Tis the season!

Thats right, time to announce AOT's 2009-2010 season! Next year we will present a core subscription season of three Baltimore shows. Outside of that we will have several projects in Baltimore, Washington, and New York. It is a busy season in this tough time, and I look forward to writing more about that thought soon.

AOT 2009-2010

November 2009
Kurt Weill's
AMERICAN REQUIEM
(Mahagonny Songspiel, Happy End Songspiel, The Seven Deadly Sins, The Berlin Requiem)

Featuring two time Grammy Award winning soprano SYLVIA MCNAIR!

January 2010
Georges Bizet's
LE CABARET DE CARMEN

A revival of AOT's intoxicating version of the classic opera - called "smashing...fresh, inventive, invigorating" by the Baltimore Sun.

April 2010
G.F. Handel's
JEPHTHA

Handels last and finest dramatic work brought to life in a rare and powerful staging.


Subscriptions will become available in April 2009, so be on the look out. And I will write a lot more on each of these productions in the coming months.

Other projects AOT has in the works include:

ANNUNCIATION/VISITATION
This is a staging of George Crumb songcycles combined with the Lecons de Tenebres of Francois Couperin that AOT will premier at Indiana University. We hope to bring this production to Baltimore audiences next season as well.

THE DEATH OF KLINGHOFFER
AOT recently received a large grant from the NEA to present John Adam's controversial and epic opera at the Park Avenue Armory in New York. There are a lot of details to work out still, but I am hoping to make the project a reality.

I'm currently in Bloomington, IN working on a production of Handel's most famous opera Giulio Cesare. And, because I just can't contain my excitement about these things, I will also announce now that we plan to open our 2010-2011 Baltimore subscription series with...GIULIO CESARE. A great work, with tremendous music (the greatest Handel hits), and a compelling story to tell.

A Few Images on Hydrogen Jukebox

Here are three photos from Hydrogen Jukebox. I hope some of you got to see the performances (all shows were completely sold out and received standing ovations!). The experience was capped off by not being able to get a train from Baltimore to Washington for Sunday's performance. I had to find a way to the College Park Metro station and then walk from the Rosslyn stop across the Key Bridge into Georgetown. The energy in that city was palpable, and as I crossed the Potomac with the Kennedy Center and the Washington Monument in the distance I was struck by how special it was to be doing this piece at this time in this place. It is a moment that all of us will remember forever, and to have transformed HJ into a work the celebrates the American spirit was a tremendously exciting way to be a part of the inauguration experience. The cast worked terrifically hard, and I am honored and awed to have worked with them. It is a great piece that I hope we can do again in the future!

HJ Continues...

Hydrogen Jukebox is going fantastically well. I hope you can all make it. It has, unfortunately, kept me in rehearsals almost 12 hours a day since we have such a short time to prepare it. I can't express how much the piece has grown on me. Glass' sensitivity to Ginsberg's text is ironic, witty, and saddly touching all at once. I am blessed with an enthusiastic, talented, and hard working cast. The set is coming together a little more each day and the costumes look great. Today I have meetings with the projection designers and the lighting designer. REALLY - you all should not miss this one, it is an extremely rare opportunity to see this piece on stage.

If you aren't sure about Philip Glass...trust me, I understand the feeling. But, this piece is different, I promise. It is accessibly and profoundly moving.

Back in the USA

Freshly arrived in Washington, DC yesterday evening and ready to start rehearsals this morning, jetlag be damned. I will try to faithfully report and even provide some photos, if I can track down a camera.

Listening to the Crack of Doom on the Hydroden Jukebox

Working on "Hydrogen Jukebox" has been more than a little consuming. Both the challenge and potential reward of working on a piece like this are far greater than traditional opera - here there is no linear narrative, no characters, no groundwork with which to begin. It is all starting from scratch and letting the mind run wild. All that to say that my days are being spent sequestered in my study creating what will eventually be the production. In the meantime - here are my recently completed program notes, that I think or hope will wet some whistles.

“Hydrogen Jukebox” is a song-cycle. It is epic in length, epic in scale, and epic in scope. Perhaps because of this, it was conceived as a staged work from its inception, and is widely understood, for lack of other vocabulary, to be an opera. It defies true categorization: a number of texts spanning the entirety of Ginsberg's work, set for a myriad of permutations (solos, duets, quartets, full choruses), which are strong in their images and diverse in their subject matters. What holds this all together – what is essential throughout the entire work – is its deeply-American language of symbols, and the balancing of extremes which it communicates.

“Hydrogen Jukebox”, with texts selected by Ginsberg himself, premiered for six singers at the 1990 Spoleto Festival. The production we present tonight is vastly different. Most noticeably, the cast has been expanded to nine and the movements have been reordered to suggest a particular dramatic arc. In its original form “Hydrogen Jukebox” was described at its premier as “a portrait of America throughout the 1950s, 60s, 70s, and 80s”. It is my belief that by arriving at this new ordering of movements, and understanding Ginsberg's cultural references as metaphors for larger universal themes, it can be a piece about much more. Instead of a nostalgic retrospective of the most domestically-tumultuous decades of the twentieth century, our “Hydrogen Jukebox” is an abstract portrayal of the rise and fall, ebb and flow, of an entire society using the imagery of the great American century. It is a portrayal of the necessary and inevitable paradigm shifts which define the human story, with metaphors which are distinctly American in character.

