Sydney Boyd

In 2016 as a PhD candidate, I received a grant to fund my research on opera and literature, and I entered the lottery for a ticket to the Bayreuther Festspiele. In the seven years that I waited to win that lottery, I had time to build anticipation and, as my research continued, collect questions—some mundane basic fandom but others more complex. Since the pandemic, I’ve become particularly interested in how opera as a bourgeoise art form is responding to new human urgencies from climate change to racial justice. Richard Wagner is to me the pinnacle of elitist opera, and I was very curious what I would find here in a performance of his 1865 opera Tristan und Isolde. 

Are the acoustics as good as they say? 

Yes, beyond what I imagined, yes! I’ve read dozens of reputable accounts of just how perfectly constructed the festspielhaus is for Wagner’s lush scores in particular—there is truly no bad seat in the house, all the sight lines are perfect, and the sound settles into the space as though it has always been there. A seamless, all-encompassing aural experience. Of course, the festspielorchester is also a set of incredibly masterful musicians—the shepherd’s lament in the third act was outstanding.

Are the seats as uncomfortable as they say?

In exchange for amazing acoustics, yes, the seats are thin and wooden and, after even one act, a test of resilience. However, I did notice a few audience members with contraband seat cushions. Whether or not you’re able to smuggle in a pillow, the discomfort is worth it for those acoustics.

Was the production as cutting-edge and trend-setting as the organizers like to boast?

Roland Schwab directed this Tristan, the ninth production since the festival’s post-war reopening, with a desire to embrace philosophical contradictions in an anachronistic parallel universe where Tristan and Isolde’s liebestod exist in multiple timelines, as he notes in the program. The representation of parallel universes is literal. The set largely hinges on two ovals—one opening to the sky, the other a set of digital screens set on the bottom that variously show water, vortexes, space, and static. Think of a clam shell with two black holes. 

The problem with one main gimmick is that it can quickly become overdetermined. Not a lot of action actually happens in this opera, so it’s already susceptible to feeling immobile. Isolde and Tristan end up rolling around on the eddy for most the opera (a stage direction I certainly don’t believe was ever in Wagner’s mind) and by Act 3, when Kurwenal has walked in endless circles around Tristan, who continues to roll around the eye of a tornado space whirlpool, I hoped Tristan would just sink into the abyss. It’s not a good Tristan when you hope he’ll just die already.

Ok, but what about the singing?

Perhaps I felt little sympathy for Tristan, sung by heldentenor Clay Hilley, because his uncle stole the show. As King Marke, bass Georg Zeppenfeld was a welcomed color, clear yet swarthy with auburn depth to it. Contrastingly, both Hilley and soprano Catherine Foster, in the iconic role of Isolde, disappointed. I admit I came in with high expectations. At any other opera house, I likely wouldn’t have been quite so critical, but both singers failed to create that enigmatic energy that one hopes to feel when at any performance Tristan. I had Nina Stemme in my memory as the reigning queen of this opera, which I saw at Houston Grand Opera in its 2013 production and which Theodore Bale writes masterfully about (https://houston.culturemap.com/news/arts/04-21-13-itristan-and-isoldei-is-crowning-achievement-of-houston-grand-opera-season-but-its-likely-to-drive-you-mad). Neither Hilley nor Foster came close, but sign me up for more Zeppenfeld.

Tickets are notoriously expensive and the festival is famously fancy—what was the audience like?

Money was on display, but not in all the ways I expected. There were a few tuxedos and gowns, but I also saw jeans and good share of artistic flare in the form of leather, bright colors, and even feathers. It does feel elite, but there is also a strong sense of friendship and camaraderie. I don’t speak German well, but I had several lovely conversations with patient, generous, and enthusiastic festival-goers who were just glad to share the experience. The seating in the hall is tight—you get to know your neighbor well and every sound in that wood-filled hall can be heard—so that rapport becomes essential once the opera gets started. A cell phone did go off, but otherwise, we were all in it together. 

What about diversity?

This is still largely a white and wealthy audience with very few exceptions. One might point out that it’s high German opera in Bavaria—sure, that’s true, but this is an international festival and one of the best in the world, so it’s time that the festival also represents the world.

Was it momentous enough to be worth a biblical seven-year wait?

There have always been controversies around Wagner’s operas—it’s why I study his work—and clearly there are still issues that opera-goers, creators, and artists need to be thinking about going forward, but the weight of history on the Green Hill is undeniable. That part of the lore is true: being in that formidable space was transcendent. 

Wagner creates close ties throughout many kinds of histories. Because of his role in my own life, I was reminded throughout of a dear friend of mine with whom I have seen many operas and talked at length about many more. He has taught me an enormous amount and influenced my thinking in a rare abundance that continues to unfold. He was there with me, if not in body undeniably in spirit.

