I attended the December 2, 2017, presentation by San Francisco Opera of John Adams’ (composer) and Peter Sellars’ (librettist) recently premiered Girls of the Golden West, with some trepidation. I experienced trepidation because having purchased my tickets six-months in advance anticipating another John Adams’ masterpiece comparable to Nixon in China, The Death of Klinghoffer and Doctor Atomic, and having traveled from San Diego primarily to see this work, many of the opening night reviews, including that of the leading San Francisco music critic, had been highly negative. There had, of course, been a few positive commentaries, including those of the San Jose Mercury News, the Los Angeles Times and some mild praise by the New York Times, but I was expecting to be disappointed. As it turned out, I was pleasantly surprised to find that the opera was fascinating, moving and beautiful, having held my attention for its entire three-hour and 20-minute length.
I could now write a tome on the subjectivity of the opera experience, but let me just say that while I appreciate intellectually the negative comments I read about this opera; for example, that it contained too much narrative, lacked momentum, was too long, all of which contain some objective validity, I found the work, to be emotionally compelling.
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Set during the early 1850’s California Gold Rush, the work focused most of the all on the fate of the three women (thus, the title), Louise Clappe, a New Jersey born doctor’s wife, an actual historical and literary figure, who wrote a series of classic letters on her Gold Rush camp experience under the name Dame Shirley, Ah Sing, a (presumably) fictitious Chinese prostitute standing in for the Chinese experience in the camps, and Josefa Segovia, loosely based on a real Mexican woman who was lynched by miners after killing one of their own. Several men were also represented mining camp inhabitants, Joe Cannon, a Missourian forgotten by his hometown girl, seeking his fortune in the camps, Clarence, a blunt and brutal miner and most compelling of all, Ned Peters, a fugitive slave, acting as an assistant to Dame Shirley.
Much of Act I (and for this it was criticized) was expository and descriptive, containing many solo introductory arias to which other characters silently reacted. The act opens with Clarence’s description of the camp’s inhabitants, taken from Mark Twain, as a “driving, vigorous, restless population.” Dame Shirley enters with her husband, describing their condition and soon employs Ned Peters. During the opera, through silent action, she is shown to be emotionally estranged from her husband (they divorced in 1857) and attracted to, or at least emotionally attached to Ned. The action, such as there is, takes place primarily in the saloon of the Empire Hotel, where Joe Cannon describes his woes, Ah Sing attempts to comfort him and where Josefa’s lover, Ramon deals cards and Josefa attracts the men (“without a girl there can be no hotel.”) Ramon and Josefa’s remembrance of love after they escape the threats made to them at the bar is one of the highlights of the evening. The act ends with Shirley describing her primitive cabin and expressing admiration for Ned. Far from being bored during this act, I found it moving, perhaps because of Adams’ wonderful score, and perhaps because of the humanity of the characters.
Act II is longer, but contains more action, dealing with the sad fate of non-white American mining camp inhabitants. The act climaxes with the lynching of the Josefa, (depicted only symbolically) who has killed would-be rapist Joe Cannon. Among the highlights is Ned Peters’ Fourth of July oration taken from Frederick Douglass on the meaninglessness of the Fourth of July to a slave. After the grim events depicted, the opera concludes with Dame Shirley’s meditation on the beauty of the mountains and the California sky, “which drops down upon the whole in fathomless splendor.”
The cast was as good as it gets. Soprano Julia Bullock, as Dame Shirley, was dramatically and musically superb. I look forward to seeing more of her. Tenor Paul Appleby, a superb Don Ottavio in San Diego Opera’s 2015 Don Giovanni, exuded despair and desperation as Joe Cannon. Korean soprano Hye Jung Lee handled the high tessitura Ah Sing’s music well and sounded optimistic and proud when called for. Bass baritone Davóne Tine was a fine Ned Peters, excellent in his star turn in the Frederick Douglass excerpt, Ryan McKinny a fine Clarence and J’Nai Bridges excelled as Josefa.
The sets designed by David Gropman were excellent, and probably sitting upstairs where I did in the Dress Circle helped in appreciating them. I especially liked the huge redwood trunk prominent in Act II.
Los Angeles Master Chorale conductor Grant Gershon conducted the colorful John Adams’ score well and the orchestra was excellent.
The music sounded like classic John Adams to me-rhythmic, propulsive, at times repetitive, and beautifully orchestrated. At one time, Adams even used an accordion.
As you may have noted, Peter Sellars’ libretto is based on third party sources. During his illuminating pre-opera question and answer session, he explained that Dame Shirley’s lines are taken from her letters, Ah Sing’s taken from poems written on the walls of Angel Island by Chinese awaiting deportation, Josefa and Ramon’s from the poems of an Argentinian poetess, whose name escapes me and Joe Cannon’s (and many of the choruses) are taken from miners’ songs with the music replaced by that of John Adams. This kind of “assembled libretto” was used effectively in Doctor Atomic, perhaps less so here, but any awkwardness was minor to me. It may be that there should be some cuts, (Lola Montez’ Spider Dance comes to mind), but I did not find the work overly long. The opera is a co-produced with Dallas Opera and Dutch National Opera, so there may be revisions, as there were for Doctor Atomic, when the opera appears at those venues.
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