When we saw the listing in the Walt Disney Concert Hall catalogue for the world-premier of Stranger Love, a 6-hour opera with detuned pianos and dance, we were intrigued. 4 to 11pm?! Having recently seen performances that felt visionless and without conviction, we took the leap. We wanted to support a big swing.
Stranger Love was indeed ambitious, and I assume they pulled it off, but we didn't stay for acts two and three. For us, the performance was an agonizingly slow reveal of missed opportunities. Or as the director would have written:
Mi... (wait for conductor cue)
ssed... (wait)
opp... (turn slowly to right)
or... (wait)
tun... (turn slowly to left)
i... (put hands in pockets)
ties.
I can believe there are some artistic experiences that simply take time. The catharsis of all-night drumming, or feeling puppetted by bone-shaking techno. The meditation of repeated chanting in a reverb-soaked place. The slow reveal of mountain climbing. The mind-altering exhaustion of the sweat lodge. Stranger Love was none of these. While its microtonal melodies benefit from extreme repetition -- things that sounded out of tune at the beginning became pleasurably sonorous -- there was no emotional benefit to the length. The singers amazing voices are wasted on the libretto's "fated love" plot with excruciating phrasing. The darkened stage obscures the musicians in favor of dancers whose pantomimed, bland choreography includes aimless walking that commands your attention just enough to dissappoint you. "Oh I watched you walk all the way over there just to have you turn around and slowly make your way back." The music would stand better on its own, or with richly choreographed dance that rewarded our attention.
During act one, I spent the bulk of my 3.5-hours thinking of alternatives. I imagined a presentation of the same music, still six hours, and still centered on a love story, but with silent actors instead of the narration and lyrics. A man is cooking dinner in real time. His date arrives. They eat. Maybe the audience is served a snack. The characters make love, shower, and sleep. We nap along with the actors. The man wakes up (and us too) to find his date gone. In this version, the length is artistically justified. We'd have come to know his date just as the main character did, and to feel the loss too. Would it be worth six hours? Maybe?
Stranger Love isn't. The uninspired libretto and choreography aggressively thwart our absorption into the unique music. The pace feels bullying. I have to keep telling myself I'm glad we gave this a shot, with the hopes that I'll still take a similar leap the next time the catalogue arrives.