Seattle Opera Takes On Flight

It’s kind of a no-brainer for an opera company based in Boeing’s hometown (and sponsored by that company) to take on the production of an opera set in an airport. When the pandemic shut down travel, it made the opera even more timely. Although set at an airport, Flight is not a story about mobility but of confinement, as a bunch of travelers are stranded by storms, temporarily sharing the circumstances of a refugee who can neither travel on nor go back. A year ago, that was an interesting concept. Today, it’s the story of all of us.  

Flight

Flight is a contemporary opera in English. Composed in 1998, it was inspired by (but not written about) the true story of an Iranian refugee who spent years inside Charles de Gaulle airport. It’s a dark comedy centered on the tragic story of one stranded traveler, but it’s also about a bunch of strangers thrown together under unusual circumstances just as each reaches some sort of pivot point in their own stories. It’s a frequently used approach in theater because it’s such an effective one. Presenting widely diverse characters hitting multiple crisis points, allows a work to explore deeper themes in an interesting way. In the case of Flight:

But deep in the narrative is a real exploration about how we treat each other and what we owe to fellow human beings—especially the people we do not know or feel kinship with.

Director’s Notes in the program

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In Flight Movie

I can easily imagine this opera as a stage production. But since COVID has forced all performing arts to become films, I can’t imagine a better candidate than Flight, especially in the hands of Seattle Opera. With each production they’ve gotten more sophisticated in their approach. This time they filmed “on site” not in a real airport, but in the Museum of Flight, which not only stands in for an airport beautifully, but provided outdoor and in-flight settings. It’s edited like a film, too, with scene cuts to new locations and even some pretty surreal sequences when we really get inside characters’ heads. Honestly, I think the story works better this way.

{Also, shout out for the fun security camera cameo by Artistic Director Christina Scheppelmann, who shared the departures quiet room with some of the characters during the intermission.}

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My Flight

This season I’ve enjoyed the way that a digital season makes opera less precious. Watching on the couch at home in fuzzy socks instead of dressing up and fighting traffic suits my temperament. But you can never be as fully absorbed in the performance when you’re at home. The sounds of the dishwasher in the other room or traffic outside an open window are low-level distractions. And when a grandparent calls in the middle of act one, you can’t really ignore it. So it took us two days to get through this relatively short opera.  

Also, I have to confess to a bias. I’m not a huge fan of contemporary operas in English. Contemporary classical music always sounds anemic compared to Mozart and Puccini. But after a season of solo piano accompaniment, the limited orchestra in Flight felt like a luxury, and even if it isn’t stylistically to my taste, even I could hear that Jonathan Dove’s score really did support the story as well any traditional opera composition. As for English, well, maybe it’s just the familiarity. It’s easier to focus on the sound when you don’t speak the language; just like lines in anime sounds cool in Japanese and dumb in English, you notice how opera lyrics are rarely good poetry when you speak the language. But I really don’t think English suits opera as well as French or Italian. It just doesn’t have the right shape.

Those biases made it harder for me to enjoy Flight, especially in the first act, which took a while to gain traction. But once the story took flight (I promise that will be my only pun) I got over it. It helped a lot that librettist April De Angelis didn’t try to write poetry – she really leaned into the incongruity of the elevated singing style and the way people speak modern English to very good comedic effect.

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The Voices

In traditional operas, there are certain character types and they’re usually sung by certain voice types. In Flight, Damien Geter’s (who was the Undertaker in Porgy & Bess) bass is what you expect from an authority figure like the Immigration Officer. But the characters in this story are not the usual assortment, and so you get a weird mix of – mostly higher – voices. The only baritone aria came from the Minsk-bound diplomat, barihunk Aubrey Allicock (formerly the marriageable Figaro). Sadness.

Fortunately, I like weird. There is a duet between a baritone and a tenor (which was both beautiful and hilarious). We also have three mezzos, two sopranos, and a countertenor, who all sing in unusual combinations and often all together in pieces that I like quite a lot more than the big choruses of more traditional works.

