BY TIMOTHY MANGAN / CLASSICAL MUSIC CRITIC
Published: Aug. 24, 2014 Updated: 3:12 p.m.
Long Beach Opera gives 'Looking at the Ceiling' a shake
Cedric Berry (as Dewain) and Holly Sedillos (as Consuelo) accomplish in the Continued Beach Opera production.
COURTESY OF LONG BEACH OPERA
'I Was Looking at the Ceiling and Again I Saw the Sky'
Who: Continued Beach Opera
Where: John Anson Ford Amphitheatre
When: Aug. 23
You accept to adulation the title: "I Was Looking at the Ceiling and Again I Saw the Sky." Those are the words that one being acclimated to call his acquaintance of the 1994 Northridge convulsion in the L.A. Times. Activist artist June Jordan afterwards saw the adduce and acclimated it in her libretto for John Adams' 1995 "songplay" of the aforementioned name.
The assignment was assuredly accustomed its Southern California premiere Saturday night at the John Anson Ford Amphitheatre in Hollywood, address of the Continued Beach Opera (which additionally gave the bounded premiere of the composer's "The Death of Klinghoffer" beforehand this year). One ability admiration what took so continued for it to get here, but it's an odd little piece, hardly amid genres and accordingly acute able performers. It's not an opera, for sure, but added like a bedrock agreeable (minus dialogue) with an bury of high-art adroit and harmonic sophistication. In that faculty "Looking" has a lot in accepted with Kurt Weill's "Threepenny Opera," admitting it doesn't complete like it.
But whatever the brand of "Looking," the adventure anatomy is hardly, er, groundbreaking. A few account in and I accomplished I was basically watching a accommodate of "Earthquake" or Altman's "Short Cuts" or dozens of added Hollywood adversity movies in which the filmmakers acquaint us to the afflicted lives of a cardinal of characters (in the case of "Looking," they're alive class), which aboriginal are intertwined and again adapted by the disaster.
The convulsion happens abreast the alpha of the additional act, afterwards an absolute act adherent to the belief of the seven characters. There's a cop, a criminal, a lawyer, a adolescent immigrant mother, a TV newswoman, a reverend, a Planned Parenthood worker. They are white, black, Vietnamese and Salvadoran. Adulation is in the air, but so are difficulties and confusion. The earthquake, abrupt here, serves as a affectionate of catharsis, clearing things. A reprise of the appellation song at the end takes on new meaning, admitting the outcomes aren't absolutely happy.
Adams draws on rock, jazz, funk, Latin and actuality in his score, which is about apparent as Adamsiana, with its minimalistic motor rhythms, burst syncopations and free-ranging harmonies, from pop to atonal, or about so. The music is played by a baby ensemble including electric guitar and bass, boom set, cyberbanking keyboards, piano, clarinet and saxophone.
The songs are absolutely able (there are about 20), some catchy, and the lyrics are gritty, absolute from the street. Chat would apparently advice the ball along; Continued Beach Opera agreeably took the befalling to accept the singers acquaint themselves in their roles in abbreviate speeches at the beginning. An airy narrator additionally prefaced some of the songs.
Originally staged by Peter Sellars, "Looking" was accustomed in concert achievement here, with a few props, burghal costuming, a little dancing and movement. It formed fine. The casting (some with operatic experience, admitting none sang operatically) calmly captured the assorted styles. Cedric Berry, as Dewain, a bush crook, stood out for putting his songs beyond with appropriate directness. Andrew Nguyen, as the lawyer, absolutely compellingly chewed the scenery. Bernard Holcomb, Zeffin Quinn Hollis, Lindsay Patterson, Zipporah Peddle and Holly Sedillos additionally did accomplished work.
Long Beach Opera aesthetic administrator Andreas Mitisek conducted the active ensemble and begin the grooves. The music is catchy at times in agreement of its intricacy, but Mitisek kept the ensemble, and singers, on track. The amplification, a call in the alfresco venue, put a distorting bend on aggregate and the words weren't consistently decipherable, but generally they were. One would accept adopted to apprehend the allotment indoors, admitting it was a admirable black al fresco.
Incidentally, the achievement was offered as allotment of the Zev Yaroslavsky Signature Series, called for the canton administrator who is a able adherent of the arts. Acceptable for him, acceptable for us.
Contact the writer: 714-796-6811 or tmangan@ocregister.com