PITTSBURGH — Color is at the heart of Jennifer Higdon’s new chamber opera, Woman with Eyes Closed, which premiered at Pittsburgh Opera on April 26. Her scintillating score was inspired by works of art by Lucian Freud, Gauguin, Matisse, Meyer de Hahn, Monet, and Picasso that were stolen from the Kunsthal Rotterdam in 2012 and never recovered. The opera is based on the robbery, but it is not a whodunit. It is rather an intense family drama that probes the question of what lengths a mother would go to protect her child.
Known primarily for orchestral and chamber works, Higdon had success with her first opera, Cold Mountain, which premiered at Santa Fe Opera in 2015. Keith Cerny, then general director of the Dallas Opera, urged her to write another, suggesting the Rotterdam art heist as a topic. The story resonated with Higdon, as her father was a painter and she grew up with the smells of paint and turpentine, but she did not pursue an opera on the subject.
Mikael Eliasen, former chair of the Curtis Institute of Music’s vocal studies program and artistic director of the Curtis Opera Theatre, had more success. He suggested that Higdon, who was teaching composition at Curtis, write a chamber opera featuring Meredith Arwady. The singer, who had also attended Curtis, was that operatic rara avis, a true contralto. Higdon returned to the story of the Rotterdam art theft.
David Devan, then general director of Opera Philadelphia, also supported the project. Higdon recalls that his enthusiasm stemmed from the company’s 2016 production of Cold Mountain, which had the third-best box office in the company’s history. The Philadelphia connection led her to opera librettist, director, and actor Jerre Dye.
They met for the first time in Chicago when her Low Brass Concerto was premiered by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra under Riccardo Muti in 2018. Dye says they bonded immediately due to their shared Tennessee roots and enthusiasm for film. He made two visits to Philadelphia, where they crafted the bones of the libretto at her large dining room table.
Women With Eyes Closed was workshopped at Opera Philadelphia with Arwady as Mona, the perpetrator’s mother, and the other roles sung by Curtis students. Revisions followed, which Dye describes chiefly as finding “more economy” in the story, but then Covid intervened, as did subsequent changes at Opera Philadelphia. The opera was without a home until Eliasen mentioned it to Christopher Hahn, Pittsburgh Opera’s general director. Their professional relationship dates to when Hahn headed the San Francisco Opera Center and hired Eliasen as music director.
Pittsburgh Opera has a relatively low profile regarding contemporary opera, despite regularly presenting new works and premiering Daniel Sonenberg’s The Summer King in 2017 and Christopher Cerrone’s In a Grove in 2022. Higdon, who had once been composer-in-residence with the Pittsburgh Symphony, knew of Pittsburgh Opera’s track record with new works. Higdon told Hahn, “It would be my honor to have Woman with Eyes Closed premiered in Pittsburgh.”
The opera’s title is taken from a painting by Lucian Freud, the grandson of Sigmund Freud, that was one of the stolen artworks. Thomas brings it and the others to Mona, his mother, for safekeeping, forbidding her to open the suitcase. Once he leaves, she does, immediately responding to “Women with Eyes Closed” as it reminds her of her deceased mother, who was also an artist.
Thomas has no appreciation for art. For him, the paintings are his ticket to an easier life after masterminding the perfect theft. Its very title, though, sums up his childhood. His mother sat with her eyes closed as his father beat him daily. Mona had the same childhood, but her mother at least locked the door to keep her daughter safe.
Anger fuels Thomas, a thug and criminal with a long rap sheet. Video cameras captured him at the crime scene, and soon the Inspector knocks on Mona’s door. She feigns ignorance of her son’s whereabouts, dismissing the suitcase in her living room as containing items to be donated to charity. The inspector pointedly tells her what experience has taught him about the lengths mothers will go to protect an errant child.
Higdon scored the opera for 12 musicians: strings, woodwinds, brass, piano, and two percussionists. The modest numbers belie the density of the score and the myriad colors produced by more than two dozen percussion instruments and prepared instruments. As the stolen paintings were in different styles by different artists, Higdon wanted to maximize the color options possible from the instruments. She succeeded to a dizzying degree.
Director Kristine McIntyre and set designer Luke Cantarella placed the action in an art gallery with the stolen art hanging on the walls. Mona’s living room furniture is in the center of the gallery. The only other stage elements are a free-standing door to Mona’s house and a barrel outside in which Mona burns the autumn leaves she gathers. The picture frames become video monitors showing news coverage of the robbery, including interviews with the Inspector and the museum’s Curator.
The paintings, especially when lit from behind, flood the theater with color. An even more extravagant burst welcomes Mona’s long-dead mother’s appearance. Without hearing the orchestral score, McIntyre and Cantarella conjured a visual environment as brilliant as Higdon’s musical one. This is not an opera with all of the i’s dotted and the t’s crossed, plot-wise or musically, but McIntyre stitched it together visually with efficiency and style.
Arwady’s Mona was a complex woman haunted by her past, wishing to end the cycle of abuse she experienced as a child, wife, and mother. She could be deviously impish when dealing with the Inspector and fierce as a tiger in protecting Thomas. The woman’s emotional scars ran as deep as her vulnerability. Mona’s son triggered almost every emotion in her, but only Momma, seemingly risen from the dead, offered solace.
Tenor Fran Daniel Laucerica exploded onto the stage as Thomas and nailed the landing. Torrents of emotion poured out of him as he threatened, cajoled, and berated his mother. He screamed, but his voice just as readily rendered the pain of a scared boy. Mona was tailor-made for Arwady, an established artist in her prime, and she was superb in the role. Laucerica’s Thomas was drawn from whole cloth and just as perfect a fit.
Lauryn Davis’ Momma was lighter than air, with a shimmering soprano and high notes that bloomed effortlessly. Matthew Soibelman’s resounding bass added depth to his compassionate portrayal of the Inspector. Mezzo-soprano Audrey Welsh captured the earnestness of the Curator and her love of art and its value to humanity with a dignified air and the patrician elegance of her singing. They, along with Laucerica, are members of Pittsburgh Opera’s Resident Artist Program.
Woman with Eyes Closed was performed in the Bitz Opera Factory, once the George Westinghouse Air Brake Factory. It is a vast open space, with no stage or opera pit. McIntyre placed the orchestra atop the set. Conductor Antony Walker mastered the space and the balance issues inherent in the score. Every word sung could be heard distinctly.
After the Opera Philadelphia workshops, Higdon and Dye received varied responses to the question: “What would you do if you were Thomas’ mother?” Higdon also was conflicted: “My gut told me that the opera needed different endings because it was a moral question with many answers.” The solution was to have three different endings, with only one used at each performance. With Pittsburgh Opera’s run of five performances through May 5, audiences will hear all three. The fate of the paintings, as well as Mona’s future, differs in each.
