Solo chamber opera "The Tyrant" is a
tour-de-force
By
Melinda Bargreen
Seattle Times music critic
May 3, 2005
Music lovers with long memories will remember a particular
flowering of talent at Cornish College of the Arts, back in
the late 1970s and early 1980s, when an imposing infusion of
talent arrived on the faculty. Tenor John Duykers, and
composers Paul Dresher and Janice Giteck, were among the
leading lights, along with flutist and new-music impresario
Paul Taub.
Dresher and Duykers left Seattle, but the Cornish
connection continues in Dresher's new "The Tyrant," a solo
chamber opera composed for the tenor, with a Jim Lewis
libretto and staging by Melissa Weaver. "The Tyrant" was
commissioned by Taub's Seattle Chamber Players, whose
members and two guests formed the six-piece ensemble
accompanying the singer/actor. (The commission is a joint
one with three other ensembles.)
It is a pleasure to report that "The Tyrant" is a
tour-de-force -- a gripping music-theater piece that is
witty, poignant and wonderfully effective. Dresher's
original "maxi-minimalist" style has grown and expanded to a
more mature style with considerable freedom, though you can
still hear those gently oscillating motifs from time to
time. Amplification, probably necessary in the Behnke Center
with these forces, helped make everything (including the
soloist) clear.
Duykers was absolutely mesmerizing in the role of the
king who dare not leave his throne for fear of being
overthrown. It's hard to imagine anyone else as eerily
effective in the role he has made so wholly his own. One of
the world's pre-eminent specialists in contemporary music,
Duykers still commands a pliant and suitably majestic tenor,
more than capable of meeting the score's stringent demands.
But he is considerably more than a singer. His thoroughly
detailed presentation of the Tyrant waxes and wanes from
imperious irony to yearning, terror, paranoia, infatuation
(with a beautiful voice heard through his window), despair
and resignation. This performance will be recorded, along
with Duykers' interpretation of Maxwell Davies' "Eight Songs
for a Mad King," but it should be filmed as well; what
Duykers does with his face and body, as well as his voice,
should be commemorated for posterity.
The virtuoso ensemble, led by Christian Knapp, was
everything it should be. Two instrumental pieces, each with
theater aspects, preceded the new Dresher work: John Zorn's
"Music for Children" and Viktor Ekimovsky's "The Princess
has pricked her finger -- and all the Kingdom fell asleep ...
" These were mere foothills; "The Tyrant" is a mountain.
Melinda Bargreen:
mbargreen@seattletimes.com
Copyright © 2005 The Seattle Times Company
Duykers brings 'Tyrant' to life
By
Philippa Kiraly
Special to the Post-Intelligencer
May 3, 2005
Tenor John Duykers
returned to Seattle Sunday night in an unforgettable portrayal
of a tyrant, his persona one all too recognizable in many Third
World countries and some in so-called more civilized countries,
too.
His vehicle was the world
premiere of a concert theater song cycle, "The Tyrant," by
composer Paul Dresher and librettist Jim Lewis from a tale by
Italo Calvino. Seattle Chamber Players commissioned it and
performed the 45-minute work at On the Boards along with two
shorter pieces.
Oddly, this was the
second soliloquy of an obsessed man in music presented this past
week in Seattle: The first was Schumann's "Manfred" performed by
the Seattle Symphony, yet "The Tyrant" elicited more
recognition, more understanding even, for Duykers' character.
On a small dais that has
become his whole living space, the Tyrant's fears, needs,
paranoia and, most chillingly, his methods of getting what he
wants are there before you in Duykers. Sometimes speaking,
sometimes singing, and always audible, he disintegrates before
your eyes and ears.
The credit for this tour
de force performance -- planned as a companion piece with Peter
Maxwell Davies' "Eight Songs for a Mad King" for a compact disc
-- has to be divided between the three: Dresher for atmospheric
music (including a moment when percussionist Matthew Kocmieroski
tossed a garbage can full of cymbals out on the floor and
rhythmic piano notes in the background pounded like the pulse of
the tyrant); Lewis for memorable words, and Duykers for bringing
it all to life.
Melissa Weaver directed
with imagination, Tom Ontiveros designed the lighting with flair
and conductor Christian Knapp held it all together.
Earlier in the program,
violinist Mikhail Shmidt of the Seattle Chamber Players, pianist
Oksana Ezhokina and Kocmieroski played a brief work by John
Zorn, and the four Seattle Chamber Players (Shmidt, cellist
David Sabee, flutist Paul Taub and clarinetist Laura DeLuca)
performed "The Princess has pricked her finger -- and all the
Kingdom fell asleep" by Viktor Ekimovsky, a hypnotic work in
slow motion in which even the performers seem barely awake.
