Disruptive Director: Yuval Sharon Comes Home to Shape “Proximity,” a Trio of New Operas at Lyric

“Proximity”at Lyric Opera of Chicago/Photo: Kyle Flubacker

“Up until now, all I‘ve heard was what we were doing in the rehearsal room with a piano,” said director Yuval Sharon in eager anticipation of hearing the first-ever orchestra-only reading of “Proximity” last November at the Lyric Opera House. “I always feel so terrible for the composers. It must be awful for them to hear their music with piano only because they have in their head a three-dimensional sound world. But what gets communicated to everyone involved with a new opera for the longest time is that whole sound world being produced by one person on a piano. It must be awful for the composers to have to sit through that. I always try to think, ‘I’m seeing a black-and-white representation of this work.’”

Sharon is likely the hottest American director in opera right now. His international productions and awards are numerous, including being the first American to ever direct at the Bayreuth Festival and being a MacArthur Fellow, receiving a “genius” grant. He works out of Los Angeles where he founded and is co-artistic director of The Industry, devoted to new and experimental opera. Sharon grew up “outside of Chicago,” in west suburban Naperville.

Yuval Sharon/Photo: Casey Kringlen

During the pandemic, Sharon became artistic director of Michigan Opera Theater, which became Detroit Opera last year. His imaginative and innovative drive-through, abridged version of Wagner’s “Götterdämmerung” called “Twilight: Gods” which was staged in the company’s next-door parking garage, also became his Lyric Opera debut. It was one of the first area cultural events during the pandemic, in May 2021. “I have to say ‘Twilight: Gods’ was really the perfect way to make my official debut,” Sharon recalled. The world premiere of “Proximity,” a trio of new American operas, is being dubbed Sharon’s “Lyric Opera mainstage debut” and has been in planning since well before the pandemic.

Two of the three composers who wrote “Proximity”—Daniel Bernard Roumain and Caroline Shaw—are at the orchestra-only reading in person. The third, John Luther Adams, is watching via Zoom. “John really tries to limit his travel, mostly trying to be mindful of his carbon footprint,” Sharon said. “He’ll be in Chicago for a very short period when he does come. He’s the only one I haven’t met. We’ve had a lot of conversations, but we’ve never been in the same room together.”

The idea behind “Proximity” came from Lyric Opera’s longtime creative consultant Renée Fleming, the curator of the work. “Renée kickstarted this project,” said Sharon. “She wanted to commission and create a scenario that was not just a world premiere of one compositional voice, but of several: a mixture of operas. But Renée really was hoping the operas would be topics that would feel relevant and feel connected to contemporary society.

“In her initial conversations before I started to work on the project, Renée had talked to Caroline Shaw and thought that maybe Caroline would want to write a piece about alienation and loneliness, the alienation of individuals and relationships in a tech-dominated landscape; what technology has done to affect relationships and the challenge of intimacy in a high-tech world. That became ‘Four Portraits.’

“Renée also had engaged John Luther Adams, who is not really the kind of person that would write an activist kind of work. But she thought that John would be able to respond to the climate crisis in a way—in his style—that would be more poetic, more elliptical, not so direct. And he did. He set the poem of an Alaskan poet, John Haines, ‘Night.’

“And then she engaged Anna Deavere Smith to take her unique journalistic approach to theater and apply that toward opera for the first time, using interviews with real people in Chicago that had been affected by gun violence. Their conversations began around 2018. When I came on board, there wasn’t a composer for that piece. Renée brought Anna on board and then Renée and I together thought about who would be the best partner for Anna. I was a particular advocate for Daniel [Bernard Roumain]. I’m a really big fan of his. That became ‘The Walkers.’

“At that stage, it was all still rather unclear as to what this piece could possibly become, you know? There’s obviously a lot of potential pitfalls in the kind of circumstance that Renée set up. There’s the potential for it to feel—well, there were so many potential problems. Let me leave it at that.”

