Review: Old Meets New at Lincoln Center, Mixing George Lewis and Monteverdi in THE COMET/POPPEA

The recent New York premiere of Yuval Sharon’s production of THE COMET/POPPEA at Lincoln Center kicked off the summer’s 5-week residency of the American Modern Opera Company (cheekily known as AMOC, after its penchant for taking a somewhat wild and crazy approach to the art form).

This time around, it blended a truncated version of Monteverdi’s 17th century Baroque tale of how Nero’s consort wheedled her way into a powerful position in Rome with one of this year’s candidates for the Pulitzer Prize in music by George Lewis with Douglas Kearney’s libretto, an apocalyptic view of life in the fast lane. Conductor Marc Lowenstein and his ensemble of old and modern instruments did first-rate work.

There was some great singing by baritone Davone Tines and soprano Kiera Duffy, as the couple who meet in the Lewis/Kearney piece, though the ensemble as a whole, including countertenor Anthony Roth Costanzo as Nero, was pretty fine.

THE COMET is based on a short story by WEB DuBois, with a black man (Tines) taking refuge after a comet wreaks havoc on New York. Tines does splendidly with this kind of difficult music, as does Duffy (as she previously shown in Mazzoli’s BREAKING THE WAVES). I must admit that I could have listened to a larger segment from the Monteverdi, but that’s not what Sharon had in mind. And I was happy to make the acquaintance of THE COMET.

Yet, I must admit to being a bit at sea about how these two works fit together—certainly not when shoehorned into a single piece, let alone as a double-bill--even in Mimi Lien’s clever revolving set, with John Torres’s lighting, that tried its best to do so.

When I saw Puccini’s IL TRITTICO a couple of weeks ago, I read that its most popular segment. GIANNI SCHICCHI, had a history of being done on a double bill with Strauss’s SALOME earlier in the 20th century. I guess that means anything goes if the director thinks it does. And yet, musically, I didn’t feel that the two were a natural fit, making it harder to appreciate the Lewis.

Summer at Lincoln Center has come far from the “Mostly Mozart” days. I just wish they’d get the balance a little better between the new and the old.

Caption: (l to r) Davone Tines and Kiera Duffy

Credit: Lawrence Sumulong

To post a comment, you must register and login.

Need more Opera Theatre News in your life? Sign up for all the news on the Summer season, discounts & more...