But let’s start with the countertenor. This is only the second time I’ve heard it (the first was also Randall Scotting, in Semele in 2015). The falsetto singing style is not one of the typical voice types that you see in every opera, so when it appears, there’s always a reason. In Semele, it highlighted that Athamas was a cultured gentleman in contrast to a cast stuffed with virile, hypermasculine gods and kings. It took me a while to figure out its purpose in Flight. But then the Refugee began singing about magic with notes that were described in the preperformance talk as sliding or looping. It sounded exactly like the Cantonese opera I heard in Hong Kong in 2019. Then I realized that the uncanny sound of the countertenor emphasized the refugee’s foreignness.

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The Landing

{Oops, a pun. Sorry.}

The greatest strength of Flight is its characters and this production was perfectly cast. I’d love to explain just why each of them is so good, but to avoid spoilers and in the interest of brevity {“Too late!” shouts the entire cast of Clue.} I’ll try to summarize. There’s a Lonely Hearts older lady, a flight attendant couple, a middle-aged couple on holiday, a diplomat and his pregnant wife headed to an undesirable post. Each of them was not only sung perfectly, but looked and acted the part as well as if voices weren’t the critical consideration in opera casting and they were actually film actors. Everyone was awesome, but I do have to call out soprano Sharleen Joynt for two reasons. First her voice blew me away. Second, her character was a major part of the weirdness.

Her character is called the Controller, but she’s more like the personification of the airport itself, and the airport is a little bit psycho. She despises the people who pass through the airport, but she’s possessive of the refugee who stays put.

Her scorn for the humans and their “grubby dreams” is merited. All of the characters are deeply flawed; there are no heroes in Flight. Even the refugee is kind of a con artist. You want to laugh at their stereotypical behavior. But you also recognize them (my husband and I couldn’t decide whether to cringe or laugh at Bill & Tina’s argument: “You’re so predictable” “No, I’m not” “I knew you’d say that”). And like real people, even the predictable ones can surprise you. In the darkest part of the night, women go full-on Lord of the Flies, while men get high and hook up.  

Even though Flight is a lot of my least favorite things in opera, it really surprised me. For a comedy, it struck some pretty deep emotional notes and did a lot of unexpected things both in the storytelling and the production. Sometimes I float on a good-story high or hum the music for days after a really good opera. Flight has stuck with me for days, too. But it’s churning in my brain, poking me with new ideas and interpretations, raising as many new questions as resolving them the more I think about it. Honestly, that’s better than a catchy melody.

The Details

Available online through Sunday, April 25 for subscribers; April 23–25, 2021 for single ticket holders. Tickets are available online for $35. Flight is rated PG-13 for mature themes, mild language, and sexually suggestive staging.

Flight
Music by Jonathan Dove
Libretto by April De Angelis
In English with English captions
Premiere: Sept. 24, 1998 with Glyndebourne Touring Opera in Glyndebourne
Seattle Opera premiere

Approximate Running Time: 2 hours and 9 minutes including one intermission

Cast

Refugee                         Randall Scotting
Controller                       Sharleen Joynt*
Bill                                Joshua Kohl
Tina                              Karen Vuong
Older Woman                 Margaret Gawrysiak
Stewardess                    Sarah Larsen
Steward                         Joseph Lattanzi
Minskman                      Aubrey Allicock
Minskwoman                  Karin Mushegain
Immigration Officer         Damien Geter
Conductor                      Viswa Subbaraman*
Director                         Brian Staufenbiel*
Costume, Hair, &
Makeup Designer            Liesl Alice Gatcheco
Audio & Sound
Designer                        Robertson Witmer
Film Director &
Sound Designer              Kyle Seago
Choreographer                Sonia Dawkins*
Lighting Designer            Duane Schuler

* Company Debut

{I purchased a Seattle Opera Season subscription for full access to digital content generated during the pandemic.}