Charles Wuorinen: Haroun and the Sea of Stories
BMOP/sound

Of the four operas BMOP and conductor Gil Rose have released since 2019 on BMOP/sound—Tobias Picker's Fantastic Mr. Fox, Gunther Schuller's The Fisherman and His Wife, Norman Dello Joio's The Trial at Rouen, and Charles Wuorinen's Haroun and the Sea of Stories—it's the latter that's the hardest sell from a listening vantage point. The reason's simple enough: as an opera rooted in twelve-tone composition, its music is less easy to embrace than that on the other three. Whereas tunes and melodies appear in the other operas that linger after they're done, there are few to latch onto in Wuorinen's. (Tellingly, an article included with the release recounts meetings Mark Lamos, who directed its world premiere by the New York City Opera in 2004, had with the composer as he was writing the score: “We had a running joke: he'd play a passage for me, and I'd yell, ‘Tunes, Wuorinen! Give me tunes!' And without missing a beat or a note, he'd continue banging out cascades of non-tonal, rhythmically challenging music and yell, ‘I don't do tunes!'”)

Composed between 1997 and 2001, the opera is based, of course, on the novel by Salman Rushdie, who completed it in 1990 while in hiding after Iran's Ayatollah Khomeini condemned him in early 1989 for blasphemy for The Satanic Verses. Haroun and the Sea of Stories can be read on the surface level as an adventure story, but its focus on the fight between the free imagination and the powers attempting to silence it obviously parallels the real-world nightmare Rushdie endured during the ‘90s. Consider, for instance, the rather Orwellian words uttered by Haroun's nemesis, the despotic Khattam-Shud, in the opera: “Foolish child, the world is not for fun, the world is for controlling. Inside every single story is a world, a story world, that I cannot rule at all.”

As Clifton Ingram writes in accompanying notes, the narrative is as complex as the music. Stories are embedded within stories: to save his family, Haroun must “restore his father's Gift of Gab”; to save his father, he "must save the Land of K from the corrupt politician Snooty Buttoo”; to save the Land of K, he must “find and save the Sea of Stories”; and to restore the Sea of Stories, he must venture “to the Land of Chup and defeat the Prince of Silence, Khattam-Shud.” Haroun and the Sea of Stories is ultimately “a tale about storytelling”; more critically, it's about how fundamental and imperative it is to our being and survival.

Implicitly acknowledging that a work rooted in twelve-tone poses challenges to the listener, Rose stresses that Wuorinen's second opera is marked by wit and humour and that it might be best broached as a “a piece of vital theatre.” Stated otherwise, in the conductor's view the optimal impression emerges when the work's experienced in its complete form, as a fully integrated visual and musical creation animated by a compelling narrative, rather than being seen as one focusing on music primarily and the other aspects second. That recommendation has merit: the story-line is engaging, and no doubt the visual presentation in the concert hall would do much to increase accessibility, even if the latter's obviously not part of this release. With booklet photos of the live presentation showing the singers adorned in striking costumes, there's little doubt the concert treatment would be powerful.

There is much to recommend the release. Wuorinen's orchestration is a constant delight for the ears, especially when both it and the writing punctuate the libretto so smartly. The twelve-tone material is adorned in opulent garb, and he maximizes the orchestra's timbral potential from start to finish. (Classifying it reductively as twelve-tone music does the score somewhat of a disservice, incidentally, when it's so abundant in detail and expressiveness.) The realization of the challenging score by fifty-six BMOP orchestral players and Rose is excellent, and the vocal performances are as impressive. Matching her magnificent performance as Saint Joan in The Trial at Rouen, soprano Heather Buck appears as Haroun Khalifa, but she's hardly the only one who acquits herself splendidly. As Rashid Khalifa, Snooty Buttoo, Khattam-Shud, and Princess Batcheat respectively, Stephen Bryant (bass-baritone), Matthew DiBattista (tenor), Neal Ferreira (tenor), and Michelle Trainor (soprano) impress, and eight other singers and sixteen choristers participate, with vocal and instrumental components delivering at a high level.

Librettist James Fenton deftly condensed Rushdie's novel without compromising on the original's essence; even better, the rendering (in rhyming verse) is entertaining, whimsical, and often comical. There are, consistent with Rose's comment, moments of humour and even hilarity. At the beginning of the first act's second scene, the announcer's introduction—“Ladies and Gentlemen, the moment you have all been waiting for: the great Ocean of Notions himself, the Shah of Blah, the Supreme Fiction—Mr. Rashid Khalifa!”—is but one example.

As is always the case with BMOP/sound releases, the presentation of the release is lavish. The package complements two CDs with an eighty-four-page booklet containing articles and the libretto, and the package and booklet are enhanced by arresting colour illustrations that do much to convey the fantastical nature of the story. One thing that does tend to make this two-act opera—133 minutes in this recording—feel long is its first act: an eighty-one-minute total isn't so much an issue for home listening; in the concert hall, however, one imagines a three-act presentation with each part forty-five minutes or thereabouts would be preferable to many a patron. Regardless, Haroun and the Sea of Stories is a remarkable creation and another release of which the BMOP and Rose can be proud. Were Wuorinen still alive, he'd no doubt be thrilled by this exceptional physical realization.

January 2021