The Sheltering Skies
Grounded and Indra’s Net come from two completely opposed places in music making. There may not be formal, physical hostilities between them, but conceptually they are enemies.
Two major music theater works premiered in New York City on the same night, September 23, that could not be more different.
That’s not a question of style: Jeannine Tesori’s Grounded at the Metropolitan Opera and Meredith Monk’s Indra’s Net at the Park Avenue Armory are of course quite different stylistically, but style is a matter of two separated points on the same continuum that connects them, no matter the distance. This is about opposition. Grounded and Indra’s Net come from two completely opposed places in music making. There may not be formal, physical hostilities between them, but conceptually they are enemies.
From now until November 1, new yearly subscribers to Kill Yr Idols are eligible to win a mint copy of an awesome new recording, or a live Can CD. See this post for more details.
Grounded
Grounded is a product of a technological society that values hierarchies. America’s general admiration for corporate and legal power was heightened by the post-9/11 militarization of society, which added a quasi-compulsory worship of uniforms. The opera is an apotheosis of this. George Brant’s libretto, adapted from his original play, has a foundation that leaves hardly any room for meaningful feelings. It takes the drone war, the morally, ethically, and strategically dubious killing of what the opera itself labels the “guilty” via remote-control robotic tools, and the civilian casualties that are inherent, and turns it into a career crisis.
Tesori’s score is polished and skillful, though it has a sense of impatience about itself that undercuts its own dramatic goals. As a presentation of values—and all creative works are such—it’s morally hollow, if not objectionable. Grounded has a couple affecting moments but has an emptiness at its core.
The most luminous cadence in Grounded comes when the chorus sings “Boom” as a missile from a Reaper drone obliterates its target. In Jeanine Tesori’s score, which opens the Metropolitan Opera’s season, it’s neither ironic nor satirical, but a smooth ambivalence that encapsulates the musical strengths and dramatic weaknesses of the work. (from my full review at the Financial Times)
The lead character Jess (mezzo-soprano Emily D’Angelo) is an F-16 pilot who relishes the violent power at her command in Iraq. She becomes a drone pilot for the most corporate reasons; she becomes pregnant and the Air Force grounds her. This is corporate war, not just through the use of remotely piloted robots to kill, but with the “Kill Chain” hierarchy that approves the process step by step—violence by corporate memo. Jess is shown as being troubled by this only in her impatience with the Kill Chain and in how her 12-hour days in a trailer interfere with her domestic life. Her one crisis comes when she sees a young girl on the drone camera who reminds her of her daughter, i.e. it’s not that drone warfare is wrong, or even problematic, but that it’s wrong for her in that moment.
Indra’s Net
Indra’s Net is a different as can be. It originates in a path that goes back into human prehistory, to the first time people made music. That’s what Monk does. Yes, call her a minimalist, but she’s sort of an anthropologist too. Everything she does comes out of how we make music in the most basic way, in our bodies.
After a short introduction from the chamber orchestra, Monk and her ensemble come into the performance space. Everything starts with that movement, bodies in motion and building up energy to the point where it’s transformed into singing and moving together in time as an ensemble. It can’t get more basic than that, and when one tribe of people met another hundreds of thousands of years ago and had no shared language, they communicated with each other by singing and dancing (of a kind), coordinating with each other in time. And now we have civilization (and technology, and drones).
Monk is incredibly human this way. There’s no articulated language in her music, just vocal sounds. But since everyone is working together, there’s a profound communication that comes through. It’s not surprising but worth pointing out that the delicate and finely crafted consonance of her score is beautiful through nothing more than simplicity and resonance. She also has a bespoke ear, her own singing is as shining and rounded as ever, even at 81, and even with some new voices in her ensemble to mix with the likes of Allison Easter and Theo Bleckmann that sound is still there, that sound like cool water on stone.
There’s a story to Indra’s Net, an inspiration in the ancient Buddhist/Hindu myth of the enlightened king Indra stretching a net across the universe, with a jewel at each intersection. Each one is unique and reflects the others.Monk’s stated purpose here is to express an ecological message. She does so with projections of tree limbs and a cratered landscape, choreography that has the performers splayed out like dead bodies.
These are the weak parts of the piece because they are a specific narrative within a much vaster and deeper impression. They are prescriptions within a descriptive work that allows the sensitive listener to find their own response and meaning. Indra’s story is fine, but Monk’s story is about how when people come together with comity, and work together in time, they can create something uncanny, even extraordinary.
Grounded runs through October 19. Indra’s Net runs through October 6.
From now until November 1, new yearly subscribers to Kill Yr Idols are eligible to win a mint copy of an awesome new recording, or a live Can CD. See this post for more details.