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Larry Littany Litt

 

Searing modernist opera leaves you wanting to see it resurrected Photo by Valeriya Landar. Opera GAZ Created by Yara Arts Group and Novo Opera Virlana Tkacz: Director, Concept and Libretto  Roman Grygoriv: Composer, Libretto and Conductor Illia Razumeiko: Composer and Libretto Waldemart Klyuzko: Set Designer Simon Mayer: Choreographer Tetiana Sherstiuk: Costumes  Reviewed Dec. 22, 2019 by Larry Littany Litt   Gas is the power driven blood of the industrial world’s ubiquitous engine. Gas is about seeking out hidden chthonic death in difficult places where ancient animals and plants died eventually decaying then compressed into a liquid mass. We all know how gas rises to the surface then is refined for our human use. But what happens socially when it rests in a gas plant. What are the dramatic possibilities and interactions? Are humans and gas compatible or is gas a jealous lover/antagonist?   Photo by Valeriya Landar. Opera GAZ is Yara Arts Group’s reinterpretation of George Keiser’s 1919 Expressionist play about an explosion in a Ukranian gas refinery. This version is one of the most searing intentional modernist operas I’ve ever seen. From the giant halo of blinking lights to the details of the Modernist designed piano, no essence of Opera GAZ’s theatricality is left unnoticed. I was moved into another world of music and song where worker/singers in drab costumes enrich and reposition their lives as workers will do on the job with conflict, love and existential angst.   Roman Grygoriv, one of the opera’s composers and librettists onstage plays a manic music ensemble conductor in the exposed risers and on the factory floor. His gyrations, dancing, and general chaotic movement attract the eye as the multi-talented singers form different choral lineups that project the difficulty of working around dangerous materials. The highly charged libretto moved me to spine-tingling expectation of the inevitable accident to come. All is not right in happy socialist worker land. Photo by Valeriya Landar. Every factory floor needs a stand up brothel piano to pace the workers and keep the rhythms of production apace with the boss’s schedule. Composer and librettist Illia Razumeiko plays an altered, decorated piano as if he were in Fritz Lang’s masterpiece Metropolis. This caricatured pianist slowly becomes unhinged and altered as the workers sing their way to the combustive crescendo of utter madness and real destruction. The pianist and piano descend into a shattering finale that burst my brain. I was glad to see and hear it. Could Yara/Novo do the same every performance? I’m left with questions about the mystery of this brilliant unique opera. Ms. Tkacz’s direction stunned me. There was total audience silence throughout the performance. The end of this opera cross-fired my brain. Finally an apocalyptic theater piece that left me wanting to see it resurrected from the ashes of its infernal chaos. A must see if you hear it is being remounted.   “And God created the heavens and the earth, people, animals and plants, and all the elements but we created for them the energy for the entire industrial world… GAZ”

 

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