Christopher Cerrone's first opera, Invisible Cities (based on Italo Calvino's novel), was a finalist for the 2014 Pulitzer Prize. There's every reason to think that this latest creation from the Brooklyn-based composer (b. 1984), In a Grove, should receive similar recognition when the two-part work, based on the same short story by Ryunosuke Akutagawa that inspired Kurosawa's Rashomon and featuring a terrific libretto by Stephanie Fleischmann, mesmerizes from start to finish. Co-produced by the Los Angeles and Pittsburgh Opera companies, In a Grove provides further confirmation of Cerrone's singular gifts and why he's justly regarded as one of today's leading composers. That he's one equally comfortable operating in electronic and acoustic environments also works in the project's favour.
Those familiar with Rashomon will already know the basic story-line (even if it's been subtly udapted for this iteration). As seven witness testimonies to murder are delivered (including that of the victim, his channeled by a medium), it becomes increasingly evident that their accounts dramatically differ and that the attempt to reach the truth of what happened is problematic, if not impossible. Kurosawa's film has over time become synonymous with the elusive nature of truth and the challenges involved in reaching conclusive determinations about the past. Just as the short story and film feature modest casts, so to does Cerrone's, with singers soprano Lindsay Kesselman (the mother, the missing woman), countertenor Chuanyuan Liu (the priest, the medium), tenor Andrew Turner (the policeman, the settler), and baritone John Taylor Ward (the woodcutter, the outlaw) handling all of the roles and sterling accompaniment provided by the Metropolis Ensemble. Led by conductor Andrew Cyr, the group comprises nine instrumentalists, including Cerrone, credited with electronics.
The shifting perspectives and multiple reexaminations of events that occur within an Oregon ghost forest in 1921 lend themselves superbly to an operatic treatment, what with its use of motifs and reliance on structural scaffolding. Cerrone and his co-producers Mike Tierney and Andrew Cyr deploy a variety of studio techniques to amplify the ethereal character of the story. Reverb, for instance, is utilized to enhance the deeply atmospheric character of the narrative. Occasional applications of electronic vocal processing also occur, though in truth such treatments are at times unnecessary when the performances in their unadulterated form are already so strong (consider, for example, the distorted treatment applied to the outlaw when he says, “You want me to talk?”).
In simplest form, the opera presents accounts by: a woodcutter, who reports finding a body in the grove; a priest, who recounts seeing a man leading a woman on a horse near the site; a policeman, who recounts arresting a local outlaw, Luther Harlow, thought to be responsible for women who've gone missing from the area; and a mother, whose daughter, Leona Raines, is missing and her new son-in-law dead. Harlow confesses, describing how he, captivated by the young woman's beauty, entered into an altercation with her husband, Ambrose, and stabbed him (“Might as well tell the truth / I killed him; I snuffed him out”). Leona's testimony aligns in some ways with the outlaw's but extends it to include her husband's rebuke of her for having, he believes, consorted with Harlow. When he dies, she, thinking herself responsible for his death (“I failed to apply pressure to the wound, to staunch his bleeding, to keep death at bay”), attempts unsuccessfully to take her own life. After she confesses to murdering her husband, a medium channels the dead man to reveal that it was, in fact, his weak heart that killed him (a condition of which she was unaware) and not his bride.
Electronic whooshes introduce the work, the brief “Prelude” immediately establishing the ghostly realm the story inhabits. The chop of an axe follows, that arresting detail followed by the woodcutter's testimony. That the vocal delivered by Ward—words fluctuating between monotone utterance and dramatic leaps in pitch—in this first scene is characteristic of the opera is intimated by Liu's similar execution as the priest in the second scene. In adopting that style, Cerrone both amplifies the entrancing quality of the music and imbues the material with a ritualistic character. As the work advances to testimonies by the policeman and the mother and the voices of Turner and Kesselman intertwine and overlap, the work's intensity, sense of desperation, and emotional potency grow. Here we also discover how pivotal Kesselman's towering performance is to the work—consider, as a representative example, how powerful the passage is where she sings “Her eyes?” and “What has happened to her?” as the mother. The soprano's later confession as the bride (the sixth scene, “The Missing Woman”) is as strong in its expressions of vulnerability and inner turmoil.
After an interlude cues the onset of the second part, the outlaw's confession perpetuates the delivery style established earlier. The complexity of the vocal design increases in accordance with the escalation in the narrative's intensity and violence, with the outlaw, the wife, and the husband featured in the fifth and sixth scenes. After the turbulence of these parts, the seventh, wherein the husband-channeling medium is joined by the wife and outlaw, resolves the work in slightly less harrowing though still gripping manner. The work's distinguished by its vocal dimension, of course, but the instrumental design deserves mention too. Ian Rosenbaum's mallet playing is critical to the music's haunting effect, as are the woodwinds, strings, piano, and other instruments played by the Metropolis Ensemble's members.
With respect to live performance, the fifty-two-minute piece naturally lends itself to a double-bill; one could imagine it coupled with, say, Bartók's Bluebeard's Castle, an opera of similar duration. There's also the possibility, however, that such a presentation would end up diluting the impact of Cerrone's creation and that a better scenario would be to have In a Grove preceded by other pieces by the composer (perhaps material from his recent Grammy-nominated releases, 2019's The Pieces that Fall to Earth, which also features Kesselman, and 2021's The Arching Path). Regardless, what he's achieved with In a Grove suggests that it will find a home on any number of opera house stages, as a work so accomplished and of such riveting character assuredly should.