NORTH HOLLYWOOD, Calif. – “It would be impossible to find a topic more relevant to contemporary theater,” wrote Knoxville Arts when I can ‘ t Breathe received its first production in February. The new opera by composer Leslie Burrs, with a libretto by Brandon J. Gibson, was a co-commission with Marble City Opera, Pacific Opera Project, Cleveland Opera Theater and Opera Columbus, inspired by constant rehearsals of police instances and justice. brutality and murder against African Americans.

I can ‘ t Breathe received its second production and West Coast premiere last weekend in three performances by Pacific Opera Project, May 13-15 (seen May 15), at the El Portal Theater in North Hollywood. In 2020, the innovative, affordable and entertaining (read: trendy) company founded in 2011, received the American Opera Performance Award.

POP Artistic Director Josh Shaw explains that “POP is of course known for our comedies and our emphasis on entertainment, but producing meaningful new opera is also part of what we do, and something we can do well. . When I was approached with this project, it seemed to me far too relevant and too important to postpone it to a future season. We try to reach all of LA with POP’s brand of accessible opera, and that includes new works like these that are vital to the expansion and continuation of the art form. The three LA performances were well attended, but not sold out.

The Knoxville premiere included six monologues or “monodramas”. Unarmed fictional characters from different backgrounds tell how their interactions with law enforcement went so horribly wrong, and lives are changed forever. Manners, appearance, education, and not even complete and peaceful compliance are enough to protect people of color from a system formed to treat them as inherently dangerous. When asked if he has a receipt for his purchases, he reaches for it in his pocket and the officer interprets the move as “taking out a gun.”

In most cases, these scenes are heavily based on real-life incidents involving individuals such as Trayvon Martin, Botham Jean, and Philando Castile, although the main characters are only named by their archetype. Some critical details of their cases have been edited for artistic effect. For example, Martin was shot by a vigilante, not a cop; and Castile’s real fiancée who was in the car with him and their daughter, was not white. Some time before seeing the opera here, one of the six scenes, that of the Father, was abandoned, apparently “for personal reasons” on the part of the singer. In order of their stages, the five remaining solo singers were The Athlete (Orson Van Gay), The Scholar (Geoffrey Peterson), The Mother (Jayme Alilaw, the only remnant of the original Nashville cast), The Thug (Michael Washington), and The Lover (Audrey Yoder).

The opera opens and ends with the entire cast lamenting these heavy losses and asking, “How much more?” At the end, four of the singers had actual victims’ names on their shirts. (In the Knoxville production, the solo cast was joined by three additional performers from the Marble City Opera Chorus.)

The production was engineered by Josh Shaw, who also co-directed with Sierra Hammond. The conductor of the small chamber orchestra of nine musicians, mainly strings, was Joshua Foy. With an intermission, the show lasted about two hours.

Any reviewer of a new opera should bear in mind the life of French composer Georges Bizet. His last and greatest opera Carmen debuted March 3, 1875. Critics gave it a beating – “amoral”, “dull and obscure”, they felt. Although Bizet was not in good health, his depression over what he called “a definitive and hopeless flop” led to his death three months later to the day at the age of 36. On the evening of his funeral, June 5, the Opéra Comique gave Carmen a special performance in his memory, and critics then agreed to declare it the masterpiece they had condemned a few weeks before. It remains one of the most famous operas in the entire repertoire, its tunes hummed in kitchens around the world.

With that caveat in mind, Burrs and Gibson crafted a work in six (here, five) scenes, each with a solo voice recounting a single, equally tragic crime (except that it’s exceedingly rare to do convicting a cop of murder). Each scene is like a cantata in itself. Burrs’ style has been called “urban classic”, a fusion of Big Band, funk, jazz, contemporary conservatory but not too dissonant, minimalistic and smooth as a constantly flowing stream over a stony riverbed, and well created. He uses a similar style for all of his scenes, creating a thick, dense pad for the solo vocals with little dramatic and emotional content. To my ears, the vocal component also had a similar approach, with one character’s language, vocabulary, speech, and musical rhythms not particularly distinct from the others. Stories are the essence of this work.

