BROOKLYN, N.Y. — There was much cause for celebration at National Sawdust Sept. 26-29. To open its 10th season, the experimental venue in the funky Williamsburg neighborhood launched the premiere of Silent Light, an opera by the organization’s co-founder and artistic director, Paola Prestini. Seen on the second night, this was a fascinating and moving way to acknowledge a decade of daring art.
The opera is based on a 2007 film by Carlos Reygada that takes place in a Mennonite community in northern Mexico. It tells the story of a married man, Johan, who has been having an affair with Marianne. Johan’s wife, Esther, knows about their trysts. Royce Vavrek’s elegant, poetic libretto focuses on how she, her mother, and others close to their family react to the situation, while also exploring Johan’s sense of guilt.
Chairs for the audience were fitted together snugly in rows along one long side of the rectangular space, with more seats in the balcony, leaving the majority of the floor as the stage. The five-member NOVUS NY instrumental ensemble improvised quiet melodic fragments and noise as we settled in and admired the Mennonite dining table and chairs and full working kitchen that were part of the set design by Thaddeus Strassberger, who also directed. (It’s not often one thinks to compliment a production’s carpenters, but Heather Curtis and Thomas Losito earned a special nod.)
The backdrops were also wood, plain and unfinished boards seeming to symbolize the straightforward belief system of this community, even if their behavior and emotions are as complicated as any humans’. That outward simplicity blanketed the opening with comforting quiet at family breakfast: the sounds of sizzling bacon and eggs, juice pitchers clinking against glasses, the sweet “Good morning!” of children showing up at the table. Underlying it all were crickets chirping and the endless ticking of a grandfather clock.
Projections by Greg Emetaz dotted the pre-dawn sky with stars. But as Johan’s longing for his lover pulls him out of the safety of his nuclear family, the pinpoints of light spiral dangerously, and the clock stops. Johan seeks advice: First his friend Zacarias (the charismatic tenor Anthony Dean Griffey) encourages him, saying God has led him to his “natural woman”; then Johan’s father (earnest bass-baritone James Demler) warns him that it’s “the enemy,” not the divine, pushing Johan to break his marriage vows.
A continuing focus on Johan would have made the opera unbearable, despite the nuanced performance by bass-baritone Daniel Okulitch. Soon Prestini and Vavrek wisely moved the spotlight to the women. Or, more accurately, the females. Five women from the Choir of Trinity Wall Street, who had been sitting onstage in Mennonite dresses, covered their heads with cow masks and were led away by male choristers, who set them up to be milked. The analogy to the subservient lot of women in that culture was not subtle, but it sure was effective. When the women ripped off their masks, they were visibly spent from all they had given to the men.
Perhaps the strongest element of this riveting production is the acting, especially by Brittany Renee as the long-suffering Esther, and Margaret Lattimore, her mother, who has not only suffered longer but has learned to suppress her feelings better than her daughter has. Significantly, while the mother does speak a few lines, it is not until the final scene, when she is ironing the winding sheet for her daughter’s funeral, that she finally sings. That’s how deeply she has trained herself to silence.
Sxip Shirey was credited not with “sound effects” but with “foley,” acknowledging his cinematic work emphasizing and exaggerating the sounds of the ordinary world. This was most compelling in Johan and Marianne’s first scene together. As she carries a pie from the oven to the table, the surreal sonic scale of her footfalls and the pouring of milk, with support from percussionist Marlon Patton, helped turn the mundane actions into eroticism.
When the lovemaking becomes physical, the score turns frantic, channeling hard bop jazz like Miles Davis or Art Blakey. Julia Mintzer as Marianne had an irresistible darkness to her voice, making her both seductress and protective force.
The well-directed sex scene, fully nude, was made poignant by its placement onstage. A large, raised platform, surrounded by boards and covered in a few inches of water, is first used as a pool where the children played. It then becomes the bed of illicit love. In the end, it is the spot in the woods where Esther dies of a broken heart.
Throughout the 90-minute opera, Prestini utilizes the small orchestra with precision to support the libretto. The swooping lines of a cello (Jeffrey Zeigler) follows the lovers’ hands against each others’ bodies. A strident violin (Katie Hyun) expresses the frustration that Esther can’t. Violin and trumpet (Sam Jones) often share material, as if showing two points of view on the same sticky problem.
Some of the writing for the chorus is spectacular, borrowing the note-against-note harmonizing of the Mennonite hymn-singing tradition, but flavored with emotional tinges of dissonance — gently at first, but then more violently. In the funeral scene at the end, NOVUS NY conductor Christopher Rountree stood at the foot of Esther’s casket to lead the mourners in a shockingly, painfully beautiful plea for the existence of heaven.
Finally, there is remorse, redemption, and a miracle. This brings about a shift: More than just accepting their lot, the women now seem to find power in it, singing of “peace” and “grace.” We hear again that “The only thing we cannot do is turn back time.”
The clock restarts its ticking, and National Sawdust begins its second promising decade.
