Out of the Box

by Colin Ure

art by Pattima Singhalaka photos of HGO chorus by Brett Coomer, George Hixson and Felix Sanchez

But what, exactly, is Chorus!? Anthony Freud, together with Music Director, Patrick Summers, Chorus Master Richard Bado and Director David Pountney explained their collective vision for this grand scale evening of operatic theater, the first of its kind ever to be produced in North America.

In David Pountney’s production, the chorus is the “People,” a mirror image of us, the audience. Their many facets, depicted through a slender narrative that runs seamlessly from chorus to chorus, create a lively collage of opposites and contrasts. An evening’s entertainment that is at once musical, theatrical, and visual, Chorus! spins a musical and dramatic thread through choral music from opera, oratorio, and American musical theater. “It is such an unusual project.” said Patrick Summers, “For the seasoned opera goer it will provide a mix of familiar things, and things that have not been heard in Houston before, while the new opera goer will be introduced to so much music.” Anthony Freud remarked, “In putting together this eclectic and engaging mix of repertoire, I hope it will make people think freshly about some pieces that they know very well.”

All four men were adamant from the project’s inception that the opera’s repertoire should include choruses well known to HGO audiences, as well as choruses from operas never before performed by the company, some of which will be heard in upcoming seasons. The repertoire of Chorus! spans more than three hundred years, from the baroque music of Purcell and Handel to that of the twentieth-century American composer Leonard Bernstein. We enter the baroque world with Purcell’s opera The Fairy Queen and the Hallelujah chorus from Handel’s oratorio Messiah, and choruses by Wagner, Verdi, Bizet, and Offenbach bring us to the nineteenth-century. The narrative thread weaves its way across the English Channel to the UK, taking us first to the county of Suffolk with Benjamin Britten’s searing masterpiece Peter Grimes, and then to the Duchy of Cornwell, with Gilbert and Sullivan’s quintessentially frothy English fare The Pirates of Penzance.

The production’s gravitas derives from four large-scale Russian masterpieces, all as yet unperformed by HGO: Mussorgsky’s Khovanshchina, Prokofiev’s War and Peace, Stravinsky’s The Rake’s Progress, and Shostakovich’s Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk. These magnificent works stand out in clever contrast to music from three of Broadway’s musical gems, Candide, Carousel, and The Sound of Music.

“The chorus of HGO is one of the world’s great opera choruses,” says Anthony Freud, “Its members need to be stretched, developed, and excited in order to make them even greater than they are.”

That is the charge of Chorus Master Richard Bado, whose leadership has earned the group renown among audiences and singers alike for its high standard of vocal excellence. “Given the variety of musical styles, periods, and languages of the choruses being performed, it is vital that it does not sound the same throughout.” Bado remarked. “For example, the chorus from The Fairy Queen composed in the seventeenth century needs to contrast with the towering chorus from War and Peace, which was composed during the 1940’s.”

Chorus! highlights the vital role of the chorus in opera, oratorio, and musical theater over the centuries. Patrick Summers explains “A lot of choruses in operas are dramatically structured like the old Greek choruses that are meant to represent the spectator. Of course in the operas of Wagner and Verdi the chorus ceases to become a spectator and instead plays the role of willing participant.” David Pountney adds, “Basically the chorus does two things: it either represents institutionalized power or it represents the people themselves.”

Mussorgsky’s Khovanshchina plays an important part here. Pountney reflects, “Mussorgsky is one of the most interesting and original users of the chorus [in opera]. He was the first composer to give the chorus its own dialogue, laid out in choral form with groups of choristers singing to each other.” Summers concurs, and explains “In the Russian operas we are presenting, Khovanshchina, War and Peace, and Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk, the major role is the People, portrayed by the chorus. This says much about national character, about the need to be heard, in fact, the people having a say in their future.”

So, musically, how is the lively collage of opposites and contrasts achieved? Chorus! aligns its musical numbers according to universal themes, and through the art of transition, juxtaposes one with the other. For example in hearing the “Hallelujah” chorus (1741) immediately followed by the “Alleluia” from The Sound of Music (1959), we hear the constancy of this particular religious sentiment throughout the centuries. With less reverent tone The Pirates of Penzance and Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk point to the more comic stage uses of hypocritical policemen. “It’s also sending up the Shostakovich [Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk] a bit as well!” says Summers. Incidentally, the lawless “cops” get their just deserts later on in Khovanshchina.

A joyous mood pervades the chorus in the Entry of the Guests from Tannhauser, a stark contrast to their appearance as a lynch-mob, baying like animals for the blood of the outcast fisherman, in the Peter Grimes excerpt. The two choruses from Verdi’s Macbeth depict men and women working secretly behind the veil of night: the men as murderers, the women summoning up spirits from another world. The “Humming Chorus” from Madame Butterfly and the sensuous “Barcarolle” from The Tales of Hoffmann create a more tranquil musical atmosphere.

The work ends as it began with the chorus praising solidarity and union, although the musical numbers chosen could not present a greater contrast. The mighty Epigraph from War and Peace that opens the production, depicting the Russian people’s victory against the invader, is juxtaposed with “You’ll Never Walk Alone” from Carousel, and “Make our Garden Grow” from Bernstein’s Candide, both choruses brimming with hope for the future.

So what of those detractors who might not regard an evening of choruses as true opera? Would the same criticism be leveled at an evening of miscellaneous Ballet pieces, or various concert pieces in a symphonic program? Anthony Freud again, “When you talk to people about what they like most about opera, it is amazing how many people pick on big choruses, and now, for the first time, Chorus! will put the core of HGO, its chorus and orchestra, in the spotlight, in a way that does justice to their virtuosity and quality. Also, I hope that it will be a highly theatrical evening’s entertainment, which has both musical and dramatic relevance.”
A final word from Patrick Summers, “More and more these days arts organizations are being encouraged to think differently about the work they present, and that is precisely what we are doing with this production of Chorus! It’s new, and it’s outside -
the box! ”

Houston Grand Opera Dramaturg Colin Ure writes frequently for Opera Cues magazine.