Grounded: A New Opera

 

In this time of war in Ukraine and in Israel comes the October 28, 2023, world premiere of Jeanine Tesori and George Brant’s opera Grounded, a co-production of the Metropolitan Opera and the Washington National Opera. Based on George Brant’s single-character play by the same name running just several minutes over one hour, the opera as produced by WNO at the Kennedy Center Opera House expands into a two-and-a-half-hour runtime with a twenty-five-minute intermission. The story concerns Jess, a female fighter pilot during the Iraq war who becomes pregnant and gets grounded. When she returns to duty eight years later, she is placed in what she calls Chair Force of the Drone. Her job is to operate a drone to kill enemy combatants on the other side of the world after her team locates them by satellite. This she does from a chair inside a trailer located in Las Vegas.

 

The Dresser attended the opening night and, in the first scenes of the opera before intermission, felt enthusiastically impressed by the varied and accessible music, clever libretto, the talented singers, and the impressive sets. What followed intermission was uncomfortably long, somewhat repetitious, and dramatically flat.

 

Funded in part by the military contractor General Dynamics, the production features a sizeable orchestra, a chorus of 27, 11 supernumeraries, a cast of eleven singers with five of the eleven either debuting or representing the Cafritz Young Artist Program in minor roles. The set, divided horizontally with a steeply raked stage on the top, initially seemed to the Dresser to be a video when, in fact, live singers were on that upper stage in swirling video imagery representing clouds and what one might see if flying in an aircraft. The stage below eerily projected that underneath experience that news junkies following the situation in Gaza with its miles of Hamas tunnels might have. As the opera unfolds, we learn that often grounding locations situated on the bottom half of the stage—Jess’s home and office headquarters—are claustrophobic places for Jess who wants to be airborne in her jet. As the story progresses and Jess spirals downward mentally, she (mezzo-soprano Emily D’Angelo) sings counterpoint from her home on the lower stage against her double’s dissonant response (soprano Teresa Perrotta) on the upper stage.

 

The Dresser highlights the resources in Grounded because many contemporary opera premieres have limited financial resources and therefore small numbers of musicians and performers and less grand staging. While a fuss was made in New York (specifically documented in The New York Times May 2, 2023) about WNO having General Dynamics as a sponsor and WNO made some attempt on its website to tell prospective ticket buyers that none of its sponsors had any creative input, WNO general director Timothy O’Leary in opening night remarks made sure to thank General Dynamics without further qualifying remarks. This background has gravitas because of a problem with how this story is presented. War manifests as a champion’s game and not so much as a life-or-death struggle affecting all humankind.

 

We are told that the protagonist Jess is an exceptional F-16 pilot in the United States Air Force, both as a warrior and the only female flyer in her squadron. The Dresser has no recollection of Jess’s actual heroism in her F-16 days and once she is assigned to the drone squad, her vulnerability shifts from body to mind. She becomes paranoid in a shopping mall and hyper aware that she and her child are being watched. Her job is boring and colors things gray. So gray that this woman who is now the mother of an eight-year-old daughter crashes the drone that she (Jess) is assigned to use in killing a high-profile enemy. Why? She sees a young female approaching the enemy target and thinks that female is her own daughter. For the sabotage of a $17 million machine, Jess is court marshalled and put in prison. She has failed in her job as a serial killer by killing her weapon.

 

Memorable are Emily D’Angelo as Jess singing “All for the Blue” about her love of flying and tenor Joseph Dennis (Eric, the rancher Jess falls in love with) singing “I Didn’t See You Coming.” The language in these songs is fresh and fun, providing a lift from the ordinary. Jess extols my ride, my tiger, my blue. Eric soars emotionally by feeling the sky in you. In between these songs we hear about fate foolers, war winners, fate cheaters. Eric also sings about the wind in a song that feels like it is going to knock open the door of the Rodgers and Hammerstein musical Oklahoma where the wind comes sweeping down the plain. After all, Jeanine Tesori earned her chops as a composer for such Broadway musicals as Caroline, or Change (2003) and more recently Kimberly Akimbo (2021).

 

The WNO production runs through November 13, 2023. The Metropolitan Opera production of Grounded is scheduled for 2025. The Dresser expects changes will be made for the Met production and that the Washington premier directed by Michael Mayer serves a test run.

 

 

Blown Away by Blue

 

If there is only one opera that an American citizen could ever see, the Dresser believes fervently that opera, a story about race in America, should be Blue with music by Jeanine Tesori  and words by Tazewell Thompson. This is the opera snatched from the Dresser and the Washington DC community and beyond in March 2020 when Covid closed down the Kennedy Center. At long last, the Dresser saw the Washington National Opera (WNO) production on March 19, 2023.

 

Since its premiere July 14, 2019, during the Glimmerglass Festival, many young black men or boys have lost their lives in the hands of white police officers. Tazewell’s poignant libretto begins with a teenage Black boy who becomes a policeman. He and his wife birth a son who grows up protesting police brutality. The Son is shot and killed by a White cop. Bass Kenneth Kellogg, a graduate of the Duke Ellington School of the Performing and Visual Arts who created the role of The Father at Glimmerglass and has performed it consistently in a string of Blue productions across the United States—Seattle Opera, Michigan Opera Theatre, Toledo Opera, Pittsburgh Opera. Kellogg’s performance, along with Briana Hunter’s as The Mother, stands out for  singing and acting. Hunter is the original mezzo-soprano from the Glimmerglass premiere.

 

Despite the tragedy of The Boy’s death, this two-hour-and-fifteen-minute work with one intermission and in two acts is well balanced with moments of levity and love. Yet the emotional balance is achieved in the face of racist clichés that label a significant percent of America’s population as “happy Negroes singing spirituals” or “niggers.” While Thompson intends for audience to view his characters as prototypes—no character has a name—their humanity is palpable and deeply moving. When The Mother tells the Girlfriends about how much she loves her husband (The Father) and that they are going to have a baby, a baby boy, they are wary about her husband being police and warn her that a son will be nothing but trouble. Still, they surround her with their loving friendship and are not a Greek chorus of doom.

 

Likewise, The Father’s fellow officers tease him about how he will become a warden of “baby jail.” Like the Girlfriends, the Policemen show support by letting The Father know they are envious that he will have a son.

 

Tesori’s music is every bit equal to Thompson’s engrossing libretto. The music is tonal, sometimes jazz inflected, and swells with Copland-like resonances. Often the music is accented with surprising percussion such as celesta and strummed piano strings.

 

Tesori is a well-known musical composer (e.g., Caroline, or Change, 2003) and WNO produced her children’s opera The Lion, the Unicorn, and Me in 2013. One thing that was disconcerting—Blue is being performed in the Eisenhower Theater where the orchestra pit is too small to accommodate the percussionists. The percussion section was relegated to a remote location. The size of the orchestra pit probably had some influence over WNO’s decision to make this production a chamber version.

 

Hats off to Tazewell Thompson who also served as the Director. Sets combined projections and furniture moved in and out by the players. The simplicity of the set and the small theater (as opposed to the Kennedy Center’s Opera house) worked very well to create an intimate theater experience. Two performances March 22 and 25 remain. The opera moves next to the English National Opera in London.

 

 

Photos by Scott Suchman