Such as how to mesh the three into a single theatrical experience? “Exactly. That was one of my overarching concerns. That led me pretty early on to imagine that we do not perform these pieces en suite or ‘trittico’ style, like Puccini’s ‘Il trittico,’ three really isolated and distinct operas. If these are pieces about some of the most urgent challenges that face us today, I don’t think we do the themes or the works themselves any service to keep them separate from each other. As challenging as it is for a sense of authorial presence, early on, I pretty much wanted to have the pieces dovetail into each other so that one piece is interrupted by another and the next one picks up and the next one starts so that there is a sense of the overlapping. The stories are distinct, but the issues and the environment that they create end up being like a polyphony. That, I think, gives the whole evening a lot of energy.”

Re-ordering works is a Sharon signature. Last April, he presented a production of Puccini’s “La bohème” with the acts in reverse order from Act IV to Act I at Detroit Opera. How do the three composers of “Proximity” feel about their works being re-ordered?

“Proximity” workshop/Photo: courtesy Lyric Opera of Chicago

“I was really, if the composers don’t like that idea, I obviously would not do it. As we continue developing the piece—and Lyric did such an extraordinary job workshopping these works over the past two years—and we are trying it with the orchestra, but not with the singers and orchestra yet. I try to come in with absolutely no expectations or assumptions and just think to myself, ‘Look. If this doesn’t work, we can always go to the ‘trittico’ model. There’s always that Plan B to just have three distinct pieces.’ I mentioned that to the composers all along. I would never want to do something that didn’t have their consensus. It is an imposition on the traditional way of doing things, where it is the composer’s voice, from beginning to end. I truly understand. They were always open-minded about it. After the [orchestra-only] rehearsal, we will meet to determine whether or not everything fits together.”

As the lights darken in the opera house and conductor Kazem Abdullah begins the orchestra read-through of “Proximity” in the pit below the stage with the fire curtain down, Sharon and his team are out at a table of laptops and desk lamps mid-theater.

Upon first hearing, stylistically from a pure musical point of view, the pieces are not that far apart. “It was pretty astonishing, wasn’t it?” Sharon later agreed. “I think they will really feel good together. I was afraid they would be much more clashing.”

Each piece is tonal and could be labeled some sort of minimalism. “Yeah, that might apply to Caroline, but I don’t think either of them or John Luther Adams are particularly keen to be known as minimalists.” Even folks who invented that genre like Philip Glass and Steve Reich don’t like that label anymore. But the idea of musical cells that shift—though some had much longer lines, some were shorter with it, more direct, more visceral with it—seemed paramount. And unabashed direct diatonic tonality. That’s all there is to go on at this stage. “Right. You didn’t even hear the vocal lines. It makes quite a difference, especially in Caroline’s piece. She orchestrated it beautifully but she writes for the voice. They all do, in their own way. But her music is so much about the interplay of the vocal ensemble.”

How did the post-rehearsal meeting with the composers go? “I said, ‘Look, be totally open. I will not be offended. Don’t worry about rocking any boats. How does this feel to you to have the interplay?’ They loved it. They were absolutely in support of it. Caroline said, ‘I can’t imagine it any other way.’

“The alternations were quite honestly indeterminate. We didn’t know if this was going to work. We didn’t know until that orchestra rehearsal if this idea was going to work at all. I will still be looking for ways to unite the pieces visually in terms of the staging to create even more resonances between one piece and another.

“I’d love for this piece to not feel disparate. It will never reduce to a single sentence meaning: this is why all three pieces belong together. Like great poetry. Great poetry is about the bringing together of different images and different words and different ideas in ways that kind of defy rational thinking. But because of that, open up new pathways and possibilities.” An anthology with a theme where the visual language will be the same. “Exactly.”

“So, you heard what it was like to shift from one piece to another. I find it really lets you absorb what each piece is trying to do because it’s in relation to another piece.

