BLOOMINGTON, Indiana (AP) 鈥� When composer Mason Bates approached Michael Chabon about turning his novel 鈥淭he Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay鈥� into an he said the writer told him frankly that 鈥渙pera was not his thing.鈥�
鈥淗e was very supportive of the endeavor and he gave it his blessing, but he said he couldn鈥檛 be involved,鈥� Bates recalled. 鈥淗e was really more giving it a thumbs-up on a rights level.鈥�
So Bates and librettist Gene Scheer proceeded on their own to wrangle into operatic form Chabon鈥檚 sprawling, tale about two young Jewish cousins set over more than a decade before and after World War II.
Now, six years after Bates first read the novel and became inspired by it, the opera is bound for the Metropolitan Opera, due to open the company鈥檚 next season in September 2025.
But first it鈥檚 having its world premiere on Friday in what might seem an unlikely spot, at the Jacobs School of Music on the Indiana University campus in Bloomington. The premiere was originally planned for the Los Angeles Opera, but the company begged off, citing the costs involved.
Bloomington turns out to be not such a surprising choice given that the school has nearly 300 voice students and the Musical Arts Center, built in 1972, was modeled after the Met stage.
鈥淭he space and technology and those kinds of production elements were very attractive to the Met in terms of how the opera would play here,鈥� said Catherine Compton, managing director of the school鈥檚 opera and ballet theater program.
鈥淚t鈥檚 been heartening to see how our students have reacted and been elevated by the Met鈥檚 creative team that鈥檚 been in residence here,鈥� she said. 鈥淎nd also how the creative team has been able to adapt their process to our students.鈥�
In fact, Met staff will be back in Bloomington in January to workshop another forthcoming commission, an opera by Carlos Simon called 鈥淚n the Rush鈥� with a libretto by playwright Lynn Nottage and her daughter, Ruby Aiyo Gerber.
鈥淜avalier & Clay鈥� was commissioned by the Met after Peter Gelb, the company鈥檚 general manager, attended a performance of Bates鈥� first opera, 鈥淭he (R)evolution of Steve Jobs,鈥� in 2017 in Santa Fe, New Mexico.
Paul Cremo, the Met鈥檚 dramaturg, connected Bates with Scheer, a veteran librettist widely praised for his work in turning Herman Melville鈥檚 unwieldy masterpiece 鈥淢oby Dick鈥� into the text for an opera composed by Jake Heggie. The Met will perform that opera next March.
鈥淚 give 鈥楳oby Dick鈥� to new librettists for a model of how to get to the essence,鈥� Cremo said. 鈥溾�楰avalier & Clay鈥� goes down a lot of side roads into history and nooks and crannies. I figured we needed somebody who gets how to adapt and condense a book into an opera.鈥�
With many of the 鈥渘ooks and crannies鈥� 鈥� like a 40-page detour to Antarctica 鈥� stripped away, Scheer was able to focus on the two main characters.
There鈥檚 Joe Kavalier, who escapes to America from Czechoslovakia on the eve of the Holocaust, dreams of bringing his younger brother to safety in America, and falls in love with Rosa, a Bohemian artist. His cousin is the Brooklyn-born Sammy Clay, who dreams of striking it rich and, ambivalent about his sexuality, has a thwarted love affair with a handsome actor.
Together, using Sammy鈥檚 talent for story-telling and Joe鈥檚 artistic genius, the cousins invent a wildly popular comic strip character called The Escapist.
Scheer and Bates identified three distinct worlds depicted in the novel, each of which lent itself to a different compositional style.
鈥淭here鈥檚 the world of World War II, where we see the Kavalier family picked off one by one,鈥� Bates said. 鈥淚t鈥檚 a very dark musical space with a lot of drums and mandolins. Then the big band music of 1940s New York, a lot of swing, a lot of jazz. Then when they start to draw and they create art, we go into this electro-acoustic, techno-symphonic space.鈥�
Bates said he deliberately keeps these sound worlds separate at first, but 鈥渨hat becomes really exciting in the opera is that as Joe goes through kinds of a psychedelic spiral, these worlds start to collide and smash together.鈥�
Keeping these worlds visually separate and then merging them posed both a challenge and an opportunity for director Bart Sher, who worked on the set design with 59 Productions, a company known for its innovative use of projections and animation.
鈥淭he unique challenge to 鈥楰avalier & Clay鈥� is the simultaneity of space and time,鈥� Sher said. 鈥淵ou might see them working in the office of Empire Toys and at the same time see their family struggling in Prague, and at the same time see them try to capture what the experience is like through The Escapist.
鈥淎nd if you can get all three of those elements to work at the same time and have music and song 鈥� then you really have something in this piece that I think is very special.鈥�
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This story has been updated to correct the name of Indiana University.
Mike Silverman, The Associated Press
