Steven Vlad

The wife and I went to New York this weekend to see the new production of John Adams’ “Antony and Cleopatra”.

Here’s the blurb from the Metropolitan Opera web site:

The most recent opera by preeminent American composer John Adams—a glorious adaptation of Shakespeare’s immortal drama—has its Met premiere. Following her debut in the company premiere of Adams’s El Niño in 2024, soprano Julia Bullock stars as the irresistible Cleopatra, one of theater’s most complex and captivating characters, opposite bass-baritone Gerald Finley as the conflicted Antony. Adams himself takes the podium to conduct his lyrical and richly orchestrated score, leading a new staging by groundbreaking director Elkhanah Pulitzer that transports the story of troubled romance and political strife from ancient Rome to the Golden Age of Hollywood in the 1930s. Tenor Paul Appleby is Caesar, who goes to war with Antony, and mezzo-soprano Elizabeth DeShong is Caesar’s sister and Antony’s forsaken wife Octavia.

It was interesting. The libretto is, for the most part, Shakespeare’s “Antony & Cleopatra” with some reworking and a few additions here and there. I’ve never seen nor heard of another opera (in English) doing that, i.e. essentially using the text of a play and making it the text of the opera. (I have seen it done in a case or two in Italian opera, the most obvious being Riccardo Zandonai’s “Francesca da Rimini”, the libretto of which is almost word for word the text of Gabriele Annunzio’s play of the same name. And yes, this is a pretty esoteric example for speakers of English though not as much for those who grew up with Italian.)

Surprisingly, I thought this was a potential drawback. Shakespeare is no longer idiomatic English, so even though the opera is in my native tongue and I had the text projected right in front of me, sometimes I found myself struggling to understand the meaning of a phrase. And the other drawback was that on this first listening I often found myself concentrating on the text (which is, after all, Shakespeare) rather than the music.

Visually, I thought they did a really nice job. Aside from the simulated sex, which I could have done without, the sparse set was filled with color and dancing and I thought it was quite effective.

The problem was that, with all of the above, I found it hard to concentrate on the music. It was definitely Adams, but it did not strike me as immediately as something like “Nixon in China” or “El Niño”. I found the music was mostly just setting mood. However, I’ve found over many years that it is rarely a good idea to judge a work on the first listening. It usually takes two or three listens to get a feel for a piece and what can initially seem like a jumble turns out to be a masterpiece. So I’ll have to sit and listen to it again a few more times before I’ll dare to pass judgment.

But all in all, this was fun. We topped the day off with an incredible dinner that included one of the most delicious Burgundys I’ve ever tasted, and we took a short walk through Central Park yesterday morning before zipping back to Boston. And today, we read books, write reviews, mow the lawn, and otherwise just hang out. All in all, a great weekend.