Mason Bates, the Richmond-bred composer known for his incorporation of electronica in orchestrations, is readying his latest opera, “The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay,” for New York’s Metropolitan Opera.
The work, with a libretto by Gene Scheer, was introduced last year at Indiana University’s Jacobs School of Music. It was to be a co-production of the Met and Los Angeles Opera, “but Los Angeles backed out, citing the cost and complexity of the work as it was struggling to recover from the financial setbacks from the pandemic,” Adam Nagourney writes in The New York Times.
“Kavalier & Clay,” based on Michael Chabon’s novel, is the story of an American and his cousin, a refugee from Nazi-occupied Czechoslovakia, who create a fantasy hero fighting oppression.
“[A]dapting a novel with this many story zigs and character zags was daunting,” Nagourney writes. ‘It’s a huge lift, to be frank,’ Scheer said. ‘We had to cut an enormous amount and reimagine it in a way that would invite music in. That’s the trick to this: to find a way for the music to distill the story.’ ”
Bates’ employment of electronic sounds and electronically driven rhythms – a technique he honed as DJ Masonic, his club performance persona, and has used in many of his scores – is challenging, even for a company that in recent years has staged a number of contemporary operas, Yannick Nézet-Séguin, the Met’s music director, told Nagourney.
“There have been a lot of attempts in music to try and mix electronica with acoustic instruments,” Nézet-Séguin said. “Most of it feels interesting and experimental but not really successful. In the case of Mason, it’s just perfectly integrated. He knows how to make it so it’s not constricting for a conductor and orchestra – and brings something to the texture that is complementary and does not overpower the acoustic instruments.”
Electronica seems a natural for an opera that “moves like ‘Raiders of the Lost Ark,’ ” Bates said. “It’s like, boom, boom, boom. Nazis. Superheroes.”
“The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay” opens the Met’s 2025-26 season on Sept. 21 and runs for six more performances through Oct. 11.
Nagourney’s Times article:
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