Press.
PROTOTYPE, NYC, 2025
The highlight of the festival was Christopher Cerrone’s “In a Grove,” a haunting psychological thriller with a libretto by Stephanie Fleischmann, at La MaMa.
The opera is based on a short story by Ryunosuke Akutagawa that describes the deadly encounter between a brigand and a married couple from multiple perspectives, including that of the murdered husband speaking through a medium. Each retelling deepens the mystery of how the man died and what happened between the woman and the stranger.
The opera transports the action to a forest in 19th-century America devastated by wildfires. The first sounds are an electronic haze that swirls like an auditory representation of the dry ice shrouding the set designer Mimi Lien’s narrow catwalk intersected by a movable pane of glass. The music (performed by the Metropolis Ensemble) grows out of this white noise. Over the course of the opera, as characters deliver their testimonies, the tensely tonal music behaves like a single mass that billows and drifts, ponders and pounces, but never falls silent.
Stylized yet sensual, the vocal lines glide along the surface of this instrumental texture. The vocal writing has an old-fashioned elegance that is artfully distorted at crucial moments by electronic processing. Sometimes it’s just a little tremor or pitch bending that reveals the intervention of machines. But when the baritone John Brancy, darkly erotic in the role of the outlaw, gives his testimony, his low notes ring out with a nightmarish buzz.
The outstanding cast also included the blooming lyricism of the tenor Paul Appleby, the luxuriously cool soprano of Mikaela Bennett and the iridescent countertenor of Chuanyuan Liu as a monk and medium. The score is eerily detached from the singers: Though individual instruments might double a line or even an isolated note sung by one of the characters, the music doesn’t reveal whether it believes — whether we are to believe — anyone.
With a foundation of ambient sound
…and vocal writing that underlines the most important moments with plangent harmonies…this is often mesmerising. The variations grow more meaningful and tragic as they pass, and the effect grows hypnotic…this was a moving experience, punctuated by librettist Stephanie Fleischmann’s line for the murder victim, “And so, ready to prove I was invincible . . . ” From this have come many tragedies.
Gorgeous IN A GROVE by Cerrone and Fleischmann
The New York premiere of the Christopher Cerrone/Stephanie Fleischmann opera IN A GROVE, in Mary Birnbaum’s simply beautiful—or beautifully simple—production triumphed at La Mama Experimental Theatre Club on Saturday as part of the Prototype Festival, presented by Beth Morrison Productions, and HERE, along with La Mama.
…Perhaps the most surprising aspect of the piece, for me at least, is the impact it has with a running time of less than an hour. It’s hard to imagine its being written by any other pairing than composer Cerrone and librettist Fleischmann, who seemed to “finish each other’s sentences” throughout their score.
Cerrone’s tonal music has a hypnotic, fluid quality to it that varies from scene to scene, from one role to another, matched superbly by the storytelling of Fleischmann. The cast of four did stellar work, in both acting and singing, differentiating between the two roles each of them sang. The seductive baritone of John Brancy brought both the Woodcutter and Luther Harlow to life, while Paul Appleby’s bright lyric tenor was a good match for the appealingly serene soprano of Mikaela Bennett as Ambrose and Leona Raines (doubling as well, as the Policeman and the Mother of the bride, respectively).
Birnbaum’s way of visualizing the piece (originally conceived for Pittsburgh Opera) with her collaborators seemed to give it just what it needed for maximum effect (including sound and visual haze), in its runway design by Mimi Lien with Yuki Nakase Link’s atmospheric lighting, Kristian Tchetchko’s sound design and Oana Botez’s compelling costumes. The instrumental work of the Metropolis Ensemble under conductor Luke Poeppel couldn’t have been better.
STUDIO RECORDING, 2023
Vividly produced …a creation of its own
…carefully considered for the studio in the manner of Meredith Monk’s stage works. The result is an hourlong immersion into the nearly suffocating mood and atmosphere of “In a Grove,” an adaptation of the Ryunosuke Akutagawa story of the same name that also inspired “Rashomon.” In Fleischmann’s straightforward yet poetically loaded libretto, the plot is moved to the Pacific Northwest of the 1920s, where the mystery of a man’s death is examined from distorted, conflicting perspectives …Two roles each are given to four singers, who dramatically embody Cerrone’s tense, direct vocal writing, which occasionally takes a sudden plunge doubled in the instruments. The music also knows more about the truth than the characters do; electronic processing flags gaps in memory or untrustworthy statements, endlessly complicating the text, and commanding attention until the end.
