Next Friday, Opera Philadelphia will be giving its first performance of the opera Oscar, with music by Theodore Morrison and libretto by John Cox. This will be the its second round of live performances, after the world premiere run in 2013 at Santa Fe Opera, which had commissioned the opera. The opera covers the period when Oscar Wilde was on trial in 1895 for "gross indecency", in the wake of his relationship with Lord Alfred Douglas (a.k.a. 'Bosie'), and when homosexuality was a criminal offense in the UK. If you cast back your memories about 18 months, you'll remember how much gay marriage and gay rights were in the news, with the general ascendant trend of acceptance of gay marriage in the preceding years (as opposed to the long downward trajectory of abortion rights, but that's off topic and a subject for another day). So the timing of Oscar, not to mention another gay-themed opera from that summer, Champion by Terence Blanchard and Michael Cristofer (presented here in STL, as it turns out) couldn't have been more propitious, even if it wasn't planned as such, given the glacial time scales on which opera works.
At the time, Oscar got a lot of press, not least because of the prestige of Santa Fe Opera as a venue for launching new operas, especially one with such a front and center treatment of a gay character. The second time around, advance buzz is much more minimal, even though Morrison and Cox have reportedly revised the opera for its second production. This may be partly due to the fact that second productions aren't quite as sexy in terms of media hype compared to a premiere. However, I suspect that there's another reason, namely......
.......that Oscar is an absolutely dreadful opera. IMHO, it is a simplistic depiction of Wilde as a flawless, put-upon gay rights martyr, a victim of the homophobia of 19th century Britain. The most heavy-handed and intellectually cheap example of this treatment of the story came in the depiction of the trial, which is rendered as a surreal nightmare that starts in the nursery of Wilde's friend Ada Leverson. The toys in the nursery suddenly come to life and the nursery morphs into the courtroom, where the judge emerges from a giant jack-in-the-box, complete with clown nose and make-up. Likewise, the prosecutor, jury and spectators are likewise dressed in kid's toy regalia and made up as figures to be ridiculed, but who mock Wilde. Of course, it's meant to make us in 2013 (or 2015) to feel smugly superior to those bigots of a past era. And certainly homophobia is alive and well in too many places now (can you say Russia and Vladimir Putin?). But such unsubtle treatment doesn't really advance the cause.
That year, when I went to Santa Fe, I was actually looking forward to hearing it, since new works are always of interest, a change from the tried and true. The music is pleasant, very tonal, easy on the ear. But the moment I heard this line, sung by Dwayne Croft as Walt Whitman, I knew things were going to be really breaking bad:
"Oscar himself was prosecuted by the Crown for 'gross indecency' and found guilty".
What then happens? Well, as James Keller put it in
his review from the
Santa Fe New Mexican:
".......the act moves back a step to the runup to that event, and then the action plays out exactly as we have been told it will."
Even if this opera is based on historical events, and in that sense, you know in advance what's going to happen, putting a "spoiler" like that line sung by Whitman
within the work itself is unbelievably stupid in the extreme. Cox is a noted drama director, so you would think that he would know better. How in the world could Morrison and Cox not see what they were doing there? Major fail in the rules of Drama 101 there. Keller then immediately comments on the "spoiler" moment:
"This is not a unique example of how the libretto manages to eviscerate what is already only marginally dramatic."
If you've ever seen Stanley Kubrick's film of
Barry Lyndon, Kubrick commits the same kind of dramatic
faux pas, where the narrator solemnly intones in summary what bad thing will happen to Barry Lyndon, and the film then shows it in the next 20 minutes, with no sense of surprise. BTW, another sense of Drama 101 failure comes from the inclusion of Whitman in the scenario, because he had nothing to do with the trial at all. Whitman died in 1892, 3 years before the libel trial involving the Marquis of Queensbury (Bosie's father). Whitman is simply a commentator from the world beyond, or the "House of Fame", in Morrison and Cox's scenario. I'm not making that up (you know), and this should give you an idea of how jaw-droppingly awful this scenario is. Plus, the opera totally ignores the hubris of Wilde in even bringing the libel suit against the Marquis in the first place, because Wilde, in fact,
was in a homosexual relationship, and thus the Marquis' accusation of that, however bigoted, was actually true -
and therefore not libel.
Oscar is literally the gay-rights version of a USSR-era "all hail the glorious Soviet proletariat" scenario, and the type of story and art that the term "politically incorrect" was invented to ridicule. (BTW, the phrase was an invention of the left as a bit of self-mockery, not an invention of the right to justify their own bigotry. However, as so often, the term escaped its creators via misappropriation by the wrong people.) Santa Fe Opera wasted a huge amount of money and talent on the most PC-kind of blather imaginable, and now Opera Philadelphia is obliged contracturally to give their production of the work. There is one report, however, of revisions to the opera, though admittedly that it's from Morrison's own website here:
"John and I have been working on revisions throughout 2014. Having a guaranteed second run at Opera Philadelphia offered us a unique opportunity to strengthen the opera. That was an exciting prospect. The outer ends are now considerably different than they were in Santa Fe, and smaller changes and cuts abound in the interior. At the very top we put on stage for all to see what a friend has called the ecstatic moment when Oscar Wilde firmly defined celebrity for the modern age. We introduce him to our audience in a surprising way at the height of his fame, and that puts in stark relief his vertiginous fall for all to see. In our newly worked out final scenes Oscar leaves this life alone to join his historic friends, the immortals of world literature, art and music, then turns back to offer us a final gift of his playful wit. We hope this reconsidered structure and its detail will help to bring a deeper understanding of the turbulent story of Oscar Wilde's trials and imprisonment to our audiences, while holding us all for a while in the spell of his enormous literary and theatrical accomplishments."
I'm far from Philly, so I won't be seeing the revised version. But my experience with the first version would bias me against going for "seconds", to be honest. If anyone here on DK lives there, reads this diary, and plans to see it, it will be interesting to see any comment on it. But to be honest, and I realize that this is being very prejudicial on 3CM's part, the puffy nature of Morrison's comment above does not give me a lot of hope that they have learned their Drama 101 lessons. The Santa Fe program book notes from John Cox, for the original version, actually seemed to convey a fair understanding of the complexity of the situation in Wilde's time, and more than just a "homophobia is bad' simple-minded lens. The problem is that
none of that understanding showed up in the opera as seen in Santa Fe.
Politically, Morrison and Cox may well be on the side of the angels, but guess what: good intentions don't excuse bad art. And the original version of Oscar is very, very, very bad art. Maybe this revised version will be an improvement. It can't be much worse (although making it worse is actually possible). I don't doubt that the singers and the production team will do their best for the work. The question is whether the opera is worth it. Round 1 says no. Round 2 awaits. I'm not holding my breath. But honestly, if you want to see a very fine work of art that speaks well to gay rights without making a faux saint out of its lead character, with a British twist, I would recommend the movie The Imitation Game over the opera Oscar, hands down.
With that, time for the usual SNLC protocol, namely your loser stories for the week......