Pittsburgh Opera and Chatham Baroque Blur Performative Boundaries

These are certainly synergistic days in the arts.  Theater companies are staging operas, operas are staging plays, dancers are speaking in ballets, and everyone is projecting video.  Museums are mixing it up, too, but then, they always have.  It’s certainly been a win for audiences – at least in Pittsburgh – where we have so much resident talent that this spilling over performative boundaries is no accident.  It’s like a form of natural evolution that can’t help itself and is thriving — because it’s successful.

Thus, it may take you a moment to orient yourself when you first sit down at Pittsburgh  Opera’s world premiere of “Woman With Eyes Closed,” (music by Jennifer Higdon; libretto by Jerre Dye) as you might not be sure if you’re looking at the set of a 1970s sitcom, or a modern art lecture.  We see the digital projection of famous modern paintings smothering the backdrops, juxtaposing an old sofa, brown coffee table, a pre-cable television, and the type of “princess” phone your grandmother used.  (Imagine the walls of Gertrude Stein’s Paris apartment grafted onto the living room of “Good Times”).  With the elevated seating — over what is essentially a large, black box stage – there’s nothing that suggests an operatic experience is about to unfold, but that’s what makes this experience all the more engaging.

This inversion of scale is our first clue that something remarkable is about to happen: as we often compare life to an opera, why not perform an opera inside the life of a family, framed by their house?  These choices by director Kristine McIntyre, and set and projection designer Luke Cantarella, lay the visceral foundation for what will become an interior journey by the characters, which would be diluted away by a less intimate theatrical motif.

The action centers on a major art heist – similar in nature to the famous thefts of the Kunsthal Museum in Rotterdamn, and the Gardner Museum in Boston – in which multi-million dollar paintings were stolen and never seen again.  In this story, Picassos, Monets, and Lucian Freud’s “Woman With Eyes Closed” — an intensely psychological portrait – are discovered by the protagonist, Mona (Meredith Arwady) in a suitcase dropped off by her wayward son Thomas (Fran Daniel Laucerica).

Complicating the story is the fact that Mona’s deceased mother was a painter, so art theft for her is not just an ethical matter, but a spiritual transgression.

Mona’s contralto vocal ruminations are deep and ponderous, but the gravity of her voice never comes off as tentative.  This is a woman accustomed to thinking profoundly, and not afraid to look into the abyss of her life’s meaning even as she mundanely rakes leaves in her yard.  She is in many respects the opposite of her son, whose ascendent tenor exists on a separate plain, and never manages to reach an understanding of the earthly consequence of what he has done.  In this phantasmagoric landscape, phonation equals cognition.

In an adagio moment of reverie, Mona is visited by her mother, Momma (Lauryn Davis) – the alliteration of names can be a bit confusing – whose rapturous, lyric soprano evokes both the interiority and the mystery of the stolen paintings, which are projected on the walls surrounding them, like portraits of an exhibition reflecting their maternal history.  Their duet is ethereal and compelling.  Mona is transfigured, becoming both mother and daughter . . . artist and portrait.  

The production also features mezzo-soprano Audrey Welsh as the curator of the museum, and bass Matthew Soibelman as the inspector trying to solve the crime, both of whom enrich the canvas of sound.

It should be noted that this chamber opera has three different endings, depending on which performance you attend.  They are all both unexpected and appropriate, so no matter which show you see, you won’t be disappointed.

In trying to sum up “Woman With Eyes Closed,” I was reminded of something Debussy said about his own opera, “Pelléas” (1902), “I also tried to obey a law of beauty that seems notably ignored when it comes to dramatic music: the characters of this opera try to sing like real people, and not in an arbitrary language made up of worn-out cliches.”

In its theatricality, lyrics, and certainly its music, this too is a work about “real people” and the dilemmas they face in real life.  We often hear the expression that “the eyes are windows to the soul,” but as we learn here, sometimes the best way to understand the soul is with our eyes closed.
For further information: www.pittsburghopera.org