• The Exterminating Angel (Met Live)

1/29/18 (Mon), Tokyo

British composer Thomas Adès’ new opera, based on the 1962 Buñuel film, was a big popular and critical success in Salzburg, London and New York, and I was eager to catch this Met Live production from last November. The source film, which I had somehow never seen, happened to be playing in Tokyo at a retrospective of Buñuel’s Mexican works, so I caught that the night before.

The story, a Beckett-like setup where fancy guests at a dinner party find themselves mysteriously unable to leave the room, didn’t seem a promising subject for a full opera. For one thing, it’s largely an ensemble piece with no real leads, less about individual characters than the breakdown of the social order and how people behave in extreme situations. The film wraps up in a brisk 90 minutes or so, suggesting that a one-act opera might be more appropriate. (That appears to be the approach that Stephen Sondheim and David Ives are taking in their musical version, which will combine this film with that other Buñuel dinner-party piece The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie.) The fact that this all takes place largely within the confines of a single room with the same costuming throughout also doesn’t suggest much in the way of scale or glamour. In any event, I was curious to see what Adès and his co-librettist Tom Cairns would make of this.

The opera follows the film surprisingly closely other than a slight reduction in the number of diners. It seemed odd to be so faithful: couldn’t the piano performance, for example, have been changed to a singer doing some actual singing rather than a pianist faking it (this is an opera, after all)? Other scenes were lifted more or less directly from the film: the entry of the guests is shown twice (I didn’t understand that in the film either), the waiter tumbles and drops food, a disembodied hand haunts a woman (here, in video form), a prying crowd gathers outside and tries to get a young boy to enter, three live sheep appear on stage in a Zeffirelli touch (fortunately they settled for a video bear). Most of the interaction among the trapped guests was also taken as is from the movie. It was if they just ran the film and put music to the film’s dialogue.

Moreover, that dialogue, sung in English, had no real lyrics, just words set to random sounds. That felt trivial and became rather grating (is this how Italians feel when they listen to opera?). The words were not always well set: when the servant is reduced to eating paper, for instance, the notes on that word did not register at all, sapping much of its strength. The music, such as it was, was atonal, backed by unusual instruments like tiny violins and an odd synthesizer-like device called an ondes Martenot. The nice piano piece, though attributed to Paradisi, is apparently a variation by composer Thomas Adès himself on an old Ladino song; I wish he had written more like this. (One guest asks humorously for “something by Adès”, which the pianist refuses.)

All fifteen principals were onstage for nearly the entire opera, each receiving his/her moment as in the film. No one is introduced properly, and we never really get to know them even as their world is breaking down. I wish the creators had concentrated on fewer characters (I thought of the musical Follies as a template), though I suppose their aim was more social commentary than individual emotions. The numerous sopranos sang at an exceedingly high pitch almost the entire time, making it hard to understand what they were saying (thank goodness for the Japanese subtitles) or feeling. When everything is sung or shrieked at that level, it becomes flat. It gives the impression of the composer wanting to show off. Leticia (a fantastic Audrey Luna), the opera singer, had some jaw-dropping moments, including what is described as the highest note sung in Met history. But all were in virtual hysteria throughout the opera.

Aside from a lovely number by the suicidal couple in the closet and the closing unattractive aria by Leticia, there were no traditional musical moments (though we’re unlikely to get that from Sondheim either). Additionally, there were few individual voices in terms of the music, maybe because there were just too many people to cover. It was generally hard to distinguish one character from another musically. One distinctive voice was the countertenor Iestyn Davies, the terrific singer from Farinelli and the King, who was fine but badly miscast here; his threats against the other men sounded ridiculous with that high pitch. He should have stuck to complaining about teaspoons (one of the show’s funnier moments), or perhaps the part could have gone to a woman as a pant’s role. That said, for all the screeching, the cast was excellent all around on the acting side, especially Luna and John Tomlinson as the doctor.

The creators did their best to open up the action by including the scenes outside the house, but those felt arbitrary here. I suspect they would have done better to keep the action inside, though maybe they weren’t sure how to convey the claustrophobic feeling of the situation in the 4,000-seat Met. I wish they had been a little braver on that front. The only real innovation was the ingenious ending, where the freed guests and others find themselves trapped yet again back in the house – or perhaps the theater, along with us.

As a sideline, Adès, who is Jewish, noted in an interview that Leticia’s final aria is based on a prayer for Zion by a medieval Jewish poet, Bianca plays a Jewish-inspired song on the piano, and Leonora, as in the film, has a scene involving Kabbalah. (The opera also eliminates a derogatory line about Jews.) The composer was apparently exploring the subject of exile and the longing to return. That makes sense in context and would be an interesting variation on the film, which comments explicitly on the Catholic church, but there was nothing evident about it in the opera for those of us unfamiliar with those songs.

Overall, this is a workmanlike adaptation that added little to the offbeat material other than the innovative ending, which takes three hours to get to, and while the discordant music may be in keeping with the social breakdown among the guests, I would have appreciated more distinctive characterizations. I think once was enough for this piece.