Disclaimer: if you have never read or seen the play, or seen the movie, of John Patrick Shanley's Doubt, be warned that this diary contains major spoilers.
There is a line from a novel that 3CM the loser is guessing that most of you have not read, The Collector Collector by Tibor Fischer, which goes (lightly edited):
"When is prudence cowardice? When it fails. When is insanity bravery? When it succeeds. It is the result that captions the policy: Luck, the (f*$#)."
There actually is a bit of a connection between this line and the story of
Doubt: A Parable, by John Patrick Shanley, which was originally a play (from 2004), then later a movie (2008), and most recently, an opera (2013). It's the last of these (of course - this is 3CM writing this diary, after all) that's the focus of this diary, because
Union Avenue Opera just gave the STL premiere of said opera, with music by Douglas J. Cuomo and libretto by JPS, last night. The local classical critic, Sarah Bryan Miller of the
St. Louis Post-Dispatch, had a preview article about this production
here. The big appeal for local audiences, besides the fact that there is a certain claque that is loyal to UAO, is that in the role of Sister Aloysius is local opera heroine Christine Brewer, who lives across the river in Lebanon, IL, and is widely popular with and loved by local classical audiences.
On the more intellectual side, for opera nerds, the fact that this is the opera's 2nd-ever production, after the 2013 premiere production at Minnesota Opera (
you betcha), adds another layer of interest. In general, It's difficult enough for new operas to get staged, because opera is, by its nature, very expensive. One has to keep in mind:
* You're taking a chance on a totally new work that no one's ever staged, played, or sung.
* Thus everyone involved needs to put in a lot of time, and to be paid a decent wage for it.
* Marketing is also harder, because classical and opera audiences, in particular, "know what they like and like what they know".
However, the presence of Brewer and the knowledge of the story undoubtedly (groan - sorry) helped a great deal with PR. There is, of course, the much darker reason for this story "selling more easily", to be crude and somewhat tactless about it, namely, of course, the long-running child sexual abuse scandal in the Catholic Church, most recently revived in the public consciousness through the film Spotlight.
To be honest, self was a bit cynical that JPS might have been milking this story for all it was worth (literally), with its 3rd incarnation (although opera is anything but a generally profitable or financially sensible endeavor). However, according to
this NYT article by Corinna da Fonseca-Wollheim, JPS apparently meant at the start to decline the offer from Cuomo to make an opera out of the story:
'The first thing John Patrick Shanley will tell you about the
opera“Doubt” is that he did it out of guilt. He agreed to a meeting with the composer
Douglas J. Cuomo intending to say no, he did not want to rewrite his Pulitzer Prize-winning play turned Oscar-nominated movie as an opera libretto. But then he forgot all about it and stood Mr. Cuomo up, not even checking his cellphone to see the politely insistent reminders.
Over lunch recently in a restaurant near his home in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, Mr. Shanley recounted how he set up a second meeting. This time “I knew I was doomed,” he said with a sly smile. “I knew I was going to have to say yes.”'
This rather contradicts the account in Miller's article:
"Turning Doubt into an opera was the idea of composer Douglas J. Cuomo. “I am always looking around for topics I think are suitable for opera,” he says. “I thought it would make a great one, because it has all of what I’m looking for — conflict, drama, beautiful language — and it seemed that there were some beautiful arias built in already.”
Cuomo contacted Shanley, who liked the idea and agreed to write the libretto."
Hmm.…
That aside, how was it? Well, it was OK, but nothing hugely special. In spite of UAO artistic director Scott Schoonover's best efforts to sell the work in the article by Miller:
“It’s a beautiful piece. I’m surprised that it hasn’t been picked up by anyone else yet.”
