AS ITS semi-staged première under Gustavo Dudamel at the
Barbican Centre in London demonstrated in 2013, The Gospel
According to the Other Mary is an oratorio stageable as a
series of tableaux that centre on Christ's relationship with Mary
Magdalene and her two siblings, the industrious Martha and the less
fortunate Lazarus.
Its progenitors are both American. The text is by the stage
director Peter Sellars, who is well-known for his provocative but
always brilliant and intelligent interpretations of, not least,
Baroque and modern opera. The music is by one of the truly
important composers of our day, John Adams.
As with the semi-staging, whose central platforms and blockings
were directly echoed here, the narrative is sometimes underlined,
sometimes interrupted, by dance and by action - indeed, in places,
by hyperactivity, it felt. Despite the unerring beauty of the set,
the lighting, and the characterisation, the flurry of motion
sometimes made it bewildering to divine exactly the points that the
production was making.
At times, scenes from the Gospel story are told with a moving
razor-clarity. The narration - shared with a wonderfully poised
trio of countertenors ("Seraphim"), Daniel Bubeck, Brian Cummings,
and Nathan Medley, whose poignant delivery was so successful in the
semi-staged version - is crystal-clear. The capers of dancers who
"mirror" (or counteract) Martha, Mary, and Lazarus can tend to
muddy rather than clarify things.
Sellars draws lavishly on others to create a powerful verbal
commentary. One of these is Dorothy Day (1897-1980), a women's
suffragist, radical, and fighter for social justice, and the
founder of the 1930s Catholic Worker, and of a centre of
hospitality akin to the one that Mary and Martha run here. Another
is the feminist poet, educator, and champion of the dispossessed
Rosario Castellanos (1925-74). Her words were also used in Adams's
13- section Millennium nativity oratorio El Niño.
He also draws on the Harlem-born black feminist poet, defender
of the underprivileged, and civil-rights activist June Jordan
(1939-2002); and the Minnesota-born (in 1954) Native American
writer and novelist Louise Erdrich ("I will drive boys to smash
empty bottles on their brows. I will pull them right out of their
skins").
There were several heroes and heroines in this unforgettable
performance. Top of my list is the exciting young Portuguese
conductor Joana Carneiro, Music Director in Berkeley, California.
She is an astonishing new find for ENO. Her hold on orchestra and
singers was vital and confident. Superlative effects were produced:
haunting violins, wan horn, a strumming of what I took to be
cimbalom, the use of gongs, melting oboe for Mary's protracted
aria, Stravinskian woodwind detail, and sneery clarinet obbligato
that underlined the agony of Golgotha and the midday darkening ("He
rolled back into the clouds and slept apart"). Even the two or
three passages in which Adams, an endlessly inventive composer,
slips deliberately into more or less unfettered minimalism were
charged and intense.
Many of the multifarious lines that Sellars employs in what the
programme described as "this rich textual tapestry", clutter apart,
have special refinement, and are comparable to a Handel opera, or
Bach's Passions, with their optimistic and visionary upper-voice
arias. The fusion of modernist ingredients provides an element of
oddity, even shock. In the preface to Act II, a "searing night
vision" is inspired by an Expressionist mural of the Mexican, José
Orozco, a contemporary of Diego Rivera, and by Erdrich's graphic
poem that includes the lines: "Who rips his own flesh down the
seams . . . who chops down his own cross, who straddles it, who
stares like a cat, . . . whose torso springs of wrung cloth".
Here, Jesus tears himself from his cross, chops it down with an
axe, and, "blazing with the phosphorescent colours of the New
World, demolishes all hierarchies. He buries his parents alive, and
sets out for Beirut and for Damascus, where restless and hungry
crowds are gathering in the streets demanding change." It is a
charged moment meant, I imagine, to have a greater impact than it
had.
James F. Ingalls's lighting played a big part. Although at times
it seemed to coast well-meaningly from one cyclorama colour to
another, the impact was strong, both warm and cold. Striking use of
reds, yellows, and midway oranges offset the use of other colours
such as turquoise to underline the other-worldliness of Lazarus's
loss; glaring green for a violent police raid; and one astonishing
moment when Ingalls broke through the colour surround to place a
pure lighting spot directly on the (still) pink face of Lazarus at
the moment of death. This was a brilliant detail showing awesome
artistic and technical skill.
Besides some magnificent choral singing (recalling occasionally
Tippett's large-scale spirituals) and a magnificently arresting
brass interlude, there were powerful performances from the three
central singers. Combining Lazarus, Christ, and narrator (these
doublings of role could be confusing), the tenor Russell Thomas
proved himself yet again a performer of stage presence and exciting
voice.
Patricia Bardon sang Mary - here, a woman who has attempted to
take her own life - and brought to her tenderness and empathy ("I
love you to my farthest limits: to the trembling tips of my
fingers, to the vibrating ends of my hair"). The erotic element
seemed wholly appropriate to this sister whose seeming
spendthriftness Jesus defends and explains, and who is desperate at
his arrest (here switched to Bethany), and then grieving and rapt,
respectively, in the Burial and final Recognition scenes.
Adams's writing of atmospheric monodies is one of the finest
aspects of this involving score; so are some telling word
repetitions ("Come and see"; "Take away the stone. . .") and
interspersed psalmic passages.
Arguably most touching of all, however, was the dominant but
pained figure of Martha, to which the contralto Meredith Arwady,
who has been an admired Mistress Quickly (Falstaff) and
Erda (Das Rheingold), brought all the deep vocal qualities
one associates with those roles. Her sympathetic characterisation,
richly endowed with personality, was one of the highlights of this
entrancing music and committed, visibly engaging production.
At the English National Opera, London Coliseum, St Martin's
Lane, London WC2, until tonight. Box office 020 7845 9300.
www.eno.org