ALBUM REVIEW
July 7, 2023
Musical America: “In A Grove” Review
Christopher Cerrone’s haunting opera In a Grove is a good example of how to create something original and modern out of a timeless classic. It’s based on Ryunosuke Akutagawa’s seminal short story of the same name (memorably adapted in Kurosawa’s 1950 movie Rashomon), centered on the violent death of a samurai warrior whose body has been found in a forest clearing. The events leading up to his death are revealed in a series of increasingly conflicting testimonies, first by passers-by, then by a notorious bandit, the samurai’s wife, and ultimately the dead man’s ghost, who channels his account through a medium. The plot device involves subjective and contradictory versions of the same story, ensuring that the truth remains hidden.
Stephanie Fleischman’s elegiac libretto relocates the story to a ghost forest in the remote mountains of Oregon, 1921 in the aftermath of a wildfire. In many respects, it hews closely to Akutagawa’s original, though by softening certain character motivations, it misses some of the Japanese master’s biting moral ambiguities.
Cerrone’s atmospheric score—with four singers doubling eight characters, nine instruments, and live electronics —is deep and magical. Opening in a wash of wind effects, its spare, repetitive patterns are reminiscent of David Lang, with harp and vibraphone prominent in the mix. The composer’s austere, yet complex textures capture the loneliness of the desolate surroundings and the shifting accounts of his cast of characters.
The scrupulously produced album goes one step further than the well-received 2022 Pittsburgh Opera premiere in its use of vocal processing, reverb, and multi-layering. The result is an immersive and deeply hypnotic piece of sonic storytelling. Andrew Cyr leads the Metropolis Ensemble in a seamless reading with excellent performances by Andrew Turner as the murdered settler, Lindsay Kesselman as his wife, John Taylor Ward as the outlaw, and countertenor Chuanyuan Liu as the medium. Cerrone was Pulitzer-nominated for his opera Invisible Cities in 2014. In a Grove is a more than fitting successor.