The American Opera Initiative this year selected three composers and librettists that the mentors of the program matched up into teams. The mentors–conductor Anne Manson, composer Jake Heggie, and librettist Mark Campbell–then worked with the teams over the course of ten months.

The main parameters given to the composer/librettist teams were that the subject matter be an American story, topic, theme or myth. Guidelines were also set as to number of singers and musicians. The teams came up with uniquely modern American stories, not ones I am used to seeing on an opera stage. The Investment, by composer John Liberatore and librettist Niloufar Talebi, told the story of a wealthy Iranian-American couple, the Mohems, living in Silicon Valley who invite a young Iranian-American painter to their house after purchasing one of her large paintings. When it emerges that the painting was a memorial to her mother and her mother’s favorite Iranian poet, the husband is irate as he sees the poet as a traitor to Persian culture. Wei Wu, part of the Domingo-Cafritz Young Artist Program, stood out for his rich bass in the part of Mr. Mohem.

Next was American Manby composer Rene Orth and librettist Jason Kim. This serious piece was about a rising political star coming home for his estranged father’s funeral, along with other motives that include destroying evidence of his father’s troublesome past. When his sister implores him to rejoin the family he gets caught being his ambition and doing the right thing. Orth used recurrent undertones of presidential pomp and circumstance and other familiar American musical themes which helped to ground and navigate the audience between the two positions. The storyline was a little hard to follow at points and I appreciated the music’s guidance in telling the story.

The final opera of the evening was a comic horror love story opera Daughters of the Bloody Duke by composer Jake Runestad and librettist David Johnston. Forty daughters of the Bloody Duke are to marry the forty sons of De Quincey and kill the young men on their wedding nights. The only problem is one of the daughters, Margot Craven, falls in love with the son she marries and her grandmother rises from the dead to chastise her and tell her not to kill her husband. As her sisters commence the murders and her husband snores, Margot vacillates over killing him while her grandmother admonishes her.  Deborah Nansteel as the grandmother was terrific. And Runestad’s melodies and lush music had me humming them long after we left the Kennedy Center. I loved David Johnston’s libretto and that his action was placed in the present day with today’s vernacular and slang. I wished this team’s opera was longer—so refreshing to have such humor infused into what most think of as a serious genre.

My friend joined us and the American Opera Initiative were her first operas; I think this is the perfect experience for someone not ready to commit to three hours (plus) that most operas are and yet get a sense of the genre. And it even had a taste of the glamour that some operas have as supreme court justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg was in attendance and even better was a man dressed to the nines complete with top hat and red velvet tie and cummerbund.

Shawn – Last Friday we schlepped down to DC, (via Amtrak–don’t even get me started on Amtrak) to see Washington National Opera’s American Opera Initiative Three 20 Minute Opera program.

Francesca Zambello