I was greatly disappointed by Claire Greenwood’s article “’Patterns of Inheritance’ excels in style and score, falters on plot” in last Friday’s edition of the Argus (Oct. 31, 2008, Volume CXLIV, Number 16). It was a shoddily written criticism and I am afraid it might mislead students who were unable to attend the opera into thinking that the opera was boring or preachy.
“Patterns of Inheritance” was a lot of things, but honestly not boring or disappointing. The opera libretto was written from Internet snippets that were pieced together deliberately out of their original context. Despite the source diversity, the snippets tended to relate to each other or to the corresponding movement onstage (albeit non-literally). The entire lyrical score was composed to complement the complex rhythm of the phrases. Singers (two blog-writers and a “Greek chorus”) delivered the lines in an operatic manner: lines from Internet blogs that were (obviously) not written with operatic rhythms/scales in mind. The bizarre combination of Internet input and opera output was unconventional and chaotic, but the score expertly united written word and operatic form. I cannot help but feel that Greenwood’s impressions—that “’Patterns’ had no clear plot to speak of” and that “the different singers’ lines … seemed not to relate to their individual characters at all”—are a gut reaction to the opera’s atypical mechanisms and not to the work itself.
Unfortunately, Greenwood did not discuss several aspects of the opera that I found deserving of mention. First, the entire libretto was included in the program, so that the audience could read the words either during or after the performance. Second, technological media ran the gamut: from working televisions placed around the set, to a mid-performance slideshow of Internet images, to an on-stage sound/noise-manipulating orchestra member. Finally, six dancers added movement and expression to the musical performance.
As for the political content, Greenwood’s close-minded interpretation neglects the libretto entirely. The preachy portions she references were pieces of blog entries that provided interpretations of the War on Iraq and the upcoming elections. In searching for a problem or a message from those entries, she once again misses the point entirely. Just as it is nearly impossible to explain the Internet, it is nearly impossible to neatly surmise an overarching wholeness from the production. Attempting to do so necessitates ignoring all the pieces. Consequently, a valid criticism of “Patterns of Inheritance” might be that it was anxiety provoking, a reaction stemming from the opera’s multidimensional quality and the lack of comfortable wholeness (an inevitable audience expectation).
Finally and more importantly than her individual opinion, Greenwood was both disrespectful and unjournalistic in her article. Her statement, “I’m pretty sure most other audience members walked away from ’Patterns of Inheritance,’ the student-produced opera which ran two weekends ago, confused, disappointed or both,” is something akin to saying,, “I don’t like this movie and I’m sure no one else did either!” That bit, at least, belongs in the Opinion section and not in a critical review. Additionally, her quotation from an anonymous Art Studio major who said of the production that, “If you want to do an avant-garde piece then great, but don’t try to pretend like it’s a legit production with bowing and clapping at the end,” was rather offensive (and furthermore, what kind of self-respecting Art Studio major would imply that avant-garde is inherently illegitimate?). The “unusually large” cast (performers and musicians) and crew that volunteered their time to construct and execute the production, a task that spanned more than two months, inarguably deserved applause at the end.
I left “Patterns of Inheritance” with a sincere respect for everyone involved in both the production and in Second Stage. It is a shame that this poorly written article discolored the success of an excellent production.
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