Thursday, April 10, 2008

Nyman's HAT: Nothing Minimal About It

(reflections after a performance of THE MAN WHO MISTOOK HIS WIFE FOR A HAT, opera by composer Michael Nyman, with libretto by Nyman and Christopher Rawlins, based on the essay by Dr. Oliver Sacks.)

Reading John Simon's dry review of Sondheim's SUNDAY IN THE PARK WITH GEORGE in the week of its premiere in 1984, I ran across a name I'd never seen before. Simon was dismissing Sondheim's music as pastiche of "Steve Reich's minimalism." That was enough for me, and soon, I was purchasing recordings by all the minimalists I could find: Reich, Glass, Adams, Riley, and a latecomer, Michael Nyman. They taught me one important lesson, from which many others flowed: there's more to music than melody and harmony. They also gave me courage, because I'd despaired of ever catching up with Sondheim who knew counterpoint and harmonic progressions by heart. Hearing the "Opening" to GLASSWORKS, thrilling DESERT MUSIC by Reich, affable "In C" by Riley, and the stately first movement of "Grand Pianola Music" by John Adams, I thought, "I could do that!" Or, in the words of Peter Schickele, after Ellington: "If it sounds good, it is good."

This week, I'll see three different pieces of musical theatre that I've known mostly from recordings since then. Tomorrow, it's SATYAGRAHA by Phillip Glass at the Metropolitan Opera. Saturday, it's SUNDAY IN THE PARK WITH GEORGE. Last night, it was THE MAN WHO MISTOOK HIS WIFE FOR A HAT by Michael Nyman, with libretto by Nyman and Christopher Rawlins, based on the essay by Dr. Oliver Sacks.

HAT is a "chamber opera," and I'd say it was a great success at its performance at Emory's Cannon Chapel last night. The audience included as many medical students as arts lovers, as it was sponsored by Emory Health Services. They were prepped to be fascinated by the uniquely focused plot: a nuerologist conducts tests to diagnose a patient's problem.

Yet it wasn't "clinical." In spoken lines at the start, "Dr. S" tells us how neurologist's jargon is all phrased in terms of loss, but tells us nothing of what the patient has; it's all what, not who. We were all moved, I think, by the plight of a man who seems at first to be healthy and happy, attended by his doting and energetic wife. The doctor (Oliver Sacks, generalized) is at a loss to understand why the man ("Dr. P") had been referred to a neurologist at all... until the man, finished with tests, dresses to go. I teared up at the moment when the wife and the doctor realized that the affable Dr. P has put on only one of his two shoes. Asked where his other shoe is, Dr. P points to his stockinged foot and sings, on a monotone, "That is my shoe." Dr. S(acks) sings back on the same pitch, "That is your foot. There is your shoe." Dr. P, embarrassed, pretends that it was just a joke. But the more that Dr. P hummed and smiled, the more horrified the wife, and the Doctor, and the audience felt. This man is somehow, in some way, perceiving the world very wrong, and it must be a nightmare, and he doesn't seem to know it.

Some moments are funny and touching at the same time. Dr. P sees a rose, and says that it is a "convoluted red form" with a "green vertical appendage." He struggles to figure out what to do with a glove, which is a "continuous surface...with five outpouchings" used, he guesses, for storing coins of five different sizes. He mistakes Bette Davis's close-up for a battlefield or contest. And he cannot recognize his wife's picture, or his own, or the difference between a photo of his face and a mirror -- while his wife looks on, losing her ability to deny that something's wrong.

I wonder, would we have had the same experience, or a better one, had there been no music? Would an enactment of Sacks's essay be just as moving?

Nyman reiterates one sequence of chords for ninety minutes, varying riffs (no doubt) and the key (I'm pretty sure). It was the carpet of sound under which the three characters sang lines that very often overlapped. Sometimes, we watched the three doing their business silently (collecting pictures for a test, stirring tea, arranging chairs) while music continued. In this way, we got Dr. P's intense efforts to put his perceptions into words, his wife's excuses for his odd behavior, and his doctor's analysis, all at the same time. The repeated piano figures with steps up and down the scale increased tension during a few sequences, most notably the scene when the impaired patient beats the doctor in a game of chess ("Bishop to Q4" is a typical line). The soprano's highest notes , 4/5 of the way through the opera, shock her husband into silence. There's a refreshing scene where the patient and doctor join in a performance of a song from Schumann's DICHTERLIEB, its pulsing accompaniment fitting in well with the rest.

Near the end, a distinctive slurred triplet in the piano's bass line recurred, and I recognized a connection between the music and the text. Dr. P may not see the whole, but he recognizes a feature (Durante's nose, Hitler's mustache, his brother's big teeth), the way we might perceive that we've heard this music before because of that little slurred triplet or a particular interval.

There's another element that the music brought. It's hard to imagine the performers' characterizations without the soprano's chirpy vocal lines, the doctor's vulnerable and incisive tenor notes, and the patient's stolid bass -- or, in one wonderful and disturbing passage, his lyrical baritone describing a photo of a lovely scene at the shore (only it's some machine, not people at the shore at all).

The performers were young for their roles, but perfect in voice and just fine in characterization: Jessica Stavros, Gideon Dabi, and Daniel Gerdes of the Boston University Opera Institute. Pianist Jeffrey Stevens never flagged in ninety minutes of unremitting, pulsing notes.

Until the end, we never applauded, and few laughed (I did). I suppose no one was humming any of the lines. But the music propelled, colored, punctuated, and structured the theatre. Having greatly enjoyed maximalism at the Met's HD broadcast of BOHEME last weekend, I can attest that the label makes no difference in the drama.

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