"I understand that it is surprising to see me compose an opera about events of two thousand years ago, when I have always dealt with events of the recent past, such as Nixon in China, Doctor Atomic or The death of Kinghoffer. But it was while I was doing Girls of the Golden West, my previous opera, that my collaborator, Peter Sellars, discovered that in mid-nineteenth-century gold-mining California, reciting Shakespeare was very popular as a form of entertainment The surreal image of dirty miners reciting Hamlet or King Lear must have been produced. So in Girls... I put in some scenes from Macbeth and discovered that I love doing Shakespeare. I'm not the first composer to admit this, of course, but what's more, Antoni i Cleopatra is a drama I've always known and I like that the protagonists are already mature and not young people like Romeo and Juliet. They are people who, as they say in America, have been there and done all this."
John Adams (Worcester, Massachusetts, 1947) frowns at the American when he utters this last sentence with a Far West accent. What is perhaps the living composer most appreciated by the operatic world on one side and on the other of the Atlantic is these days at the Liceu immersed in the rehearsals of this Antony
The score is a joint commission from the Gran Teatre itself (with sponsorship from the BBVA Foundation, as Adams won the 2019 Frontiers of Knowledge award) and the San Francisco Opera, the city where he resides. This title premiered there last year to commemorate the centenary of the institution. And now the Metropolitan Opera House in New York has been added to the project, as it is no secret that it is a winning horse in the always difficult scene of contemporary opera.
The one on the 28th at the Gran Teatre will be the European premiere of a political opera that talks about Rome versus Egypt and also the declining regime of Antony and Cleopatra versus the emerging totalitarianism of the young Augustus. The libretto, the work of Adams himself, is the result of a selection from the original, and often extrapolates phrases or puts them in the mouths of other characters to synthesize the scene.
The Shakespearean metric is not something to be respected here. "John manages to get close to the public with his direct way of communicating. We won't have Shakespeare's metric as we studied it in school, but the strength of the text captures the attention and is very easy to understand", points out Elkhanah Pulitzer, the stage manager.
“I love reading poetry with meter and rhyme, and it's interesting how it has returned to our culture through rap. No poet dares to use it, but rappers do - comments Adams-. What I'm looking for is an internal rhythm of the words. Shakespeare would probably be horrified, but I express it in a way that is consistent with contemporaneity."
The staging plays with the theater within the theater. Or, rather, with the cinema within the theatre, as it draws on the iconography of Hollywood from the thirties, with art deco elements. "We wanted to play with the myths, the Liz Taylors and the Richard Burtons, and with the idea of what it means to be a public figure with a mask," explains Pulitzer. So, in the sphere of what is public, the viewer meets Hollywood actors and paparazzi, while within the walls, in privacy, they really become the historical beings they play: two people in love of which, in that geopolitical context, represents the fusion of two cultures to create a new world where bridges for understanding are built. "It's funny how that geographical area is still so volatile today," said Adams, thinking of Israel.
In this production, Antony is in Hawaii, back from everything, also from the past as a great military general: he only thinks about having fun. Cleopatra, on the other hand, continues to love him and still has things to prove to Alexandria. They are two iconic leaders between whom intelligence and sexual desire run, but the political ambiguity will cause love to prevail in the end.
The third in discord is Augustus, who will establish a totalitarian government with an iron fist and displace the predecessor generation. "My analogy is based on what I live in San Francisco, where Facebook, Twitter... There are all these masters of the universe, young billionaires who claim to be right", adds the composer.
Both American soprano Julia Bullock and Canadian baritone Gerald Finley had previously worked with Adams. She participated in the cast of Girls ... and encouraged the composer to stage a Shakespeare. Finley, on the other hand, is the Oppenheimer of Doctor Atomic. For once, the opera anticipated the cinematographic superhit!
If in the past they defended their operas at the Liceu from Stravinsky to Richard Strauss, Falla, Glazunov, Mascagni or Toldrà, this time it will be John Adams who will sit on the podium. "I never fully understand my plays until I direct them myself," he reveals.
