‘…(Iphigenia)’ opera at Kennedy Center pushes musical boundaries

Opera in the 21st century has been radicalized and reimagined by new artists and musical languages, but almost nothing pretty organized me for the fevered dream of …(Iphigenia), a new work centered on Euripides’ tale of probable infanticide. Composer-musicians Wayne Shorter and esperanza spalding teamed up to disinter the bones of the myth and study motivations of not just pater, King Agamemnon, but also daughter Iphigenia and women of all ages all through heritage who, this creative group thinks, should share some culpability in accepting such as self-sacrifice.

There is extra than a 50-yr age distinction in between Wayne Shorter (88), regarded the best residing jazz composer, and Grammy Award–winning esperanza spalding, and they were doing the job on opposite coasts for this collaboration. Nonetheless, they engendered a development that is presently the things of legends. It premiered final thirty day period in Boston and was done this weekend at a packed Kennedy Center Eisenhower Theater.

The opera started out as an odd pastiche, even parody: Total Steel Jacket meets Monty Python. The men are suited up for war on a barren landscape, the only phase ingredient a huge stone altar from a scrim with a red sky projection. The adult males are restless, edgy, and stuck in this windless landscape, unable to embark on their war against the Trojans. Two brothers — leaders Agamemnon and Menelaos with their lengthy “rock star” hair — are the only types whose faces we see clearly. Tenor Arnold Livingston Geis as Agamemnon and baritone Brad Walker as Menelaos have effective vocal chops as does tenor Samuel White as the oracle/seer Kalchas. Kalchas crudely solves the Greeks’ problem brought on by Agamemnon engendering the wrath of a goddess, by suggesting sacrificing the youthful woman to Artemis.

Enter Iphigenia, soprano Nivi Ravi, dressed as a spring-eco-friendly flower youngster. She gets hoisted onto the altar, and in fragile sluggish movement, Dad slits his daughter’s throat. The males cheer, just about every a person lifts a fisted arm into the air, then in one file they operate-march in a double-time jody. These soldier buddies repeat the scene yet again. Enter a different Iphigenia. And so on. It’s absurd, even pushing bloated opera-with-elephants conventions, and the toxic masculinity is no question intentionally unremarkable.

At 1 place the males get drunk. Soldiers turn into frat boys, as they stumble and throw jumbo-sized pink plastic cups, littering the stage. One particular of the troopers operates across the phase left to ideal carrying a flesh-colored plastic blow-up sex doll. Soldiers mill all over grunting in a crocodile line and exit again.

Aspect II shifts to emphasis on the several Iphigenias. Each individual a single is color-coded and each has her very own audio terrain. Sopranos Alexandra Smither as Iphigenia of the Light and Joanna Lynn-Jacobs as Iphigenia of the Sea are adopted by mezzo-soprano Kelly Guerra as Iphigenia Unbound. (Later, the very same singer plays Opera Broadcast Host, striving overly challenging at this position in the opera to make the function applicable.) Most distinctive is the saffron-clothed, Iphigenia the elder. Sharmay Musacchio is an incredible contralto who pulls out the stops in conditions of range and shades.

The stage house has opened up. Billowy baroque-like style and design components by acclaimed architect-designer Frank Gehry are flown in. Clouds? They seem to be sensitive in their light-weight-catching translucency yet risky in their needle-like spikes.

A person out of the blue realizes that musically the creators have thrown absent the rulebook. It is not jazz exactly and unquestionably not what a single has heard as classical contemporary. It has pushed boundaries concerning customers of the innovative team. (Caroline Shaw is given compositional credit score for the feminine choral voices who variety cluster chords, go into unison, then play with broad-wavering vibrato so that the complete influence is of voices turning into destabilized, every single Iphigenia threatening to choose in excess of from another. Who’s in cost? No matter if scored or improvisation, this feels like opera as incantation.

In the meantime, Kennedy Centre orchestra members in the pit led by conductor Clark Rundell,  in cost of further orchestrations and musical dramaturgy, mushrooms in polyrhythms and density.

Shorter has delivered his most seething and slippery of scores. It normally takes you by surprise, and I located myself shed at occasions in a musical labyrinth.

With a little something so formidable, there are certain to be bloopers. The character Usher, performed by Brenda Pressley, wanders through the proceedings. Elegantly dressed, she only speaks, a tutorial-interpreter of types, and periodically exhorts just one of the six Iphigenias to split the spell and get out of this mess. But as she gets drowned out in the stability of audio (intentional?), I by no means understood her perform.

There is no doubt that spalding is fearless. I was stunned to notice she was there in the combine of Iphigenias. She stood out not just since she was dressed in a silver 21st-century astronaut jumpsuit but when she moved into her have solo function, she went to sites stylistically, perhaps even spiritually, no 1 in the ensemble had ventured. Buzzing, delving into resonant head and body spaces, this artist, like Shorter, broke all the regulations. She didn’t wait to pare back seem and discover deep house.

In Component III the phase is stripped further more to expose the back again partitions, and there, stage proper, a jazz trio became the emphasis. The audience reveled in ingesting in a few wonderful jazz musicians — bassist John Patitucci, pianist Danilo Perez, and drummer Brian Blade, whom Shorter assembled back in 2000 for his quartet. For jazz fans, these fellas are kings. And what was the healthy for the opera story?

So is Shorter nonetheless nuts immediately after all these yrs? WTF. You wager.

Operating Time: Somewhere around one hour 45 minutes, with no intermission.

…(Iphigenia) played December 10 and 11, 2021, in the Eisenhower Theater of the Kennedy Middle, 2700 F Street, NW, Washington, DC.

The digital program can be seen listed here.

For a total list of the Kennedy Center’s 50th anniversary season gatherings, click right here.

To master extra about the Kennedy Center’s 50th Anniversary, click in this article.