REVIEW: National Sawdust's "Silent Light"
Above, Brittany Renee as Esther in Silent Light. Photo by Jill Steinberg.
September 28, 2024
The ticking of a grandfather clock was as ominous as Poe’s The Tell-Tale Heart: “It grew louder — louder — louder!” The clock did not chime the hour, but we experienced a dizzying starry night sky, which blurred and spiraled as it does when you’ve been craning your neck upward, mesmerized by the galaxy.
Soon, the aroma of hot coffee, sizzling bacon, and hot-off-the-griddle pancakes filled the house. The audience at National Sawdust was invited to breakfast in Silent Light, the new, immersive opera by composer Paola Prestini and librettist Royce Vavrek, based upon the 2007 Dutch film Stellet Licht.
Co-commissioned for the opening of the tenth anniversary of Brooklyn’s premiere new music space (with Trinity Church, Banff Centre for Arts, and Visionintoart), director and scenic designer Thaddeus Strassberger and costume designer Amanda Gladu transport us to a Northern Mexican Mennonite community in this captivating parable of love, duty, temptation, and the role of women in society.
Prestini has created a vivid sound universe that harnesses the musical ambiance of the world around us, occasionally references cultural musical roots, and embraces modern technology to translate the austere, contemplative film to the musical stage. The six-piece orchestra — conducted assuredly by Christopher Rountree, and tasked with occasional jazzy avant-gardism (the trombonist also credited as “looper”) — alternated vulnerability with ardent passion. Their sonic mass was decorated by, and enmeshed within, the work of Foley designer Sxip Shirey — performed prominently in view by Nathan Repasz — creating a panoply of amplified aural effects, from squirting liquids, rustling broom bristles, and falling marbles, to orally mimicking the billowing steam from a clothes iron.
The Choir of Trinity Wall Street served as a greek chorus of townspeople in traditional Mennonite wardrobe, performing their daily tasks dutifully; the men stoic, and the children well wrangled, perhaps (or perhaps not) oblivious to a disturbance gradually evidencing itself to the voyeuristic audience.
The breakfast table has been set by a wife, Esther, played by the radiant soprano Brittany Renee, and her taciturn mother, astutely portrayed by mezzo-soprano Maggie Lattimore. But, Esther’s husband Johan (sympathetically acted and sung by bass-baritone Daniel Okulitch) has confessed to an affair with another woman, Marianne (an appropriately intense and sensuous Julia Mintzer).
Daniel Okulitch (as Johan) and Julia Mintzer (as Marianne). Photo by Jill Steinberg.
Silent Light’s efficient libretto unfolds in nine flowing scenes adhering closely to the original screenplay. The performances were subtle, detailed, and unaffected. James Demler conveyed melancholy endurance and a matter-of-factness as elder Father; as Zacarias (the tractor mechanic friend of Johan, representing the locker-room-talk department of the patriarchy, encouraging Johan in his indulgence), Anthony Dean Griffey’s tenor held its own against a tractor engine repair that sent smoke, sparks, and industrial noises roaring. The chorus tackled Prestini’s varied and imaginative vocal writing, veering between pure, open harmonies and piercing dissonances with crystalline accuracy; and sustaining a rustic naturalism in some timely “tsk, tsk-ing.”
The physical production makes three-dimensional the mise en scène of the film, and in the process — through the illusion of theatre — highlights its use of symbolism. A flirtation between Johan and Marianne involving a cherry pie and spilled milk is rife with implications. And surely, when the women of the chorus transform into a chorus of dairy cattle — donning rubber cow masks — while the men assume a lowly, yet assaultive position as milking machines, a rich metaphor is implied.
A scene from Silent Light. Photo by Jill Steinberg.
The score is at its best when conveying emotional extremes, when motifs pile upon each other until the accumulating harmony coalesces into a kaleidoscopic tapestry that melts away, like joy itself, too soon. Prestini has a thrilling knack for the aleatoric, and her vocal writing gives the singers a wide range of expression. Intimate interplay between instrumentalists and vocalists makes the characters’ inner lives as present as their faces.
A different piece might have been written from the story’s bones — one that used operatic tropes and lyric poetry to more strongly emphasize Marianne’s torment about her betrayal of Esther (a sex scene between the lovers was staged as erotic lovemaking here, whereas in the film, a closeup focuses instead on Marianne’s regretful weeping). Another approach to the libretto might have found occasion for Esther and Marianne to convey their shared empathy for Johan (a strong overtone in the film) in a duet, or other theatrical ensemble moments that might be created between characters across different planes.
But Silent Light has more in common with the Dogme 95 filmmaking movement than with Tosca. And Prestini injects the film’s silences with a musical palette as eclectic as modern life, and deep enough to convey the torment of the intractable. National Sawdust and Prestini’s coup de theatre is a haunting tale that surprises and makes you think — like a great art house movie, but one communally lived and ritually shared.