IMHO, the opera didn't seem all that great to me. There were some funny moments and lines (kids singing "booger, booger", after Father Flynn tells a tale of a kid who picked his nose, and later died of meningitis due to dirty nails - don't ask) and the writing was definitely in the "audience-friendly" vein, with decent moments for Sister Aloysius and Father Flynn (baritone Wes Mason, very good, charming and authoritative in style) to have it out with each other at the top/near-top of their voices. But in sticking fairly closely to the story (at least as best as I remember the story - I've seen the play, but not the movie), things rather drag at times, especially in the latter part of Act II. The closest show-stopping moment all evening was the Act II scene with Mrs. Miller, the Af-Am mom of the 1st Af-Am kid ever in the history of St. Nicholas School, Donald Miller. But I honestly couldn't hum a note of it if you asked me to.
In fact, in the original production at Minnesota Opera, in the
NYT review, James R. Oestreich caught this point:
"The operatic setting, in two acts, highlights all the finagling and petty jealousies in the story but seems unable to get at the deep underlying emotions. Emotion being the great driving force of opera, the work comes to full life only when Mrs. Miller enters in the second act. There are no great operatically scaled heroes; there is no huge tragedy. And the action is uneven."
Because in terms of plot, there aren't any typically "operatic" events like what Oestreich alludes to ("no huge tragedy"), any resonances come from the small-scale events and resonances, which were already present in the play (and, I assume the movie), that I can tell. The obvious big resonance is the question of whether Father Flynn is guilty of inappropriate sexual misconduct with Donald Miller. The "party line" is expressed in Miller's preview article:
"Father Flynn's guilt or innocence is left undetermined."
Actually, from even a not-that-close listen to the opera, it seems pretty much "not in doubt": Father Flynn did it. The evidence, however, is very weak, and most probably would not stand up in any court of law, as it is pretty much based on Sister Aloysius' one-track-mind conviction that Father Flynn is guilty, based on very isolated incidents (like one other kid suddenly pulling his hand away when Father Flynn takes that kid by the hand), or the smell of alcohol on Donald Miller's breath after a meeting with Father Flynn. The ultimate circumstantial evidence comes towards the end, in the big confrontation between Sister Aloysius and Father Flynn, where she plays an apparent ace in the hole, that she contacted one of his previous parishes, and has evidence of his past guilt in similar situations. She tells him that he can request a transfer out of St. Nicholas, and leaves him alone. The logic is that if he were innocent, he wound stand his ground and fight her in front of the church authorities, which he would be a slam-dunk to win, given that Monsignor Benedict likes him, and the patriarchal structure of the church is weighed in favor of men anyway. Given the stories that have emerged of the long-running pattern of abusive priests being reassigned to new parishes after they did bad stuff in one parish, this seems pretty damning and convincing, on a gut-feeling level.
But here's the catch (major spoiler alert). It turns out that Sister Aloysius kind of did a Breitbart on Father Flynn, when SIster Aloysius tells the younger and more naïve Sister James that she made no such call to Father Flynn's previous parish, and thus she had no real evidence in her hands, or from a 3rd party, of his past guilt. In other words, Sister Aloysius nailed Father Flynn on totally false pretenses, which compromises her authority. Her own character has been a ramrod, rigid, old school type, not open to "new thinking", in Father Flynn's outlook. She is not a terribly sympathetic character, and is very easy to dislike, even if she is nominally acting in an apparently "just" cause, trying to stop what she sees as a rogue priest who preys sexually on underage boys.
But here's the countercatch, at least IMHO (again): Sister Aloysius got Father Flynn correct. This is in spite of her unethical means of learning the truth about him. Plus, Father Flynn kept saying that Sister Aloysius did not act properly by not going through the proper hierarchy, by reporting the incident to his superior, Monsignor Benedict, which, by the strict letter of protocol, is a correct "bureaucratic" analysis on Father Flynn's part. But you know that he's in good with Monsignor Benedict, who would have never accepted such accusations about Father Flynn. In other words, had Sister Aloysius followed "proper protocol", she would have been totally hosed. Both she and he know it, because the rules were tilted in his favor. So to get rid of him, she knew that she couldn't go through 'normal' channels.
