Interludes

VIEWPOINTS – PROTOTYPE 2025 Roundup: Continuing to push form and content in opera and music theater in exciting and unexpected ways

• By drediman
• January 23, 2025
• No Comments

Over the years, Prototype has become an integral platform for presenting new opera and music theater, often time pushing the envelope in terms of form and content in exciting and unexpected ways. This year’s week-and-a-half long festival continued to do so and was headlined by three fully-staged productions, in addition to a pair of more intimately scaled concert-style performances. On top of that, Prototype 2025 also digitally streamed an opera (i.e., Khary Laurent’s 10-minute hip-hop opera video Telekinetik, which is not covered below). As per usual, read on below for my thoughts.

EAT THE DOCUMENT
HERE’s Mainstage

Perhaps the largest-scale — and most conventional — of the offerings at this year’s Prototype festival was the world premiere of composer John Glover and librettist Kelley Rourke’s Eat the Document (RECOMMENDED), an ambitious operatic adaptation of Dana Spiotta’s novel of the same name. Alternating between the escalating political protests of the 1970s and two decades later during the 1990s, the opera is a meditation on how communication, culture, and activism can evolve over time, particularly between these two periods. Glover’s score draws heavily from the popular music of each era, while still managing to infuse much of the composition with its own unifying operatic identity. That being said, Rourke’s libretto struggles to keep up with the considerable shifts in tone and the complex plotting, occasionally resulting in some uneven storytelling and unintentionally parodic moments. The opera ultimately finds its footing when the the dramatic wheels start turning during its latter half when a key secret is uncovered. Throughout, the piece was admirably performed by a cast who effectively took on a multitude of roles from both the 1970s and 1990s, giving the impression of a production larger than it actually was. And as sprawlingly staged by Kristn Marting using the full expanse of HERE’s Mainstage (Marting was HERE’s artistic director until only recently), the work enveloped the audience, as if sweeping them along the currents of history.

BLACK LODGE: LIVE MULTIMEDIA EXPERIENCE
BRIC Arts Media

Then over at BRIC Arts Media in Brooklyn, I ventured to catch certainly one of the most visceral experiences of the festival. That would be Black Lodge: Live Multimedia Experience (RECOMMENDED). Inspired by the literary works of William S. Burroughs, this film/opera hybrid depicts the state of being known as Bardo, an intermediary realm between death and rebirth where souls must wrestle with their darkest fears and residual memories that continue to haunt them from their earthly existence. David T. Little’s music — which was performed live by singular vocalist Timur and his band The Dime Museum, as well as the Isaura String Quartet — strikingly merges traditional opera with the aesthetics of theatrical punk rock (just think of extreme outfits like Marilyn Manson and Trent Reznor’s Nine Inch Nails). Cinematically, Michael Joseph McQuilken’s 2022 film draws significant inspiration from the surreal worlds created by the late David Lynch. Be forewarned, however, given the film’s grotesque phantasmagorical imagery and the score’s cranked up volume, Black Lodge is an assaultive and relentless experience that may not be to everyone’s taste. Once again returning to Prototype is stylish tenor Timur (who in the past has made indelible impressions in similarly intense festival offerings like Anatomy Theater, Aquanetta), whose magnetic performance and goth-glam persona proved to be the driving force of the experience. Indeed, he’s just as attention-grabbing as McQuilken’s hallucinatory film, nicely balancing out the evening.

IN A GROVE
La MaMa Expimental Theatre Cub, Ellen Stewart Theatre

For me, the the indisputable highlight of Prototype 2025 was the New York premiere of the Los Angeles Opera-commissioned In a Grove (HIGHLY RECOMMENDED) by Christoper Cerrone (music) and Stephanie Fleischmann (libretto) at La MaMa’s Ellen Stewart Theatre (the work had its world premiere in 2022 courtesy of Pittsburgh Opera). In short, the hypnotizing and atmospheric chamber opera, which is based on Ryūnosuke Akutagawa’s story, sets its gaze upon a violent incident “in a grove” between a married couple and an outlaw, which is enacted a number of times from multiple perspectives, Rashomon-style. Cerrone’s music is dreamlike and gorgeously evocative — bracingly brought to life by the Metropolis Ensemble under the baton of Raquel Acevedo Klein — calling to mind the contemplative stylings of such contemporary composers as David Lang without resorting mimicry. Fleischmann’s astute and efficient libretto poetically explores the nature of memory, thankfully while staying clear of the sensationalism that can dominate such psychological thrillers. The vocally luxurious cast includes the likes of in-demand tenor Paul Appleby, smooth-voiced soprano of Mikaela Bennett, luminous countertenor of Chuanyuan Liu, and dynamic baritone John Brancy. The Prototype production has been elegantly directed by Mary Birnbaum on a platform set (designed by the talented Mimi Lien) that dramatically cuts through the performance space, bringing intimacy and a sense of communal reckoning to the proceedings.

POSITIVE VIBRATION NATION / NIGHT REIGN
HERE, Dorothy B. Williams Theatre

This January’s lineup also featured a pair of cabaret and concert-type offerings — Sol Ruiz’s Positive Vibration Nation and Arooj Aftab’s Night Reign (both RECOMMENDED) — both presented at the Dorothy B. Williams Theatre, HERE’s cozy subterranean theater. Less full-fledged operas than thematic song cycles, these hourlong experiences were pungent excursions into the stylized and distinctive musical minds of two artists. In Ruiz’s Positive Vibration Nation, exuberant Latin-futurism was the plat du jour — a defiant vision of the future, as manifested by fantastical superhero-inspired costumes and a rollicking rock guaguanco score (sung largely in Spanish) that demanded adoration. Above all, the piece is an unabashed celebration of the New Miami Sound, made all the more palpable by the energized performances — full of swagger and attitude — by Ruiz and her band. On a more laidback note was Grammy-winning singer-songwriter Arooj Aftab, who with her expert musicians performed an intimate evening of song, mostly from her album Night Reign. Over the course of her relatively short set, the cool and confident Aftab sensuously wrapped around her smoky yet silky voice around songs (mostly performed in Urdu) that conveyed the bewitching possibilities of nocturnal escapades. Musically, the songs drew from jazz and South Asian influences, the result of which is an appealing global quality that plays particularly well in cosmopolitan centers like New York.