BEYOND THE HORIZON (Nicolas Flagello) New York 2024 Sara Kennedy, John Robert Green, John Bellemer
MORE VIDEO FILES: VIDEO
Information on the Performance
- Work Title: Beyond the Horizon
- Composer: Flagello Nicolas
- Libretto: Walter Simmons Libretto Text, Libretto Index
- Venue & Opera Company: La MaMa, New York City, Teatro Grattacielo
- Recorded: September 15, 2024
- Type: Staged Opera Live
- Singers: Sara Kennedy, John Robert Green, John Bellemer, Melina Jaharis, Daniel Klein, Carla López-Speziale, Dick Scott
- Conductor: Christian Capocaccia
- Orchestra:
Information about the Recording
- Published by: TEATRO GRATTACIELO
- Date Published: 2024
- Format: Streaming
- Quality Video: 4 Audio:4
- Subtitles: yessubs, ensubs
- This Recording is NOT AVAILABLE from a proper commercial or public source
ADDITIONAL INFORMATION ON THIS PERFORMANCE
The opera by the late Nicolas Flagello and librettist Walter Simmons (in attendance at the premiere) is based on Eugene O’Neill’s Pulitzer Prize-winning play. The piece has a ton going for it. Basing your work off a Pulitzer-Prize winner is a great start, but the other major factor, which I think often gets overlooked in the landscape of modern opera, is that it’s based on a play. Not a novel. Not a film. A play, which is already a format that dovetails in its artistic language with opera. So many of the modern operas we see aim to be cinematic in scope, often bringing in dozens of extraneous characters, dozens and dozens of set changes, extensive plots, and elements that are foreign to theater. One of the reasons many of these modern works don’t have the sought-after impact is that they lack the dramatic focus to match the emotional intensity required of opera. “Beyond the Horizon” is quite the opposite, featuring a handful of characters, and a minimal plot that spotlights the desires and emotions of the characters, thus amplifying the themes more potently.
For those unfamiliar with the work, Andy and Rob are two brothers working a farm. Rob is destined to travel abroad with their uncle and Andy to remain on the farm. But when Rob finds out that his love for Ruth is reciprocated, he leaves his dreams behind to stay with her. Andy takes his place. Years pass and Rob and Ruth realize they made a mistake. His dreams are gone and she never loved him. A child anchors them to one another and the only thing they can nurture is a growing resentment. Meanwhile, Andy is living the life, accumulating a fortune, and causing the other two envy and longing. But in the end, Rob and Ruth’s son dies, Rob gets ill and dies, Andy gambles away his fortune, and Ruth ends up alone and miserable. The opera takes across this vast palette of emotions in 75 minutes, presenting the drama with razor-sharp clarity.
It’s an emotional intensity that doesn’t relent for its duration, leaving you walking away satisfied with the experience. Oftentimes, less is more, and we don’t often get that from a lot of modern opera where the notion seems to be that because this is the Gesamtkunkwerk, the art of all arts, more is more. When it comes to story, clarity, by way of simplification, really is king
Musically, this piece is clearly inspired by verismo operas of the past in its orchestration and the hints of melodic lyricism. Ruth gets a gorgeous arioso passage (“I now know what I did not know before”) near the end of the opera in which she laments her fate and Rob and Ruth get a duet early on in the opera in which they profess their love. There’s also a mysterious and melodious prelude that starts in the brass, brings in the strings, and then the winds. But the opera does run into a lot of problems most modern operas do – almost everything feels like recitative with orchestration. Even when he went half hours with long recitativo exposition, Wagner found ways to cap scenes with extended and potent lyricism. And within those exposition passages, the vocal line would burst into moments of captivating melody and musical poetry. That’s not the say that this doesn’t exist in Flagello or other modern composers’ works, but it doesn’t feel as present when the musical approach seems to repeat itself. The major centerpiece argument scenes between Andy and his father and then Rob and Ruth felt very similar in how the orchestra built itself up into a furious climax, the characters bantering back at each other. No one gets a chance to explore their emotions more deeply outside of direct confrontation. For a piece so well-paced, it might feel contradictory to ask for expansion of the material, but just more moments like Ruth’s aria at the close of the opera would have allowed more time to connect and bond with the characters and their emotions. We love opera because it gives us that time and space to indulge in emotion, even if a character is repeating the same lines over and over. Assuming the orchestra has it all handled misses the point a bit.
by David Salazar
Quoted from grattacielo & operawire