The G-Forces (Ginsberg and Glass) Combine: Hydrogen Jukebox Blares at Tri-Cities Opera
Despite - or perhaps because of - its startling unconventionality, Hydrogen Jukebox is a popular piece for opera companies to perform these days, but it is probably safe to say that no one has ever staged it like Tri-Cities Opera.
“Since Tri-Cities has an amazing Resident Artist program, it totally makes sense to choose some repertoire that not only is modern and inventive, but also features this ensemble in a unique way,” comments Stage Director Alison Moritz, who is based out of New York City.
The work is a chamber opera with words by the late, groundbreaking poet of the Beat generation, Allen Ginsberg, and music by the equally seminal and still living, still working composer Philip Glass.
After Ginsberg’s poem Howl was published in 1955, America shook to a kind of attention, and was never the same as it had been before the poem’s publication. The opera’s title came from a verse in that poem: “listening to the crack of doom on the hydrogen jukebox,” and the poet himself once said that Hydrogen Jukebox’s, “secret message, secret activity, is to relieve human suffering by communicating some kind of enlightened awareness of various themes, topics, obsessions, neuroses, difficulties, problems, perplexities that we encounter as we end the millennium.” Without using a plotline, the opera explores themes such as war, sexuality, ideology, drugs, and the political and planetary environment.
The composer is best known for his film scores like The Hours, The Truman Show, and Notes on a Scandal, and his experimental operas such as Einstein on the Beach and The Juniper Tree. Glass has also written eleven symphonies. His innovative music in Hydrogen Jukebox, which premiered in 1990, is as relentless as Ginsberg’s words. The instrumental casting includes cow bells, finger cymbals, hand claps, and anvil.
Moritz explains that the two highly recognized artists found an immediate rapport upon meeting, “so we’re trying to build an ensemble of performers that builds on that rapport.”
Ginsberg and Glass were artistic contemporaries and neighbors in New York’s East Village. They met by chance in 1988 in St. Mark’s Bookshop – a landmark and neighborhood staple that closed just last year, victim of hard times for bookstores. Moritz relates the story of what happened when Glass approached Ginsberg to ask if the two might do a presentation together. “Allen picked a copy of his collected poems off the shelf… and he started to do this sort of spontaneously musical reading of his own poetry. That’s the seed from which Hydrogen Jukebox grew.”
Moritz reveals that “the idea originally was to present an abstract of American life in many ways.” Most productions over these last 27 years have been staged using abstract sets and interjecting film projections, but this director was inspired by something more concrete: she decided to set the opera at the end of Ginsberg’s life.
Twenty years ago, a terminally ill Ginsberg returned to his railroad-style apartment after a hospital stay, and lay in a coma for two days. During those hours, his caring friends and neighbors – including luminary cultural figures such as Glass, Patti Smith, and Johnny Depp - his relatives; Peter Orlovsky, his partner of 40 years; and Buddhist monks seated in a row sought to attend him and his spirit as it passed out of this world. “The audience will be seated on both sides of the apartment,” Alison describes, with performers moving through the space, “in a way you might not be used to.”
Because of the richness of Allen Ginsberg’s experiences and the prolific poetic expression of his beliefs and observations, this production of Hydrogen Jukebox seeks to use a projection of Ginsberg’s totality as a reflection of America in the latter half of the 20th century, and the timeless ideological struggles of humankind. But some Ginsberg admirers turned away when he defended pederasty and became a member of the vilified North American Man-Boy Love Association (NAMBLA), which he claimed to have done in defense of free speech.
Was that going too far? “I think Allen Ginsberg did not shy away from life in any form,” Moritz answers, “and it’s possible to give a gift to humanity without being a perfect person.” She adds that, “He was involved and opinionated about many of the major cultural debates,” and that he was a controversial figure. “He was during his entire life and will continue to be.”
Hydrogen Jukebox is often performed with its singers depicting six iconic, stylized American figures: a waitress, a policeman, a businessman, a cheerleader, a priest, and a mechanic. The TCO presentation does not employ that convention, which had been a directorial choice for the original production. In this interpretation, the archetypes are embodied in the artistic and familial figures in Allen’s life. Moritz says she wanted to “try and get more of the juice of the text from its incredible realism and incredible sort of ecstasy.”
As a freelance stage director, Moritz directs about a dozen operas each year around the country. For this production, she is teamed with maestro Branden Toan (returning after his popular music direction of TCO’s Sweeny Todd last season), six resident singers, and local actor Bill Gorman who portrays Allen Ginsberg in spoken text.
“Typically, when you stage an opera, everybody comes in and they’re all already memorized. We make sure we all are on the same page musically, and then we start staging right away,” Alison explains. But this experience is different. Using basically the Viewpoints technique, developed for modern dance and ensemble theatre, Moritz and her cast have dedicated “maybe a third of the rehearsal time” creating in that way.
The production takes place in TCO’s smallest performance space, “and in a more intimate context. If anyone is shying away from attending Hydrogen Jukebox because they think they’re going to get less show than they would during a Sweeney Todd or during a big show like La Traviata, I would encourage them to come and check it out. There is going to be a lot of show… more enriched for singers [and] a more nuanced, alive production for the audience.”
Hydrogen Jukebox runs on weekends from April 21st through April 30th at the Tri-Cities Opera Center Savoca Hibbitt Hall, 315 Clinton Street in Binghamton. Ticket prices are $40-50. There is a free preview on April 8th. For tickets and more information call (607) 772-0400 or visit tricitiesopera.com.
