Music Review : L.B. Opera’s U.S. Premieres of Cage’s ‘Europeras’ Hit Home

John Cage came to opera late, but not by degrees. When the late American composer jumped into the operatic pool--in 1987, in his 75th year--he did so with fervor, and with his unique artistic immersibility.

Up to now, however, Cage’s I Ching-operated “Europeras” had not reached these shores, the shores of Cage’s native country--and, in the City of the Angels, his hometown. Not until Saturday night, when Long Beach Opera mounted “Europeras,” Nos. 3 and 4, in their United States premieres in Center Theater at the Long Beach Convention Center.

These recent works, which were launched in London three years ago, are Cagean collages placed on an operatic stage marked off in 64 squares.

Six singers and two pianists--nobody accompanies anybody: the vocal performances are a cappella--enter the stage before the performance, and thereafter take their cues from a one-time-only set of instructions regarding placement and participation arrived at by the computerized I Ching. The six singers (one soprano, two mezzos, two tenors and a bass) choose their own arias, which they sing on demand, standing in a location chosen by chance.

In “Europeras 3,” they sing whole arias, by Puccini and Verdi, mostly, but also by Mozart, Saint-Saens, Purcell, Cilea, Bizet and Leoncavallo.

At the same time--we are talking about the composer who saw the whole world and the world of art in terms of his own phrase, “Everything together!”--six record-players, placed around the stage, again by chance, broadcast historic operatic recordings. And two pianists, separately, play excerpts from Liszt’s multitude of operatic transcriptions--but mostly, if not exclusively, those on Wagnerian works.

“Europeras 3” does all this for 70 minutes, producing a gentle chaos, moments of great noise and some of dead silence and a serendipitous coming together of operatic grandiosity and trivia. “Europeras 4,” on this occasion mostly in the dark--3,800 lighting cues, the program claims, are also selected by chance--does the same thing, but for only 30 minutes, and with only two singers, one pianist and one record-player.

The Saturday performance amused, titillated and provoked--as Cage must have intended.

The two singers of “Europeras 4,” sopranos Anne Marie Ketchum and Daisietta Kim, proved measurably more effective than their colleagues in “Europeras 3”: Suzan Hanson, Ruby Hinds, Patricia McAfee, Richard Powell, Michael Lyon and Kevin Bell.

The vocalists selected their own arias, and wore clothing of their own choosing; some looked better than others.

The pianists, Bryan Pezzone and Vicki Ray, had been instructed by the composer to play only 16 bars of each transcription. Thus, we had a mid-climax interruption in the “Liebestod,” a cutting-off that may have amused Cage, but would have offended Wagner.