“Amistad,” the new opera by Anthony Davis and Thulani Davis that will have its world premiere by Lyric Opera of Chicago on Saturday, sets a hot subject in mostly cool colors.
The true story of an 1839 slave rebellion aboard the Spanish vessel Amistad will unfold in a stream of haunting, eye-filling scenes that suggest a film more than your average opera. That’s very much the artistic strategy of Cuban-born set designer (and son of an opera singer) Riccardo Hernandez and his colleagues Toni-Leslie James, who designed the period-perfect costumes; Paul Gallo, who created the moody lighting designs; and George C. Wolfe, the Broadway director (“Bring in ‘da Noise/Bring in ‘da Funk”) who is bringing all these creative impulses together on the stage of the Ardis Krainik Theater.
Hernandez explains that the stage will be more of a poetic, stylized space than a realistic playing field. His design palette, he says, runs primarily to ocean-blues, purples, pale yellows and greens. A Federal-style court bench towers over the trial scenes as symbol of an almighty U.S. judiciary bent on punishing the slaves for high crimes committed at sea.
Flat, cut-out houses fly across a blood-red sky as if uprooted by a hurricane-a striking image that enables us to view the New England landscape through the fearful eyes of Africans brought to trial in an alien land they cannot comprehend.
“Riccardo’s work is very minimalist and abstract,” explains poet and playwright Thulani Davis, the work’s librettist. “His sets use formal elements taken directly from the Federalist period. On the other hand, I associate the formality, Classical columns and richness of the textures to George’s taste.” Adds composer Anthony Davis: “There is a solidity and symmetry to the formal elements that fit my music so well. And the backdrops – sometimes impressionistic, sometimes expressionistic – are as emotionally turned-up as my work.”
It was director Wolfe’s idea to employ shrouds as sails on the death ship that gives the opera its title. He says he likes the idea of creating and exploiting on stage a kind of tension between “old-fashioned scenery and contemporary storytelling.” “It’s a very pretty show,” he explains. “I want it to be very romantic, beautiful and pure, so that the behavior and the actions … become like litter on an exquisite landscape.”
If realization matches intention, the Lyric’s “Amistad,” adds Wolfe, will “sound like an opera (but) look and move like a musical.”
