Yesterday afternoon, the Ann Getty Center at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music (SFCM) hosted the first full-length workshop production of a new opera entitled Madame Theremin. The music was composed by Kennedy Verrett working with a libretto by George M. Kopp; and an instrumental ensemble, which included pianist Kymry Esainko, was conducted by Mary Chun. The opera was set in New York City in 1938 over the course of a single night. It had two acts, allowing the audience a ten-minute intermission.
Leon Theremin playing one of his instruments, which he called the Termenvox (photograph by Corbis Bettmann, December, 1927, public domain, from Wikimedia Commons)
The title refers to Lavinia Williams (Ariel Emma), a Black ballet dancer that married Leon Theremin (Eric Levintow), the inventor of an electronic musical instrument named after him. Patrick Blackwell sang the role of the Black movie star Nobel Washington, a character “loosely based” on Paul Robeson. The narrative is framed by episodes in Theremin’s apartment with much of the “action” taking place in an around the Waldorf Astoria New York hotel.
The libretto abounds with political narrative at a time where even the slightest sympathy for Soviet ideology could be taken as traitorous. Ironically, Theremin was at risk in Russia for his anti-Soviet ideology. He eventually ended up in one of Stalin’s gulags, survived, and went on to provide the Soviet authorities with sophisticated spyware. He only returned to his musical interests when Mikhail Gorbachev began to rise to power, bringing on the policy of glasnost. Towards the end of his life, he revisited the United States in 1991, where he was reunited with former pupil Clara Rockmore, who had promoted his instrument in our country.
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