Inventive troupe turns diaries into opera
On Site Opera uses Postal Service to deliver songs, more
A strange package arrived on our doorstep last week. Strange because it didn’t contain masks, or disinfectant wipes, or even another jar of that chili-crisp paste we keep blowing through. It was a box of opera.
“The Beauty That Still Remains: Diaries in Song ” is the latest experiment by the New York-based On Site Opera, a company that stays true to its name, even as it eschews that most foundational of operatic conventions: the stage.
It’s also the latest example of the many ways opera is reinventing itself amid a pandemic that has kept houses shuttered for the better (read: worse) part of a year. Without audiences filling rows in real life, opera companies are experimenting with ways to keep fans engaged — even if they have to do it one listener at a time.
Since 2014, On Site has put on productions of classical and contemporary operas at barbecue joints, soup kitchens, libraries, wax museums and catacombs in the name of liberating the form from the confines of the concert hall. And since the onset of the pandemic, and the closing of venues in general, the company has adapted by adopting quasi-virtual strategies for presenting its most recent productions.
In the spirit of social distancing, “To My Distant Love” split Beethoven’s lovelorn song cycle “An die ferne Geliebte” (Op. 98) into personalized phone calls. Homebound audience members assumed the role of the “distant love” and received an over-the-phone serenade from a soprano or a baritone, depending on individual fancy.
“The Beauty That Still Remains” takes this indirectly direct approach and slows it down — perhaps more than originally intended — by employing the U.S. Postal Service as a medium. Every two weeks, audience members receive a new “diary” in the mail, each one based on a different song cycle: Leos Janacek’s “The Diary of One Who Vanished” ( based on the journals of Osef Kalda), Dominick Argento’s “From the Diary of Virginia Woolf ” (what it says on the tin) and Juliana Hall’s “A World Turned Upside Down” ( based on the diaries of Anne Frank).
Presented as a trio of elegantly designed folios, each diary contains handwritten diary entries (which function here as librettos), photos, pamphlets with essays on the works and notes on the performers (which include mezzo-soprano Vanessa Cariddi, soprano Chantal Freeman, tenor Bernard Holcomb and pianist Howard Watkins), and QR codes that link listeners directly to the music. (Orders are open until Jan. 24, and the audio performances will remain available through March 1.)
Even for those already familiar with the song cycles, the diaries open a beguiling new entrance. Their physical heft in your hands lends the music a new, tactile dimension, and the private ritual of listening and leafing through the pages imparts an uncanny intimacy that extends beyond the crisp closeness of the recordings.