Generally speaking, if a composer sets a play or a screenplay to music, it is because the words only say half, and perhaps not even the most important half, of what is meant to be communicated. . Even an opera with a short and simple text can be effective because the weight of the narration is in the music, which conveys the place, the class, the mood, the feeling. Here it is the reverse. I can not breathe strikes a listener like an ancient melodrama, music accompanying a spoken piece in order to intensify and bring out the emotional input of the storyline, but not intended to stand on its own. Some of the early operas were like that – a vehicle for telling a story, but not meant to be memorable music on its own. The vocal line itself, as here, soared and became lyrical at times, but closely resembled a sort of parlando recitative not far removed from the narration of a Bach oratorio.

As an indication of how independent the characters are from scene to scene, personally, historically, dramatically, musically and vocally, the absence of The Father from this production changed absolutely nothing! As we discussed opera after dinner, many in my group thought that the music itself, ironically not being the dominant contribution to opera, might well have been removed, and the actors might have recite their monologues much more effectively as solo theater scenes. . I might not go that far, but I would say that however isolated one scene is from the next, other than thematically, a concert performer could well program a scene for his vocal range in a recital, and the rest of the opera would not be missed.

That said, each of the stories has its own fascination, fueled by the inevitability we see coming, like a Passion Play that we ritually re-enact every year, knowing full well the outcome. In the clever staging, we first see the huge pillars of white letters on stage, perhaps 8 feet tall: IC B. These turn out to be moving parts that become beds, sofas, shelves, counters and other accessories.

The Athlete begins with the three male cast practicing their graceful basketball moves, the phew! of the ball lending a cool percussive effect. He was an overweight kid who once “couldn’t breathe”, let alone walk let alone run up a hill, and now, after much disciplined training, he is aiming for a professional sports career. But a man stops him on the street after he makes a small purchase at a convenience store, and within seconds he is dead.

In The Scholar, a young straight arrow with three graduate degrees in chemical engineering moves into a condo his new employer has set up for him. He starts work on Monday. With his hands full of boxes, he poses something of a threat to the woman in the elevator. He did everything right and knows he will succeed. But he knows black people don’t get second chances, so he knew he had to get it right the first time. He opens a bottle of wine, orders a pizza, settles into his new sofa with a book and hears a voice shouting: “The suspect is still there. And another good man is gone.

The Mother is a particularly moving story, in which the 17-year-old son plays with her on stage. He was born to her and her wonderful husband after three disappointing miscarriages. Then the husband dies in a car accident and a few months later, she learns that she is pregnant again. Having never known his father, David is her son, whom she raised with so much care and love. He went out with his friends when the car was stopped for a roadside check. David reaches out to turn off the radio….

In The Thug, we learn how a child grows up in a divided family with an inexperienced and indifferent mother. He’s reduced to selling himself on the street – for his innocence, his warmth, his compassion – and struggles when an older boy at school calls him a few nasty names. From then on, he is referred to as a “thug”. “They don’t send black kids to shrinks,” he tells us. Eventually, he finds himself with a patch of sidewalk in front of a flower shop, where he sells socks and odd items. The cop comes to ask about the license, the permit, the taxes. Next thing he knows, he’s on the ground, hands tied behind him, not resisting, can’t breathe….

In The Lover, we hear about the bride. She and her man and their little girl are driving and they get pulled over in broad daylight. He states that he has a gun license and his gun is in a safe in the trunk. Hands up, he’s shot anyway, the whole incident recorded on his phone. The official report said: “The suspect had a weapon. The cop gets paid administrative leave, she gets a funeral. Eventually, the police return her possessions – her wallet, her phone, and a velvet box with the engagement ring he was going to present to her that day. “Is it worse to be the killer, the killed or me?” She wonders.

In the final chorus, deep questions are asked. How many more black bodies? More orphans? How many are imprisoned in cages and coffins? “We are not threats to your existence simply by living…we hold our breath waiting for you to decide if we die…brought here in chains and now free to be executed…four hundred years, that’s is long enough!”

Podcasts relating to opera can be heard; they are available on the POP website.

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