COOPERSTOWN, N.Y. — The new opera “Blue” tells the story of an African-American family in Harlem driven to crisis and tragedy amid the son’s growing outrage over police intimidation of young black men.
Interviews in the program book at the Glimmerglass Festival here, where the work had its premiere a few weeks ago and runs through Aug. 22, reveal a storytelling decision made early on that greatly enhanced the opera’s complexity.
[Read about how American opera is grappling with race this summer.]
The composer, Jeanine Tesori, best known for the Tony Award-winning musical “Fun Home,” suggested that the father in the opera should be a police officer — rather than a jazz musician, as in an early draft. At first, the librettist, Tazewell Thompson, resisted. But he eventually embraced depicting the particular agony of a father whose son is killed by a fellow officer.
This wrenching twist is not the only reason that “Blue,” which I saw in its second performance, on July 26, came across as powerful — as well as sadly timely. Drawing on her deep experience in musical theater, her keen ear for elements of contemporary classical music and her abundant imagination, Ms. Tesori has written a strong yet subtle score that avoids the obvious and exudes a personal voice.
Mr. Thompson, who also directed the production, has written one of the most elegant librettos I’ve heard in a long time. The conductor John DeMain drew a vibrant performance from an orchestra of nearly 50 players; the cast was superb. (A chamber version will be presented next year at Washington National Opera and Lyric Opera of Chicago.)
The three main characters are called, simply, the Father, the Mother and the Son. The opera unfolds as a series of conversations among friends and family members over issues of commitment, ambition and everyday injustice in minority neighborhoods. An opera driven by words is perfect for the intimate theater here, which seats just over 900.
At the start, impending tensions are suggested in the orchestra by rumbling percussion, cries from scraped piano strings, and prickly chords that accumulate pitches and linger in the air.
The mood shifts for the lively opening scene, in which the Mother (Briana Hunter, a radiant mezzo-soprano), who is several months pregnant, talks with three girlfriends (Ariana Wehr, Brea Renetta Marshall and Mia Athey) about the husband she loves and the hopes she has for her child. In rapturous yet playful lines, she sings about her man: the bigness of his frame and smile; his head “full of big ideas”; his voice.
“I could pitch a tent and live in the body of that voice,” she sings. The music shifts from jaunty exchanges between the women to passages where the Mother’s fantasy of her family’s future is evoked by plangent, wide-spaced, Copland-esque chords.
The friends gently mock her infatuation. They’re alarmed, however, to learn that her husband is a police officer. “You married a cop?” they ask. And while they try to be supportive, they turn fretful when the Mother says the baby she is bearing is a boy. Nothing but trouble, her friends predict, only half-joking. The Mother asserts that she will keep her boy close and doesn’t care who he ends up being.
In impassioned moments like this, the characters sing soaring vocal lines cushioned by the orchestra. But just when you fear Ms. Tesori is pushing into melodramatic excess, she shifts the mood and surprises you.
The next scene takes place in the hospital after the birth of the boy. The Father (Kenneth Kellogg, a tall, commanding bass) has just seen the boy in a room where everything was white — walls, floors, sheets, nurses. Our “little baby boy,” he sings, was “like a black exclamation point on white linen paper.” He holds his son and vows to protect him.
The Father then visits three fellow black police officers watching a football game at a Harlem bar. “You got a son on the first try,” they say, envious, while kidding him over his burgeoning responsibilities.
The opera flashes forward to a brief scene with a scampering little boy (played by Mr. Kellogg’s own young son, Jayden). Things then become tense when we meet the teenage Son (the young tenor Aaron Crouch, in an arresting performance), a volatile young man in a hoodie who is fixated on his laptop when he’s not arguing with his father.
The Son has been swept up in protests against police intimidation. His father, anger simmering, explains that he and his fellow officers risk their lives to protect their communities. He beseeches his son to do “your art stuff,” be alone, have your friends over. The boy angrily replies that no friend wants to come over with a cop on the premises. “A black man in blue,” the son mutters. “Pathetic!”
Why must his son get involved in protests and try to change the world, the Father asks. “What am I supposed to do?” the boy responds. “Stay alive,” answers his father, who of all people understands the risks of the streets.
Act II, which begins after the Son has been killed by a policeman at a protest — an event we do not see — depicts another strained conversation, this time between the bitter Father and the Reverend (the stentorian baritone Gordon Hawkins), a well-intentioned but pontifical counselor. A funeral scene contains the opera’s most ambitious ensemble writing, with the parents grieving in duet, while other cast members sing plaintive choral strands that hint at atonal rawness yet take melodic flight.
During the final scene, the Son reappears for a family dinner. The Mother has made greens for her son, a vegan, and roast chicken for her husband. The Son boasts that an art teacher thinks his school project might gain him entry to a top design school.
Is this a fantasy of reconciliation? It seemed to me like a poignant memory. There were some nights like this at that dinner table. There could have been so many more.
Blue
Through Aug. 22 at the Glimmerglass Festival, Cooperstown, N.Y.; glimmerglass.org.
Anthony Tommasini is the chief classical music critic. He writes about orchestras, opera and diverse styles of contemporary music, and he reports regularly from major international festivals. A pianist, he holds a Doctorate of Musical Arts from Boston University. @TommasiniNYT
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