As well, there's a lot about Father Flynn to like. He's charismatic, appealing, and certainly more open-minded, and more "progressive" than Sister Aloysius. He has a much better rapport with people and much more personal warmth than Sister Aloysius (granted, that's not difficult). He seems "cool", which Sister Aloysius definitely is not. But again, keep in mind that he knows how to game the system in his favor, in terms of any past misdeeds. Cuomo has a sharp insight in how he needed to treat the music for Father Flynn:
“You can’t really know what he’s thinking. Ideally, you want different people in the audience to have a different sense of whether Father Flynn is guilty or not, because of what (they) bring to it. It can’t be neutral; there has to be some inkling that he might not be telling the truth.”
A further layer of complication comes from Mrs. Miller, after Sister Aloysius speaks of inappropriate conduct of Father Flynn towards her son Donald. Far from being shocked at this, Mrs. Miller is more resigned, and strangely "forgiving" of any possible inappropriate behavior of Father Flynn, because circumstances at home are much, much worse. Donald's own father beats his son, and Mrs. Miller hints that he's because of Mr. Miller's homophobia and suspicions that Donald is of a "certain sexual orientation". The only adult male who has shown Donald any decency is Father Flynn. In other words, Mrs. Miller is saying that even if Father Flynn has made certain (inappropriate) moves on Donald, given how bad Donald has gotten it from his own dad, it could be a lot worse.
Sister James, the young and naïve teacher at the school, is much more inclined to give Father Flynn the "benefit of the doubt", and to respect that he's innocent until proven guilty, which is legally just and proper, after all. (Remember Drumpf railing that HRC “is guilty and everyone knows it", on the faux e-mail 'scandal'?) But this ties back again to Father Flynn knowing how to work the system. Sister James seems somewhat unaware that he is really good at that, although maybe a hint of such awareness starts to creep in during the scene between Father Flynn and Sister James, which is almost an intellectual seduction scene, if not a conventional sexual seduction scene. At the end, she is understandably miffed at Sister Aloysius for maneuvering Father Flynn out of St. Nicholas School.
But there's one last twist of the knife. Sister Aloysius reveals to Sister James that she did contact Monsignor Benedict with her accusations. But the Monsignor dismissed them (no big surprise). Furthermore, Father Flynn was appointed to a new parish, to a position of higher authority compared to his post at St. Nicholas. In other words, Father Flynn wound up in an even better situation for his career than before. He gamed the system, just like before, and is now "someone else's problem". Sister Aloysius “kicked the can down the road", so to speak, but at great mental and ethical cost, because of her underhanded actions to do so. On a micro level, she won, and he lost. But on a macro level, he won, and she lost.
The other loser aspect of this diary is because the core artwork behind the opera, the play, is 10+ years old, and even the movie is just shy of 8 years old, discussion of this dramatic subject is old hat. But given that the abuse scandal continues to have ramifications, even if they don’t make the headlines at this time, the subject will, it seems, sadly always be with us.
Will this opera get a 3rd production anywhere? 3CM the loser has no idea, since, as the late great Yogi Berra said: "Prediction is difficult, especially about the future". To be honest, I wasn't all that won over by the opera, so I'm not holding my breath for another company in the US to stage it. By contrast, Miller's review, posted just this afternoon (so it’ll be in print tomorrow), is pretty much an unqualified rave, which will no doubt help UAO’s box office.
The play will have much longer shelf life, since it's much easier to stage, of course, with just actors (and many fewer performers overall), and of course, you can rent the DVD or the movie or get it from Netflix pretty easily. But if nothing else, UAO certainly gets points for stretching its wings, and giving the opera a second chance, especially in a world where new operas and new classical music have the worst time in getting second chances.
With that, feel free either to:
(A) Discuss the topic on hand, or (B) Observe the standard SNLC protocol.
Or there's always the option of (C), i.e. both :) .