“Proximity”at Lyric Opera of Chicago/Photo: Kyle Flubacker

“Quite honestly, as I think about what is possible, this is not a piece that is going to offer any easy answers to these challenges. Nor should it. That’s not really the role of art. One of the dangers that I was worried about with this piece was that I hope this won’t be the kind of piece that audiences will feel like they get a gold star for attending. Something that feels like it’s a duty to come see this, your civic duty. I don’t want this to be a piece that feels like it’s a substitution for actually engaging with these challenges in the real world. And in that way, me and Anna have really clicked because so much of her work has been about both turning the spotlight back on the audience and thinking, ‘What are you going to do about this? How are you going to engage with these challenges?’ Not in a way that lets you sit back and say, ‘Oh, isn’t this too bad that these are the challenges in our community.’ But instead to create this kind of panorama that invites a certain amount of participation.

“The link between these pieces is something given to the audience to piece together. And that’s where we came up with the name ‘Proximity.’ Because in the end, one of the main things that we really want the audience to come away with is that these are all challenges that are not just approximate to each other, but shockingly close to exactly where the Lyric Opera is. The people who are coming and viewing this piece and the stories that are being told about gun violence or a disrupted relationship due to technology or the fate of our climate are not issues that we can say are other people’s problems. They are right here. They really demand our own engagement.”

How does the word “Proximity” unite these works? “I think that it is…” Sharon says and then interrupts himself. “You know, you’re catching me before rehearsal starts. One of the things that I find compelling about this particular project is that the most honest way to create an artwork—especially a brand new artwork—is realizing what Wieland Wagner, Richard Wagner’s grandson, said, ‘Every new production is a journey to an unknown destination.’ That’s a beautiful image to think about when you’re thinking about projects. When you’re doing a new production, we will be articulating and discovering what this piece is all the way up until opening night. In some cases, even after, although I will not be making changes after opening night, to give the singers a break. But this is a piece that is very illative and we’re following a path toward what the notion of proximity might mean. It’s a guidepost more than it is a clear-cut definition.

“I do hope that it invites the audience in to the right kind of spirit for experiencing this work. Don’t come in and expect answers, we do not have solutions. We have reflections, we have meditations, we have opportunities. We’re offering the audience opportunities to think about these issues in new ways. In ways that are also aesthetically audacious and challenging in terms of the design, in terms of the music which is just so stunning.

“It is also a work of art. It’s primarily a work of art. And part of what’s so wonderful about works of art is their mysterious quality. The things that develop your curiosity. I do think when you’re dealing with socially critical topics to our society, make sure that you’re always engaging an audience’s curiosity and provoking that curiosity. That’s so important for wanting to encourage an audience to be inquisitive on their own. And think on their own. And consider their own pathways to engagement and to potential solutions.”

There was a break at the orchestra-only read-through, but it was unclear if there would be an intermission during “Proximity.”

“There is,” Sharon clarifies. “We didn’t originally think that there would be, that it will all happen in one act. The end of Act I will be John Luther Adam’s piece, ‘Night.’ The final scene of Act II which will be the end of Daniel’s piece—there’s more than that in the second half but I was really worried that the story that’s told at the end, to me, feels like the real heart of Daniel and Anna’s piece. And I just didn’t want the audience to be worn out. This is going to be quite a sensory overload for the audience.

“There are three different compositional voices. The final scene is from ‘The Walkers,’ but there are two other scenes from Caroline’s piece that are in the second half that I just think after a little bit of time to absorb what these three pairs of authors are starting to do, ideally the audience has learned the visual language of the production.

“Proximity”at Lyric Opera of Chicago/Photo: Kyle Flubacker

“It’s all set on this curved LED wall which allows for a very fluid transition from piece to piece. But it also offers opportunities for incredible illusions of depths of space. It allows us to blur the line between what is sometimes a GPS map of Chicago where the characters walk on the actual representation of the city of Chicago and then suddenly move into really allusive spaces: spaces capable of illusion rather then being concrete. That allows each piece to have a distinct visual language. And of course, the technology of the LED screen feels equally connected to all three pieces in that way. The visual language of it is going to take some getting used to for the audience.

“The first act, the orchestra rehearsal ended up being fifty-five minutes or so, a little less than an hour. But I think that that is a great amount of time to then process and think about it a little. Clear your head. And then come back and be really fresh for these really important final scenes of Caroline’s and Daniel’s. Daniel in particular because that last scene is really emotional.

