Thoughts about the Opera "Blue" You Won't Find Elsewhere

 The most poignant -- and disappointing -- moment for me when attending a recent performance of the contemporary opera "Blue" was near the end when the unnamed Mother gets up out of her seat in what is presumably a church and walks over to stand one last time at the coffin of her son.

"At last, an aria," I thought. This is the moment she is going to actually sing a song -- a musical tour de force through her thoughts and emotions -- highly memorable melodies requiring exemplary vocal technique, in the finest tradition of opera. The sort of thing that leaves one exclaiming in due course:  "wasn't she fabulous!"

But, no, just more of the same bits and pieces of often almost recitative-like vocalization, occasionally soaring with the continuous orchestration into one variety of crescendo or another.

While I'm sure she didn't do it, I can just see Briana Hunter, who sang the role of The Mother, down on her knees, begging librettist and director Tazewell Thompson and composer Jeanine Tesori "please, please, please, let me SING!" My heart goes out to her, as would have those of Handel and Mozart.

But that's where it's at these days in contemporary opera: "Singing? What's that? Some sort of distraction." I can hear Thompson and Tesori dismissing Hunter along those lines.

But what about the rest of "Blue," which I saw in a Seattle Opera production the other day. Widely praised, the almost entirely Black (librettist and performers) piece centers on the story of an angry and idealistic young Black man, the son of a police officer, being killed at what was supposed to be a peaceful demonstration by another officer. He's an only child and beloved by his father despite sociopolitical differences and thus a sometimes tempestuous relationship.

While the race of the officer who kills The Son isn't identified in the program or promotional material, he's identified as white in the lyrics, giving the opera additional currency in the post-George Floyd era. But interestingly, The Father at one point bemoans the fact that his son was killed by one of his "brothers" on the police force. 

Young Black men are not always killed by white officers. Notably, in "Between the World and Me," Ta-Nehisi Coates relates the trauma he experienced when he learned that a man named Prince Jones he had apparently known at Howard University had been killed by a Black police officer in a jurisdiction controlled by Black politicians. And, according to Coates, the officer who supposedly mistook Prince for someone else was sent back to work.

Well, the first half of the opera, which runs for two hours not counting the intermission, is about the risks young men run being born Black in America and the second half opens with news of the death of The Son as a result of police violence, and of course the racial inequities of that in America.

But almost immediately thereafter, the opera changes course in a fashion that none of the reviews that I have read mention. Race relations fall into the background and what comes to the fore is religion -- Christianity in this case. What's at issue in the lengthy segment that follows news of the death is whether the Chruch, and a particular Reverend, can offer the family and eventually their friends any consolation. The message there is at best mixed.

This jumped out at me in part because I had just finished reading "On Consolation," subtitled "finding solace in dark times," by Michael Ignatieff.

His bottom line: "It is not doctrine that consoles us in the end, but people."

Perhaps in that vein, the final scene of the opera takes the form of a flashback to a family dinner at one point during which father, son and mother join hands at the table. Perhaps the audience is led to believe the Mother and Father are consoled more by such memories than by anything else.

"Superstition:" The Subliminal Power of Culture & Religion

 "Superstition," a short story by Sarah Braunstein, in the Aug. 2 New Yorker is about the lingering claims of culture and the almost subliminal power of religion.

Two teenage boys, conventionally dismissive of anything but what strikes their prevailing fancy, live with a permissive, understanding father, perhaps excessively so because the mother of the boys died some years earlier. They have been indulged with all manner of toys and youthful paraphernalia, now no longer valued. 

As is often the case with children in general, and particularly teenagers, the boys are into testing boundaries and at one point discover eBay. The story is set relatively early in the Internet age, before the advent of social media. 

One of the boys, named Lenny, suspecting the public is easily duped, makes up a lucky-charm story about a plaque-mounted fish he had once bought at Goodwill for a couple of dollars and sure enough, after a round of bidding, someone buys it for over ninety dollars. 

James, his brother, is impressed and wants to do likewise, but struggles to come up with something to sell about which a convincing story might be told.  Until he recalls a cross that he received at his first communion, kept in a velvet box.  Eventually he comes up with a story -- it had been in the family since 1915 and, when in the possession of a somewhat distant family member, had been blessed by Pope Pius XII, a controversial figure, James knows, because he "had been reluctant to intervene as a genocide unfolded in Europe."

As far as the plot goes, I will stop here so as not to spoil Ms Braunstein's tale, but suffice to say that James is far more entangled in the cultural and religious background of his family than he would care to admit if, indeed, he understands the genesis of his emotional crosscurrents. 

It's a story that is more interesting than initially appears to be the case and, no surprise, the New Yorker, in the usual author interview, fails to explore the seminal issue. (These interviews are frequently disappointing.)

The ending is an allegorical short cut, necessarily, I suppose because this is a short story. Ms Braunstein's topic is complex and as such, deserves a more sophisticated denouement.

Religion Seen as Most Difficult Topic for YA Fiction

I've written a number of posts on YA (Young Adult) Fiction because it has been showing good growth while sales of most other genres of fiction are described as stagnant or even declining.

Not surprisingly, given what anyone can easily find on the Internet, few topics are off limits for young adults (aged 12 to 18) except perhaps religion. That's the view of Donna Freitas, an author of such books and a person who has a doctorate in religious studies, as recently expressed in the New York Times  weekly book review section.

"A writer can go as dark and violent as it gets. Sex is more than fine. ... Graphic, instructive, erotic, romantic, disappointing: bring it all on.  Even better, current YA novels now have many L.G.B.T.Q. protagonists ... which was not the case 10 years ago."

In fact, "the sky is the limit," Freitas said, except for religion.  "Religion is the last taboo."

Since most wars these days seem to be grounded in religious differences, that's a curiosity even beyond the reasons Freitas gives in her article.

"As a frequent speaker on college campuses, I can confirm that while young people may be more skeptical about traditional religion, their hunger for a more inclusive, nontraditional spirituality is  constant," Freitas said. While teenage readers "search for themselves" in the books they read, few protagonists of YA fiction identify with a particular faith or claim spirituality as something of interest, she said.

Why don't authors address such interests?

"We worry someone may be trying to convert or indoctrinate teenagers; we resist preachiness about certain moral perspectives,"  Freitas said.  But at the same time, she conceded that "religions and religious people have done and still do reprehensible things in our world, to women, to children, to some of the people I care most deeply about."

Not to mention what they do to other societies in general that don't happen to adhere to their faith. Remember what ISIS did to their neighbors and what they apparently would have loved to do with us, and what we in turn did to them?  And all the "collateral damage" that occurred in the process?

But Freitas' point is nonetheless well taken.  And I say that as an agnostic.