Photo by Steve Sherman. St.Louis Symphony, Carnegie Hall
I’d like to have applauded John Adams’s revision of The Gospel According to the Other Mary, but this go-round, performed in concert at Carnegie Hall, doesn’t help the oratorio’s original problem--its confusing premise. The piece looks right: soloists, full orchestra and chorus, just like “Elijah” or “The Creation”, but the narrative is still a mess. And when it comes to the gospels, listeners get sensitive.
On the one hand, Jesus raises Lazarus from the dead, is crucified & etc. We’ve got that. On the other hand, we time-travel back and forward to where Mary Magdalene joins Martha (rich strong low notes) in providing a home for battered unemployed women. (The three are siblings.) We hear of heroin withdrawal, species of lice, Cesar Chavez, California grape worker riots. “Blood, sweat and tears” are over-dutifully attributed to Churchill in the narrative. Adams said he thinks of his own undocumented gardeners as agents of Jesus, whose mother, after his death, mistook him for a gardener--hey wait a minute! This is a mess! Thanks for the libretto, Peter Sellars.
No waiting a minute. “Don’t be alarmed if you don’t know what’s going on,” Adams said in a preview talk. “I don’t either.”
Bzzztt! Cuteness? Smugness of winning Pulitzer prize, and having “Nixon in China” and “Doctor Atomic) produced at the Met Opera? Not clarified by David Robertson’s pedantic selected quotations in a Times advance interview. Were they plucked, wholesale, off a tape recorder by a writer who didn’t consider who would be reading--or why?
Mary (Kelley O'Connor) and Martha (Michaela Martens) call on Jesus to help their dying brother, but as in the real Gospel of John, that’s not at the top of his to-do list and he arrives too late. (There’s a reference in John to his decision to wait, so he can be seen to perform a miracle.) Feeling guilty, he raises Lazarus in grave clothes, and they all sit down to dinner. The chorus sings praises. Intermission.
It must be noted that Robertson and the St. Louis Symphony were clearly committed to the piece and the performance. Soloists and eerie trio of countertenors were powerful and dramatic, Jay Hunter Morris was so clear that the supertitles were not needed, and Amy Kaiser did an absolutely awesome job with the large chorus. (Wish I’d joined rehearsals for that.)
Maybe this concert version could have used platforms for characters to walk along, as there were five years ago in the Lincoln Center performance.
We were among those who didn’t stay until the end. It’s ok about that--we bought our own tickets, I’d seen the first version, the first half was reportedly better, and this is not a review. (A full one is promised when Adams relents and composes an opera about what we’re hearing on the news every day. Adams says he’s not interested, because of the main character’s lack of self-doubt. But think of the possibilities for duets and small ensembles!)
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