BREVARD MUSIC CENTER | OVERTURE
J. MARK SCEARCE (1960-) Falling Angel For those of us who first came to William Hjortsberg’s ground-breaking horror/detective mash-up through Alan Parker’s film, “Angel Heart” (1987), certain images are indelibly imprinted: - Robert DeNiro’s peeling of a hard-boiled egg - a teenage Lisa Bonet - a smoldering Charlotte Rampling - a once-beautiful Mickey Rourke - a teenage Lisa Bonet One can’t emphasize enough the shock and awe that Cosby kid’s fall from grace had in Eighties culture! And what a fall! If you saw it, you’d remember. The small roles were memorable, too. Blues guitarist Brownie McGhee, Pulitzer-prize-winning playwright Charles Gordone, the Broadway actor Michael Higgins, and Dann Florek long before his Captain Kragen Law & Order franchise. Did I mention a teenage Lisa Bonet? But in spite of DeNiro’s curtain-chewing cameo, it is Mickey Rourke’s movie as it is Harry Angel’s, the character he plays, in book and movie and now opera. It is the self-realizing hero’s journey of all great literature from Dante to every great detective story there is — for the mystery is always about discovering yourself. It is a hajj of the soul. A pilgrimage of great consequence, of moral and spiritual significance. And besides being a truly great story (thank you, William Hjortsberg!), it is a metaphorical journey justifying opposite aspects of self: our morning’s striving to be intentionally better and our evening’s fall from grace into a less socially-attractive, personally-desirous shadow, undermining us at every turn. I ask you: is that not opera? To ask the question “Who are we?” only to discover “We don’t know.” That is pure horror and what it means to be human. Only to learn in the asking what we truly don’t want to know, coming face to face with the moral of Sophocles’ “Oedipus Rex”: “Alas, how terrible is wisdom when it profits not the wise.” The movie has generated an industry of soul-searching: an exhibit in “Psychiatry and the Cinema,” the central character in “The Philosophy of Neo-Noir,” a starring role in “Black Magic and White Guilt.” And as great and over-the-top as the movie is, the book is SO much better. And fortunately William Hjortsberg likes opera too! And the supremely talented playwright Lucy Thurber brilliantly adapted the story to the stage! And Dean and Michael and all these young actor-singers are bringing our opera to life in a joint venture between Brevard and the Center for Contemporary Opera in New York!
On one hand the story is simple: a detective is hired to find a missing person — a big band singer from a decade earlier, Johnny Favorite. [How fun it is to have an opera about a missing singer!] On the other hand, this story is quite complicated as most mysteries are. So — SPOILER ALERT — here’s a chronological time line of Johnny Favorite’s life. DO NOT READ if you want to figure it out on your own! - Meets Toots Sweet and Spider Simpson and begins playing in their band with them. - Meets Ethan Krusemark, a fellow devil worshipper, and greatly impresses him by conjuring an image of Lucifer right in front of him. - Ethan introduces his daughter Margaret to him and Johnny begins dating Margaret. - Meets Evangeline Proudfoot, begins an affair with her. - Offers his soul up to Satan for eventual collateral in exchange for stardom in the music industry and hits it big as popular singer “Johnny Favorite”. - Backs out of the deal with Satan, and finds an ancient ritual to do so. - Goes to Time Square, New Year’s Eve, 1943 with the Krusemarks to find someone his age to steal his soul, choosing a soldier, Harold Angel. - They take the soldier to a nearby hotel room, enacting the ritual by stealing Harold Angel’s soul and memories after eating his heart. - Johnny seals the dog tags in a vase without showing them to anyone but himself, completely hiding the identity from everyone involved in the ritual. - Margaret hides the vase without ever opening it, never knowing who Johnny became nor knowing the soldier’s identity. - 1944, Johnny gets drafted into service during World War II, going to Africa to serve as part of the entertainment division. - Johnny is shell-shocked in an attack in Tunisia and shipped home as a vegetable to a military hospital in Poughkeepsie, NY. - During his stay at the hospital, his memories as Harold Angel take over his mind, and he loses all memories as “Johnny.” - During his stay, his doctor, Dr. Fowler, operates on his face, surgically repairing his war injuries, but changing his appearance enough so that he no longer resembles Johnny Favorite. - With his face still bandaged, the Krusemarks come to Poughkeepsie using false identities, and pay Fowler to release “Johnny” to them but to continue falsifying hospital records to show that he’s “still there”. - The Krusemarks drop “Johnny” off in Times Square, thinking it’s the last place that the soldier they kidnapped will remember before the ritual. - And it works! He is found wandering around Times Square claiming to be a soldier named Harold Angel. He is treated for “shell-shock”, rehabilitated, and becomes a private detective. - Satan greets him as Louis Cyphre, hiring Angel to “find” Favorite. And our opera begins...
-J. Mark Scearce
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Overture