“The pieces are in a state of evolution. I really have to commend the Lyric on truly supporting a path that has been—again, quoting Wieland Wagner—a journey to an unknown destination. All along. It’s been really well-supported. They’ve always been open to the notion. There was a different title for ‘The Walkers’ previously but as we were workshopping the piece and saying, ‘What is this piece really about?’ When Anna invokes this notion of people that are really walking with the victims of gun violence, they become a kind of throughline for the piece. The people that are walking with, that are supporting the community. Trying to find a way past all of the problems and trying to find solutions actually in the field. That’s something that Anna talks about a lot. These are people that aren’t just talking the talk, but walking the walk. They are there. And that could be any of us. At any point, we could walk with them. I find that to be really resonant.

“What ends up happening in Act II is four final scenes, two from Caroline and two from Daniel. The second half is about forty minutes. It’s still not a long evening but I really felt the audience needed a chance to absorb everything before getting into the real meat of what this is about.

“In Caroline’s piece, Act II is going to open with her piece with this absolutely stunning aria that she wrote for Lucia Lucas, who is a transgender baritone. She sings this beautiful text as she’s driving through Chicago on her own. She’s a remarkable artist. She’s one of two main characters in Caroline’s piece. The other is John Holiday, a phenomenal countertenor. The casting for those two and what Caroline has written for the two of them is going to be stunning. And it obviously intersects with a lot of ideas about identity and connection.

“The piece is called ‘Four Portraits,’ and I’ve come to think of it as a ghost story. We meet these two characters and they have a relationship that obviously feels quite strained. Part of the strain, we come to understand, really comes from technology. The technology in their lives seems to be pushing them apart. The first scene is the two of them trying to have a phone call that keeps getting interrupted. There’s lots of interference and the feeling that the entire city of Chicago is somehow interfering with this conversation between the two of them.

“I would like it to feel that somehow there is loss in this relationship. I would like it to have that shimmer. I’d like to keep it open-ended because that’s what Caroline’s real wish is, for it to feel open-ended. There’s a real feeling of loneliness and spareness in this that in the second half, is transcended.

“We do have this amazing aria for Lucia that she sings on her own as she drives to the city and imagines her life in the buildings around her. It’s a beautiful and very peaceful aria that I just think is stunning. But I should probably call it a duet because she sings it with her own GPS. The GPS actually becomes a voice and accompanies her on her journey through the city of Chicago. It’s a wonderful musical invention on Caroline’s part. She also wrote the GPS for a multiphonic system called a Helicon keyboard. You sing into it through a microphone. It starts as a little funny. But as the aria goes on, it’s incredibly soothing and touching to hear Lucia’s voice harmonized with this multiphonic voice.

The finale of the evening then comes back to “The Walkers.”

“It’s the last scene of ‘The Walkers,’ a mother who loses her newborn to gun violence. It’s devastating, but it’s also illuminating.. That final scene, I don’t know anything quite like it: musically, dramatically, in terms of the text, in terms of the music, in terms of what it’s doing. And every time we rehearse it, someone is crying. It’s very powerful but also so beautifully written.

“That had to be the ending. We talked about that a lot, even with Daniel and Anna. ‘Okay, maybe there’s a postlude.’ ‘No, we’ve got to give this woman the last word in this piece.’ On the whole evening. Anything that would come after it would have a major disadvantage.”

Sharon early on received the nickname “The Disrupter.” He laughs when he is reminded. Are there things in “Proximity” that support his reputation as disruptive?

“Well, I suppose you can say that shuffling these pieces together the way that we are doing. A piece that I did in Los Angeles called ‘Hopscotch’ had six different composers and a scenario in which you went from car to car and in every car, there was another composer’s work. You were always hearing another voice. That was a non-conventional dramaturgy, a non-conventional mode of storytelling that was more in line with other kinds of dramatic experiences. I think that’s one hallmark.

“I think the use of technology in this production with these LED screens that we’ve talked about—which I’m very excited about—is another. I think it points toward a whole new way of creating visual productions.”

“Proximity” receives its world premiere on 7pm, March 24 and runs through April 8; Lyric Opera House, 20 North Wacker, lyricopera.org.