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A Flowering Tree
At Chicago Opera Theater
music by John Adams
story translated A.K. Ramanujan
Harris Theater
205 E Randolph St, Chicago, IL
312.704.8414
May 14, 17, 20, 23 at 7pm; May 25 at 3pm
Running time approx 2-1/4 hours with intermission
Simple seeds grow into Majestic Beauty
A simple story about a girl turning herself into a tree can quickly develop into a thicket of meanings and interpretations. This simple story is the subject of John Adams’s1 new opera A Flowering Tree, currently in production at Chicago Opera Theater. The story is based on a southern Indian folk tale and is the center of a month-long festival of Indian culture sponsored by COT. In the tale, a teenage girl decides to transform herself into a flowering tree in order to ease the burden on her poor mother. This secret gift, then, is discovered by a prince who falls in love and summons the girl to be married. It is a simple magical story but has implications of class2, sexual politics, and physical abnormalities.
Simply put, every aspect of this production—from the music to the costumes to the direction—beautifully mimics the simplicity and profundity of the original story. Adams’s music is a stunning tapestry of churning sonorities embroidered by buoyant melodies and punctuated by shimmering/thundering percussion. Nicola Raab’s direction is visually alluring with its ingenious use of simple shapes and stark contrasts, but it never oversteps its role as storyteller. The costumes and stage design are full of sensual colors that shift with the timbre of the story. Even the dance seems perfectly integrated into the momentum of the story.3
Adams decides to simplify the number of characters in the story, using only a chorus and three lead singers. Natasha Jouhl plays the “flowering tree,” Kumudha; she sings with ease and clarity despite the beautifully angular melodies and complex rhythms. Sanford Sylvan plays the Storyteller whose lyrical recitative gathers the listener into the story and commands attention at will. Playing the Prince is Noah Stewart, a tenor whose voice is refreshingly clean and open. Each of the voices seems to match the others and the gestalt: simple yet beautiful.
Supporting the leads is COT’s fantastic chorus, playing the roles of the anonymous masses, an excitable elephant, the King, and beggar minstrels. Adams sets the words for the chorus in Spanish, which, by now, most Americans should be able to understand.4 Adams correctly sees Spanish as America’s second most spoken language but his view is probably distorted by living in southern California. He is apparently trying to be an activist for the cause of immigration and for the acceptance of Latino cultures throughout America, but he is actually harming the cause: mixing English and Spanish does not fit with the plot; and worse, the lead roles are in English, while the chorus sings in Spanish to play the nameless masses at the market and the beggar-minstrels in the street.5 American folk tales deal with class and most deal with race, too.
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John Adams’s music may seem simple on the surface, but, beneath that veneer of deft orchestration, the music is incredibly difficult to perform. Every performer must be able to count, but the burden is even heavier on the singers who do not have the benefit of staring at their music in front of them.6 In spite of the odds, the performance came across almost flawlessly: they made it sound easy. It is a beautiful story with some of Adams’s most beautiful music. He has also finally found a director, Raab, who matches his aesthetic.7 A Flowering Tree is one of Adams most successful operas.
HIGHLY Recommended
Evan Kuchar
evan.kuchar@gmail.com for comments
Date Reviewed: May 14, 2008
Disclaimer
John Adams is one of my favorite composers, so when I say this music is beautiful, it is based on a musical language that I have been familiar with for almost a decade. He is a contemporary composer, but it is not contemporary music that need instill fear into the hearts of concert-goers; his music is mostly tonally centered and uses regular rhythms to propel itself forward—it is very exciting. Even though his musical language has evolved and changed over the years, but you can still hear remnants of his early masterpiece, Harmonium, woven together with new material.8
1. John Adams is one of America’s most prominent composers. He rose to fame in the early 1980s with Harmonium, a work for orchestra and chorus and one of his most enduring works. Recently, Adams has been in Chicago for the productions of Nixon in China (by COT) and Dr. Atomic. Working with COT for Nixon, Adams grew fond of the organization and was excited return for A Flowering Tree.
2. I happened to see this production on the Buddha’s birthday. It is interesting to watch for the parallels and the differences.
3. I can count on one hand the number of times I have found the dance useful to an opera. This production makes dance feel necessary by incorporating it to help tell the story; dance is not merely decorative.
4. …unless you are over 30.
5. I did not find it at all distracting in performance; the supertitles made it easy to follow the chorus. I also find it an interesting idea, one that Adams probably borrowed from his oratorio El Niņo, a setting where mixed languages makes better sense.
6. If it were me writhing on stage, wrapped up like a sausage, I would have required some sort of pocket abacus to know when to come in.
7. Peter Sellers cannot match Adams’s lyricism or rich textures.
8. Of the new material in A Flowering Tree, I particularly liked the moments of stillness in this opera that reminded me of European minimalism. Those moments come toward the end, for there is a lot of tension that must build before it can be released.
9. There is no source for this annotation; it simply exists on its own. I am writing it to apologize for the vain, self-referential irony exuded by these notes (indeed, by the very existence of these notes). My only excuse is that it seemed, at the time, to befit the opera; just as the opera is a multi-cultural Cobb salad, the review must be multifaceted and cannot exist linearly. And now, by trying to excuse myself, I am digging the hole deeper.
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