The Opera As Science Fiction

By Michael Walsh

Is there a busier contemporary composer than Philip Glass? The prolific minimalist seems to be everywhere these days, churning out operas, film scores and instrumental music with the tireless industry of an 18th century Kapellmeister. Unlike Haydn, though, Glass has no Prince Esterhazy to keep him in livery, only his appetite for work. In May his The Fall of the House of Usher, based on Poe's grisly tale, opened in Cambridge, Mass. Seven weeks later, the Houston Grand Opera premiered his operatic setting of Doris Lessing's novel The Making of the Representative for Planet 8. Now, and most spectacularly, comes 1000 Airplanes on the Roof in Vienna. The production will tour 39 U.S. and Canadian cities beginning in the fall.

Glass has always been an enthusiastic collaborator, working with Theater Artist Robert Wilson in Einstein on the Beach, fellow Composer Robert Moran in The Juniper Tree and Choreographer Twyla Tharp in In the Upper Room. But 1000 Airplanes may be his most daring ensemble effort yet, involving Chinese- American Playwright David Henry Hwang and Scenic Designer Jerome Sirlin. The trio has produced a science-fiction music drama that is part Freud, part Kafka and part Steven Spielberg.

A 90-minute work for a speaking actor and small ensemble of synthesizers, amplified winds and wordless soprano voice, 1000 Airplanes resurrects the hoary genre of the melodrama. As a musical term, melodrama refers to a composition in which one or more actors recite to musical accompaniment. Schubert's world-weary Abschied von der Erde and Ralph Vaughan Williams' radiant An Oxford Elegy are examples.

1000 Airplanes is the story of M. (Rocco Sisto), a timid Manhattanite who, while walking his date home one night, finds himself transported to an alien ship, where spacemen subject him to various medical experiments, then release him with a warning to forget everything. M.'s struggle to remember, and to tell the world, is at the heart of the piece.

As it is in his current Broadway hit M. Butterfly, Hwang's theme is otherness. M.'s experiences -- in fact, his name itself -- evoke images of Kafka. Like Joseph K. in The Trial and K. in The Castle, M. is a victim of circumstance. Forces beyond his control are propelling him toward a destiny he cannot understand.

"Perception is the fifth dimension," he cries in this delirious monologue, and that is just about the only dimension left to him. On Designer Sirlin's trompe l'oeil stage, the first three dimensions dissolve, shift and disappear; on the spaceship, the fourth, time, is relative and thus meaningless. By the end, a half-crazed M. (the work's title comes from M.'s description of the pounding sounds in his head) has forgotten most of his ordeal, but is left to fear that the nightmare will begin again.

The task of realizing M.'s altered states fell to Sirlin, whose credits include, in addition to opera, Madonna's 1987 "Who's That Girl" tour. The Viennese venue was striking: a section of Hangar No. 3 at Schwechat International Airport. "We looked at a couple of beer halls, but we needed a bigger space," says Sirlin. "Then someone said there was plenty of space at the airport."

To turn the hangar into a giant theatrical "black box," Sirlin invented a brilliant three-dimensional dreamscape that uses holographic projections in place of sets to alter the show's physical and mental terrain. Nine projectors throw a kaleidoscope of images onto a small raked stage and side panels, creating a cinematic illusion in which the actor can dash up the steps of an apartment building and vanish inside or float high above New York. The shift is instantaneous -- like putting a live actor into a movie. Operatic design may never again be the same.

Glass's music adds the final layer to this psychodrama, and he responds with one of his most daring scores. From the arresting opening chords that symbolize the lurking spacemen -- an alien harmonic system that makes sense to them but not us -- to the striking stretch of C-major that underpins poor M.'s longings for a girlfriend, this primal scream of angst surges and soars on an electric current of inspiration.

"I'm trying to invent a way for English to be used as a viable music- theater language," says the composer. "Usher was all sung, The Representative used a mixture of speech and song, and 1000 Airplanes is spoken. But I'm still finding my way." As directed by Glass, the piece emerges as a strong statement in which the whole is, for once, equal to the sum of its formidable parts. And for those who care about contemporary music theater, that is good news.