A world of his own
By David Patrick Stearns
Inquirer Music Critic
May 18, 2005
The tyrant is there on stage
-- his name and kingdom not specified, but you can guess --
planted on a throne, vehemently preaching about the danger of
letting down his guard for a second. "Rumor has it that your
spies are not your own!" he intones. "Your grip is slipping!"
But on a happier note:
"The sex is quite good.
No complaints there. Plenty of women. All types. Men, boys, even
-- if that be your proclivity. Which it's not. Let's make
that
perfectly clear."
Red-state voters seeing
The Tyrant, which plays in repertory with Slow Fire at the
Prince Music Theater through the weekend, probably will know
just which real-life figures the central character portrays:
Saddam Hussein crossed with Bill Clinton. Blue-state voters are
likely to debate which of many Republicans (Richard Nixon for
starters) are the target. About 40 minutes later, blue and red
might be united: The tyrant isn't about kings and presidents,
but our own private delusions.
The catalyst in all of
this is Paul Dresher, the San Francisco-based composer who has
long been one of the most dynamic fixtures on the
alternative-music-theater circuit, his works making the rounds
at receptive havens in Seattle, Minneapolis, Charleston, S.C.'s
Spoleto Festival USA, and Philadelphia's Prince Music Theater.
Now 54, Dresher has an
extensive-enough repertoire that he'll send out a production
truck to crisscross the country -- Appleton, Wis., was one recent
stop -- with any number of odd theatrical apparatuses, such as a
stage set that resembles a giant metronome and doubles as
musical instruments he created for the piece.
The two works being
presented at the Prince are music-theater pieces written for a
solo stage performer. Slow Fire, an older work revived by
popular demand, depicts a beleaguered middle-class father played
by celebrated performance artist Rinde Eckert, whose voice and
physicality easily achieve operatic magnitude. The Tyrant has
existed for only a matter of weeks, written for singer John Duykers, known among opera audiences for his idiosyncratic Mao
Tse-tung portrayal in John Adams' Nixon in China.It's significant that
Dresher's tyrant is nameless: "I've been reluctant to use
current events as a starting point. I don't think we know enough
about the impact of grand historical moments until they're long
past."
Still, such subjects lend
themselves to a medium closer to guerilla theater than grand
opera. Like East Coast minimalist-based composers Philip Glass
and Steve Reich, Dresher had to create his own group, the Paul
Dresher Ensemble, in 1985 to accommodate his singular vision,
both for concert and theater works.
"Every year I ask myself
if it's worth it anymore. The funding has been going away for
the kind of work we do. I'm not [director] Peter Sellars, who
can galvanize a roomful of people. I'm anti-megalomaniacal," he
said. "We do pure art - not because it's good for you or because
we're trying to make the world a better place. We may do all
those things. But we're not about identity politics."
But like many mavericks,
Dresher seems unstoppable - not out of egotistical determination
or even belief in what he's saying about the world at large.
Indeed, what world would that be? Though raised playing
guitar-based rock-and-roll, he is just as influenced by his
studies in Hindu classical music, Ghanaian drumming, and music
from Bali and Java.
"I love our traditions,
but I don't think they're our only tradition. I look at Western
harmony as this is an amazing creation - something that's been
built upon for centuries," he said. "And yet I look at
Indonesian music, and it's rich with possibilities for change
and evolution as well. One tradition doesn't in any way diminish
the significance of another."
Whether composing for the
theater, concert works such as his superb Concerto for Violin
and Electro-Acoustic Band (now recorded on the New Albion
label), or scores for the Margaret Jenkins Dance Company,
Dresher describes himself as tapping into an inner world that
can be strangely oblivious to outside events. Even after his
first wife, Robin Kirk, succumbed to cancer in 1999, his work
stopped only for a month. You'd also be hard-pressed to notice
musical differences since his remarriage, to Australian
Shakespeare scholar Philippa Kelly.
"When I was younger, I'd
see Crater Lake or the Grand Canyon, be very awed, and feel the
need to express it in music. I don't do that anymore," he said.
"Sometimes I'm sad about this. But the best music creates a
vision of a world that's different from what we're in on a daily
basis. The work that I do is so thoroughly an internal process.
Music exists inside of me. It goes on all the time."
Also important is his
exploration of the netherwords between speech and song. When
talking about influences on his vocal writing, the oration of
the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. looms larger than the tunes
of Giuseppe Verdi. "I'm always wanting to make our singing more
like the way we speak," he said. "When I'm setting a line of
text, I go through hundreds of ways of singing that line, to
find a natural speech way to do that and turn it into melody."
So what would that mean
were he to receive a commission from some truly traditional
opera singer, like Renée Fleming? "I'd feel honored," Dresher
chirped. "I wouldn't ask her to do things she couldn't make
work. When I write, I'm writing for a band. And that approach is
manifested with any other skilled performer."