NEW YORK – Days before the world premiere of one of the most anticipated works of the Metropolitan Opera season, composer Tobias Picker still hadn’t decided how to end “An American Tragedy.”
With rehearsals at fever pitch for the Dec. 2 opening, “I realized one day that there are three ways to end it,” Picker said Wednesday, opening a score and pointing to notes that may, or may not, be performed.
The story is based on Theodore Dreiser’s classic 1925 novel that’s filled with questions about love, American-style: sex, success and money as seductive bullets in a Russian roulette of life.
The plot revolves around an ambitious young man who plans to drown his working-class pregnant girlfriend while courting a high-society beauty. He’s convicted of killing his child’s mother to free himself to go after the American Dream. The price he pays is the electric chair.
“You think of Scott Peterson, or O.J. Simpson,” said mezzo-soprano Susan Graham, who plays seductress Sondra Finchley.
Dreiser drew from real life – the 1906 trial of Chester Gillette, convicted of killing his pregnant lover Grace Brown, who drowned in Big Moose Lake in upstate New York.
“That was the first time there was this incredible media hype around a murder,” said director Francesca Zambello. “Was it murder? Was it an accident? Everyone knew he was a boy trying to better himself. And everyone knew there was a wealthy girl involved.”
The novel, depicted in the 1951 film “A Place in the Sun,” starring Elizabeth Taylor and Montgomery Clift, was a favorite of Picker’s late father. The composer wrote the work in memory of him, and dedicated it to his 88-year-old mother, who insists on driving herself from her home atop a mountain in upstate New York to her son’s premiere.
The characters include a fiercely evangelical mother who preaches the gospel in the streets, making her young boy, Clyde Griffiths, walk in tow and preach, too. Elvira Griffiths, sung by mezzo-soprano Dolora Zajick, is a musical bookend that grounds the story, starting and ending the work in prayer.
She projects a stern authority “that later drives her son to do what he does. She never allowed him to play while he was a little boy. And he ran away from that,” said Zajick, picking at lunch from the Met’s canteen – a Thanksgiving eve turkey meal in a plastic foam container, eaten in her dressing room during a run-through of Act I.
Minutes later on stage, clothes are fast coming off the social climber and his factory girl, portrayed respectively by baritone Nathan Gunn and soprano Patricia Racette. From a level above, Graham peers down and offers some unscripted comic relief to the hot-and-heavy lovers: “Don’t mind us!”
But with only days before opening night, the fine-tuning is quickly back on track.
“What’s with the Raggedy Ann on the bed? That’s terrible!” Zambello said into her hand-held microphone, the words ringing through the empty opera house where she and a team of experts for lighting, costumes, sets and choreography filled several rows of seats facing the stage.
Raggedy Ann is flipped on her face by Clyde as he plunges into the love scene with his girlfriend. The huge doll was thrown in by somebody trying to dress up the scene – and removed after Zambello’s comment.
“The character, a poor factory girl, would have something much smaller, much simpler,” Zambello explained later.
Even with a stellar cast and the world’s best when it comes to production, there were plenty of things to fix, from lighting to scenery panels not shifting properly. That was part of the excitement, with ideas flying while the last stitches were sewn into the sumptuous dresses of early 20th-century American society.
The props even include a vintage car – an American Dream symbol.
“This story is a mirror to America – even today,” Picker said. “It’s the conflict between the values of society, the values of religion and the needs of the human soul.”
“This opera could easily play on Broadway,” Picker said. “The music is full of melodies, and romance. It’s a love story – all kinds of love, from someone who’s in love with someone, who’s in love with someone else, to someone who’s obsessed with the symbols of the American Dream, with money, beauty.”
But in their life games, the protagonists didn’t figure on death.
Zajick sings the last words to her son, by librettist Gene Scheer – “The mercy of God is equal to all sin” – in her chocolate-rich, powerhouse voice, heard as the door of the execution chamber is shutting and Clyde welcomes Jesus and is “saved.”
Death could come with a bang or a whimper. The note C, for Clyde, could be played in unison by every instrument in the orchestra for 30 seconds, growing and climaxing in an ear-shattering last sound. Or it could be played in the softest short “plunk” in a minor key. Or maybe three “plunks.”
“The unison is open, with no harmony. It leaves the questions about life open, with no real answers,” said Picker, who was leaning toward that ending. Preferred by conductor James Conlon, “the three plunks are more of a statement, like the Holy Trinity.”
Which music announces his execution will be heard on opening night.
On the Net:
www.anamericantragedy-theopera.org
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