Until Tuesday evening, Chicago Opera Theater never had staged a digital opera.
But extraordinary times call for extraordinary measures, so the company presented a virtual concert reading of composer Stacy Garrop and librettist Jerre Dye’s new opera “The Transformation of Jane Doe.” Rather than prerecord the performance, then edit it, COT opted to stream the production live from the Studebaker Theater, on South Michigan Avenue. This was a risk, considering that it involved multiple voices, a small instrumental ensemble and rolling subtitles that tracked the opera’s progress.
It all proceeded quite smoothly, if lacking in the sophisticated lighting and telling camera angles that a more controlled production might have yielded. Yet there’s something about a live event that raises the intensity level of everyone’s work, and that fervor was unmistakable in this 90-minute presentation.
More important, Chicagoans Garrop and Dye have created an unusual, alluring piece based on an original story deeply woven into this city’s history and character. It was so thick with surprise, dramatic twists and layers of meaning that even a straightforward concert performance made clear the opera’s inherent value.
Originally, “Jane Doe” was to have premiered in the spring, but the production had to be postponed due to the pandemic. In presenting the piece in stripped-down form, Chicago Opera Theater chose to call this a “first performance” rather than a world premiere. That descriptor will be saved for a time when another company presents a fully staged production, according to a COT representative. But notwithstanding an ending that wasn’t quite as persuasive as the rest of the opera, “Jane Doe” proved so immediately attractive and ripe with potential that COT ought to consider presenting the piece again, in full form, when our theaters reopen.
The opera’s premise is pure Chicago. Set here on New Year’s Eve of 1919, the story concerns a nascent newspaper reporter who yearns to get off the obituary desk, where she clearly has been relegated because of her gender. When a tip comes in that a woman has jumped off a downtown hotel rooftop, the reporter – Abigail Dabrowski – persuades her editor to let her cover the story.
It all feels very Roaring ’20s and “Front Page,” an era when newspaper scribes hustled to land scoops for the next edition, and women like Abigail were granted scant opportunities to do so. And yet Abigail’s palpable excitement at chasing the story, though fun to watch, is but an attractive veneer surrounding a much deeper tale.
To reveal the nature of Abigail’s discoveries would be to spoil for readers the second two-thirds of the opera, which pivot on revelation. Suffice it to say that Garrop and Dye allow the viewer to piece together Abigail’s back story slowly but inexorably, just as she does. We in the audience are as startled as she is, in other words, by what she finds out about the suicide she’s covering and, ultimately, about herself, her future and the nature and importance of feminism.
Garrop, one of Chicago’s most keenly sensitive composers, has penned a score that revels in long legato lines but never to cloying effect. Quite the contrary, Garrop keeps the musical material in flux. So though the opera opens with ribbons of melody as Abigail dreams about a critical moment in her youth, it soon shifts to Jazz Age bustle when she’s in the newsroom, then moves on to Sondheimesque flavorings, elegiac arias and more.
Dye has written an ingeniously structured libretto, methodically divulging key pieces of information but also unexpected levels of emotional depth. As the piece unfolds, we learn not only that Abigail is haunted but how and why.
About that unconvincing finish: After digging so deeply into Abigail’s emotional makeup, the opera’s ending forces Abigail to mouth somewhat superficial and expository statements. But we already have witnessed and experienced the unstoppable power of her deepening convictions; we don’t need her to spell them out for us. That flaw can be fixed with a bit less purple text, slightly less heated music and a briefer finale.
COT music director Lidiya Yankovskaya gathered a fine cast, with soprano Samantha Schmid urgent in voice and compelling in gesture as Abigail; mezzo-soprano Morgan Middleton vocally sensuous as Jane Doe; mezzo-soprano Leah Dexter fiercely expressive as the night maid; and Curtis Bannister, John Mathieu and Keanon Kyles effective in multiple supporting roles.
Conductor Yankovskaya drew a wide range of color from a chamber ensemble and kept the music pressing ever forward, surely the best way to present an opera when the score alone must carry the story.
For more information, visit www.chicagooperatheater.org.
Howard Reich is a Tribune critic.
