Friday, September 24, 2021

NYTimes.com: Stream an Operatic Rarity by a Black Composer...William Grant Still’s “Highway 1, U.S.A.,” staged by Opera Theater of St. Louis, is...online until Sept. 30


 
Credit... Eric Woolsey


Seth Colter Walls

Sept. 24, 2021

Want a break from prestige TV for an evening? Good news: An important 20th-century American opera is newly available to stream, after a rare live staging this summer. And it’s about 50 minutes long, just like an episode of “The Crown.”

The bad news: It’s only available until Sept. 30. (Tight streaming windows are an all-too-regular issue in a classical field still adapting to digital formats.)

The work is “Highway 1, U.S.A,” which combines swift narrative drive and some folksy, mellifluous tunes with a look at the tension between community belonging and individual advancement. The plucky company is Opera Theater of St. Louis, which has made its summer festival slate available for rental on its website, through the end of this month.

With an excellent cast, Leonard Slatkin as conductor and a crisp production by Ron Himes, founder of The Black Rep company in St. Louis, this one-act is the work of William Grant Still (1895-1978), known in his lifetime as the “dean” of Black American composers.

Credit...Eric Woolsey

Opera Theater of St. Louis gave Blanchard an early boost, staging both “Fire” and his first opera, “Champion” (2013). The company is giving its larger competitors on the American opera scene another chance to play catch-up when it comes to Still’s “Highway,” which has rarely been performed since its 1963 premiere.

The work revolves around a married couple, Bob and Mary, who run a rural filling station. The couple has supported Bob’s younger brother Nate through his undergraduate studies, as the brothers’ mother had requested on her deathbed. But now, as Nate prepares to graduate, Mary (the soprano Nicole Cabell) is dismayed to discover that he hopes to secure their patronage for a while longer.

In this performance, Mary pivots thrillingly between the loving entreaties she makes to her husband and the hint of rising conflict with Nate. As she fulminates, Slatkin and the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra respond with punchy yet well-judged changes in dynamics — perhaps with an eye to the film and TV scores that Still produced after having his early operas rebuffed by the Met.

The Bob in this production is Will Liverman, who plays the leading role in “Fire” at the Met and will also play Malcolm X when Anthony Davis’s “X” arrives there in 2023. Bob gets some of the most beautiful solo music in “Highway,” which Liverman handles with affecting, even soothing grace. But he also makes the most of the moments that curdle. In the second scene, when Bob briefly comes around to Mary’s more jaundiced view of his brother, Liverman seethes along with the churning, mechanical sound that Slatkin elicits from the orchestra.

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