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AMERICAN VOICES Robert Ashley and New Opera AMERICAN VOICES Robert Ashley and New Opera Alan Lockwood Dust, Celestial Excursions, and Made Out of Concrete, composed and directed by Robert Ashley, La MaMa E.T.C., January 15–25, 2009. he recent operas of Robert tactics of memory and the emotional Ashley—Dust (1998), Celestial realm of old age. Excursions (2003) and Made TOut of Concrete (2007/09)—received As nineteenth-century operatic forms new productions in January in New York such as bel canto mirrored their culture, City, rotating on a ten-night program at Ashley’s operas reflect ours with their La MaMa E.T.C. entitled Robert Ashley speed, incision, and the directness he Three Operas. Ashley, along with the sea- sheathes in off-handed generosity. Since soned ensemble of singers and the crack television came to dominate audience tech team he has worked with—for about expectations, advanced stage works two decades, in most cases—turned the from Beckett’s late monodramas to the theatre’s Annex into a concentrated lab monologues of Spalding Gray and Anna for these wry, austere, and decidedly Deavere Smith have contended with a beautiful works. Each piece had been new manner of passive attention. Ashley retooled since its premiere: Dust, with sees TV as the ideal medium for his a full new staging; Celestial Excursions, work—quick cuts and channel surfing with condensed stagecraft and the addi- seem built into the fabric of his texts— tion of four instrumental preludes in the but his telltale vocal style and spare, third act; and by a thorough shuffling sumptuous music are most powerful in of vocal parts in Made Out of Concrete, live performance. the implementation of a less predictable sequence of musical movements and a The works at La MaMa shared a deft new aria for singer Joan La Barbara. drive, and this was matched by the exact- As a retrospective of a decade’s work, ing vigor of Ashley’s team. The composer it was an exceptional opportunity to directed the three operas, with stage experience Ashley’s musical structures design and lighting by David Moodey. and thematic aims. And given that he’s Joan La Barbara and singers Jacqueline seventy-eight, it proved a rarified forum Humbert, Thomas Buckner, and Sam for an experimental master’s views on the Ashley recreated their roles; they have 74 PAJ 93 (2009), pp. 74–82. © 2009 Alan Lockwood Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/pajj.2009.31.3.74 by guest on 02 October 2021 Top: Celestial Excursions, La MaMa E.T.C. Photo: Hiro Ito. Courtesy Performing Artservices. Bottom: Joan Jonas in Celestial Excursions, The Kitchen, 2003. Photo: Mimi Johnson. Courtesy Performing Artservices. LOCKWOOD / American Voices 75 Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/pajj.2009.31.3.74 by guest on 02 October 2021 been originating Ashley’s characters since stretched out under an industrial-blue the composer embarked on his opera mover’s blanket. The uppermost bench tetralogy Now Eleanor’s Idea in the late was left vacant for No Legs, the absent, 1980s. Tom Hamilton has handled live amputee war veteran whose morphine- mixing and sound processing since 1990. induced revelation about an end to “Blue” Gene Tyranny played synthesizer brutality was at the heart of Dust. An in Dust, and improvised the keyboard alerting swoosh of sonic exhaust ushered accompaniment as performance art- in Ashley’s careworn ruminations on ist Joan Jonas reprised her role as the thought organization and short attention Silent Character in Celestial Excursions. spans. As he introduced his park com- Tyranny has been involved with Ashley panions, the adroit electronic orchestra- since the 1960s; it has been in such cir- tion shifted gears, gradually assembling cumstances of intensive community and a suspension with its poignant chord collaboration that the composer’s oeuvre changes derived from soul and gospel has evolved over the past fifty years. music. Ashley considered the theme of irreversibilities, describing inaccurate The La MaMa productions opened with portraits and the consolation of friends Dust. Six park benches were clustered on then culminating with the war vet’s staggered risers strewn with styrene bins condition (“We don’t grow back legs”). and wire milk crates, before a looming No Legs was a hero among the park backdrop of skyscraper silhouettes that denizens, and Ashley said they would would be utilized in each of the operas. sing some of his songs. He warned that For its premiere in Yokohama in 1998, “this will be kind of confusing,” spicing Dust had an imposing visual design by a melodic elision across the syllables in Yukihiro Yoshihara that featured banks “confusing” that veered his speech-like of video monitors. The new stage design vocalizing into a fleeting tune. by Moodey was produced last year for