The place we know and love as the Kennedy Center is, by a congressional act, the United States National Cultural Center. KC was formally named in 1964 as the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, a “living monument” memorializing JFK’s legacy; President Lyndon Johnson laid the cornerstone that year. In the foyer that runs the length of its three main theaters is placed a dramatic, larger-than-life bust of JFK, created by sculptor Robert Berks. KC has recently undergone a substantial expansion known as the REACH and a new statue of JFK has been placed there. The Kennedy Center is home to the National Symphony Orchestra, the Washington National Opera, and the Fortas Chamber Music Concerts; its major venues, the Eisenhower Theater, the Opera House, and the Concert Hall, host performances from a wide range of the performing arts, and free concerts are performed on its Millenium Stage several times each week. The Kennedy Center structure is itself a history written in stone.
Aerial view of the Kennedy Center beside the Potomac River; the Reach is in the foreground. Photo by Richard Barnes; courtesy of the Kennedy Center.
WNO Artistic Director Francesca Zambello conceived the monuments theme as she considered ideas for a commemorative event for the Kennedy Center’s 50th anniversary as a follow up to Leonard Bernstein’s Mass composed for the inauguration of the Kennedy Center in 1971. Director Zambello chose the theme before the controversy boiled over regarding confederate statues. It also should be noted that Ms. Zambello intended that the pieces raise awareness and questions, not take sides in political debates, rather to present searches for meaning with adjudications left to the human heart. She called upon composers and librettists who have a history with WNO to choose a monument for their focus, and the four teams of opera creators selected served WNO’s purposes well. I was entertained by each story, and each story was powerfully told using the human voice in song.
WNO has, since 2012, been pairing composers and librettists and commissioning them to create and produce on KC stages each January new, short American Operas. This program, known as the American Opera Initiative, was paused after last season’s trio of excellent 20-min operas, presented online due to COVID. Efforts this year were devoted to creating “Written in Stone”, an assemblage of four short works constructed around the theme of “monuments”, focusing on
what monuments capture about our history,
their meanings for we the people,
at a point in time,
while we change,
including four world premieres:
Chantal – an opera on a surveyor’s view of monuments
Music and Libretto by Alicia Hall Moran and Jason Moran
Rise – an opera inspired by the Portrait Monument in the Capitol rotunda
Music by Kamala Sankaram
Libretto by A.M. Homes
it all falls down – an opera inspired by the Supreme Court Building
Music by Carlos Simon
Libretto by Marc Bamuthi Joseph
The Rift – an opera inspired by the Vietnam War Memorial
Music by Huang Ruo
Libretto by David Henry Hwang
Alicia Hall Moran as the surveyor in Chantal. Photo by Scott Suchman; courtesy of Washington National Opera.
Chantal, a name derived from a word meaning stone, provides a prologue for the program with a solo performer, mezzo-soprano Alicia Hall Moran, who plays a surveyor and who coauthored the score and libretto with her husband Jason Moran. Team Moran’s music and Ms. Moran’s professional singing contributed effectively to the vignette. Chantal presents a surveyors view and muses that each monument is both a question and an answer that stands until brought down by an idea. To borrow from the program guide, the surveyor also recalls “others who have surveyed the American landscape: Harriet Tubman (~1822–1913), who guided enslaved individuals to freedom via the Underground Railroad; Benjamin Banneker (1731–1806), a free African-American who assisted with a survey that established the original borders of the District of Columbia; Jean Baptiste Point du Sable (d. 1818), a man of African descent who is recognized as ‘the Founder of Chicago’; Esteban de Dorantes (~1500– 1539), an enslaved man who was the first African to explore North America; and Gladys Mae West (b. 1930), an African-American mathematician known for her contributions to the mathematical modeling of the shape of the earth”; I quote in case you, like I, are not familiar with all of these names, little recognized for their contributions. This prologue set the stage for raising the questions in the stories to follow, making for a more cohesive grouping.
l to r: Darryl Freedman as sculptor Adelaide Johnson, Vanessa Becerra as Girl Scout Alicia Hernández, Danielle Talamantes as her mother, Suzanna Waddington as The Monument, and J’Nai Bridges as a Capitol police officer in Rise. Photo by Scott Suchman; courtesy of Washington National Opera.
