Along the way he developed a voice that remains recognizably his own through the constant changes. (He has compared it to Picasso leaving the strictures of Cubism behind.) His palette is constantly evolving - synths here, saxes there, chugging arpeggios, swelling strings, Bachian choruses, echoes of Wagner or Beethoven or jazz or rock. He explored minimalism alongside composers such as Terry Riley, Philip Glass and Steve Reich - weaving shimmering, textured tapestries out of the pulsating repetition of small elements - but later found it confining and tried to incorporate it into a broader language. Early on he turned away from the sometimes chilly modernism of the 20th century - which, at its most extreme, wore its indifference to popular tastes as a badge of pride - and embraced harmony, rhythm, unabashed emotion and flashes of humor.
He has had a small rustic cabin here in the Sierras for decades (large swaths of “Girls” are practically set in the neighborhood) and, as he wrote in his 2008 memoir, “Hallelujah Junction,” the region’s gilded past has sometimes struck him as a troubling metaphor.
SFOPERA GIRLS OF THE GOLDEN WEST HOW TO
Adams - a thoughtful, wryly funny man who lives in Berkeley, about 200 miles from here, and could easily be mistaken for one of that college town’s professors, or ex-hippies, or both - still worries about what classical music should be, how to get it to speak to audiences that now flock to other art forms, and what his role is in its changing ecosystem. This year, leading orchestras around the world celebrated his 70th birthday over the past decade, three of his operas finally reached the stage of the Metropolitan Opera and earlier this month, the Berlin Philharmonic, which made him its composer in residence last season, released a lavish boxed set of his works.īut for all that, Mr. This onetime enfant terrible has grown into an elder statesman. Adams can fairly stake a claim as America’s most prominent composer. Three decades after the premiere of “Nixon in China,” Mr. Adams said, recalling news footage of Trump supporters chanting for Hillary Clinton’s imprisonment being shown as he wrote choruses for his opera’s angry mob. “I kept hearing ‘Lock her up!’ at those horrible rallies,” Mr. It was particularly jarring, he said, to write the opera’s climax - in which a Mexican woman is lynched - against the backdrop of the 2016 presidential race.
“And when it became not so easy to find gold, they all started sounding like Donald Trump.” Sellars's previous collaborations with Adams have included premiere productions of Nixon in China, The Death of Klinghoffer and Doctor Atomic (for which Sellars also wrote the libretto).“They all came here looking for gold,” he said at one point during a drive through the Sierras along State Route 49, which links many of the old mining sites of the 49ers. According to Sellars, "These true stories of the Forty-Niners are overwhelming in their heroism, passion and cruelty, telling tales of racial conflicts, colorful and humorous exploits, political strife and struggles to build anew a life and to decide what it would mean to be American." Adams wrote, "To be able to set to music the authentic voices of these people, whether from their letters or their songs or from newspaper accounts from their time, is a great privilege for me." Sellars, who also directed the opera, conceived the libretto while doing research for a production of Giacomo Puccini's 1910 opera La fanciulla del West (based on David Belasco's 1905 play The Girl of the Golden West), which also deals with the gold rush period. The libretto is also sourced from other literature of the period, including newspaper articles and the writings of Mark Twain. Clappe published the letters under the pen name Dame Shirley. The opera is inspired by the 1851/1852 letters of Louise Clappe, who lived for a year and a half in the mining settlement of Rich Bar (now Diamondville, California) during the California Gold Rush. The opera was premiered in San Francisco on November 21, 2017. The San Francisco Opera commissioned the work jointly with Dallas Opera, the Dutch National Opera (De Nationale Opera) and Teatro La Fenice in Venice. Girls of the Golden West is an opera in two acts with music by John Adams and a libretto by Peter Sellars.