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the gospel according to the other mary
Dancers Stephanie Berge, Ingrid Mackinnon and (lying down) Parinay Mehra with mezzo Patricia Bardon, centre, as Mary and contralto Meredith Arwady (back right) as Martha in ENO’s The Gospel According to the Other Mary. Photograph: Tristram Kenton
Dancers Stephanie Berge, Ingrid Mackinnon and (lying down) Parinay Mehra with mezzo Patricia Bardon, centre, as Mary and contralto Meredith Arwady (back right) as Martha in ENO’s The Gospel According to the Other Mary. Photograph: Tristram Kenton

The Gospel According to the Other Mary review – a mesmerising aural world

This article is more than 9 years old
Coliseum, London
The Other Mary has its longueurs, but John Adams’s remarkable score is brilliantly performed by English National Opera

As a leaf in a gust of wind, so the other Mary begins her story in mid-air, almost mid-sentence, a vortex of brutal music swirling around her dominated by harp and piano in percussive mode: “The next day, in the city jail, we were searched for drugs,” she tells us, breathless and urgent. We know nothing of what happened the day before, to whom, why or where. Then a chorus cries out, fortissimo: “Howl ye, howl ye!” In an instant we are thrown from the violent world of strip searches and prison cells to the thee-thou language of Old Testament prophecy, a truncated warning that the day of the Lord is at hand.

John Adams’s The Gospel According to the Other Mary, which was given its world staged premiere at English National Opera last week, is subtitled “A Passion oratorio in two acts”. The libretto, with equal care, is described as having been “compiled” by Peter Sellars, who also directed the show. This is the pair’s seventh joint venture. As well as the Bible, texts range from Hildegard of Bingen to Primo Levi and Louise Erdrich. Oppression and sociopolitical dissent rub shoulders with miracles and resurrection. Sellars has sewn these shreds into one cloth of various textures, as he did with Doctor Atomic and with the nativity oratorio El Niño, a partner piece to The Other Mary.

Some who saw the European premiere concert performance at the Barbican last year (I didn’t) maintain it worked as well, or not according to taste, as this staged version, with sets by George Tsypin suggestive of tent, cave, prison, sandstorm, cool dawn, blazing sunset and earthquake via a mere shift of scrim or change of lighting (by James F Ingalls). Clothes are modern – skinny jeans for Mary, bright ethnic garb for the chorus, generic sportswear for the ethereally effective Seraphim (Daniel Bubeck, Brian Cummings, Nathan Medley). This trio of countertenors manages simultaneously to sound like boy-band stars, clean believers from The Book of Mormon and grown-up versions of the three boys in Mozart’s The Magic Flute.

Countertenors Daniel Bubeck, Brian Cummings and Nathan Medley. Photograph: Jane Hobson/REX

The Other Mary consists of big choruses, arias and orchestral interludes, but the impact is contemplative rather than operatic. Action unfolds slowly and demands total concentration from the audience, who obliged on the opening night and again at the second performance on Tuesday. The raising of Lazarus, prefiguring Christ’s own resurrection, is the main episode of Act 1, with Lazarus’s sisters Mary and Martha as key players. Bound and tethered, he returns to life in terrified shakes, his “soul” slithering across the floor mysteriously, beneath gauze, to re-enter the body. Act 2 centres on the crucifixion from the women’s point of view, recounted directly from the Bible or more obliquely. The modern streetwise thread is woven through, though at times it feels redundant, given the potency of the central Passion story. Whether you believe its transcendent meaning or not, its mythical power is equal to the tale of Orpheus or any of those derived from the bleak house of Atreus, always an operatic favourite.

Adams invents an enthralling range of effects throughout. The orchestral sounds vary from thick and saturated to pale and barely audible. Cellos and double basses observe Adams’s instruction to sound, in eerie glissandos, like “piercing groans”. A clarinet solo bursts out in klezmer exuberance. The chorus bays and laments, at one point dividing into multiple parts, some muttering in the charismatic Christian tradition of speaking in tongues. Bass guitar, percussion – conspicuous low drums and tam-tams – and above all the jangly, folkloric exoticism of the cimbalom create a mesmerising aural world. The ENO orchestra excelled, vigorously and sensitively conducted by Joana Carneiro making her house debut, a (Portuguese) name to watch.

The other Mary of the title, as distinct from the Virgin, is a conflation of Mary Magdalene, she who had seven devils and loved Jesus, and Lazarus’s sister, Mary of Bethany, who washed his feet with her hair. Most Bible women are unnamed. Many with names are called Mary, with little unanimity about their identity. Luckily Martha, who cooked and cleaned while her sister prayed, was a more straightforward girl.

Adams has chosen low voices for these two women: the compelling mezzo of Patricia Bardon (Mary), giving the performance of her life, and the gloriously resonant contralto of Meredith Arwady (Martha). Both have sung the role of Erda, who rises from the bowels of the Earth in Wagner’s Ring, which gives an idea of their rich but contrasting amber tones. At the empty tomb, Arwady sings a gutsy low D sharp on the word “sepulchre”, overlapping with the baritone range and sounding like a funereal trombone. It was one reason I went back a second time: I could hardly believe my ears.

Banks as the Angel Gabriel. Photograph: John Snelling/Getty Images

Lazarus is sung by Russell Thomas, who created the role at the world premiere in Los Angeles in 2012. His moving showpiece aria, Tell me: how is this night different, continues the Adams tradition of soliloquy arias first heard in Nixon in China, then in The Death of Klinghoffer and, most memorably, in the John Donne setting Batter my heart in Doctor Atomic. The pairing of Mary and Lazarus with dancers is a success, with Parinay Mehra an almost ghostly counterpart to Thomas’s hulking presence as Lazarus. The flex dancer Banks made the biggest dramatic impact as the Angel Gabriel. For a supernatural spirit, he had muscles to die for.

Sellars’s production employs his familiar hand gestures in the choruses. If they irritate you normally, they will again. Indeed if you are an impatient type you may hate the whole thing. It has its longueurs. Dramaturgical difficulties aside, this modern Passion has inspired Adams’s most thrilling score. Sellars is back at ENO in February with Purcell’s Indian Queen in a retelling of the encounter between Europeans and Mayans in the New World from a female perspective. You may want to run for cover.

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