[Originally published in the Toronto Star]
Submitting your ears to an opera about the Internet calls for grit. But for Internet addicts, you’ll have to actually leave your house to see it.
The visual art world has been exploring the role of the Internet in our lives for over a decade but, in music, the concept has been slower to catch on.
There was Nico Muhly’s Two Boys, a sordid tale about an Internet chat room and murder that premiered at the English National Opera in 2011 and ends, as they often do, badly.
Most recent is The Whisper Opera, which had its Canadian premiere at the Theatre Centre on Thursday. The libretto and music were written by Pulitzer Prize-winning composer David Lang, who created the text by cataloguing short, affecting dictums typed into an Internet search engine. For those who weren’t there, this is what we saw:
Patrons were ushered into a dimly lit perimeter that surrounded a raised platform lined with white linen curtains leading to banks of seats facing four sections. Once seated, we saw our 52 protruding heads poking up from the floor, looking at each other with an odd sense of trepidation.
The musicians entered the stage designed by Jim Findlay and began twirling cymbals that were touched with metal rods, producing a taut, metallic sound.
They began to vocalize brief, whispered phrases, which combined to create a texture of hushed avowals like: “I wonder where my sister is,” “make people laugh when I am with them, but when I’m alone I cry,” “go to the commissary,” “I was just a boy,” “I want to dance.”
The entire work lasted 70 minutes and was led by a central character played by soprano Tony Arnold, who at times conducted and, at others, paced around as if searching for something or someone.
Cellist Kivie Cahn-Lipman provided a contemporary basso continuo to Claire Chase’s alto flute motifs, which flickered like the suspended light bulbs hung throughout the space. Ross Karre played a glockenspiel with his fingertips and, at other moments, rubbed the skin of a bass drum to produce an ambient rumble. Clarinetist Joshua Rubin (wearing bright orange striped socks that I will not soon forget) quivered out soft tones that sounded more like abstract melodies melting under a desert sun.
The errant sounds of Queen St. wafted in every once in a while to meet the hushed, hypnotic tableau that never made it beyond pianissimo.
The ritualistic and almost reverent production ended with Arnold singing off-stage, accompanied by Lang’s signature interwoven fragments and stuttered rhythms.
The entire opera was tiny and fragile, yet wonderfully beguiling.
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