Opera denied author’s gifts

Opera

Nikki Cormaci

Met in the Park
By Dr. John Gates
Indiana State Museum
Saturday, April 22

Dr. John Gates promised the Saturday afternoon audience that his opera, Met in the Park, would be absent of the “screaming and bellowing” of frenzied divas, of dragging recitatives and the complexities of plot which deem them necessary. His opera would be absent of the “vanity and violence” inherent in the medium’s lore and would finally give the people what they want: an opera heavy on the arias and light on the heaviness.

The ability of opera to wade into limitless depths of human darkness and human love without overreaching is without parallel among the arts. So it is unclear why a globally accomplished musician like Gates would undertake the massive endeavor of composing his first opera at age 80 and then adamantly deny it the intrinsic gifts of the medium.

At its best, Met was a bitingly satirical musical revue, remarking on the incongruity between the enormity of the stuff of opera and the ordinariness of opera appreciators. The moments of meticulously pointed satire were infrequent, however, and mostly Gates’ attempts seemed half-hearted and haphazardly aimed at targets ranging from Peyton Manning to the Jesus-loving anti-inclusivity of the aged opera set.

Laura Young sung the role of Anna, the pretty, young, wheelchair-bound lover. She maintained fleeting control over pitch, tone and volume and was entirely inaudible during her scenes with the chorus. On the rare occasion that Anna descended from the rafters to settle into Young’s natural range, however, Anna’s was a different voice — lovely, human and warm.

Ron Berry, despite his wooden stiffness, sang the role of Anna’s age-inappropriate love-interest, Robert, with an authority and accuracy unmatched by the rest of the ensemble.

Of course, the ensemble also included a stuffed cat, whose appearance as the screeching tenor in Helen’s aria “You’d Be Better Off Owning a Cat” regrettably upstaged Jill Birch’s delicate soprano with his 360-degree head spins and electronic hissing.

Met in the Park opened with the lines, “I listen to her through the rain and through the gray of sunless hours.” Poetry like this verse exposed Gates as a soul easily equipped to write an opera worthy of all the medium’s grandeur and gore. Whether Gates feels his community of common, aging and dreamy appreciators worthy of the opera he is capable of producing remains entirely up to him.