Center City Opera's "ConNextions'

Two new operas are impressively played and sung in a double-bill by Center City Opera Theater.

The Always Present Present was commissioned by this Philadelphia company and composed by Peter Westergaard with a libretto by Renée Weiss. It's a world premiere production that was performed in Princeton (its creators' home town) in August before its Philadelphia debut.

Weiss's story is taken from her life. It tells of the gift of a collection of love letters that Renée saved from the time she and Ted Weiss met, in 1939, until their marriage during World War II. The couple later became the editors of the prestigious Quarterly Review of Literature. Ted died in 2003; Renée Weiss, still a youthful-looking 87, was present for the premiere.

The opera contains lovely poetry and sensual music by a tiny chamber orchestra. Unfortunately, awkward vocal writing obscures many of the lyrics. The words are spoken and declaimed almost as often as they're sung— and, when they are sung, the vocal notes fail to complement what's going on instrumentally. Nor is there a dramatic reason why the voices and instruments should contrast with each other. Despite the use of a pair of dancers as alter egos for the soprano and baritone who portray Ted and Renée, not much happens on stage.

The good news is that the Weisses' words are exquisitely crafted and poetic, and the instrumental music for violin, cello and piano is lovely. It's atonal, and if you've been moved by Alban Berg's operas Wozzeck or Lulu, or by the works of Anton Webern or Arnold Schoenberg, you'll find many moving moments in Westergaard's score. Jason Switzer, as Ted, copes professionally with the notes he has been given. Darlene Kelsey capably sings the much shorter part of Renée.

Modern but accessible music

Darkling was developed and introduced by American Opera Projects of New York in 2006. The opera is performed by a quartet of singers, with a string quartet on stage, plus an introduction by a separate baritone accompanied by piano.

Stefan Weisman's music is modernistic yet accessible. His short opera Fade, I wrote last year, "had attractive music with softer contours, leaning toward French impressionism." In this story about a Polish Jewish family during the Holocaust, Weisman uses a more somber pallet. There's much variety in this music, as Weisman varies meters and tempi. He also blends the vocalists exquisitely with the string players. Some eight-part harmonies are very attractive and I'd love to hear the music again.

But this enterprise seems more like a cantata than an opera. The libretto is by Anna Rabinowitz, based on her book-length acrostic poem, Darkling: A Poem. In an acrostic, the first letters of each line spell out something, in this case another poem. Rabinowitz used Thomas Hardy's The Darkling Thrush, about "an aged thrush, frail, gaunt, and small," as the armature for her meditations about people who died in concentration camps.

Murky details

Unfortunately, the story is static, its exposition murky and the details not compelling. Rabinowitz is dealing with the tragic fact that many Holocaust victims died with undocumented lives, leaving behind only truncated messages and un-captioned photographs. This is an intriguing point but too weak for theater.

Outstanding singing and playing mark both halves of this production. Soprano Maeve Höglund, mezzo Hai-Ting Chinn, tenor Jon Garrison and bass Martin Hargrove are the excellent quartet in Darkling. The soprano and the baritone, especially, make the most of great solo opportunities.

The instrumentalists for both operas are Jennifer K. Lee, Walter Dupue, Scott Wagner, Glenn Fischbach and Jody Schum. Andrew Kurtz, artistic director of the company, conducts with precision and feeling.