Life is a Dream

When the prince is born, a prophecy is made: he will bring disaster to the kingdom. The king tells everyone he died and stows him in a tower on top of a mountain, where he cannot harm anyone. He stays hidden away from everyone's eyes, save one advisor. Only decades later is he finally introduced to the world, and even then, it's far too brief.

The premise of Lewis Spratlan's opera, after a play by the Spanish playwright Pedro Calderòn de la Barca, has unfortunate parallel's to the opera's history. It was written in 1978 on a commission by the New Haven Opera Theater. By the time it was ready to perform, the opoera company folded. It remained hidden away for another two decades, until Spratlan organized a performance himself, with the support of Amherst College. That performance was just act II, though, and was all too fleeting, even with the Pulitzer Prize it brought. Like Segismundo, it sits in a tower having experienced the real world ever so briefly, waiting to be liberated.

*

Calderòn's text lends itself to setting as an opera. Unlike many plays, which require significant shuffling and rewriting to become suitable libretti, James Maraniss's task was primarily to truncate his translation. The play's many long speeches serve as built-in arias. (This act does include two elaborations: where Calderòn calls for musicians to perform, he supplied a two-stanza madrigal text, and added a speech for Rosaura's lament to close the act.)

Spratlan handles the libretto nimbly. The best example, I think, is before Segismundo's entrance. Basilio and Clotaldo continue their conversation without changing the same musical style of their singing. Against, this, however, the orchestra leaves them behind and instead becomes source music. First they "noodle, as if warming up" (original instruction), before settling on a unison B-flat tuning note. The singers maintain their triple meter as the orchestra is reduced to a military band playing a duple march.

After the chorus welcomes Segismundo with a flourish, a "people's entertainment" follows. This section is scored as a solo violin playing in parallel fifths with a flute. What's remarkable is that even though I generally find parallel fifths grating, they sound good here. I think there are two reasons this works. First, the opera as a whole doesn't treat fifths as perfect consonants. By treating fifths sparingly, it's as if the interval becomes a dissonance. Second, the timbre of the violin and flute are different enough that they don't "lock in" the way they do when similar instruments play in perfect parallel invervals. This is followed by a madrigal in imitative counterpoint.

It's a travesty that the entire opera has never been performed or recorded. You can only hear it if you happen to know the right person. Ironically, Spratlan's recent opera "Earthrise" seems to be headed for a similar fate: although the San Francisco Opera commissioned it, they have yet to perform it publicly, citing budget difficulties. Both these operas deserve to be heard. In the story, Segismundo is liberated by an army, and given the opportunity to take his rightful place on his throne. It's time someone did the same for these operas.