Pletts: Music inside and outside 

“Siddhartha, She: A Ritual Music Drama in Seven Tableaux” was given its world premiere in our music tent on Aug. 2. Good for us for co-commissioning a gorgeous, humane, original stage production. 

The name Siddhartha is claimed to be the first name of a man called Buddha. Whomever he was or wasn’t, Siddhartha is a name associated with someone who attains a nearly constant state of love during his/her lifetime. And the beauty of Aspen’s production is that it is a woman’s journey. The world needs feminine energy now to rebalance our lives on Earth. 

“When I want to think, let me instead open. When I want to know, let me instead love,” writes librettist Melissa Studdard. Her sometimes-melodious, sometimes funny, sometimes challengingly self-reflecting words were set to music by composer, Christopher Theofanidis.   

There’s a blue (cloth) “river” downstage sometimes broken up, but also whole — stretching across the entire stage. And we can journey with it while Christopher’s music ebbs and flows through a story of the etheric, opportunity for embodiment and transcendence with Nature. His score surprises, interjects, soothes, and connects the extensive moods of the heroine. 

In the seventies and eighties in New York and Europe, a “new” kind of opera emerged. Robert Wilson, a director and artist who studied at Pratt Institute had the magnetism to get hoards to travel by subway to the Brooklyn Academy and sit for — 4 1/2 hours? — and listen to and watch “Einstein on the Beach.” We went partly because it was the thing to do, but like Siddhartha, I’m not a good follower. 

So, we attended hoping the artistry would inspire. It did when I allowed it to. Big, empty spaces in an abstract set plus long pauses left me empty, unless I put myself into the work. They called my generation weird (good!), John Denver repeatedly said “far out” — but we encouraged many to feel more, slow down, and perceive the world around us better. It’s interesting to sit longer than one might, in a kind of disciplined meditation. Being born in the West, I was not accustomed to this. But when artists get us to extend our concentration and focus, on repetitive music and illuminated images, it provides time to change. I was fortunate to observe and assist artists who dared to build on the traditional power of the operatic form, who paved the way for new works.  

Though to quote Eleanor Roosevelt in her autobiography, “its (retrospection) danger is that one may easily tend to become self-absorbed in one’s voyage of discovery and self-analysis.” There’s much too much of that in this culture. People here need to care more for each other, beyond the family unit. For me, a benefit of contemporary opera is to allow unfamiliar reaction and eventually put that into action. Voltaire persuaded his audience to reflect with “Candide,” Oscar Hammerstein II did it over and over. Traditional operas do this, of course, like Verdi’s duet from Simon Boccanegra when the daughter pleads with her father. Now, “Siddhartha, She” does this. 

Congratulations to Melissa, Christopher (I understand it took 20 years!), Lauri Stallings (choreographer) Robert Spano (conductor), Alexandra Munroe and Robert Rosenkranz (primary funders), our Aspen Music Festival, and others who truly believe in the power of creativity and its potential to evolve humanity. As I felt the reflection and intensity with which the tent audience asked itself the questions that soprano Caitlin Lynch so superbly sang out, I was satiated, couldn’t stand at the end for the clapping, and knew that Elizabeth Paepcke and Gordon Hardy would be pleased. Brava. 

This weekend, Aug. 8 and 9, there will be opportunity to directly support local creativity on Buttermilk Mountain at the UP IN THE SKY MUSIC FESTIVAL. The Jakes Film and Music Arts Foundation (JFMAF) will have a dedicated hospitality tent. JFMAF awards scholarships to high school seniors who demonstrate storytelling talent in film and music. Yeah! Our own Victoria of Victoria’s — the former long-time café — is heading the team. She endlessly supported poets who read and sipped in her cafe. She was just warming up and is at it again with the beneficial.company and more. Come dance and support young artists in our mountains!