Tod MACHOVER (b.1953)
Death and the Powers (2010)
Simon / voice of Robot Leader - James Maddalena (baritone);
Miranda / voice of Robot Four - Joélle Harvey (soprano);
Evvy / voice of Robot Three - Patricia Risley (mezzo-soprano);
Nicholas / voice of Robot Two - Doug Dodson (countertenor);
The United Way - David Kravitz (baritone);
The United Nations - Hal Cazalet (tenor);
The Administration - Tom McNichols (bass)
Boston Modern Orchestra Project/Gil Rose
rec. 16-19 September 2011, Rogers Centre for the Arts, Merrimack College, North Andover MA
Reviewed as a digital download from a press preview
BMOP/SOUND 1082 [86:00]
The great operas, like those of Mozart and Wagner, penetrate to the core of the human experience and ask profound questions about that experience in a way few other art forms can. Wagner, for example, may be steeped in the philosophy of Schopenhauer but his distillation of those philosophical ideas has a compelling force through the combination of drama and music that reading a book of philosophy seldom achieves. Death and the Powers is just such a deployment of operatic resources to bring complex difficult ideas vividly to life. I am not going to claim that it is the equal of Wagner or Mozart but it is fine modern continuation of the same operatic tradition.
The plot concerns artificial intelligence, specifically the abandoning of the physical body in favour of a kind of digital existence in what is referred to in the opera as The System. In addressing this question, it also raises questions about what it means to be human and our attitude to our own mortality. With Jeff Bezos announcing earlier this year that he is pursuing immortality, the character of billionaire Simon Power is even more relevant than it was when the work was first performed in 2010.
It helps that this opera has an excellent libretto by Robert Pinsky. Machover mentions in his notes that he deliberately chose a poet rather than a novelist to write the text for the opera and I think it was a wise decision. I immediately recalled that the librettist of an opera used to also be known as the poet and that Wagner was always very clear that the texts of his operas were poems. Pinsky has the poet’s knack of concerning himself with the sound of the words as well as their meaning or rather that the sound of a phrase is part of the meaning. He also has the ability to conjure up phrases that evoke rather than explain, leaving space for the composer.
Looking at Machover’s CV - a director of IRCAM in Paris and currently holding a position at MIT - I anticipated much colder and more austere music. One of the most distinctive aspects of this opera is the way it manages to be completely approachable without the least artistic compromise. I suspect only a composer with Machover’s background could have composed this work. There is a paradox at work in this piece. One expression of that paradox is that some of the most movingly human music in it is produced using electronic means. The music that evokes Simon’s fate when he passes, hubristically, into the digital realm is profoundly disturbing precisely because it is electronic. It is not just monstrous but monstrous because it so powerfully evokes the effect on the human of an untrammelled faith in technology.
But this is an opera that, above all else, celebrates the human and it does so through glorious music. The end of Scene 8 where Miranda rejects her father’s entreaties to join him in the digital world, abandoning her body, erupts at its conclusion into a marvellous deluge of live orchestral and electronic sounds. A lot of the music derives from much more traditional approaches to opera, as in the lovely duet between Evvy, Simon’s wife, and Miranda in Scene 5. Or the surprisingly erotic scene between Evvy and the now digitised Simon in Scene 4. There is again a presumably intentional irony here in that some of the most moving music here is electronic or at least a hybrid of electronic with more traditional instruments. This irony, it seems to me, encapsulates the seductive allure of technology most aptly. The second track, ‘Memory Download’, is a great example of this near paradox.
A special mention must go to James Maddalena whose showstopping voice dominates proceedings even as, ironically, he adds humanity to the inhuman Simon. His voice, whether speaking or singing, is magnetic. His feeling for both the meaning and the musicality of the words is a real highlight of this recording though all of the singers sing very well. They are helped by an extremely sympathetic recording. I recently reviewed a recording of an opera by Arnold Rosner, also from the BMOP/Sound label, and it seems to me that they have discovered a near ideal way of producing these operas on disc.
There are some longeuers. Scene 6 entitled ‘The World Reacts’ seems to me to spread too little material that is a bit too ordinary too thinly. The scene does redeem itself with a tremendous burst of electronica at the end which is thrillingly dramatic. Machover deploys a kind of American post-modern musical language (think John Adams) to set a lot of the words which moves the drama on with a minimum of fuss and helps make the words easily comprehensible but sometimes the results are a little banal.
Mercifully, this is not the overall impression with which this splendid piece leaves the listener. Of all the many fine new operas that have premiered since the start of the century, I would say Death and The Powers is the one I would most recommend to people for whom contemporary music is anathema.
David McDade
