“BLUE!” SHE SINGS with an exuberance and a fresh energy that will hold you fast. It’s a paean to the sky and its freedoms articulated by fighter pilot Jess (Emily d’Angelo) in the brand new American opera Grounded, which South African filmgoers can experience tomorrow at Ster Kinekor outlets nationally. And what a treat it is to see the collaboration of this wonderful Canadian mezzo soprano with a full-bodied ensemble, LED technology and a contemporary war story. This work is as much about stage innovation and extraordinary performances as it is about the complex universal issues surrounding the moral trauma of war. The season is brief, but it is being screened at more Ster Kinekor outlets than usual, including Rosebank Nouveau, Brooklyn Commercial and Bedford Square in Gauteng; Gateway Commercial in KwaZulu-Natal, and the V&A, Blue Route, Garden Route and Somerset in the Western Cape.
Jess is at her peak. She rides her ‘Tiger’, an F-16 fighter jet, into the heat of war in Iraq and she’s white hot in her accuracy and her superiority over her male colleagues. By the time that ‘boom’ goes off, killing ‘the guilty’, she’s miles away. And then, life happens. She meets Eric (Ben Bliss), a cowboy from Wyoming and a child is conceived. Her career is put on pause, and she goes to ground to be a mother.
Five years later, the US Air Force invite her back. The deal is sweeter, but the price to pay more expensive. Hers becomes a desk job. She does war from an office just outside Las Vegas from nine to five and domesticity the rest of the time. Her ‘Tiger’ has become a dinosaur and Reaper drone warfare is de rigueur. At first, the adrenalin brings her the same rush as her real time work in the sky, but that ‘silent grey boom’ and the proximity of the drone camera facility bring back to her the reality that she’s actually killing people here. People with vulnerabilities and children of their own. And that notion of ‘the guilty’ and ‘the innocent’ begins to corrode. Are the camels guilty? The sand? Is the sky innocent?
It’s a tale in which technology serves as a cipher to understand the overwhelming greyness of who is right and who is wrong in the terrifying timeless behemoth that sets all humankind against one another, teeth and knives bared. War is not an unusual topic in operatic tradition – think of Alban Berg’s 1925 Wozzeck or Donizetti’s 1840 La Fille du Régiment – and of course, love amidst the bloodshed is part of the discourse. ‘Shell shock’, too, but in Tesori’s work, this phenomenon is translated into a terrifying episode of post traumatic stress in a shopping mall with a little girl’s pink frilly dress at hand.
Unequivocally, this work by Tesori takes its place as a prescient tale of humanity covered in the rash of war, alongside these classics. But as a contemporary work it features a set and an engagement with technology that effectively transforms the aesthetic strengths of the work.
Staged on two levels, the piece features a combination of nearly 400 LED screens on the floor and the backdrop. Effectively, this renders the performers on that stage almost like CGI-generated images that do not cast a shadow. Combined with choreography that works with gesture and the unity of form, evoking at times the potency of 14th century Italian painter Giotto in its lines drawn and power cast, the work will enfold you in its nuances but show you its grand narrative with great clarity.
At the denouement of the work, Jess splits into two versions of herself (the other is performed by soprano Ellie Dehn). While their vocal harmonies are sometimes absolutely perfect, the narrative place of the Jess alter-ego in the work is insecure and difficult to relate to. Also on a sensory level, the white noise that is used in much of the technological dialogue might be harsh on your eyes in the movie theatre.
Overall, this is a knock-out of a work that is upbeat and relevant, offering a take on female identity in the proverbial man’s world of war and aggression that breaks ground through many old tropes and is potently clarifying.
- Grounded was composed by Jeanine Tesori to libretti by George Brant, based on his eponymous 2011 play. It enjoys its world premiere in this season. Directed for the Metropolitan Opera in New York by Michael Mayer, it features design by Mimi Lien (production); Tom Broecker (costumes); Kevin Adams (lighting); Jason H Thompson and Kaitlyn Pietras (projection); Palmer Hefferen (sound); Paul Cremo (dramaturg) and David Neumann (choreography). Conducted by Yannick Nézet-Séguin, it is performed by a cast headed by Ben Bliss, Emily D’Angelo, Ellie Dehn and Kyle Miller and is being screened by Met Opera live at several Ster Kinekor outlets nationally on Tuesday 5 November 2024.