OPERA REVIEW

John Brown, hero: Lyric's new opera is hit at opening performance

At several points during composer Kirke Mechem’s 20-year struggle to put the story of John Brown on the opera stage, he must have despaired of its chances of ever becoming a reality.

But it is very real, and Saturday’s world premiere of “John Brown” by the Lyric Opera of Kansas City was the sort of magical success that composers and musicians dream of.

With unabashedly lush solo and choral writing, a shimmering orchestral backdrop and a raw-nerved story of continued relevance, this opera is a natural almost from start to finish.

What it has going for it, for starters, is Mechem’s libretto drawn largely from the profound and often movingly poetic writings of John Brown and his ex-slave abolitionist friend Frederick Douglass.

(“Those who want freedom without struggle, want crops without plowing,” Douglass sings, paraphrasing an actual speech. With texts like that, who needs a librettist?)

Mechem makes no secret of his admiration for a historical figure who has at times been regarded as a treasonous, cold-blooded murderer. The first words that Brown utters in the opera are not his but Jesus’: “Think not that I come to send peace on earth. Not peace but a sword.”

His words are set off by a warm cushion of string sound throughout the opera, in much the same way that Bach gave Jesus’ words a string “halo” in his Passion settings. (Coincidentally or not, the “Once To Every Man and Nation” hymn sung in Act 2 and heard again in the finale contains the melodic contour of the opening of the “St. Matthew Passion.”)

Those who still find Brown a violent, controversial historical figure might find this near-deification jarring, but it is consistent with Mechem’s Brown: He is a loving, caring man, shown in sympathetic situations with family and friends and wanting the best for America regardless of the cost.

Mechem’s musical language is approachable yet complex, and only occasionally prolix or overly sentimental. The opera’s chief strength is the composer’s skill for marrying musical and dramaturgical design. The Act 2 scene at Emerson’s house builds tension using hymn verses as structural principle, with conversation interspersed — its hymnal humdrum spiced by unexpected harmonic turns and orchestral color.

Mechem also shows skill in mitigating heavier passages of historic talk with emotional moments. By the end of Act 1 we’re feeling a bit overloaded with narrative, and the love-duet between Oliver Brown and his fiancée that opens Act 2 comes as a welcome moment of human sentiment.

Likewise the effective, simply-written duet between Brown and the dying Oliver in Act 3 is a tender if bitter moment in a whirlwind of violence.

Several of the solo songs were part of an earlier version of the opera that was never performed, and they remain some of the strongest bits, in particular Frederick Douglass’ melancholy “The Songs of the Slave are the Sorrows of His Heart.”

Mechem’s special skill in choral writing stood out throughout, in numbers ranging from the joyous (“I’m Free!”) to the rhythmically nervous and dynamic (“Stoke the Fire!”).

Any opera is historical fiction by its very nature, and indeed Brown’s heroism is enhanced by the bronzed-voice mastery of baritone James Maddalena. It’s hard to imagine anyone else in American opera who could more powerfully convey both the sympathy and the hard-headedness of Mechem’s Brown. His was one of the few voices in the cast that could always project over the busy orchestration.

Another was that of baritone Donnie Ray Albert, who inhabited the role of Douglass with inner smolder and tinges of humor where necessary, his robust voice like a cannon firing ingots of gold.

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To reach Paul Horsley, call 816-234-4764 or send e-mail to phorsley@kcstar.com.