the Arteforum Festival in Ferrara, Italy, Jacqueline Humbert’s aria melded and situated the opera in the urban park straight and gay beach sex, mismatched described by Ashley during his opening fisticuffs, and Madam Blavatsky’s theoso- song. The mise-en-scène would prove a phy. The first in a sequence of motets, comfortable fit for most of the piece, her intertwined tales were marked or as five homeless characters sounded shadowed by the ensemble’s pulsating, off from their benches in solos and in unison interjections. Though nomi- ensemble sections that at times seemed nally stationary (everyone remained on an impenetrable weave of muted voices. their benches for the duration of Dust), The psycho-linguistics of ranting has Humbert enriched her role with facial been a cornerstone in the composer’s expressions, her hands tracing rhythms method, and for Dust he constructed and inflections of her voice. It was a an exemplary playground. commanding performance, for which the choral phrases might have seemed The ensemble entered, dressed with simple rhythmic support and propul- rumpled ease—Ashley in a light jacket sion. However, in an uncanny instance and brown slacks, La Barbara in a wildly of hiding in plain sight, their comments creased blouse and sleeveless dress, were the wants, grievances, and recollec- with impressive pumps—and Buckner tions of No Legs. What is more, the lingo 76 PAJ 93 Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/pajj.2009.31.3.74 by guest on 02 October 2021 of his painful memories—morphine a perfect wife pined to taste love once “peanuts” injected by the battlefield more, a quest for ardor that began to medic (“the pizza delivery boy”)—jerked sound like a Faustian plea. In the opera’s those obsessions into the opera’s urban concluding sing-song, Sam Ashley noted setting, as if he were speaking of street dryly that “Patsy made it / Merle made food. What at first listen was a soothing it / Tammy made it / Willie made it / I chorus became, in fact, highly complex didn’t make it.” He sang first of a lonely and utterly human. old codger at a bar then of a lonely old millionaire in the same spot, their hopes After the series of motets, Ashley took a revived by the angel of loneliness. solo that wrapped up an hour of mount- ing orchestral suspension. He said that Dust’s park setting became overly literal No Legs, in speaking of his revelatory during the final songs. As idealized radio conversation with God, had the atten- numbers, they wafted the opera to a tion of everyone in the park. Calling it bemused or bittersweet memory realm “the long song,” Ashley added that No that might have been heightened had Legs’s friends would now strive to do “a each singer been isolated or perhaps lit perfect imitation.” He then took the lead from below. What did carry through role, as each of his colleagues had sung the piece with startling precision was cantus firmis during the motets. But the Cas Bouman’s sound system design. The ensemble had shattered into individual music’s delicate, vivid resonance rendered voices, with the mix further skewed by La MaMa’s air as alive and turbulent as voices dropping in and out over about the material in Ashley’s texts. Swooshing nine minutes of vocal powerhousing. electronic arcs and dangling tom-tom Not loud, plenty sly in its pace, and drum patters came and went in the mix, with only droll organ strains as musical these details as spacious and exact as the accompaniment, the effect was that of conflicts and conundrums the singers having one’s hearing pinned back, in a were enacting onstage. The marvelous wind tunnel of words and voice tones. sound quality Bouman achieved would Rote means of listening were eclipsed, add unobtrusive impact through each as if it were necessary to hear with both of the operas. ears and the whole head. For Celestial Excursions, the ensemble Dust concluded with four songs that had settled in at aligned desks, with Ash- been alluded to by the chorus in Buck- ley’s desk at the left, nearer the front ner’s motet then by Ashley in his solo. of the stage. A lamp and a stack of While in the hospital, No Legs found libretto pages occupied each desktop; solace in the radio fare, and these last the performers would gradually place songs were an attempt to perform some the pages in a new stack, inadvertently of them in his honor. They hinged on marking the progress of the piece. (Dust’s emotional regrets of middle and old age, librettos were in notebooks; Made Out in a sort of anti-pop fodder. Humbert of Concrete would sport hands of over- sang of kids, the PTA and roses received sized poker cards.) Facing the audience from a secret admirer—her line “don’t through the opera, the performers wore get your hopes up” repeated like a velvet pale button-front cardigans, with dusty punch.
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