MADISON, Wis. Commissioning new work is risky business, for eventhe largest and most established opera companies.
But American opera has been on a roll with recent commissions.The Metropolitan Opera's first commission in 25 years was JohnCorigliano's highly acclaimed "The Ghosts of Versailles." LyricOpera of Chicago scored a success with its "McTeague" last October.
Wednesday night it was Madison Opera's turn. The small companycommissioned composer Daron Aric Hagen and Irish poet Paul Muldoon towrite an opera about a tumultuous period in the life of famedarchitect Frank Lloyd Wright. Conducted by Roland Johnson, directedby Stephen Wadsworth and designed by David Birn, "Shining Brow"proved to be an absorbing, beautifully staged work.
Wright's life between 1903 and 1914 was certainly the stuff ofopera. There was his bitter break with mentor Louis Sullivan.Wright fell in love with Mamah Cheney, the wife of a wealthy client,and they ran off together. They settled in Wright's dream home,Taliesin, ("Shining Brow" in Welsh) near Spring Green, Wis., but ademented servant set it on fire. Cheney and her children died in theblaze.
Sullivan's design maxim, "Form follows function," was evokedthroughout the opera. But Hagen's spare, evocative scoredemonstrated the truth of another famous architect's rule, Mies vander Rohe's "Less is more."
At points of high tension, during Cheney's disillusionedsoliloquy in Act I, for example, the orchestra was silent for longperiods. A lonely horn call might sound or a swell of strings mightaccompany the restless melody lines. But the orchestral writing wasas austere and carefully placed as the beams in Wright's homes.
The opera dragged slightly in the first act whenever Wright(sung and acted with intense commitment by Michael Sokol) expoundedon his design theories. But Hagen and Muldoon managed to turn adebate about order in the universe into a riveting operatic scene.Stunned by the wreckage at Taliesin, Wright and Cheney's husband,Edwin (Bradley Garvin), tried to make sense of the tragedy. EdwinCheney, weary and bitter, countered Wright's assertions of an ordereduniverse in which even tragedy has its place. In Cheney's deep,brittle melodies we felt his anger at once again hearing the ideasthat enthralled his wife and destroyed his marriage.
Barry Busse's light, unaffect ed tenor turned the brooding Sullivan into a very human figure.Carolann Page as Mamah Cheney was equally expressive as a woman tornby great love.
The sets, including the floating outline of a prairie houseroof, were imaginative.
"Shining Brow" will be repeated at 8 tonight and 2:30 p.m.Sunday in the Madison Civic Center, 211 State St., two blocks west ofthe capital building.
Tickets are $15 to $45. Call (608) 266-9055.
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