JAY REISE'S ENCOUNTER WITH A RUSSIAN MONK An associate professor of music has just done what nobody else has ever done: written an opera about Rasputin. And had it mounted by the New York City Opera. And reviewed by the critics. By Peter Ross HEN my editor asked and the haut monde, coupled with Neu; resignation and-I hoped-commendable me, "What do you Yorker movie critic Pauline Kael's sage as­ professional fatalism: "Not too much. know about opera?" I sessment that "In A Night at the Opera, the Why?" found myself sifting Marx Brothers do to opera what it deserves Little did I realize that soon I would know through the collected to have done to it'~). Also, a host of crude something about opera-and from the W troves of unused­ impressions, most starring a stereotypicaUy inside. What I would learn would have usually unusabJe­ sizable soprano-a dead ringer for Margaret nothing to do with busty Vikings, happy­ information heaped in a writer's mental Dumont-with trailing blond braids and go-lucky gondoliers, or tubercular Bohe­ junkyard, sorting through files overloaded cavernous breastplates bleating intermina­ mians. I was to cover the world premiere with gems of the arcane, the curious, the ble intimations of imminent death, which of Rasputin by Jay Reise, '75 G, the associ­ exotic, the mind-bogglingly dumb, hunting never-alas!-seems to descend to silence ate professor of music at Penn who wrote for operatic lore. her as quickly as I'd like. both its score and libretto. It is Reise's first What I unearthed was paltry: random Aghast at the prospect of enduring such opera, commissioned by Beverly Sills for dates; names of composers, productions, an ordeal, I thought how best to feign an the New York City Opera and sung for the and singers; a few places (La Scala, the incapacitating tone-deafness or a phobic first tirr,e in the company's home at the Lin­ Met, Covent Garden). A few quixotic dread of musical drama stemming from coln Center for the Performing Arts on Sep­ quotes (AI Capone's "To me, grand opera some unspeakable childhood trauma. tember 17. is the berries" and some scenes from the I didn't think it would play; when I But before the glitter and glamour of the Marx Brothers' classic send-up of opera. responded to the question, it was with premiere-which will also be marked by 26 THE PENNSYLVANIA GAZETTE I NOVEMBER, 1988 some clamor-I make two trips to Lincoln what he had in mind. "Yeah," he says, "that "and we all take our chances. I think I do Center to see Rasputin come alive. To get gets picked up by the voice, so when you it convincingly; I hope so. I try to." He to the first of the two rehearsals I am playit'!....he gestures like someone hurling thinks of himself as "a romantic moder­ grudgingly permitted to attend-the New a frisbee on a short, straight flight~'play nist," he volunteers. York City Opera publicists guard too well out." The music is, to my ears, very modern, against intruders-I have to rise long be­ Reise's music is usually accorded the brimming with dissonances and harmonic fore dawn, dash to Philadelphia's 30th catch-phrase "eclectic"; Reise himself em­ clashes, flinty and formal. So I'm surprised Street Station to catch an express train, and ploys it when talking about his work­ when, at measure 816, Keene asks the pi­ then stand and wait until it arrives. Two especially about Rasputin-but he ex­ anist, "Can you play that fox trot now?" hours later, at the stage entrance of the presses some reservations about the term, A fox trot ensues, and the pianist is soon building in Lincoln Center known as the wondering if he has overused it, or if it has joined by the strings, the juxtaposition New York State Theater, I pass a smiling come to carry derogatory cormotations. His creating a tense, still-dissonant counter­ guard, who instructs me in a Jamaican lilt approachto composing, he says, "involves point. The piano is soon drowned out-in to follow the squares of black set into the examining and culling from the best fact, it seems to sink, surface, and sink tile floor until I come to the practice area, sources. We're all influenced, we all have again, almost like the proverbial "down for where I am to meet Jay Reise. a parentage, we all have roots, and I think the third time." The effect is eerie and un­ Down long corridors I descend-not that a lot of art esthetics that involved settling. much like Orpheus, I fear-passing a burly negating roots-I think of Webern and When the passage concludes, the orches­ man guiding a floor-waxer. To my satisfac­ Schoenberg [two of the most