New and newish operas

I was at the Kerrytown Concert House in Ann Arbor last night for an opera. The Kerrytown Concert House was an actual house and much of the first floor is now a concert venue seating maybe 90 people. The opera was As One, with two singers and a string quartet for accompaniment (all that would fit on the small stage). I thought at times the voices were a bit too big for the space, but that’s a minor quibble.

I think the piece could be described as a song cycle, not really an opera. There is a story and the singers were also marvelous actors (their faces were quite expressive), but not much of a plot. What prompted me to attend is that story – it is about a transgender woman and her transition. The libretto was written by Kimberly Reed, who is transgender, along with Mark Campbell. The music is by Laura Kaminsky.

The two singers are a baritone as Hannah before and a soprano as Hannah after. The expected way to do this would be for the baritone to sing about life before transition and the soprano to sing about afterward. Instead, both singers were onstage nearly all the time singing about two aspects of one person, the male body and the female mind.

The first part is about childhood. Hannah before (the pre-transition name is never used) had a paper route and would sometimes wear a blouse under the jacket. She was criticized in school because her penmanship was too feminine. Sex education was, of course, an embarrassment, though when the male teacher taught the boys about female anatomy Hannah was fascinated. She tried to be the perfect boy. She pretended to be constantly reading about the Transvaal to hide that she was reading about transgender, and what a relief to find there were others like her.

The second part is about being a young adult and going through transition. She is delighted when seen as a woman. When starting hormone treatments she thinks the physical changes aren’t happening fast enough, while the mental changes were hard to handle. She decides to not go home for Christmas and after the holiday she gets a Dear Son letter with thanks for the gifts. She spends Christmas day in a coffeeshop and has to figure out how to flirt. She escapes a violent assault – the soprano sang about the encounter as the baritone listed trans women who have been murdered.

The third part is one extended song almost all by the soprano. She spends time alone in a cabin in Norway and figures out how to make herself happy.

After the performance the singers, acting director, and music conductor talked about the show and took questions from the audience. The singers talked about a man and woman on stage together and they’re not playing lovers. Yet they had to be intimately involved to play two aspects of one person.



Last weekend I saw the articles in the newspaper about the live stage version of Jesus Christ Superstar being shown Easter Sunday evening. But when it was actually on I forgot to watch. So when I went to YouTube this evening to find something to listen to (an amazing number of classical music pieces available) I was pleased to see it listed as a recommendation for me (how’d they know?). And seeing it this way means I missed the commercials (and from the timings I missed 40 minutes of commercials).

What, you say? A classical music fan like me watching a rock opera? Well… yeah. The album came out when I was a teenager. My brothers brought it home and played it. It was widely discussed and shared in my church youth group. The college I attended showed a movie every Friday (usually a year or two after it was in theaters) and this was one of them. So it was a part of my youth.

John Legend and the gang did a pretty good job! Though I thought Alice Cooper as Herod was rather tame. He got the part because (the newspaper said) his portrayal was so menacing. I kept waiting for the menace to happen.

As I frequently do I looked at the story through the viewpoint of ranking. Jesus was working hard to eliminate ranking, as seen by his defense of Mary Magdalene. The Jewish and Roman leaders were working to maintain their high rank. Many of those following Jesus, especially Judas, were trying to flip the ranking with Jesus on top instead of the Romans. They were disappointed when Jesus didn’t do it. Jesus died because his message was too much of a challenge to those of high rank. And Judas got used. He was also disappointed, so helped those of higher rank maintain their position. He hoped that would boost his rank, but he was cast aside when his usefulness was done.