Well, Why Not ‘Jackie O’?

We’ve had, since 1980, two operas about Marilyn Monroe (one from Italy, by Lorenzo Ferrero, the other from the U.S., by Ezra Laderman). Nixon, Mao, Kissinger and Leon Klinghoffer have found their way onto the lyric stage with John Adams’ help. Patty Hearst, Malcolm X, Harvey Milk, Jack Benny, Charles Manson and Hedda Hopper have all been the subjects of recent opera.

And now three CDs bring the operas “Jackie O,” “Gagarin” (the Russian cosmonaut) and “Dennis Cleveland” (a fictional TV talk show host).

This trend to put current events and especially celebrities into opera has been dubbed “CNN opera” by some critics. And there is no doubt that a celebrity-crazed press will respond to such subjects far more readily than it will to a new work on the subject of Ulysses through the ages.

But it can also be argued that opera is simply the most suitable art form to convey the sense of larger-than-life personalities and to consider their inner lives. In fact, that is exactly what opera has always done.

The very first operas written four centuries ago were about Orpheus, the cult singer of Greek legend who still attracts composers (most recently Philip Glass). “Tosca” is about a famous opera singer. Violetta (in Verdi’s “La Traviata”) and Lulu (in Berg’s opera) are deep and important studies of the lives of public women.

And why not? Opera is an art of amplification. While it is possible for music to tell stories, it does so only vaguely and needs help (you have to be told ahead of time what’s going on, and then you have to use your imagination to make the narrative work). But song can take you directly into a character’s inner life. Others’ inspiring visions become our own, as do their frailties, their loves and hatreds and their tragedies.

So it could hardly be otherwise that opera today might be drawn to the public figures of our time, especially now that we have the musical means to do so. Modernism was never the right language--it is hard to imagine, say, a “Bogart” from Boulez or Babbitt. But with eclecticism now reigning in American music, “Jackie O” makes sense. And no one seems better suited to the task than Michael Daugherty, the 43-year-old composer from Iowa.

Daugherty has written exuberant, sassy, irreverent concert works about Elvis, Desi Arnaz, J. Edgar Hoover and Superman. His is an extravagant style: infectious pop melodies that get out of hand; rhythms that go haywire; orchestrations that turn bizarre. But this is still very much a classical music. The compositional techniques are sophisticated, and Daugherty’s lighthearted surfaces often cover darker undertones.

“Jackie O”--which was recorded this spring around the time of its premiere by the Houston Opera Studio (a training program of the Houston Grand Opera) and has been rushed out on CD (Argo)--is a Jackie fantasy. For it, Wayne Koestenbaum has fashioned a fantastical libretto that is a little bit Gertrude Stein, a little bit “Nixon in China,” and tries hard to be very ‘70s.

In Act 1, Jackie (Nicole Heaston) meets Ari (Eric Owens) at Andy Warhol’s Factory, and leaves with him to see the erotic art film “I Am Curious (Yellow).” In Act 2, Jackie, melancholy on Ari’s yacht, sleepwalks across the gangplank onto the island of Skorpios where she meets Maria Callas (Stephanie Novacek) and they have an anti-Ari epiphany, which leads Jackie back to Jack and his inspirational vision of a New Frontier.

Daugherty’s music is all over the map, outgoing and pop at one moment, moody and introspective the next, just like Jackie. Her wavering, ambiguous melodic motif, first heard as a solo cello line, is the stark and dark prologue to the opera. It seems to capture something crucial about an ambivalent Jackie poised between an addiction to glamour and a desire to rise above all the superficiality.

There are, given our current obsession with the tragedy of Princess Diana, some absolutely chilling moments in this opera. “I’m tired of being a princess/I’m bored with being exposed by the press,” Grace Kelly sings in the opening scene, at a party at the Factory.

Later in the opera, Jackie and Callas are assaulted by the paparazzi and they sing a duet, “Smash His Camera!” It is a transforming moment, and one that only music can handle. A jazz version of Jackie’s ambivalent motif banishes Ari and his delicious Dean Martin-style cocktail aria, and celebrates Camelot as the music becomes inspirational.

Not all the music is consistently fine (though most is), and Koestenbaum’s libretto can annoy with its coy insider quality. The performance is adequate, although it could use a bit of vocal star power. Still, the overall effect of the opera is profound. And a world troubled over Di and her fate might find in it brutal insight and powerful illumination.

Celebrity is also a fixation in “Dennis Cleveland” (New World). Here Mikel Rouse turns the confessional television talk show into a near religious ritual. And though his means are fairly simple, the result is complex and original.

Rouse’s musical style evolved out of art rock, and “Dennis Cleveland” is an opera of guitar and drum machine. But simple rock drum rhythms become complex when intricately patterned, one atop another atop another. Rouse builds thick layers from his voice, his guitar, percussion and electronically altered tape samples of talk-show guests.

Rouse’s style is not without precedent. “Dennis Cleveland” is dedicated to Robert Ashley, who pioneered a surreal form of electronic television opera, and Steve Reich is clearly an influence in the sampling techniques. But I know of nothing that has this combination: the compositional intelligence of the best of New York’s downtown avant-garde (the opera had its premiere at the Kitchen two years ago), the musical means of a rock band and the ability to transform the sleaziest side of popular culture into near-Wagnerian exaltation.

Next to these examples, “Gagarin,” recorded on the Norwegian Hemera label, is far more conventional, although it gets classy packaging (“Jackie O” sports tasteless faux-Warhol graphics). The music is by Hakon Berge, and the opera was created six years ago for Norwegian television. It may work better on the tube, but musically this is earnest modernism meant to make something epic of Yuri Gagarin, the first man in space.

The libretto by science-fiction writers known as Bing and Bringsvaerd is a series of 46 small, pregnant scenes of Gagarin (Espen Fegran) as boy and cosmonaut. He dreams of flight and becomes a contemporary Icarus. Unfortunately he doesn’t fly over Skorpios and spy on Jackie and Maria. Gagarin/Icarus has no use for Western society. Fame is no problem, and the music tells us as much. He’s certainly no Boris Godunov. Somehow, Yeltsin seems so much more operatic.

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