influential tra takes a break. A woman comes up to tion, he sings as he toils, an aria that I can­ modern composers], who tried to get rid Reise. "Those layers," she says, referring not identify and, for all I know, one that of the whole 19th century-has become to the dense carpets of sound: "brilliant." is the current salsa hit. His voice is what this obsessive quest for what has become, The orchestra pit empties; a violist deli­ I consider a queasy baritone. for lack of a better definition of the term, cately packs her instrument in its case and Reise is late, and he apologizes for his unwraps a package from which she re­ tardiness when he arrives. Now 38 years • moves two hard-boiled eggs. old, he carries a tote bag and a suit bag and During the break, I wander around, over­ wears glasses. with clip-on tinted lenses What motivates an hearing conversations between the grow­ flipped up; he has thick, close-cropped, ing number of people lounging around, wavy brown hair that is beginning to gray. trying to guess what they have to do with We make our way to the auditorium. I am American living in the opera: those who pace nervously, grind instructed not to sit too close to conduc­ to halts, place hands on their diaphragms, tor Christopher Keene and Reise, who sits the 1980s to write and emit trills are dead giveaways. When in the front row behind Keene, not because the orchestra reconvenes, I hear more un­ I am persona non grata but so I don't block an apera? It is, usual instruments: a tenor saxophone war­ the flow of traffic: copyists, technicians, bles in a swing-era mode, Chinese gongs opera company officials. add brassy flutters, and although I am un­ Keene-who seems and, in fact, having Reise suggests, able to spot them, I am convinced I hear reached only his 41st year, is very young maracas. I have to remind myself that this to have been named, as he just has been, very much amatter strange, exotic, demanding music is but one to succeed Beverly Sills as head of the New part of something much vaster-the foun­ York City Opera company-talks to Reise of dation for a drama, for singing and acting. while the orchestra warms up. Cacophony temperament. A little after noon, the singers are called reigns until precisely 10:30 a.m., when the • up, and they sit on two benches at the fore­ strings sound a concert A (440 vibrations originality." To him, that spells a serious front of the stage, which is concealed by a second). Not until Keene armounces they problem, especially since, in his view, even the curtain. Most are in casual dress, jeans will begin with Act n, at measure 401, does the most erudite listeners (and, I suspect, and knit shirts. They flip through the score he greet the musicians with a brisk, critics) "wouldn't know originality if it hit while they wait for one of their number to businesslike "Good morning." Then they them over the head." join them, and soon, one of them, grown begin to play. Keene, who is wearing a Reise considers the term polystylistic to impatient, summons the shirker with a short-sleeved knit shirt, waves a pencil in encompass his musical sphere, but he isn't down-home cry of "Hennnnnn-reeeeey!" place of the usual baton. He feints and jabs content with that, either. "Certainly any­ (Tenor Henry Price, who plays Prince Felix at points for emphasis, making some body listening to my music," he says, "is Yusupov, Rasputin's assassin.) A tall man gestures that look like rabbit punches. going to be aware of the fact that I've heard with a puckish expression-much sugges­ I am too far back to see much of the or­ a good deal of music in my day." In Raspu­ tive of humorist Garrison Keillor-then chestra, but a quick peek allows quick im­ tin, he uses tonal music and atonal music, stands and, with a stylishly dressed pressions: the musicians seem to range in usually depending on the characters, and woman, begins to sing. (They are bass­ age from the 20s to the 60s; I do not see the opera includes strains of a'IChaikovsky baritone John Cheek, who has the title any blacks; there are many women; nearly waltz, ragtime, cabaret motifs it la Kurt role, and soprano Margaret Cusack, who everyone is wearing glasses. At measure Weill. He feels strongly that the intermin­ plays Tsarina Alexandra Romanov.) The 741, a cellist asks a question, and Keene gling of modern atonality with more tradi­ number and combinations of singers shift has all the cellists repeat their section with­ tional tonal music is not a style, merely a as different groupings practice different out the rest of the orchestra.