In A Grove is an engrossing and complete experience
…Cerrone evokes the fragility of memory from the outset. The opening Prelude, an inchoate layer of electronic fog, suggests the erasure of the forest’s own past through wildfire and lingering smoke.Metropolis articulates [Cerrone’s] economical writing for nine players with vivid nuance….Cerrone’s vocal characterisation is most striking in the final scene’s duet between countertenor Chuanyuan Liu as the medium and tenor Andrew Turner, poignantly lyrical as the deceased Ambrose, as their voices join in two simultaneous versions of the same character. But in the opera’s dynamics, revelation denies resolution.
PITTSBURGH OPERA , 2022
“In the opera’s stunning world premiere…the philosophical questions and underpinnings of murder and violence remained relevant and powerful,
especially in today’s era of Black Lives Matter and #MeToo….An impressionistic rendering of the story’s philosophic base—truth, untruth and, most important, the fragmentation of memory…Lien’s design also alluded to the opera’s Japanese roots through its contemporary minimalism. The judicious use of mist added to the ghostly atmosphere, softening the stark lines. Yuki Nakase Link’s lighting,…magnified the drama.
All of the above effects were welded together by Christopher Cerrone’s remarkable score…cinematic…With loops, echoes, and sustained overlaps, Cerrone uses his mixer like another instrument, to enhance the texture. The nine-piece orchestra, authoritatively led by Antony Walker, sounded epic.
…this opera transcends time in so many ways. [Oana Botez’s] clothes were beautifully constructed and set up an impressive reveal in which the singers morphed from one character to another by simply changing the draping of the fabric…
Given the presence of more than a dozen microphones, the mixer and approximately 300 cues that sonically altered the performances, some purists might ask, “Is it opera?” In a word, yes. The actions may have been splintered, but the cohesive efforts of the creative artists produced an opera that will linger long in my memory.”
“Moody, haunting
…Mr. Cerrone’s score, for nine instrumentalists and electronics, opens with a wind-like wash of sound; the instrumental soundscape, with fragments of melody subtly woven into a foundation of percussion, remains alluringly and dramatically hypnotic. Vocal lines are direct and unembellished, often with repeated notes and a sudden drop into a lower register for just a syllable or two. Like the instruments, the voices are amplified and sometimes electronically manipulated and distorted, alerting the listener to the fact that a character may be lying, or remembering wrong. Turning points are carefully signaled: For example, when Leona realizes—or thinks she realizes—that her husband hates her, the pounding orchestration disappears to leave her voice nakedly and poignantly exposed.…Mary Birnbaum’s acute, choreographic direction told the story clearly, with the aid of Yuki Nakase Link’s ghostly lighting and Oana Botez’s monochromatic period costumes that hinted at Japanese shapes. The look of the show paid homage to the story’s Japanese origins, coexisting ingeniously with the opera’s more American style in its dissection of this young couple’s tragedy.”
“Shrouded in mystery, shadowed with doubt, a brilliant new opera…
Rarely does a new opera emerge so perfectly formed, let alone presented in a production as musically and visually stunning.…In a Grove begins with the drone of white noise that is mirrored visually in the mist that rises from the stage: Both symbolize the smoke arising from the smoldering, charred landscape. From this primeval wash of sound emerge rhythms, harmonies, and motives from which entire melodies are built….The musical bones of In a Grove evoke the clean, uncomplicated structure that Akutagawa prized in writing…. Four singers — each in dual roles — are pivotal to the action. All were remarkably adept at creating richly detailed characterizations in the mysterious, timeless visual environment that director Mary Birnbaum crafted with her restrained but highly effective staging….Based on the Ryūnosuke Akutagawa story that inspired Akira Kurosawa’s renowned 1950 film “Rashomon,” the 60-minute opera’s moody, haunting score, laced with electronics, explores the uncertainties—multiple, conflicting testimonies—that are the hallmarks of the story and the film…extraordinary.”
Cerrone’s score is full of slow, pulsing phrases,
rhythmic tugs in and out of recitative and spare and dramatic instrumentation. The minimalist use of vocal manipulation, subtly complex reverb, looping and the like creates a sound that mimics the atmospheric smoke effects on stage. Director Mary Birnbaum places the performers on an empty runway, like the footbridge on a Kabuki stage, with the audience in straight lines on either side. The stage is empty, aside from a glass screen in the center that moves on and off stage at important transitions. The staging feels purposefully two-dimensional, like a long painting on a screen, and amplifies the drama of the excellently staged violence.
