EGN NEWS DESK
In Handel’s oratorio “Israel in Egypt,” which the New York Philharmonic carried out in October, Jews reside in captivity throughout the Red Sea from their historical homeland. In “Émigré,” a brand new oratorio that was given its American premiere by the Philharmonic on Thursday at David Geffen Hall, they’ve gone quite a bit farther: to Shanghai, the place hundreds fled Nazi persecution.
Few milieus might be as seductively dramatic as that Chinese metropolis within the Thirties, with its cosmopolitan glamour and wartime hazard. But “Émigré” evokes none of this theatrical attract, failing to seize the ear or the center.
With music by Aaron Zigman (identified primarily for movies like “The Notebook” and “Sex and the City”) and a libretto by Mark Campbell with contributions by Brock Walsh, the piece sketches the historic scenario by way of the story of two German Jewish brothers who settle in Shanghai, which was interesting for its open immigration insurance policies. One of the brothers falls in love with a Chinese lady; her father and the opposite brother object to the match; amid the violence of the Japanese occupation, tragedy ensues.
It’s a promisingly sturdy plot. But the 95-minute rating is so blandly cloying, the rhymed-couplets textual content so stiff and the characters so cardboard, that not a second finally ends up shocking or transferring.
Oratorios at their greatest commerce opera’s naturalism for stirring, meditative grandeur. “Émigré” is oratorio at its worst, with stentorian choral writing, vocal strains that soar indistinguishably from one singer to the following, prim formality — these rhyming couplets — and sluggish pacing.
A greater deployment of the story would have been as a type of vigorous items of musical theater wherein particular person lives intersect with world occasions. Think “Les Misérables,” “Miss Saigon” or the apparent precursor to a story of Jewish persecution and a judgmental father: “Fiddler on the Roof.”
Full of earworms, these musicals are actually unforgettable. But Zigman lacks a expertise for that sort of songwriting, relying in “Émigré” on generic lyricism that rises to strained climaxes. The solely catchy tune, a stoutly surging upward melody begging to be lined by the pop tenor Andrea Bocelli, is milked dry over two numbers.
And whereas one other composer might need extra creatively introduced collectively the sounds of Jewish prayer, Asian percussion, Thirties dance and Hollywood sumptuousness, Zigman’s orchestral accompaniment tends to be lushly repetitive vamping or saccharine floods of strings mirroring the singers. Occasionally there’s a loud passage to suggest that one thing unhealthy has occurred.
At Geffen Hall, “Émigré” was given a semi-staged, costumed efficiency directed with resourcefulness by Mary Birnbaum. The fantastic forged sings on a strip on the lip of the stage in addition to up behind the orchestra, within the block of seating the place the refrain has additionally been positioned.
Archival imagery projected above the stage (and designed by Joshua Higgason) conjures the place and time higher than the piece itself. And with the singers carrying microphones however properly balanced with the orchestra, as soon as once more the just lately renovated corridor has proved itself glorious for amplified sound.
Matthew White and Arnold Livingston Geis because the brothers; Shenyang, Huiling Zhu and Meigui Zhang because the Chinese household they encounter; and Diana Newman and Andrew Dwan as a pair of fellow Jews all have enticing, wholesome voices and commit themselves soberly to what drama they’ll muster.
And with the Philharmonic’s taking part in, and its resident refrain’s singing, candy and clean, it’s exhausting to think about a extra polished, affectionate efficiency than the one led on Thursday by the conductor Long Yu. An influential cultural determine in China, Yu co-commissioned the piece as music director of the Shanghai Symphony Orchestra, which premiered “Émigré” in November and recorded it.
China and particularly Shanghai have been vital sources of funding for the Philharmonic, which additionally commissioned the oratorio and has teamed with the Shanghai Symphony over the previous decade. Yu has been a frequent presence on the rostrum in New York.
You get the sense that “Émigré” has been introduced into existence much less as a murals and extra as a chance for diplomatic change and as a spur to elevated giving. It’s like a bauble handed between leaders on the finish of a state go to: costly and nondescript.
Émigré
A second and ultimate efficiency is on Friday at David Geffen Hall, Manhattan; nyphil.org.
