A Wedding, which receives its collegiate première here at Indiana University, is William Bolcom’s third opera. His previous efforts, which have been well received, were each based on different sorts of works. Bolcom’s first opera, McTeague, with libretto by Arnold Weinstein and Robert Altman, is fashioned after Frank Norris’s novel Greed and was performed here in 1996. The second, A View from the Bridge, featured a libretto by Weinstein and Arthur Miller based on Miller’s play. It too had its collegiate première here, in 2005. A Wedding features Altman and Weinstein as librettists again, but this time their writing is based on Altman’s 1978 film of the same name.

The movie Bolcom adapted is typical of Altman, who is known for the many characters and subplots he weaves throughout his films. His Wedding featured 48 characters and no discernable central plot. While the couple before the altar is ostensibly the focus, the myriad bits of gossip and scandal caused by the meeting of two families are the real attraction—rather like the real thing.

The adaption is generally true to the movie and Altman’s style. The opera overflows with colorful characters: the family matriarch who comes from old money; a flaky interpretative dancer in love with the butler; the best man, an alcoholic marine; a nymphomaniac bridesmaid; and an emotionally stunted morphine addict. While the ensemble is cut down to less than half the original movie’s 48 players, there are still many more major characters than one normally finds in an opera.

The plot follows the clash of families by Dino Corelli and Margaret “Muffin” Brenner’s wedding. Corelli’s father married into the Sloan dynasty of Illinois. Muffin, on the other hand, comes from a newly rich Louisville family. A tried, tested, and tired comedy archetype follows: old money with Northern reserve meets nouveau rich with Southern charm. Hilarity ensues.
This formula works well when handled with care. Unfortunately, many critics consider A Wedding one of Altman’s weakest films. Bolcom, however, is assured his Wedding will do better. He claims Altman approached the project with an open mind, “aware that you have to do something different in an opera.”

Bolcom is daring in his attempt to turn cinema coal into an opera diamond. His confidence is deserved, as his earlier work in opera has charmed many critics. Alex Ross recently called Bolcom the “rare living classical composer whom God made with the theatre in mind.” Ross may be right—this A Wedding could endure better than the film.

Its plot and music draw on stock opera buffa conventions from Mozart and Rossini. Bolcom has noted this himself, calling A Wedding “a comedy of manners, twentieth-century style, something within the manner of The Marriage of Figaro.” Elsewhere he has called it a “twenty-first century combination of Figaro and Così.” The music and text are arranged in the manner of a Mozart or Rossini opera, as a string of stand-alone “numbers,” which Bolcom calls “front-and-center vignettes” of each character. This form of musical drama today is mostly found in Broadway musicals; most operas since Wagner feature a seamless, continuous flow of music.
The result of mixing this many characters and plots with a variety of styles is somewhat like opera buffa but could more accurately be called buffa maxima. It is like a Mozart ensemble finale, except the ensemble is all on stage nearly the entire opera, the plot is a bit stranger, and there are many more genres of music. Bolcom’s Wedding might better be compared to a musical; even Bolcom thinks it is less “opera than musical comedy.”

While Altman is known for his many characters and plots, Bolcom is perhaps best known for his adaptation of a wide variety of styles, from classical to popular and from familiar to newly invented. That A Wedding is organized into clear-cut songs suits Bolcom, who has identified himself as a “magpie” in the line of his teacher Darius Milhaud. In A Wedding, far-ranging styles of music are presented back-to-back: an Elvis-style rock; a countrified parody love duet, “Heaven, Tallahassee”; a Platters tribute, with, as Bolcom observes, a “little Schubert and Massenet thrown in.” One also hears Puccini, Ives, Copland, and Gilbert and Sullivan.

While the musical juxtapositions might strike one as incongruous, an actual wedding is not all that different. The sacred ceremony invites a degree of musical eclecticism, from the unavoidable Pachelbel’s Canon at the procession to Kool and the Gang’s “Celebration” at the reception. Bolcom might be on to something here, as his musical wedding is as much of a mash-up as the real thing.

Some critics find the resulting confusion unsatisfying. Even Ross, a defender of Bolcom and this opera, notes that “the trick in assessing A Wedding is to make it seem something other than a stylistic casserole.” Ultimately, he thinks the work is “half ironic, half tender, and fully enchanting.” Others have found it equally endearing but without Ross’s qualifications. John van Rhein of the Chicago Tribune called the work “accessible, singable, eclectic, consistently inventive, and great fun.” Dennis Russell Davies, who conducted the première, said it is one of the only truly funny operas, along with Figaro and Falstaff.

But who cares what they think? You are about to hear it. Enjoy.

Oh, and one more thing: in the past, Bolcom has been “concerned that the audience will be shy about laughing.” Don’t be.