Strawberry Fields

With big-ticket American opera premieres from Adams and Picker already under our belt this season, there’s been a lot of ink-spilling over how new opera can/should function in the 21-century. Is opera just too over the top for cynical modern audiences, who can take hours of CGI violence but not suspend belief far enough to enjoy musical number in their films? Michael Torke and A.R. Gurney have made an attempt to bridge the gap without futzing with the style expected by conservative lovers of the form-rather they have dealt with it by creatively approaching their plot. The core of the 38-minute Strawberry Fields is simple enough: an elderly woman sitting on a bench in Manhattan’s Central Park is suffering from the delusion that she is actually at the opera. But the plotline means it’s much less peculiar that people are singing all around her. Instead, the cast of characters is just kind of enveloped in her non-threatening madness. Though at the same time, the point that opera is not so far from real life gets a jab in. When a panhandler starts begging, the old lady laments, “Now that’s opera. It’s called German expressionism. I don’t like it, but I suppose I should support it.”

—MS