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Indiana University Opera Theater’s production of
William Bolcom’s A View from the Bridge,
the first such production in a collegiate setting, is
only the third performance of this opera in the US
since its premiere in 1999. The libretto, written by
Arnold Weinstein and Arthur Miller, is based on
Miller’s play of the same name. The play – set in
mid-twentieth-century Brooklyn – centers around an
Italian dock worker named Eddie and his niece
Catherine, who falls in love with her aunt’s cousin
Rodolpho. As the story unfolds, Eddie’s jealousy,
fueled by a possible incestuous love for his niece,
leads the dockworker to violence and ultimately his
own demise. According to Miller, a water-front
worker conveyed the story to the playwright long
before the original one-act play was written in
1955. Initially the play received little acclaim,
and only after Miller revised and expanded the work
to two acts in 1956 did it find success.
According to Bolcom, Miller and Weinstein approached
the composer with the idea to write an opera based
on the play. Bolcom’s challenge was adding something
through music to a play that was already a
masterpiece. In an interview, the composer says he
went directly for the emotional core through the
subtext—“the music fills out all the feelings in the
situation.” Bolcom states that he modeled his
melodic style on Harry Warren, an ethnic Italian who
was born in Brooklyn with the name Salvatore
Guaragna. Much of Warren’s music, according to
Bolcom “is built like an Italian aria – but it is
very much American!” Warren is a perfect musical
model for A View from the Bridge, a story
centering on Italian Americans struggling to make
lives for themselves in mid-twentieth-century
Brooklyn. The music that accompanies Rodolpho upon
his initial entrance is the best example of this
Americanized Italian-aria sound. The composer sets
bassoons playing a walking, repeated bass line
(imitating a plucked string bass), muted trumpets
playing rhythmic syncopations, and strings playing a
lush melody. All of these elements imply a lighter,
more popular style which Bolcom derived from Harry
Warren. Bolcom also uses a similar sound when
Catherine and Rodolpho first appear together on
stage. This Italian-flavored popular style may
suggest the innocence of youth and optimism of new
immigrants in America. The light, romantic music of
Rodolpho and Catherine is contrasted with the music
of Eddie. From the moment Rodolpho enters the story,
Eddie’s jealousy becomes apparent in the music. When
Eddie sings, he is often accompanied by a dark and
sinister low brass sound.
In addition to a musical contrast between the
characters of Rodolpho, Catherine, and Eddie, Bolcom
utilizes two slight changes between the two-act
version of the play and the libretto to help the
transfer from play to opera. The first change is in
the part of the narrator. In the play, the lawyer
Alfieri functions as both a character participating
in the action and a narrator speaking only to the
audience. The opera libretto splits the narrator
into two entities—Alfieri, and the chorus—which
places the work alongside more traditional operas
throughout history that use the chorus as a
narrator. The second change between the play and the
libretto is the addition of Marco’s aria near the
end of the opera. After Marco and Rodolpho are
arrested, Marco sings an aria lamenting the return
of the hunger he felt in Italy, now that he can no
longer work in America. However, there is no
equivalent speech in the play. By attributing this
new aria, the longest and perhaps most moving of the
second act, to Marco, his character receives greater
depth and interest.
Bolcom’s version is not the first time the opera
world has heard this particular Miller play.
Renzo Rossellini’s Uno Sguardo
dal Ponte premiered in 1961 in Rome. Only
one other Miller play has been set operatically.
Robert Ward won a Pulitzer Prize for his 1961
operatic version of The Crucible. In
addition, Bolcom’s opera is not the first time that
the composer has worked with this playwright. When
Miller needed a cellist to play between scenes of
his 1994 play Broken Glass, Bolcom composed
the music.
William Bolcom’s second large-scale opera, A View
from the Bridge, is an enjoyable adaptation of
the classic Miller play and an example of a more
musically traditional contemporary opera. In recent
years, Bolcom has proved that he is a force to be
reckoned with in operatic composition with both A
View from the Bridge and McTeague (1992)
and has given the opera world something to look
forward to in his new opera, A Wedding, which
the Chicago Lyric Opera is premiering this season.
Note: An Extended interview with composer William
Bolcom can be viewed on the web at the following
link:
http://www.newworldrecords.org/linernotes/80588.pdf
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