Rise has a heart-warming plot idea for a chamber piece around a monuments theme: Girl Scout Alicia Hernández visiting the Capitol has gotten separated from her troupe. Alicia’s trip to the nation’s capital has turned into a spiritual journey, with her wishing to discover her place in our history, and she is initially troubled by being unable to see anyone in the statues or walls that looks like her. She finds validation in Adelaide Johnson’s Portrait Monument, a sculpture of pioneers of the American women’s rights movement: Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, Lucretia Mott, and one figure unfinished to be sculpted by the future. The libretto tells us that “We hold our history in our bodies...We embody what has come before... We each have stories to tell.” The 100th anniversary of the 19th amendment giving women in the U.S. the right to vote was celebrated in 2020; that’s right, just slightly over 100 years ago women could not vote in the USA. Tennessee was the last state to ratify the amendment, the vote was only 50-47 in favor. That’s long enough to forget; the Portrait Monument causes us remember, and its unfinished figure could become Alicia; there are plenty of inequalities remaining that she might be inspired to address. The music provided appropriate background for the singing and mood of the story, with dissonance used to reflect the tension. Rise was cast with an outstanding group of young sopranos: soprano Vanessa Becerra as the Girl Scout, soprano Danielle Talamantes as her mother, mezzo-soprano J’Nai Bridges as Capitol police officer Victoria Wilson, mezzo-soprano Darryl Freedman in two roles as Powerful Woman and as Adelaide Johnson, and soprano Suzannah Waddington as The Monument. Alas, such talent on display for such a short period of time. (Want to guess who the model was for the Powerful Woman? Check the Fan Experience section below.)
J’Nai Bridges as the mother caught between her gay son to the left, played by Christian Mark Gibbs, and her husband to the right , played by Alfred Walker in it all falls down. Photo by Scott Suchman; courtesy of Washington National Opera.
It all falls down is the most tightly integrated and promising opera of the four and presents a conflict of monuments. The inspirational monument is the Supreme Court Building where a black father and son wait on its steps for the Court’s decision on the legality of gay marriage; a church is a living monument poised in the background. The father is a fundamentalist preacher for a largely black congregation who take the Bible literally and uncompromisingly as the word of God; for him and most members of the congregation, homosexuality is an intolerable, abhorrent sin. His son, also a preacher, is gay and has recently announced his love for men to the congregation in the same church. On the Supreme Court steps, they are not standing together. Can love overrule everything as the opera asserts and bridge the gulf between father and son? If you are betting on yes, I’d ask for odds, and the opera does not provide the answer. I found this opera to be impactful; I felt a high level of anxiety as I watched and feared for this decent young man as he approached his turn at the podium, determined to announce his sexual orientation. His mother, in a marvelous performance by mezzo-soprano J’Nai Bridges, supports his decision. His father, in a marvelous performance also by bass-baritone Alfred Walker, declares his son as persona non grata in the church. The son, in perhaps an even more marvelous performance by tenor and versatile actor, Christian Mark Gibbs, stays true to himself and love, while longing for reconnection with his father. The characters are convincingly brought to life by the singers, powerful stuff. The pleasure of a chorus was also featured in this piece as the church congregation. The engaging orchestral music was especially effective in supporting the drama and was even enlivened with a couple of spiritual riffs.
Karen Vuong as sculptor Maya Lin, Rod Gilfry as former defense secretary Robert McNamara, Christian Mark Gibbs as veteran Grady Mitchell, Nina Yoshida Nelsen as Vietnamese refugee Phuong Tran in Rift. Photo by Scott Suchman; courtesy of Washington National Opera.
