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Chloe Veltman: how culture will save the world

Digging Deep

June 23, 2013 by Chloe Veltman

UnknownMark Adamo’s new work currently receiving its world premiere run at The San Francisco Opera, The Gospel of Mary Magdalene, is all about excavation. The metaphor of digging runs throughout the musically fecund work both explicitly and implicitly, reminding us in our age so obsessed with shiny surfaces, to look below for meaning.

The story, which seeks to reinstate the controversial and oft-derided Biblical figure of Mary Magdalene as a key player rather than marginal nobody in the life of Jesus, is framed by an archaeological dig.

As a group of archaeologists at the site sing about their desire to discover deeper truths about the Biblical past through finding evidence that supports new truths that lie embedded in the earth, so Adamo’s powerful musical score, coupled by nuanced and moving performances from the cast — the American mezzo soprano Sasha Cooke is particularly mesmerizing in the title role — serve to take us beyond the merely shallow.

If Adamo’s extensive scholarship on Mary Magdalene makes the narrative feel a little bloated and over-mined (scholarly footnotes even appear in the libretto), the composer’s straight-to-the-heart use of language and engulfing musical sonoroties force the listener to become deeply involved in the characters’ stories.

The fact that some of the arias feel like show tunes, complete with soaring melodies and lots of sentiment, easily draws listeners in. But there’s nothing easy or superficial about Adamo’s writing. The use of instrumentation creates constantly surprising timbres and the restless harmonic landscape undercuts the fluidity of the lines to make us understand that there’s more going on in each scene than surface texture.

 

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Chloe Veltman

...is the Senior Arts Editor at KQED (www.kqed.org), one of the U.S.'s most prominent public media organizations. Chloe returns to the Bay Area following two years as Arts Editor at Colorado Public Radio (www.cpr.org), where she was tapped to launch and lead the state-wide public media organization's first ever multimedia culture bureau. A former John S. Knight Journalism Fellow (2011-2012) and Humanities Center Fellow (2012-2013) at Stanford University, Chloe has contributed reporting and criticism to The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, BBC Classical Music Magazine, American Theatre Magazine, WQXR and many other media outlets. Chloe was also the host and executive producer of VoiceBox, a syndicated, weekly public radio and podcast series all about the art of the human voice (www.voicebox-media.org), which ran for four years between 2009 and 2013. Her study about the evolution of singing culture in the U.S. is forthcoming from Oxford University Press. Check out Chloe's website at www.chloeveltman.com and connect with her on Twitter via @chloeveltman. [Read More …]

lies like truth

These days, it's becoming increasingly difficult to distinguish between fact and fantasy. As Alan Bennett's doollally headmaster in Forty Years On astutely puts it, "What is truth and what is fable? Where is Ruth and where is Mabel?" It is one of the main tasks of this blog to celebrate the confusion through thinking about art and perhaps, on occasion, attempt to unpick the knot. [Read More...]

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