Milwaukee Opera Theatre’s Mystical ‘Utterance’

×

Expand

Photo Credit: Mark Frohna

Milwaukee composer Amanda Schoofs’ astonishing music and exquisite performances by the young choral ensemble Aperi Animam with the music and dance trio Cadance Collective in Calvary Presbyterian Church took me to deep places. Staged with valor by Milwaukee Opera Theatre’s Daniel Brylow, and with impeccable music direction by Aperi Animam’s Daniel Koplitz, this show—call it a service, a ritual, a minimalist opera—touched chords in me born, I guess, of a devotedly Catholic childhood.

The Milwaukee Opera Theatre presentation combined two 13-part song cycles under the title Utterance: Ancient Prophecies, Modern Revelations. The performance alternated between the cycles song by song. Schoofs’ experimental opera Eternal Burning provided the modern voice. The “ancient” was that of 16th century French composer Orlande de Lassus. His Prophetiae Sibyllarum (Sibylline Prophecies) represents the avant-garde of the Renaissance era. He was a pioneer, like Schoofs today.

The rebirth for which the Renaissance is named was that of classical Greece. De Lassus’ lyrical conceit was that ancient oracles prophesied the birth of Christ in Biblical detail. He set his lyrics, each “prophecy” a confirmation of the others, to unpredictable harmonies and rhythms that register as radical and mystical. In contrast, Schoofs’ texts are reminiscent of the actual poetry of the legendary oracles. Each is an expression of a woman’s physical and psychological experiences during pregnancy and childbirth. Intense, often dissonant or non-melodic singing is mixed with whispers, cries, coos and lullabies.

All the singing is unaccompanied. Cadance Collective’s flautist Emma Koi and cellist Alicia Storin were silent actors throughout the performance. They sometimes played briefly, hauntingly, between songs. That the 10 Aperi Animam singers maintained perfect pitch, timbre, phrasing and dynamics in every moment with no conductor seemed to me a model for living. And what singing! Just as remarkably, I felt I’d gotten to know each of them individually by the end. That’s because the traditional Victorian church, empty of pews, allowed us to sit in a circle around and close to the singers who often changed position to give us new views; and because they sang with understanding.

Dancer Christal Wagner was the shaman of this mystic ceremony, blind at first and finally guiding. The show was erotic in the sense of Eros, non-binary in costuming and contact among ensemble members. Words like religious, secular, Christian and pagan lost their distinction or seemed concepts devised to divide us.