By expanding the message of “Hydrogen Jukebox” far beyond its initial conveyance, this production paradoxically arrives at a general philosophy much closer to a fundamental truth contained within the body of Ginsberg's work: the meeting of apparent opposites in lasting harmony. In a way, this is the meeting of eastern and western thought which is increasingly prevalent in Ginsberg's poetry. It permeates all aspects and layers of “Hydrogen Jukebox”.

“First, in its large scale structure, the work is cyclical. It is indeed the rise and “Fall of America” (to quote the title of Ginsberg's National Book Award-winning collection of poems), but understood as the meeting ends of a circle. The series of texts which begin and end this performance focus simultaneously on creation as destruction as creation. This is an understanding of the world deeply relevant to Ginsberg, and Glass for that matter, as practitioners of eastern thought. In Hinduism, from which almost all of the non-American references in these poems come, creation-destruction can be understood as a function of the dance, called naraja, of the trimurtis-deity Shiva. Naraja is the sustaining of the universe; it is the cosmic vibration and undulation of everything beyond human consciousness. In creation there is destruction, and in the end there is beginning. Likewise, the beginning of “Hydrogen Jukebox” is about the formation of a new society, but contained within that beginning is the struggle and necessary destruction implicit in all new communities. By the same token, the end of “Hydrogen Jukebox” is about the passing away of a society, but within that is the creation of something new. Their time has past, and a new age has come.

“Secondly, the imagery of the work is about balance. In talking about the cyclical structure of this performance I cited its beginning and end as an example. At the center of the work are two movements which balance each other: “Under Silver Wing” and “from Howl”. Essentially, the references in these movements are the same. They are about the American structure; they are about technology, infrastructure, man's interaction with the natural world, and the realization of the American Dream. They are, however, opposite sides of that coin. “Under Silver Wing” portrays the wonder of the American building – skyscrapers rise like crops, airplanes are metallic insects hopping across the landscape. This America is awe-inspiring, wondrous. The America of “from Howl” is the same, but vastly out of balance. Molloch is the technological and psychological god created by man, who demands the ultimate self-sacrifice. The movement portrays materialism, ultra-capitalism, consumerism, fanaticism, and all the 'isms' which define the new global age in dark and catastrophic terms. In a sense, “Under Silver Wing” and “from Howl” portray the same exact city, but they are Metropolis and Gotham. In just this way, almost every movement is mirrored on the other side of the intermission. Ying and Yang permeate “Hydrogen Jukebox”.

“Thirdly, the small scale minutia of many of the individual movements' imagery is about balance between extremes, and in that way the sameness of extreme differences. The strongest example is the dead center of “Hydrogen Jukebox”. Between “Under Silver Wing” and “from Howl”, lies “Wichita Vortex Sutra”. It begins and ends with the personal and the trivial: a man traveling in a car across the middle of America, beginning with a rumination on the solitude of the American automobile, and ending with a pit stop in Florence, Kansas for “tea and gas”. Between these, in what could be considered the epicenter of the vortex which is “Hydrogen Jukebox”, Ginsberg the poet wanders out into the immensity of the universe. He portrays a solitary man summing from within himself all of human consciousness, all deities, all powers, to “make mantra of American language” in the phrase “I declare the end of the war”. It is microcosm and macrocosm come together; it is the most eastern and western of images along side each other to evoke the very definition of “yogi”, defined in shiva samhita as “someone who knows the entire cosmos is situated within his own body”.

“This same pairing of extremes exists in many of the movements of “Hydrogen Jukebox”. It is a literary device that Ginsberg used often, and treasured as endemic of his own style. This he took from the paintings of Paul Cézanne, where he noticed that there was a physical reaction, an “eyeball-kick”, when the eye moved between vastly different colors. He often cited this phrase itself, “eyeball-kick”, as an example in literature of how the same reaction could be achieved. Likewise, he cited the phrase “Dexedrine Clown” which he used to describe Bob Dylan. The most frequent example he used to describe this literary phenomenon came from his most famous poem “Howl”. The line is “Listening to the crack of doom on the hydrogen jukebox”.

“Our production of “Hydrogen Jukebox” is markedly different than what was presented at its debut nearly two decades ago. It isn't about a museum portrait of America throughout its twentieth century growing pains. It is about a universal truth: ages pass away, times come and go, and societies rise from the sea of posterity to which they inevitably return. All of this, when told through the imagery of Americana, is profoundly powerful, and pregnant with meaning. Yet, on a fundamental level, the production you will see tonight reconnects with a mystical thread of insight which runs throughout all of Ginsberg's poetry, and which is latent in the music of Philip Glass.

A teaser...more to come!

Reports of my death...wait, déjà vu!

Well, once again strange rumors seem to be flying around. I heard from a little bird that there is talk that AOT is canceling its Spring offerings! Nothing could be further from the truth. This Spring AOT present three shows. The first is the Washington, DC premier of Philip Glass' "Hydrogen Jukebox", in collaboration with Georgetown University. Then will be our runout performance of "Venus and Adonis" and "Dido and Aeneas" in Blacksburg, VA (made possible by the Virginia Arts Administration), and finally a double-bill of songs by John Dowland and Kurtag's "Kafka Fragments". Plus, there is a special surprise coming in the summer months.

This is all to gear up for our fifth anniversary season next year, featuring 5 different fully staged productions in Baltimore and Washington. The season will include one revival, a baroque collaboration, and most exciting, the possible participation of one of America's most acclaimed Grammy award winning sopranos. AOT was also just recommended for a large grant from the National Endowment for the Arts for a project in 2010. So, AOT is in great shape to continue producing its one-of-a-kind work.