Perspectives, reflections, obscurity, and illusion
Christopher Cerrone and Stephanie Fleischmann's opera at the Prototype Festival re-sets Rashomon in the Pacific Northwest and binds its characters into a hellish cycle of violence with a dark, hypnotic score…Director Mary Birnbaum had staged In a Grove in the oblong: the audience was bisected by a runway, and set designer Mimi Lien’s runway was, in turn, bisected by a two-story lucite window hanging framed from a track on the ceiling. So as the opera began, the characters on either end of the runway, and the listeners on either end of the action, were literally, physically divided by their opposing points of view. A hint of stage fog thickened the atmosphere, so that the beams of designer Yuki Nakase Link’s stark, powerful stage lights were visible in the air, and in their glare the singers cast ghostly half-reflections on the pane.
It was, in other words, a perfect staging for a Rashomon story: a drama of perspectives, reflections, obscurity, and illusion. Re-setting the action to the Pacific Northwest and sensitively reshaping the action, Stephanie Fleischmann’s libretto for In a Grove is an adaptation of the Ryunosuke Akutagawa short story of the same name…while the cyclical storytelling of Invisible Cities unrolls time into space, here it binds the characters into a hellish cycle of violence. And while Cerrone’s musical textures for that piece were as lavish as the production, Birnbaum’s minimalist vision for In a Grove matches the asceticism of Cerrone’s dark, hypnotic score.
…Throughout the piece, Birnbaum’s choreography of the action is highly stylized, and the story is told to us as much as shown. But the chillingly abstracted, patient, insistent music and stagecraft, rather than cooling down the brutal action, instead work subtly to infuse the drama with an aching, dreamy sadness borne of a deep compassion for the characters, and as the piece comes to its close, it is with a sense of dread that the grand cycle of violence has come full circle, and that in its end, its terrible beginning has returned.
A hypnotic ritual awash in beauty and tension
…Each new soliloquy complicated or contradicted what came before it, with amplification and electronic vocal processing serving as potent mood-altering tools.
The action, directed by Mary Birnbaum, was spare and suspenseful; the physical production – a bare, slender platform bisected with a transparent panel hung from above – showed how much imaginative stagecraft can be wrung from minimal means. Singers Paul Appleby, Mikaela Bennett, John Brancy, and Chuanyuan Liu were sensational; so, too, was the Metropolis Ensemble, effectively and excitingly led by Luke Poeppel.
Compelling and visceral
…One of the most compelling productions I’ve seen in a long time…The intimate setting at La MaMa’s Ellen Stewart Theater augmented the visceral impact….Surtitles were projected above the stage, but for the most part they were not necessary to decipher Stephanie Fleischman’s effective libretto….Christopher Cerrone’s melodic material was memorable…. As I left the theatre after the performance, the haunting lament of the last scene continued to ring in my ears….Director Mary Birnbaum’s concept was exceptionally powerful in its simplicity, with no props and no set, save for a large pane of glass that glided in to bisect the stage at certain points. The glass panel also served as a mirror in some scenes….I was very much captivated by this powerful drama and its excellent performance.
photo: Maria Baranova
“Music that’s lit from within…
…a phantasmagoric reinterpretation of the eponymous story by Japan’s great modernist writer, Ryūnosuke Akutagawa.…a work that melds the scintillating tones of woodwind and string instruments with the crepuscular thrum of ambient digital technology….The production begins in darkness and never really leaves the realm of a dream state: the performers step into fluid shafts of illumination like iridescent fish flashing in the murky depths of an aquarium. Set designer Mimi Lien utilizes a runway-style stage that bisects the audience…suggesting an ancient Greek, chorus-like mise-en-scène, as you’re watching faces watching the action…you can’t help but feel as if you’re part of a jury with all those eyes witnessing what you’re witnessing.…Yazid Gray, Chuanyuan Liu, Andrew Turner, and Madeline Ehlinger…perform…as components of something larger and selfless – constituting, ultimately, a kind of sublime gestalt…a synesthetic revelation.”
“This is exactly the sort of work the opera world should be programming….
a smart, captivating work that deserves additional performances…
A compact libretto by Stephanie Fleischmann pairs beautifully with composer Christopher Cerrone’s taut, tonal score and its electronic effects…There needs to be a reason the characters are singing, a reason that the score plays an integral role in the drama for a work to be successful. “In a Grove," Pittsburgh Opera's latest production and a world premiere, does just that with style and finesse…It’s an insightful, thought-provoking exploration of the nature of truth…A truly excellent opera and a terrific premiere…..”
“If I were asked to return
and listen again, I wouldn’t hesitate to say yes...
…an ambitious work that tackles issues such as living mortals being incapable of knowing the whole truth about everything; the question of to what extent does emotional harm stand next to physical harm, the concept of one person’s lie being another’s version of the truth, and more, all wrapped up in a “whodunit.” The music of the story is electronically enhanced throughout—even the voices of the singers reverberate somewhat hauntingly, while winds whistle and pre-recorded sound effects are set off to ricochet through the fog that envelops the stage setting.”