The Hour Has Come

THE WORLD THAT JAMES JOYCE presents in his writing is unique. It’s Dublin, of course, portrayed in prose and verse by a master of language. But it’s a city he knew in staggering detail, peopled by those he also knew well, given life in a few deft strokes of his pen. Joyce also loved music. He sometimes seemed as likely to sing as to write, and music threads throughout his writing, with mentions of song after song, popular and obscure.

Richard Wargo, Michael Pavese,
and Dorothy Danner

So it’s no surprise that Joyce’s words lend themselves to music. Better still, the characters he describes think and act with the intimate characteristics of chamber music. Dubliners, a collection of fifteen stories finished in 1905, offers a view of the city through the lives of a number of seemingly unremarkable residents.

Two of them figure in the story “A Painful Case,” which is the subject of a new opera by Richard Wargo. It premiered as part of this summer’s music festival at the Sembrich Museum in Bolton Landing, New York, and it’s so new that only the first act (of two) was presented.

It was envisioned as a one-act but, as Wargo writes in the program notes, he didn’t anticipate “over the course of writing the libretto and developing one evolving relationship between the two characters in this intimate story, that the opera would double in size.”

He was inspired by a dramatization of the story by Michael Pavese, a longtime friend, and promised to be a story that would fit quite well into the intimate performance space at the museum.

This it does. Splendidly. That’s because the music and lyrics are extremely compelling, because the singers are extraordinary, and because the playing space is used so creatively. The venue is the music studio built for the renowned soprano Marcella Sembrich, now a museum that affords an intimate performance space.

For this piece, the instrumentalists – pianist and string quartet – were placed in a small room upstage of a windowed wall with a set of French doors in its center. Following a lush, slow introduction by the string quartet, the piano entered, the tempo quickened, and James Duffy entered. Baritone Nicholas Fahrenkrug inhabited this character with casual deftness, his excellent voice and acting at first concealing Duffy’s priggishness, although it sneaks out when he offers the strange observation, early on, that “I have this odd habit,” that of thinking of himself in the third person.

James Joyce

His general detachment is so entrenched that when he mentions finding within himself “a trace of empathy,” it wins a surprised glance from a character called Everyman. He’s not in the original story, but serves the necessary purpose of adding dimension to the main characters and smoothing transitions between scenes. It’s a non-speaking (and -singing) role, but, as played by Shane Troxell, Everyman inhabits his moments with the reserved presence of a good valet, but displaying subtle reactions to moments that deserve them. It would be easy to overplay these moments, but Troxell keeps it all in check.

Although Duffy promises us “an adventureless tale,” he is a concert-goer, and at one such event he meets Emily Sinico, a woman married to a ship’s captain and thus with a lot of time on her hands. They meet to the strains of Mozart’s “Eine Kleine Nachtmusik,” and variations on a theme from that piece run under the vocal exchange that marks this meeting. Besides bringing an excellent voice to the role, soprano Emily O’Connor inhabits it with propriety and an undercurrent of longing.

Expanding on the bones of Joyce’s story, Wargo creates more opportunities for music. Emily, it turns out, is a singer, which she reveals after the two attend a concert of music by Brahms. She notes Brahms’s longing for Clara Schumann, and, as they enjoy an after-concert drink at (the still-standing Bewley’s Café, tellingly wonders if the Romance in F, a late-career piano piece, was meant as a kind of love-note to Clara.

This draws Duffy into the duet “We have music,” setting the stage, as they walk home through the rain, for the incredibly affecting “Strolling side by side,” an innocent recitation of actions revealing the churn of emotions within. Soon the two are getting together to play music for piano four-hands, and Mrs. Sinico finally is persuaded to sing. Mozart’s “Voi che sapete” and Schubert’s “Die Forelle” start it off, or at least tastes of them, then “At That Hour,” a song thus contextualized as something classic. It’s actually Wargo’s setting of a poem from Joyce’s collection Chamber Music. “Play on, invisible harps, unto Love, / Whose way in heaven is aglow / At that hour when soft lights come and go, / Soft sweet music in the air above / And in the earth below,” runs the third of its three stanzas, and with it the emotional weight of the moment changes.

The cast and creative team

We feel at once the happiness this couple is now able to share, yet there’s a sense of foreboding as well. It’s an emotional pivot borrowed from “The Dead,” the last of the Dubliners stories, and it serves the two-part construction of this story well. As a composer, Wargo know how to support the complicated emotional layers of a Joyce story with music that is melodic without succumbing to the sentimental, nicely geared to the voices for which he’s writing. As a librettist, he is as choosy with his words as Joyce is, and there’s no higher compliment.

The intimacy of the experience was enhanced by the instrumentation: a piano quintet. Danny Zelibor, pianist and music director, worked in concert with the Hyperion String Quartet, skilfully supporting the singers while doing justice to the beauty of Wargo’s music. Director Dorothy Danner made full use of the smallish space available, turning what could have been the liability of a bisected playing area into a virtue as those French doors were put into service.

I know where the couple is headed in “A Painful Case,” which becomes a wrenching study of loneliness. I’m eager to see the complete opera when the second act is finished – and Wargo promises that it’s underway. I’ll have handkerchiefs handy.

The performance opened with the Hyperion String Quartet playing works by Haydn and Mozart. Cellist Jonathan Brin gave an insightful introduction noting that these are pieces Joyce (and, thus, his characters) might have heard and enjoyed, and that there was a slight connection because they would perform one of the six quartets that Mozart dedicated to Haydn.

How startling to hear this ensemble in such a setting! It literally was like having them in your living room. The sound was big and rich, the notes more exposed than in a large hall.

Haydn’s Quartet in C, Op. 76 No. 3, known as the “Emperor,” was the opener. A five-note motif opens the sunny first movement, a motif that will recur in many guises. Each of the players was able to shine in solo moments, and they blended with ease. Amanda Brin and Jamecyn Morey were the violinists, with violist Youming Chen.

The second movement features a folksong-like melody Haydn wrote as an anthem to Francis II, Emperor of the Austrian Empire; the tune took off and became Germany’s national anthem as well as the tune for countless alma maters. Through four variations, the melody never strays far, and is even hinted in the busy fourth and final movement of this piece. That sunny mood persisted through the menuetto and finale, and why not? It’s Haydn’s specialty.

During the first-movement development section there’s an amusing peasant-dance moment as the violins play against a drone from the viola and cello. There’s also a similar moment in the third movement of the Mozart quartet, possibly pointing to that composer’s enthusiasm for dancing. But, as Brin reminded us, Mozart’s writing is always vocal, even in an instrumental line. The work was Mozart’s Quartet No. 16 in E-flat, K. 428, a tasty confection brilliantly performed.

At That Hour, Act One
A Chamber Opera after James Joyce
Music and libretto by Richard Wargo
Based on an adaptation by Michael Pavese
The Sembrich Studio
Bolton Landing, NY, 25 August 2024