Forster Ill-Served by Tedious New Opera

Sara Duchovnay as Helen Schlegel and Michael Dailey as Leonard Bast in Howard’s End, America

Last night at Z Space, Earplay in partnership with RealOpera presented the world premiere of Howards End, America. As might be guessed from the title, the three-act opera is a reconception of E. M. Forster’s novel Howards End, translating the narrative from England at the beginning of the twentieth century to the United States in the middle of that same century. Howards End, America is the seventh collaboration of composer Allen Shearer and librettist Claudia Stevens.

As is the case with any novel that manages to survive through future generations of readers, there are a variety of ways to interpret the plot of Howards End. The opera’s libretto suggests that Stevens read the book as an impassioned critique of British class consciousness, expressed through the dark consequences that ensue. Transplanting Forster’s settings to Boston in the Fifties was definitely an inspired move on Stevens’ part. World War II may have equalized those in the trenches, but those who lived in and around Boston came home to class distinctions that were as sharp as they were before Adolf Hitler rose to power.

As a result, the upper-class Wilcox family transplants easily into the world of the Boston Brahmins, while the poverty-stricken Basts inhabit a world all but entirely unknown to those Brahmins. By casting them as blacks, Stevens underscored that distance by suggesting that the Basts were, for all intents and purposes, “invisible,” thus evoking the spirit of Ralph Ellison’s 1952 novel. Between these two extremes are situated the intellectual Schlegel sisters (brother Tibby does not make it into the libretto), clearly right at home in a metropolitan area that abounds with institutions of higher learning.

John Cage used to enjoy citing a Zen proverb to the effect that trying to change the world only makes matters worse. That proverb could early be the model of Forster’s novel; and it thrives just as heartily in Stevens’ libretto. Sadly, however, that is the best that can be said of the entire opera. The text never successfully cuts to the core of the characters in these three social strata; and, because the characters themselves are so inadequately realized, one never grasps the dire implications that arise through their many encounters with each other. Instead, the text plods through a tedious account of this-happened-and-then-that-happened that always seems to miss out on critical aspects of personality types and the contextual settings in which they are embedded.

Just as sadly, Shearer’s score never compensates for the weaknesses of the libretto. Indeed, more often than not, the music seems to serve little purpose than to provide a platform upon which the words may be declaimed. Ironically, music figures significantly in both Forster’s novel and Stevens’ libretto. The opera begins with both Leonard Bast and Helen Schlegel leaving Symphony Hall, where Ludwig van Beethoven’s Opus 125 (“Choral”) symphony in D minor has just been performed. Later on we learn that Jacky Bast used to be a successful jazz singer, now fallen on hard times, probably a victim of the addictions that plagued Billie Holiday. Sadly, Shearer never seems to have developed an ear for jazz as it was practiced in the Fifties, while the Beethoven quotes come across as gratuitous, rather than as signposts along the path of the narrative.

Many of these weaknesses probably could have been overcome, or at least muted, by perceptive stage direction. Sadly, Philip Lowery’s efforts lacked that perception. Thus, while the class distinctions were clear, through Lowery’s direction they came through as little more than cardboard stereotypes. Indeed, there were times when characters like both Schlegel sisters (Sara Duchovnay as Helen and Nikki Einfeld as Margaret) and the young Charles Wilcox (Daniel Cilli) were so exaggerated as to be absurd. Only Philip Skinner managed to capture the helplessness of Henry Wilcox as he realizes that he is drawn into complexities from which he had assumed he would be immune. Furthermore, Skinner was not afraid to own up to the fact that, at the very end of the tale, his character is as clueless as he was at the beginning.

Mind you, trying to translate as sophisticated a narrative as Forster had conceived into opera was clearly an ambitious undertaking; but last night that ambition needed to be made of sterner stuff.