Friday, September 27, CAL Performances opened their 2024-25 Season with the United States Premiere of Olivier Messiaen’s Harawi in a superlative production by the American Modern Opera Company’s (AMOC) in which the French 20th composer’s evocative song cycle for piano and voice is expanded to include two dancers. Reinterpreting and revealing this complicated work while demonstrating the excitement that contemporary opera can and should deliver, the artistic quartet brings forth, both aurally and physically, transcendent depths of emotion and insight into the state of mind of its composer, Messiaen.
It was written in 1945, as Messiaen returned home from having been a prisoner of war in World War II, to find his wife, Claire Delbos, in declining health. As she suffered from amnesia, their emotional distance must have been very disorienting and yet their familiar physical intimacy remained. During this period the composer was also discovering a new love partner. At the preshow lecture, Harawi director Zack Winokur spoke of the collaborators desire to reveal the humanity in Harawi, and to see the piece through Messiaen’s experience.
In Harawi, Messiaen includes his own French poetry about love and loss, as well as some lyrics in Sanskrit and Quechuan (an Andean indigenous language family originating in Peru). The repeating of syllables and the inclusion of birdcalls is all part of the eclectic texture of this Surrealist composition.
Soprano Julia Bullock and pianist Conor Hanick are magnificent partners, sharing the stage from start to finish over an arc of a dozen songs. Choreographers and dancers Bobbi Jene Smith and Or Schraiber enrich, enliven, and elucidate the experience of the songs. Assuming various roles, they represent characters in the protagonist’s life, phantoms, memories, animals in the text, alter egos, and even physical manifestations of the piano’s intonations. The songs explore a wide range of moods and ideas. The dancing guides us through divergent perspectives from song to song, as Messiaen grapples with his demons and desires.
Julia Bullock & Bobbi Jene Smith (L to R) in AMOC Production of 'Harawi' photo: Brittany Hosea-Small
The production is spare and yet, in the hands of these performers, it feels opulent. Black is the dominant ethos. The women, in knee length dresses, are barelegged and barefooted. Smith’s plunging V-neck, finds its match in the plunging back of Bullock’s high-necked gown (Costume design Victoria Bek). Color appears only in the pale backwall of the stage and the warm tones of designer John Torres’s lighting. Balancing the two sides of the grand piano centerstage is a block-bench at the right and an angularly draped cloth-mountain on the left. The large central supertitle border hangs low in the space, making it easy for us to absorb the text without missing the staging. The titles feature the original French lyrics as well as an English translation. When the singing moves into the Sanskrit and Quechuan phrases, the supertitles reflect only the sung syllables, as any written translation would be contrived.
Schraiber and Smith are world-class dancers and yet Bullock, who has spent her career redefining the singer’s role, matches, at every turn, the eloquence of their bodies, with her magnetic presence. Her face, voice, focus, and fluid movement carry us through the piece with an authenticity that makes it seem as if she were preordained to bring forth this artistic offering on behalf of Messiaen.
I perceive Bullock as Messiaen embodied; a person who has seen the face of evil, who experiences great joy and deep grief, sees eternity in the stars, and feels the freedom of birds in flight. We meet her, as she sits facing away from us, her song a melancholy one whose low notes resonate over “the village that slept,” in “the full midnight.” Her contemplation and yearning reverberate in the darkness as she rotates slowly toward us. The first song ends with the phrase “Your gaze,” as Bullock turns to look offstage, drawing Smith to enter. As Bullock opens the second song with “Good Morning, green dove,” we picture Smith in flight.
Emerging from the shadows, glazed in golden light, the strands of Smith’s extravagantly long hair fly with abandon matching the urgency of her dashing, plunging, reaching dance in cadence with the piano’s insistent chords. Smith calms as the vocal line is reintroduced. Balancing on the balls of her feet, bending and straightening her knees, she gently rises and falls, as if she represents breath itself. Moments later, with the piano defining a starker reality, Smith reanimates surging with a frantic attack, before dropping into a wide legged squat, her chest shining skyward, her head thrown back as if to see behind herself.
Approaching Bullock’s bench with care, Smith takes a seat facing upstage. Side by side, facing opposite directions, the women’s arms rise in tandem. Drawing the other close, before turning to see one another fully, and falling together into a deep enveloping hug.
Pianist Conor Hanick, Julia Bullock & Or Schraiber in AMOC Production of 'Harawi' photo: Brittany Hosea-Small
Bullock stands, leaving Smith in half-light on the bench, to sing the dramatic and forceful third song, “Mountains.” We meet Schraiber here, as he dances a fast-paced jig. Bouncing, toe tapping, and thigh slapping, his energy exudes a confidence which attracts Bullock. Face to face, she sings “There you are, oh my own one,” as they sway, clutching each other as if having finally found their missing piece. As Schraiber lifts Bullock, she is his completely, if fleetingly. Mimicking the sounds of a birdcall, Bullock appears to remember her dove, a symbol of spirituality perhaps, her first love. Leaving Schraiber she returns briefly to be alongside Smith. Schraiber’s innate wildness proves irresistible to Bullock, and they are soon dancing shoulder to shoulder, and then back-to-back, faces tilted so their cheeks touch. Their sensuous connection is strong as Bullock sings of “Chains of red, black, mauve, love, death.”
The trio of dancers orbit the piano in slow contemplative spirals. They are trancelike seekers, and practitioners of rituals. Bullock performs a boxy waltz, alternating her dance-mates between Schraiber and Smith. Two sides of a coin, they represent alternate paths, or perhaps the old and new loves in Messiaen’s life. Even pianist Hanick adds to the transporting physicality of the piece. As Schraiber perches on the rear of the piano bench, his head falls over Hanick’s shoulder, while across the stage Smith similarly drapes her neck around Bullock’s.
Each interaction, each song, offers opportunities for deeper resonance and understanding of the rich tapestry of ideas which comprise Harawi. Bullock’s singing is magnetic and emotive. We feel each nuanced feeling in her delivery, the crushing sadness and the rising exultation. We thrill at the speed at which she enunciates the repeated “pia” in the “Syllables” song. As the twelfth and final song, “In the Black,” is sung Smith approaches the low mountain. Sliding face first into its cloth folds, she crushes its shape under her prone form. Schraiber watches and waits, rapt, as Bullock sustains the ultimate note and the village returns to sleep. One hour after it began, the journey of Harawi ends far too soon.
Review by Jen Norris, published October 1, 2024
________________________________
Production Credits
Friday September 27, 2024, 8pm
Zellerbach Hall
An AMOC* Production Olivier Messiaen’s Harawi (United States Premiere)
Music and Text by OLIVIER MESSIAEN
JULIA BULLOCK, soprano
CONOR HANICK, pianist
BOBBI JENE SMITH, dancer
OR SCHRAIBER, dancer
ZACK WINOKUR, director
BOBBI JENE SMITH, choreographer
OR SCHRAIBER, choreographer
JOHN TORRES*, lighting designer
CHRIS GILMORE*, lighting supervisor
MARK GREY*, sound designer
VICTORIA BEK*, costume designer
BETSY AYER*, production stage manager
JULIA BUMKE, producer
JULIA BULLOCK, supertitle translations
LANDON WILSON, supertitle designer
*guest artists
Comments