On my way to Bayreuth, I stopped by an old favorite in Frankfurt, the Alte Oper, although it’s quiet in the summer save the responsible children crossing in front.

In Bayreuth, I’ll be seeing Tristan und Isolde and have been thinking today of E. M. Forster, whose early odd novel The Longest Journey (1907) draws throughout from Wagner’s works. Siegfried and Parsifal play the most obvious roles, with characters clearly modeled after the (anti) heroes, but there are also occasional mentions of Tristan. Rickie, the protagonist and struggling author/lover/human, tries to identify what his craft is missing and wonders at music’s ability to inspire emotion, saying “for music has wings, and when she says ‘Tristan’ and he says ‘Isolde’ you are on the heights at once.” 

I wonder at Forster’s fascination with Wagner overall. Of course, authors and artists at the turn of the century were widely intrigued and variously infatuated with how Wagner’s operas operated and what they were able to accomplish with regard to an audience’s experience. But Forster himself didn’t attend the Bayreuth Festival until he was in his 70’s, and afterward recorded “Revolution at Bayreuth,” a travelogue broadcast talk for BBC in 1954 that wasn’t altogether flattering when one reads between the lines. Perhaps we’re all a little more susceptible to opera’s romance in our youth.

Does new opera succeed by parceling history for a post-pandemic world? While Terence Blanchard’s Champion premiered at the Opera Theatre of Saint Louis in 2013, it has made an impactful impression in its Metropolitan Opera appearance this 2022-2023 season. A historical opera, it recounts the life of Emile Griffith, a welterweight boxer who dominated his sport in the 1950s-1960s, with melodic jazz and snappy dance numbers—a sort of Hamilton for the highbrow art form. In its last performance on May 13, I listened to the opera as much as looked to the audience, wondering if I was seeing the future of opera or a hopeful glimpse of what it could be.

The opera is split between present and past, with Ryan Speedo Green starring as the “young” Griffith and Eric Owens playing the elder. Owens begins the opera, bent and confused, suffering from dementia. Soon memory whisks him from his present-day haunting to his joyous youth in St. Thomas with lively singing and dancing numbers replete with bright brass and drums. But the dazzle is pierced by a fight announcer at the side of the stage, as though an unshakable voice in Griffith’s own mind and a continuous reminder of the trauma he experienced: “Only shadows in the night” as one aria goes.

The recurring announcer, appearing simultaneously on the corner of the stage and Griffith’s memory, foreshadows the centerpiece and climax of the story, a critical match at the height of Griffith’s career. In the match, he kills Benny “Kid” Paret after Paret hurled a homophobic slur at him, “maricón”—a Spanish word that the libretto and score work together to punctuate tauntingly. The scene itself is masterfully choreographed and lit, cinematic, in fact, and brutal to behold. The program notes that Griffith delivered “seventeen blows in less than seven seconds.”

One way to understand Champion is as an exploration of how memory works with and around trauma. Whenever the elder Griffith appears, he is crouched, physically weighed down by a tormented past: he carries a burden even when he can’t recall why he feels burdened. In addition to dividing past from present, the story also splits to capture both sides of Griffith’s double life as a gay man. Mirthful scenes in one of Manhattan’s gay bars fade to his courtship and quick marriage to Sadie (sung with glitz by soprano Brittany Renee) in the second act. 

The opera is built to offer a version of reconciliation, and given our current state of affairs, this is perhaps why audiences are so drawn to its story right now. The fight and its aftermath focus on Griffith’s crisis of identity and discrimination as much as on the shock of having killed a man. Phrases like “what makes a man a man” set to melodic, hum-able songs with driving bass lines and catchy percussion revolve visually around series of squares that light up blue, red, and orange, frame within a frame, that steadily power onward. It’s an opera that holds the audience’s hand to process a devastation that is both real and recognizable.

Historical operas, works that represent and recreate history, perhaps give a foothold for new audiences, telling a story in an unfamiliar way about a known entity. I’m thinking of Adams’ Nixon in China, Glass’ Satyagraha, but also operas like Handel’s Giulio Cesare—it’s not an original idea to make an opera about a historical figure, but it does seem to be trending in recent years. 

History is selling. In this opera, it’s bringing to light pain that we’ve forgotten or systemically hidden, and people are showing up for it. Notably, Champion is only the second opera the Met has staged by a Black composer, the story it tells but one erasure of many that we’re slowly unearthing. 

Classical music has been reeling from a series of slow-moving crises around its relevance in society at large. I have been writing about this for a while now (most recently in a paper at the MLA that explored artistic labor as defined by Sasha Cooke’s pandemic album how do I find you), but this month, I’ve been to a series of concerts that are grappling with the problem of relevance in new ways.

