SYDNEY CHAMBER OPERA : WORLD PREMIERE OF ‘APHRODITE’ BY NICO MUHLY

Above and featured image: Jessica O’Donoghue in the role of Ava. Photo credit: Daniel Boud.

It remains a powerful artistic device to tinge modern narratives with ancient or mythological themes and borrowings, tweaking them towards our modern sensibilities.

So plays out the current scintillating chamber opera commission by composer Nico Muhly for Sydney Chamber Opera,  currently in World Premiere at Carriageworks. This globally adored composer’s innate text-setting skill here hones in on a direct and powerful story of beauty almost destroying a beholder by local playwright Laura Lethlean.

A modern tale of a successful modern fifty year old here shows how when we urgently grip onto notions of beauty and being desirable to mask insecurities can be a recipe for pain and increasee frustration. The protagonist in this work, Ava, does so despite her achievements, career and progressive personal direction. Watching this fifty year old academic falling into the Aphrodite complex trap is here jarringly and soberingly set in the fantasy ambience of a modern hotel room. The stunning design is further enhanced by video images and filming.

When recent academic-turned-documentary-star Ava returns from a book launch to her hotel room, she ponders the success of her recent bestselling book about the Aphrodite complex. This concept discusses the powerful beauty that the mythological figure used to manipulate her own success and characters around her. This power is dangerous when we lose ourselves in its temptations. Such blurring is graphically explored in the libretto with beautifully paced music and visual atmospheres in the short opera.

Ava’s infatuation with a new acquaintance and film set beauty, Hector (a reference to the Trojan Prince perhaps?) sets her old-world urges for being seen as a beauty, for being desirable, take over and almost overcomes her in boozy body-conscious sequences.

Above: Meechot Marrero as Aphrodite. Photocredit: Daniel Boud.

Muhly’s score with expansive vocal journeys has a strong, accessible line that matches the pace and throb of Ava’s desire and is decorated with engaging musical gesturing. It also receives quality reinforcement from the videography on set. The instrumental writing for ensemble of strings, wind, percussion and piano which accompanies Ava’s darting thoughts and self-speak (torment) is delivered as a pulsating, shifting atmosphere by expertly blended Omega Ensemble musicians.

This signature svelte excellence in creation and maintenance of a musical mood is what fans of the safe beauty in Muhly’s work have grown to love. The intricate, incessant tapestry works well as the two vocal lines intersect and move fluidly about each other to highlight the questioning text by Laura Lethlean, as the modern and mythological collide on the hazardous lonely hotel room set.

Ava is visited by the mirror, bed and minibar by the form of Aphrodite herself. The women are beautifully costumed in pink satin gowns, Ava having discarded her workday business suit for a more ‘attractive’, erotic outfit long before.

As the gently ominous psychological duet and musical pairing continues, Ava’s angular vocal line peaks and troughs but continues on, sung with perfect nuance of an unravelling modern resolve by local vocal powerhouse Jessica O’Donoghue. This singer shows total affinity with the modern operatic through-composed flow.  Her dramatic range and movement from room entrance through bedroom, mirrored preparation area to a hectic bathroom is wedded with arrow-through-the-heart accuracy in her realisation of Muhly’s vocal thread for this character.

The moments of rest in the monologue betray some beautiful cadencing in Muhly’s score. These pauses in the more angular vocal action, where inner beauty or realisation of the character descending into shallowness could be said to shine through.

Above: Meechot Marrero as Aphrodite and Jessica O’Donoghue as Ava. Photo credit: Daniel Boud.

The entry of Aphrodite when welcomed by Ava’s drop of defences is carved up performance wise in a fiesty portrayal from Meechot Marrero. Resplendent in identical dress and wig to Ava, hers is a haughty, manipulative Aphrodite, a lively coach who goads and taunts vulnerability hedonistically. Her vocal timbre in surround sound about Ava’s agonised vocal fragments shows a capable pursuit of Muhly’s earthy richness in contrast to Ava’s athletic lines with darting distress. Aphrodite as played by this performer is presented in smooth, almost sinister swathes as she sashays from room to room of the hotel suite, sensual and relaxed in the role.

In modern rather than Classical mode, golden fruit and pastoral scenes are swapped for video cameras, well lit mirrors and mobile phones. A screen above the stage magnifies and gives a 360 degree view of the pair’s urgencies below. This video design element from Morgan Moroney emphasizes and magnifies with appropriate skew troping the turmoil and complex self exploration below.

Dramatically, the work has tremendous tension and release between the two characters and for us following them. Aphrodite,  taunting as the mythological mother of Eros, mother in law of Psyche and oh so fair but unfaithful, scheming lover that she could be chases and questions our modern, progressive outlooks. Ava personifies the contradictions inherent in the predicament of career or intellectual pursuits  versus basic emotional need.

And in the guise of modern opera, particularly the intensity of chamber opera, the music and modern packaging of action is compelling. Here however it doesn’t overwhelm at all, remaining accessible, powerful and of thought provoking beauty, despite the production style being as current as one can get.

Conductor and Artistic Director of Sydney Chamber Opera, Jack Symonds, links the superstar music, storytelling, plus textual and historical fragments together in a smooth, irresistible arc. His supporting team of creatives (see below) are stellar in achievement of this world premiere’s impact.

By end of this shiny new opera, Ava urges Aphrodite to ‘close your eyes’. This is for protection against a harmful obsession with beauty. With the excitement of a Muhly premiere in Sydney at the attractive, historical Carriageworks, we need no urging to ‘close our eyes’. We do this -not in defence against the shallowness of mere beauty- but we blink in total appreciation of the beautiful, successful creativity just witnessed.

Do not miss the new-age exquisiteness of this production.

‘Aphrodite’ plays at Carriageworks Bay 20 until June 28.