The musical adaptation of “Cold Mountain” arrived at the Santa Fe Opera Saturday night with all of the expectations a very good idea provokes.
Charles Frazier’s National Book Award winner is a sweeping tale of life, love and death and opera knows exactly what to do with those things, especially death. There was more promise surrounding the premiere: A first opera from the talented composer Jennifer Higdon, a starring role for the art form’s best-loved baritone, Nathan Gunn.
A few notes in, it was clear the pressure brought out the best in everyone. “Cold Mountain,” the opera, turns out to be a special piece of American art that examines both our fortitude and failures. It is challenging to hear and true to its source material.
That’s a particular compliment considering it took endless compromises on the part of Higdon and librettist Gene Scheer to condense a 356-page Civil War epic into a two-act opera that’s less than three hours long. Frazier’s 1997 novel sprawls across time and geography, and only so much of that fits on a stage.
The duo pared the tale deftly and what is lost in detail is enhanced by Higdon’s colorful score. It is confident, at times indulgent, and it doesn’t always connect perfectly with the drama. But Higdon finds sounds for all of her characters and makes it their signature; the musical dimensions she adds would feel right to the millions of people who read Frazier’s original work.
Music allows the composer to add deeper layers to a piece that traverses the Old South, following Confederate deserter W.P. Inman’s long and violent journey home to his love Ada Monroe in North Carolina. Appalachian sounds influence the instrumentation, as do the solemn hymns of the Baptist tradition. Higdon transforms that church music from somber and rote to haunting in sections written for the chorus.
She embraces the full power of the orchestra as a tool for scene-setting, and offers accessible melodies for her singers to exploit, though she resists giving into romanticism. Many of today’s new operas rely on big numbers, they can feel like Broadway shows. But Higdon writes mainly to convey dialogue. This piece isn’t so much beautiful as it is real.
That gives Scheer a big spotlight. Words matter in “Cold Mountain” and he is alternately sparse and poetic, and always on point as his characters suffer greatly from their lost conflict and evolve as humans. They sing:
Some borders can’t be crossed,
Some wounds will never heal,
Some things you can’t forget,
Hearts buried beneath regret,
In the end, how will I feel?
Who you are the war reveals.
He has a lot of story to impart and it’s a complicated one. The women here are not universally well-drawn, they can be too plucky or virtuous, but as with Frazier’s novel, the male characters go deep, conveying within themselves the full scope of human potential and depravity. It’s hard to discern the bad guys from the badder guys in this narrative. The ones you end up rooting for are cowards, killers and thieves. Scheer and Higdon mine their dramatic riches without whitewashing their evils.
Robert Brill’s scenery allows anything to happen. There is just one set, consisting of a pile of giant beams and boards that jut out in all directions. They evoke, generally, ruin. But the parts move with agility, allowing the heap to stand in as a farm, a boat, a battlefield. The set propels the piece forward as dates and locations are projected on a large timber, making the action easier to follow as time moves backward and forward tracking Inman and Ada’s travails.
Director Leonard Foglia has his performers step precariously over all of it and it doesn’t look easy, though he guides them into singing that way. Gunn lead the pack at the premier, he’s just right for Inman, handsome and tragic and a natural actor. As Ada, Isabel Leonard sang with ample clarity and moved efficiently between the naivete her character starts with the wisdom she gains the hard way. There was considerable support from Jay Hunter Morris, Emily Fons and Deborah Nansteel in key roles.
As with all operas staged for the first time, “Cold Mountain” has some rough edges. At times, the lighting was so dark you couldn’t tell what was going on. The final scene, a flash forward in time, came off as excessive punctuation, a too-good turn meant to send the audience out without so much regret over the demise of the protagonist.
It’s unnecessary. Higdon and Scheer have already done their jobs well by then. The real reward comes from experiencing the palpable pain the characters sustain to tell a compelling story and take us to the reaches of human endurance. This is opera; happy endings are not the point.
It’s all about life, love and death. And on “Cold Mountain,” death especially.
“Cold Mountain” continues at the Santa Fe Opera until August 24. For tickets and information, call 505-986-5900 or go online to santafeopera.org. The work is a co-production between the Santa Fe Opera, Opera Philadelphia and Minnesota Opera, in collaboration with North Carolina Opera.
Ray Mark Rinaldi: 303-954-1540, rrinaldi@denverpost.com or twitter.com/rayrinaldi