Rift, the concluding segment, tells the story of American designer and sculptor Maya Lin, beginning as a Yale student who enters a national competition for the best design for a Vietnam Veterans Memorial. At that time, building a memorial to the war was highly controversial as the country was deeply divided over the war. Ms. Lin, of Chinese heritage, wins and faces an aftermath of praise and condemnation, both personal and in regard to her design. The telling of the story in Rift is raw and shocking at points with brutal epithets hurled both at the decision to establish the memorial and towards Ms. Lin personally, attacking both her design and her racial heritage – as one example, Ross Perot at the time called it an “ugly black slab designed by an eggroll”. Rift also weaves in a vignette about Robert McNamara, Secretary of Defense under Kennedy and Johnson, and his recriminations over his decisions in the war. The excellent cast of singers included soprano Karen Vuong as Ms. Lin, mezzo-soprano Nina Yoshida Nelsen as Phuong Tran, tenor Christian Mark Gibbs as Grady Mitchell, and baritone Rod Gilfry as Robert McNamara. Each character presented a different perspective on the war and the monument. Grady Mitchell, a war veteran, disappointed and angry with the government at first had no desire for the memorial, and poignantly, Phoung Tran, a Vietnamese refugee mourning the loss of her husband in the war, decried that there was no memorial for the Vietnamese soldiers who fought with the Americans. Ms. Lin’s concept was to have a memorial that represented a rift in the earth, a “wound in the earth that was closed and healing”. If you fought in that war or have family or friends who did, especially if you lost a loved one in the war, you know the feelings are still tender and strong. Many have visited the memorial to touch the names inscribed upon its walls.
The rift in America over the Viet Nam War was a turning point in our history, and I believe Rift could be developed into an important full-length opera. I found the music engaging in reflecting the moods of the different scenes and held rich possibilities for elaboration, especially more arias allowing the emotions to be expressed and to sink in, some perhaps in more reflective moments, less structured by anger and stress. Puccini and Wagner used hours to develop musical themes and explore emotions. One aspect of short operas is that they need to tell a story in a short amount of time. I was so attuned to learning the story in these short operas, I frequently unconsciously placed the music in the background while focusing on the words; unfortunately, this means I miss some of the richness in the construction of the scores. Something longer for Rift might be even more compelling. Rift, of the four operas, perhaps best demonstrates the theme of “Written in Stone” as a powerful demonstration that monuments not only tell our history as a country, but connect us in very real ways with our memories and feelings about that time and those events.
The excellent music of “Written in Stone” was provided by the Washington National Opera Orchestra ably led by Conductor Robert Spano, and Steven Gathman ably served as Chorus Master. The orchestra was placed on stage at the rear behind a scrim, a challenge for the conductor to be behind the singers. James Robinson served capably as Director for the last three operas; Alicia Hall Moran did so for Chantal. The sets were minimal but effective and were greatly aided by the projected images. Set design, lighting design, and projection design was well done and handled by Erhard Rom, Mark McCullough, and S. Katy Tucker, respectively.
The Fan Experience: “Written in Stone” is scheduled for performances in the Kennedy Center’s Eisenhower Theatre on March 5, 9, 13, 19, 21, 25. The performance runs 2.5 hours including an intermission between it all falls down and Rift. The operas are sung in English with English supertitles.
In support of members of the WNO Orchestra who are from Ukraine and have families both there and in the U.S., the national anthem of Ukraine was played and sung in Ukrainian by the WNO’s Cafritz Young Artists prior to the beginning of the performance.
For fans of the American Opera Initiative, like myself, I obtained this statement from the program’s director, Robert Ainsley, “After celebrating its tenth season with the well-received production Written in Stone, the initiative's next iteration will reboot its popular weekend festival format in the next season. The expanded work of AOI includes: The Cartography Project and the recently announced True Voice Award.”
Parking ($25) in the indoor KC parking lot can be reserved online ahead of the day of the performance; there is a discount for KC members. Access through the north side entrances is still closed but traffic flows freely to entrances on the south side. Taking the Metro to Foggy Bottom and catching the red Kennedy Center buses is a good mass transit option.
Before you go, check KC’s masking and vaccination requirements, which often pop up anytime you visit the KC website at kennedy-center.org, but if it doesn’t, click on the banner at the top of the page.
Who was the Powerfull Woman in Rise based on? KC Artistic Director Francesca Zambello and several of the composers and librettists participated in a Guggenheim Works and Progress discussion that included music samples by performers. During the discussion, composer Kamala Sankaram revealed that the Powerful Woman in Rise was Nancy Pelosi in the original draft, but the Kennedy Center has to remain apolitical. The video is worth viewing to learn more about some of the interesting elements incorporated into the scores.