On February 26, in the exquisite chamber music room of The Phillips Collection, I heard double bassist Xavier Foley play a program of his own work and Bach’s Cello Suite No. 5 in C minor (transcribed for the bass). He wrote some of the works on the program during the pandemic; one, Lament, responds to the loss of his mentor and teacher in 2014, and others explore difficult life changes or other forms of loss; all seem to focus on processing emotion and fostering acceptance in the present. 

Each of Foley’s own works hold meaningful intent but emerge as free from any listening barriers as possible. The sound of pieces like Lost Child, which he opened the program with, clearly and beautifully echo Edgar Meyer (with whom he worked while pursuing his BA at the Curtis Institute), whose simple yet serious sound I know best from Appalachian Journey. But much of Foley’s work leans further into popular music genres as if to avoid risking anyone feeling anything beyond comfort in a new music environment. The most obvious example on the program was Upright Metal, which aimed to recreate heavy metal on the double bass. Certainly, the homage was successful and delightful in the way that a familiar sound emanating from something unfamiliar always strikes a quick chord of wonder, but soon I wondered what will become of it a century from now. What will make us turn to a double bass cover of heavy metal if we can just listen to heavy metal?

Foley’s interpretation of Bach, however, was a lasting moment of awe and artistry. The timbre that he draws from his instrument is sweet, round, and delicate. The low growling range inherent to the bass emerged as if an underground deity were casting axioms upward to illuminate our human plight. It was technically stunning and emotionally transfixing. If there was any doubt that Foley is a serious player in the Classical music realm, this Bach was irrefutable evidence. Crowd-pleasing tunes buried the profound lede. 

Several weeks prior, I heard Lang Lang do the opposite at the Kennedy Center. In a 100-minute, no-intermission program, he performed a brief Schumann C major Arabeske followed by the complete Bach Goldberg Variations—that’s all 30 variations and an aria to open and close. A pianist known for flash and bravado, he hasn’t often demonstrated the finesse underpinning this particular Baroque paragon and certainly didn’t prove otherwise in this performance. The fact that he played to a sold-out theatre with a program like this at all showed artistic flex, a draw on his star reputation to get away with a complex Classical program during which many audience members fell asleep. 

With one artist burying the high-brow and the other boasting it, their chosen encores were notable. Lang Lang came out with an arrangement of “Feed the Birds” from Mary Poppins, followed by a favorite from Disney’s Mulan. Foley responded to his standing ovation with the Prelude from Bach’s Cello Suite No. 1 in G Major. I couldn’t help but think one was placating and winning back an audience; the other was offering a parting gift of virtuosity and reflection. Both performed a balancing act of mundane and masterpiece that are becoming increasingly common in our concert halls. If this is a concession we’re making to keep audiences showing up to Classical music concerts, then hopefully the balance remains.

At a stunning recital on Friday in the National City Christian Church in Washington, DC, pianist Yvonne Chen reminded me of a fugue’s Latin roots: coming from the Latin fuga, flight. A fugue initially introduces a lone subject, and all the entering subsequent parts chase it, imitating what it has already announced. As Ebenezer Prout authoritatively defines it, a fugue is founded on “the idea that one part starts on its course alone, and that those which enter later are pursuing it.” 

Chen closed her program of French composers with César Franck’s Prélude, choral et fugue, a masterwork of fervent tranquility. Composed in 1884, the work came to be in the midst of an intensely creative shift in Franck’s work toward the end of his life, and it shows in the complex phrase structures, the shifts between form, the bend of certain harmonic rules that, over the course of its movements, drive sensation to a pitch. Under Chen’s deft fingers, the delicate balance between control and abandon was pristine–a yearningly profound flight to the end to catch its subject.

I’ve always been a fan of Grammy Award-winning mezzo-soprano Sasha Cooke’s vocal prowess, but after interviewing her about her latest album focused on the pandemic, “how do I find you,” I have huge respect for her as a creator, an intellectual, and a fellow human. Read a small part of our conversation in Rice Magazine.

MLA 2023: San Francisco (January 5-8^th)

At Work and at Play: Opera, Musical Performance, and Reflections on (Creative) Labor:  Many theorists have considered the relationship between art and work. This panel will both participate in and further such conversations via papers that consider the more specific relationship between work and musical performance. Submissions may consider theoretical questions (what is the nature of creative labor?), and or more practical questions regarding the economics of artistry or current conditions for creating and performing during a pandemic.

 Please submit a brief abstract and bio for this guaranteed session by March 28^th to naomi.morgenstern@utoronto.ca

It was a pleasure to go inside “Un Village Français,” A Small Village During Occupied France, with the writers and actors involved in making this history come to life. Read about the event and watch the webinar here.