BREVARD MUSIC CENTER
FALLING ANGEL: A WORLD PREMIERE OPERA by Rebecca Schmid
With Falling Angel, the Brevard Music Center (BMC) breaks new ground on more than one front. The stage work by American composer J. Mark Scearce kicks off a collaboration with the Center for Contemporary Opera in New York. Over the course of a multi-year cycle, freshly commissioned operas will be workshopped in New York before receiving fully staged premieres in North Carolina — with the possibility of traveling back to New York or another city. “It is fantastic for our students from an educational viewpoint,” says BMC President Mark Weinstein. “They’ll be forming the characters and music side by side with the composer and be showcased to representatives of other opera companies from around the country. It could be the launch of a career.” Falling Angel, based on the novel by William Hjortsberg — which was transformed into the 1987 film Angel Heart starring Robert DeNiro and Lisa Bonet — also forays into an unlikely genre: opera noir. Both Scearce’s score and the staging by BMC faculty member Dean Anthony evoke the black-and-white imagery and horror elements of film noir within an operatic context. Librettist Lucy Thurber charts the journey of Harry Angel, a private detective under contract by Louis Cyphre (an allusion to Lucifer) to hunt down the singer Johnny Favorite. Favorite — the suspect in a series of murders in New York City — in fact sold his soul to Satan in exchange for stardom, but neurological trauma after serving in World War II has marred his memory: Johnny is in fact none other than Harry himself. For Scearce, the story clearly stands in the Faustian tradition of a character “who is willing to sell everything” and another “who is willing to take.” The challenge was to tell the story without
giving away too much: “In opera, the music has to keep that tension alive for two hours,” he says. “The music withholds. It does not reveal.” His scoring includes an alto saxophone, harmonica and a Turkish Rebab, a single-stringed instrument which evokes both the lonely Harry Angel in his search for identity and his involvement in a bombing raid of Tunisia as a soldier. Scearce also weaves in a popular song alluding to a kind of “1930s crooner” (Favorite) which came to him in a dream. In Anthony’s staging, Harry is followed by a Greek chorus, of sorts, as if the ensemble were “in his mind, fighting to find the truth.” "This is a journey we are all taking through the eyes of Harry," the director explains. Back-lighting to create shadows and multiple surfaces for video projections will visually underscore the psychological landscape. Both the score and staging build into the final scene in which the devil worshipper Ethan Krusemark reveals the truth to Harry. Scearce integrates quotes from both the Renaissance composer and notorious sado-masochist Carlo Gesualdo, and J.S. Bach for the climax. “Moro, lasso, al mio duolo,” sings the chorus (‘I die, alas, in my suffering’). Anthony calls it a thrill to produce a new opera from the ground up. “The gift is that nothing is set until we open. Things will change many times over even after the cast assembles. They have to live this, not me." Rebecca Schmid is a classical music and culture journalist based in Berlin who writes for the New York Times, Financial Times, Musical America Worldwide, Gramophone, and many other publications.
Photo Credit: John Allen
18
Overture