Late in Robert Ashley’s new experimental opera Concrete, recollections of flying carpets and a Turkish rock appear over probing electro-harmonic suspension. Then the question “So what else are you going to do?” is answered with: “Tell stories, and sing.”
Concrete evolves those twin compulsions of Ashley’s vanguard oeuvre that shaped masterworks like Improvement and Perfect Lives into new music cornerstones, supreme revitalizations of operatic form and are among our most brilliant reminders that television’s way behind the game.
Envisioned to maximize TV’s rapid visual potential, only Perfect Lives (co-produced by the U.K.’s Channel Four) has seen extensive broadcast life, so Ashley’s gnarled, hi-speed storytelling thrives on stage.
“I wanted Concrete to be a singers’ piece,” Ashley explains, distinguishing its musical structure from his signature computerizing of singers’ lines into MIDI formatted orchestra parts. “I wanted them to be free in their choice of pitch and their manner of inflection.”
With Ashley and Tom Hamilton processing the music, the vocalists wield oversized playing cards and approach the house from the set’s “dark and mysterious” carpets and casino tables (by David Moody, the Met Opera’s effects designer) for a sequence of extended arias.
“I put it in the form of the reminiscences of an old man [who ‘lives in concrete’],” Ashley explains. “The mystery of why buildings are aligned when the world is supposed to be round; why we play games counterclockwise, like baseball … There are no characters, just voices.”
And what voices: flexing deft embellishments at rehearsal, Jacqueline Humbert’s knowing persistence, Sam Ashley’s rhythmic twang, Thomas Buckner’s supple projection and the breathtaking precision of Joan La Barbara devote immense skills to Ashley’s subtle sonic world. It’s clear why, when asked, playwright Richard Foreman calls Ashley “a tremendous beacon for us all. He takes the banality of normal life, then makes it hover above.”
Jan. 17–20. La Mama, 74A E. 4th St. (at 2nd Ave.), 212-474-7710; 8, $20.
