At the Opera, the monastery has long and curiously become a fetish. About a century ago, composers couldn't get enough of lusty, dreamy nuns. Although Puccini's 1918 Suora Angelica was relatively dull compared to what followed, it showed a monastery in which worldly and spiritual desires collide.
But Hindemith's Saint Susanna, with its striking love affair between a nun and her maid, excited German audiences in the early Roaring Twenties and continues to do so today. A sexually explicit and violent production in Stuttgart last year resulted in 18 frightened spectators requiring medical attention – and houses sold out.
The Los Angeles Opera got involved early. There was a bold production of Prokofiev's 1927 “The Fiery Angel,” one of the operas that opened the company's second season in 1967, the Times music critic wrote. Martin Bernheimer“hysterical nuns tear off their sacred robes, writhing in a climactic moment of topless demonic madness.”
Now, as a counterbalance to the dark male gaze, as the new opera of Los Angeles Opera's 40th anniversary season, we have Sarah Kirkland Snyder's heartfelt and compelling Hildegard, based on the real-life 12th-century abbess and modern-day cult figure Saint Hildegard von Bingen. The opera, which premiered at Wallis on Wednesday night, is the latest in LA Opera's ongoing collaboration with Beth Morrison Projects, which commissioned the work.
Elhana Pulitzer's production is decent and spare. Slow, elegantly restrained and, within limits, reverent, Snyder's opera functions as a passionate piece, as an opera does. Her concerns and desires are our 21st century concerns and desires, and Hildegard is seen as a proto-feminist icon. Its characters and music span the distance of a millennium so easily that the High Middle Ages could have been the day before yesterday.
Hildegard is best known for the music she created in her monastery in Rhineland Germany, as well as for the transcriptions of her luminous visions. But she also attracted a cult following as a healer with extensive knowledge of herbal remedies, some of which are still used as alternative medicine, and for her remarkable success in challenging the patriarchy of the Roman Catholic Church.
She also reached a wider audience through Oliver Sacks' book Migraine, in which a well-known neurologist suggested that Hildegard's visions were the result of her headaches. These visions themselves acquired the status of classics. There are many recordings of her music. Produced by David Lynch and featuring Scottish fiddler Jocelyn Montgomerie, Lux Vivens is set to be the first to put the songs of the saints on the popular culture map.
Margarethe von Trotta directed a spectacular biographical film about Hildegard, in which the flamboyant singer Barbara Sukova played the main role. Fiona Maddox's seminal biography, A Woman of Her Age, followed Hildegard's canonization by Pope Benedict XVI in 2012.
However, Snyder, who also wrote the libretto, focused her two-and-a-half-hour opera only on a crucial year in Hildegard's long life (she is believed to have lived to age 82 or 83). As abbess at the age of 40, she found a young assistant, Richardis, who was deeply devoted to her and painted images of Hildegard's visions. These visions, like unheard-of divine communication with a woman, bring her into conflict with the priests, who consider them false. But she ignores her hostile abbot Cuno and convinces the Pope that her visions are the voice of God.
Michaela Bennett (left) as Richards von Stade and Nola Richardson as Hildegard von Bingen during the dress rehearsal of “Hildegard.”
(Carlene Stiehl/For The Times)
Hildegard, some musicologists have suggested, may have developed a romantic attachment to the young Richardis, and Kirkland turns this into a spiritual crisis for both women. The co-crisis manifests itself in Hildegard's battles with Cuno, who punishes her by forbidding her from making music, which she ignores.
What about the music? In addition to being a convent opera, Hildegard joins a lesser-known idiosyncratic genre of operas about composers, including Todd Machover's. “Schoenberg in Hollywood.” presented by UCLA earlier this year, and Louis Andreessen's twisted masterpiece about a fictional composer, “Rose”. In them, the music of one composer somehow conveys the presence and character of another composer.
Snyder follows this intriguing path. “Hildegard” is written for a nine-piece chamber ensemble—string quartet, bass, harp, flute, clarinet and bassoon—who are members of the Los Angeles Opera Orchestra. Gabriel Crouch, music director, is a long-time member of the early music community as a singer and conductor. But the allusions to Hildegard's music remain modest.
Instead, each short scene (there are nine in the first act and five – along with an intermission and an epilogue – in the second) is accompanied by a short instrumental introduction. This can be a rhythmic Steve Reich style pattern or a short melodic motif that varies throughout the scene. Each creates a sense of movement.
Hildegard's vocal writing was characterized by stormy melodic lines, a style unusual for the more restrained singing of the time. However, Snyder's vocal performance may seem more conversational and better suited to the storytelling. Characters are introduced and only gradually gain personality (we don't really understand Richardis until the second act). Even Hildegard's visions are implied rather than revealed.
Beneath it all, however, lies the beguiling complexity of the instrumental ensemble. And yet, with the help of a couple of angels, pomp creeps in in the short choral passages.
In the second act, the relationship between Hildegard and Richardis blossoms, and with it, musically, rapture sets in and an ecstasy sets in, more overwhelming than divine visions. In the end, opera, like the saint, requires patience. The epilogue marks the exciting arrival of spiritual transformation.
Snyder has assembled a wonderful cast. On the surface, soprano Nola Richardson may seem like a coolly experienced Hildegard, a capable steward of the convent and her sisters. Yet, once revealed, her radiant inner life colors every utterance. Michaela Bennett's Richardis contrasts with her darker, more powerful and dramatic soprano. Their duets are awe-inspiring.
Tenor Roy Hage is the amiable Wolmar, Hildegard's confidant in the monastery, and baritone David Adam Moore is her tormenting abbot. The small roles of monks, angels, etc. are all exciting voices.
Set design (Marsha Ginsberg), light show projection design (Deborah Johnson), scenic design including small church models (Marsha Ginsberg), and various other designers are all designed to create a concentrated space for music and movement.
All but one. Beth Morrison Projects, LA Opera's invaluable source of progressive and unexpected new work, tends to engage in explicit amplification. The herculean task of singing five performances and running a dress rehearsal for this complex opera over the course of six days could easily have resulted in mass vocal destruction without the aid of microphones.
But the intensity of the sound adds coarseness to the instrumental ensemble, which may consist of a harp or a thunderous clarinet, and detracts from the individuality of the singers' voices. In a quiet place where silence is practiced, there is little silence.
Perhaps that's the point. We reinforce the worldly and spiritual conflicts of the 21st century without delving into this or any other good night wishes.
'Hildegard'
Where: The Wallis, 9390 N. Santa Monica Blvd., Beverly Hills
When: Until November 9
Tickets: Shows are sold out, but check for returns.
Information: (213) 972-8001, laopera.org
Opening hours: Approximately 2 hours 50 minutes (one intermission)
