Reich and Korot: Three Tales — A Documentary Digital
Video Opera
Steve Reich & Musicians
Synergy Vocals
Bradley Lubman
(conductor)
Nick Mangano (stage direction and design)
Friday 31 May 2002
Memminger
Auditorium,
Charleston, South
Carolina
Presented as part of Spoleto Festival USA 2002
A
co-production of the Wiener Festwochen, Holland Festival, Settembre Musica
Torino, BITE:02 [Barbican Centre, London], Festival musica Strasbourg, Festival
d'Automne à Paris, Hebbel-Theater Berlin, Centro Cultural de Belém [Lisbon], the
Spoleto Festivals and Brooklyn Academy of Music.
In 1993, when composer Steve Reich and video artist Beryl Korot left
the Cave of the Patriarchs in Hebron — site of The Cave, their
study of Abraham, his offspring and their legacy — they took a good bit
of Old Testament imagery with them. The Garden of Eden and the Tree of
Knowledge, its major "prop," are central to Three Tales, premiered at the
Vienna Festwochen in mid-May and presented for the first time in America at
Spoleto Festival USA 2002.
Three Tales completes the video opera that began with Hindenburg (premiered in its original version at Spoleto Festival USA in 1998); the 75-minute triptych now includes "acts" on the atomic testing at Bikini Atoll and Dolly the cloned sheep. Reich describes the completed Tales as reflections on the growth and implications of technology in the 20th century. The fiery crash in 1937 of the swastika-bearing zeppelin Hindenburg at Lakehurst, New Jersey was the first great failure of technology documented on newsreel film. While "Bikini" considers the immense threat of universal destruction wrought by the atomic bomb, Reich and Korot also focus attention on the natives of the atoll, driven forever from their own Eden-turned-nuclear wasteland. "Dolly" raises the issues of genetic engineering and artificial intelligence that the world currently confronts.
Although European critics, beside themselves in praise of the Tales, saw the work as a doom-and-gloom prophecy of the future, Reich insists that it is not an indictment of technology. Rather, it is intended to encourage critical thinking about the possibilities and problems of progress. Particularly moving are newsreel clips of the Bikini natives, manipulated by Korot to suggest figures in paintings by Paul Gauguin.
Man was placed in the Garden of Eden "to serve it and to keep it," Reich says
in his libretto. Problems began, however, when Adam and Eve ate too soon of the
Tree. Thus came into the world the imbalance between the power derived from
knowledge and man's inability to control knowledge and use it benevolently.
"Here we are under the tree, under the tree again, at the end of the day," Reich concludes the Tales following interviews with 18 scientists, sampled by Korot to form a pro-and-con exchange on Dolly. Mankind's chances might indeed be slight, but the door of hope remains open.
Three Tales, compared to The Cave and Hindenburg, is smooth and seamless, with all images projected on a single screen. The five Synergy vocalists and the instrumentalists of the Reich ensemble (string quartet, two pianos and four percussionists), all grouped beneath the screen and superbly lighted by Kevin Adams, gave the effect of a Greek chorus that enhanced the dramatic impact of the narrative.
Particularly effective was Spoleto's choice of Memminger, once Charleston's major auditorium, then deserted as a near-ruin following Hurricane Hugo in 1989, as the venue for the Tales. The site's barren walls, seats patched with duct tape, huge stage and superb acoustics contributed much to the critical stance that Three Tales hopes to encourage.
There is, of course, an irony in the use of advanced digital technology to question technological advances; still, the high-tech set was quick to hail Three Tales as the opera of the 21st century. To be sure, it achieves a total integration of all the arts plus complete control of the assembled forces by one person (or, in this case, two). Richard Wagner, who practically patented the concept, could only dream of such a true Gesamtkunstwerk in the primitive gas-lit theater of his day.
While Europeans found this "theater of ideas" Reich's
finest compositional achievement to date, those less familiar with his work will
probably hear little advance over the basic 
minimalism of his earlier years. Reich, who confesses no
interest in music from Bach to Schoenberg and places Kurt Weill above Alban
Berg, has developed a unique form of music-theater; as demonstrated in
Charleston, it attracts an audience: the more than 800 people who jammed
Memminger were loud in their acclaim of the work. Where Reich and Korot take the
form next will be watched with interest.
