THENEWYORKER,OCTOBER3, 2022 73
carries political resonances—notably in
its portrait of Octavius Caesar, the fu-
ture Emperor Augustus, who defeats the
rebellious lovers and exposes himself as
a soulless dictator-in-training.
Plutarch, in his life of Antony, wished
to demonstrate how a great soldier had
fallen prey to feminine temptations.
Shakespeare complicated that scheme
by granting Cleopatra an aura of liter-
ary majesty. Adams further undercuts
the Roman moral by letting Cleopatra
have both the first and the last word.
In place of Philo’s introductory lines
about “The triple pillar of the world
transform’d/Into a strumpet’s fool”—
words that Caesar will utter later in the
opera, with spluttering venom—Cleo-
patra and her handmaidens enact a
scene imported from “The Taming of
the Shrew,” dressing the drunken An-
tony in female garb. The notion of An-
tony being “unmanned” thus takes on
a playful vibe, as if to say, “So what?”
Nevertheless, the love affair of An-
tony and Cleopatra is no oasis of illicit
sensuality, on the order of the various
incarnations of “Romeo and Juliet,” or
of its delirious Wagnerian cousin,
“Tristan und Isolde.” The rat-a-tat, scher-
zando energy of the opening bars is sus-
tained throughout the first act, which
takes us up to Antony’s defeat at the
Battle of Actium. There’s something
desperate and unsettled about the an-
tics of these middle-aged lovers, both of
whom are losing ground to a new im-
perial dispensation. The dialogue un-
folds with Adams’s practiced natural-
ism, yet the orchestra seethes underneath,
delivering brief, explosive outbursts that
variously suggest Cleopatra’s tantrums,
Antony’s bouts of self-pity, and the ner-
vous reactions of their underlings. All
this instrumental agitation conveys the
feeling of characters caught in a rapid-
flowing stream that is leading toward
certain catastrophe.
The music for Caesar is disciplined
and machinelike. Where Antony and
Cleopatra’s first scene is full of quick-
silver changes of meter, Caesar enters
with an orchestral juggernaut in 2/4
time, reminiscent of Adams’s minimal-
ist roots. The part is written for a tenor,
and it often presses uncomfortably high
in register, recalling the bleating mono-
logues of Mao Tse-tung in “Nixon.” At
the culmination of Caesar’s development,
he proclaims himself emperor and ad-
dresses a chanting populace: “Rome, ’tis
thine alone, with awful sway,/To rule
mankind, and make the world obey.”
These words come from John Dryden’s
translation of the Aeneid, but they mesh
neatly with Shakespeare. The orchestra
embodies a vicious grandeur that again
smacks of “Nixon”—this time the to-
talitarian pageantry of Jiang Qing.
Cleopatra’s death, by contrast, un-
folds in an atmosphere of imperturb-
able serenity, implicitly defying Cae-
sar’s cold new order. Underpinning the
scene are sad, stately descending figures
in the harps, which nod to Stravinsky’s
neoclassical ballet “Orpheus.” A shim-
mering soundscape of gongs, celesta,
and the dulcimer-like cimbalom ex-
tends the rapt mood. It is an old and
rather too familiar trope—an exoticized
woman expiring at an opera’s close. But
Cleopatra is leaving on her own terms,
choosing to have no part in “this wild
world.” Her vocal line gravitates toward
the lower end of the soprano range, its
contours shapely and unhurried. Her
cool composure is, perhaps, prophetic
of another kind of power.P
ulitzer’s sleek, stylized production—
with sets by Mimi Lien, costumes
by Constance Hoffman, and lighting
by David Finn—locates the action in
the nineteen-thirties, mixing the seedy
splendor of pre-Code Hollywood with
the monumental bombast of Fascist
Italy. The linkage makes good sense,
given how cinematic values influenced
Fascist iconography: silent movies
helped popularize the so-called “Roman
salute,” which does not seem to have
existed in ancient times. The filmmaker
Bill Morrison, a master manipulator of
found footage, supplies appropriate video
projections, including images of the
marriage of Mussolini’s daughter.
At the heart of the conception is the
Machiavellian Caesar, whom the tenor
Paul Appleby portrayed with charis-
matic nastiness on opening night. Wear-
ing a blue suit, his hair slicked back, ges-
turing floridly while twisting in his seat,
Appleby fashioned a vivid picture of
hollow authority. Is he a snappily dressed
dictator? Or a brassy studio chief? The
psychological differences between the
two are minor. Appleby maintained a
beauty of tone despite the role’s taxingdemands, and his delivery of Caesar’s
ode to Roman might was a tour de force
that drew unsettled applause from the
audience. This tyrant was both laugh-
able and terrifying: we’ve met his like
before, and we will meet it again.
Cleopatra comes across as a star who
has emerged from the culture industry
and is trying to master it. The role was
written for Julia Bullock, who with-
drew on account of pregnancy. We won’t
see a definitive account of “Antony”
until that lavishly gifted singer puts her
stamp on the part. Amina Edris, who
stepped in on short notice, sang with
force and finesse, even if her lower notes
were a bit vague. Antony was played by
the incomparable Gerald Finley, who
originated Oppenheimer in “Doctor
Atomic.” On opening night, Finley
seemed uncertain of the character, his
body language awkward and his tone
recessed. When I watched a stream of
a subsequent performance, I heard more
of the ruminative richness that is Fin-
ley’s trademark. In the smaller roles,
Alfred Walker stood out for his ironi-
cally vacillating Enobarbus and Philip
Skinner for his gruff, potent Lepidus.
Eun Sun Kim, San Francisco Opera’s
vibrant young music director, led with
crisp command and a sure grasp of the
Adams style.
The première of “Antony” was the
first production of San Francisco Op-
era’s centennial season. Those who
know their theatre history might have
wondered whether broaching this sub-
ject matter in a celebratory context
risked fiasco: when, in 1966, Samuel
Barber’s Italianate adaptation of “An-
tony” inaugurated the Metropolitan
Opera House at Lincoln Center, it
proved to be a lush dud. Adams’s score
is a more musically distinctive creation,
but the real difference has to do with
context. By the later twentieth century,
premières at the Met had become rare
occurrences, fraught with expectations.
Adams, a longtime Northern Califor-
nian, has seen five of his works staged
at San Francisco’s War Memorial Opera
House, to the point that his presence
there has become routine. It’s worth
remembering that the company’s first
full season opened with a piece by a
living composer, one that was newer
then than “Nixon in China” is now:
“La Bohème.”