Interludes

VIEWPOINTS – Classical music roundup: Assessing the anticipated premieres of Jeanine Tesori’s GROUNDED and Meredith Monk’s INDRA’S NET

• By drediman
• October 3, 2024
• No Comments

This week, I had the chance to catch up with a pair of major premieres from two highly established and much loved female composers — Jeanine Tesori and Meredith Monk. As per usual, read on for my thoughts.

GROUNDED
The Metropolitan Opera
In repertory through October 19

The Metropolitan Opera kicked off its 2024/2025 season last week with the New York premiere of composer Jeanine Tesori’s operatic adaptation of Grounded (RECOMMENDED). Based on George Brant’s 2013 play of the same name (Brant also wrote the opera’s libretto), the Met production — a revised version of the Washington National Opera staging mounted last year — ambitiously expands the one woman show into a large scale opera, befitting the immense psychological turmoil underpinning the story of Jess, a fighter pilot who must reconcile womanhood and civilian life with the unique challenges of modern/virtual warfare. As the piece unfolds, Jess is faced with difficult moral dilemmas and a slipping sense of reality and identity, ultimately descending into a state of mental crisis. Best known for her astonishing versatility as a composer of Broadway musicals (e.g., Fun Home, Kimberly Akimbo), Tesori acclimates seamlessly to the operatic vernacular (well, Caroline, or Change is essentially an opera), penning a distinguished score that eloquently navigates the work’s spiky psychological terrain while remaining musically accessible and distinctive. Her work for Grounded is one of the stronger new scores to grace the Met stage in recent memory, and it’s vividly brought to life by Met Music Director Yannick Nézet-Séguin in the pit. As Jess, the cast is led by mezzo-soprano Emily D’Angelo, who gives a dramatically courageous and vocally lustrous performance. The cast also includes the game tenor Ben Bliss as Jess’s arguably ill-fitting love interest. Michael Mayer’s sleek and striking staging contrasts eye-catching LED projections with naturalism, thereby highlighting the heroine’s conflicts in visual and theatrical terms.

INDRA’S NET
Park Avenue Armory
Through October 6

This week at the massive drill hall at the Park Avenue Armory, you’ll also be able to catch another anticipated New York premiere, Meredith Monk’s Indra’s Net (RECOMMENDED). The work arrives at the Armory after having been staged in Amsterdam last year. That the New York engagement has been by and large sold out is a testament to Monk’s status amongst legendary “downtown” artists (she created art alongside the likes of Philip Glass, Laurie Anderson, and John Adams) — at 81-years-young, she has spent decades creating decidedly avant-garde works that span theater, music, and film (often all within the same piece). Make no mistake, Indra’s Net firmly continues in this holistic interdisciplinary tradition. In essence a wordless vocal, sensitively choreographed meditation on human interconnectedness and interdependency — as such, it’s a spiritual companion piece to Cellular Songs, Monk’s rumination on that most minuscule of life units, which I caught at the Brooklyn Academy of Music in 2018 — the work is simultaneously vivid and calming. As with most of her other efforts, the piece unfolds organically — and sometimes surprisingly. Throughout, Monk is supported by her longtime ensemble of primarily women vocalists, as well as a wonderfully in-sync orchestra. There’s an instinctive symbiosis in the way instruments and voices weave together and against each other, in the process evoking deep humanity and a community completely in touch with its place within the larger scheme of things (the ravishing play on perspective makes this clear). The whole endeavor is infused with compassion and hope, and it ends on a gently breathtaking note of perfect harmony.