The Lyric Opera of Chicago’s recent run of Blue, an opera last seen stateside in Washington in 2023, showcased a hardworking cast and a politically charged libretto, but one that was completely burdened by a frankly boring score. Fans of Jeanine Tesori may have recognized her idiosyncratic use of brass and double reed instruments–especially as the orchestration picked up towards the end of Act I — but her vocal writing seemed to be lost in translation in the move from musical theater to opera.

Gone were her usual melodies and careful text setting. Instead, we heard phrase after phrase according to a few stock formulas. For the sopranos, this formula meant most of the text declamation was delivered in continuous notes in the upper passaggio, perhaps a little bit above it, only to be contrasted with disjunct jumps to the middle register. And for the principal baritone, a predictable rhythm whereby almost every phrase ended with a long, sustained note. For that matter, agogic accents were Tesori’s main expressive tool across all voice types and characters. In other words, no real variety.

The most effective moment in the production had more to do with Thompson’s staging than the music or the libretto. At the very beginning of the opera, the Father (Kenneth Kellogg) sits alone in the middle of the stage and stares out at the audience without a word. After enough time has passed for the audience to feel implicated in the events that are to follow, the Father rises from his seat only to be confronted by uniformed officers. The encounter prompts him to change out of his civilian plain clothes and steadily climb into a police uniform. And here we’re introduced to the main thrust of Blue—what happens when a Black police officer is confronted with the death of his son at the hands of a white cop?

But for all the potential contained in this vignette, what follows is a somewhat perplexing pregnancy announcement between the Mother (Zoie Reams) and her three girlfriends—referred to as Girlfriend 1 (Ariana Wehr), Girlfriend 2 (Adia Evans), and Girlfriend 3 (Krysty Swann) in the libretto. Initially, the girlfriends are excited about the news when they think the Mother is carrying a baby girl, but eventually that enthusiasm morphs into an admonishment to “start over” once they discover the Mother is pregnant with a boy.

A strange situation continues to develop into a bizarre one once the girlfriends encourage her to send the boy over the Great Wall of China because “they love baby boys in China.” Huh? If that was an attempt at a joke, it didn’t land. I’m not oblivious to the fact that the point was to draw attention to the violence Black boys and men face in America and therefore the fear the girlfriends have for the male child, but a reference to China’s now abolished one-child policy was an odd way to get that message across.

Throughout the rest of Act I we get an accelerated look at the Son’s upbringing starting from his birth to a culminating scene in which the Father and the Son (Travon D. Walker) fight over the teenager’s recent foray into fare evasion on the MTA. The conflict is clear: a dedicated cop and his vegan, social justice-oriented son are on opposite sides of the law. We don’t get any real sense of resolution before the curtain closes and Act II begins with the painful realization that an unnamed white police officer has murdered the Son at a protest. While it’s an off-stage death, the tragedy of the situation is communicated through a painful interaction between the Father and the Reverend (Norman Garrett). But by the end their exchange, the Father is still gunning for revenge. It isn’t until he reunites with his community at the funeral that he begins to accept what has happened through the arms of the church.

This final message—inner peace through religion—was conveyed in the libretto, but it had little impact due to the lack of any compelling music. There’s no reason Thompson’s Blue couldn’t have worked as a play and more often than not, I was surprised at what the performers were able to accomplish despite the music they were given. As the headstrong Son, Walker shined with a golden tenor voice and spinning legato lines—something that was truly impressive given the amount of shouting allocated to his character in the fight scene with the Father. At times the orchestration overshadowed Kellogg and his rich bass voice, but his talent as a storyteller allowed him to compellingly convey the confusion and resentment central to the character of the Father. Although she was relegated to Girlfriend 3, mezzo-soprano Swann often dominated her scenes with an ease of tone and timbral beauty. The conductor Joseph Young also deserves a mention for the elegant control he held over the orchestra.

By the end, I was left wondering how exactly we got here. The note from Thompson in the program detailed how the composer (Tesori) and genre (opera) was chosen before him, the librettist. But why opera? Here is where I sensed some bleed over from the Lyric’s current sense of purpose—and that of most American opera houses, for that matter—and the opera itself. The program notes for Blue emphasized the volunteer efforts by the House and its employees in an article entitled “Paying it forward.” Additionally, the Lyric hosted a series of pre-opera talks over the month of November meant to foster discussions over violence prevention and police malpractice.

Clearly, there’s anxiety over what it means to create, produce, and execute “relevant” contemporary opera in an empirically meaningful way. But the more institutions such as the Lyric try to grapple with their own powerlessness, the more they reach outside the confines of the theater and their own artistic mandates and beyond what they are built to do well and sustainably. I don’t know what the answer is, and if the goal is to improve the lives of Black people, then commissioning Black artists seems like an area over which they have some control. But there are limits to the type of socially significant work the Lyric can do and for now, it’s not clear to me how to measure the impact of the Lyric’s outreach. Selfishly, I’d settle for some decent music.

Photos: Kyle Flubacker

Comments