Since I’m not in New York, I have not seen the Met’s production of Tobias Picker’s An American Tragedy, nor am I likely to. Judging from the reasons given by Mark Swed of the Los Angeles Times for his disappointment in the new commissioned work, I’d say it looks like something I would admire, given the opportunity.
Let’s see…
The production is handsome and sure. Friday’s performance proved enjoyable. Picker’s score contains lush, singable, flowing music, easy on the ear. Gene Scheer’s libretto is, to a fault, literate and considerate of composer, singer and audience.
Yup, sounds like a bit of a letdown. OK, what else…
The d�cor is appealing, and the comfort level is very high. A veneer of sophistication is unmistakable, as is a certain design imagination.
Right. We don’t like competent stage design. And?
The opera does a strong job of setting the scene. Picker’s inexorable stream of lyric music acts like a society. It has a mind of its own and can’t be stopped. Picker is traditional in his production of arias, duets, trios and ensemble numbers that seamlessly connect to a thread of arioso.
And, we can’t have an opera composer with dramatic skills. No. At least we can hope he’s a crappy orchestrator.
Picker writes expertly for orchestra � his finest pieces are the orchestral scores he produced before turning to opera in 1996 � and James Conlon had the Met orchestra sounding as excellent as ever…
Darn. Nope. OK, now we’re getting to the heart of what Mark Swed’s beef is:
…But Picker has an annoying habit of sounding too much like other composers at times. In “Fox” he came uncomfortably close to “Peter and the Wolf.” Here, a theme reminiscent of the storm music from Benjamin Britten’s “Peter Grimes” leads off the second act and returns often.
And…
[Picker] pays lip service to social concerns and class differences, but ultimately his is an art of accommodation � to singers stuck in the past, to audiences wanting what they already know and to opera companies eyeing donors’ checkbooks.
First of all, it’s a bit cynical to automatically assume that a composer writes accessible music in order to be appealing to donors. I know, I know, Picker has written more difficult stuff in the past. But he’s by no means the only composer who’s made that switch, and yeah, maybe he’ll switch back, and let’s not read anything into that either.
As for the need to keep audiences and funding in mind, this is just the way it is, and it’s not Tobias Picker’s fault. Here’s a radical idea: Because of the expense of mounting these large-scale productions, maybe grand opera on the scale of the Met is not the place where new ground is going to be broken right now. I, too, wish that donors at that level would be more adventuresome, but it’s not Tobias Picker’s fault that they’re not.
It doesn’t matter if the music is derivative or too accessible, or whatever. If the drama works, and the music successfully supports the drama, and the orchestration is good, and the set is good, and there isn’t a dry seat in the house at the end, then the opera works. Full stop.
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