JUANA SUMMERS, HOST:
Most productions of operas lead with the composer's name and ignore the writer. It's Puccini's "La Boheme" or Verdi's "La Traviata." But a new opera, "Complications In Sue," which opens tonight in Philadelphia, is being billed for its librettist. That's Pulitzer Prize-winning writer Michael R. Jackson. Jeff Lunden explains.
JEFF LUNDEN, BYLINE: Michael R. Jackson is best known for his Tony Award-winning musical "A Strange Loop" about an overweight, Black, gay man, which is funny, transgressive and touching. He'd never written an opera before, so when Opera Philadelphia asked him if he'd write a piece with the cheeky title "Complications In Sue," about a woman named Sue played mutely by cabaret artist Justin Vivian Bond, he jumped.
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UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR #1: (As character, singing) Who is Sue? Who is Sue? Who is Sue? Who is Sue?
MICHAEL R JACKSON: I had been seeking an opportunity to really stretch artistically and take a risk that's not inexorably tethered to commercial success.
LUNDEN: And "Complications In Sue" is kind of a grand experiment, which features 10 composers, from Missy Mazzoli to Cecile McLorin Salvant to Nico Muhly. Each one has written a scene from the 99 years of Sue's life, from birth to death. Some reflect Sue's inner life. Others are about characters observing her from the outside. There's the angel of death. There's AI, represented by a trio of singers. And Opera Philadelphia's general director, Anthony Roth Costanzo, says each composer only got their scene and nothing else.
ANTHONY ROTH COSTANZO: I really was inspired by "Exquisite Corpse," that game that the surrealists used to play in the '20s in Paris parlors, you know, where one would draw the head, one would draw the body and one would draw the feet. And part of the point of that game is that somehow, in only drawing a portion of something, the unconscious emerges when you look at the whole thing.
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NICHOLAS NEWTON: (As Santa Claus, singing) Christmas time. Somebody kill me.
LUNDEN: Composer Missy Mazzoli was handed a scene with a depressed Santa Claus and a Mrs. Claus who reminds Santa that 10-year-old Sue believes in him, so he should shape up. She says she liked being part of the experiment.
MISSY MAZZOLI: This is a really great model for a way that opera can be made in the future, not all the time.
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UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR #2: (As character, singing) Trust not in Santa (ph).
LUNDEN: Tying it all together is Justin Vivian Bond, who's onstage for almost the entire opera, while a protean group of four singers and a troop of silent actors inhabit a stage illuminated by projections. Bond says she gets to wear 10 costumes designed by JW Anderson, creative director of Dior.
JUSTIN VIVIAN BOND: Now, I start out as an angel showgirl with this fabulous outfit.
LUNDEN: And though many of the scenes and ideas in "Complications In Sue" are comic or outré, the opera goes to deeper places, says Anthony Roth Costanzo.
COSTANZO: I think mortality emerges as a kind of interesting theme just by virtue of the fact that you're going through the decades of someone's life.
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UNIDENTIFIED ACTORS: (Singing, as character) Ninety-nine revolutions. Ninety-nine revolutions. Ninety-nine revolutions.
LUNDEN: Librettist Michael R. Jackson says, somehow, this unconventional birthing process has created a piece that holds together.
JACKSON: It really is truly a collage and kaleidoscope of scenes from one to the other. But what's interesting is that I don't think it ever feels particularly jarring. It's like you're on a roller coaster ride, and you just kind of have to follow the peaks and valleys and twists and turns that happen.
LUNDEN: "Complications In Sue" plays through this Sunday. For NPR News, I'm Jeff Lunden in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
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