by Stephanie Manning
Asked at the post-concert talkback about her musical influences, composer Kamala Sankaram described an eclectic hodgepodge — Kaija Saariaho, Radiohead, and the Cameroonian electronic musician Francis Bebey, to name a few. “For the most part, things that I write sound very different from each other,” she said. “So it’s interesting that these two pieces sound kind of similar.”
Sankaram was referring to the pairing of A.E. Reverie and Rise, a duo of chamber operas recently co-presented by Baldwin Wallace Opera and the Cleveland Museum of Art. The February 1 performance in the Museum’s Gartner Auditorium showcased a double-bill united not just by composer but also by topic: both operas center on female protagonists pushing against gender stereotypes.
The contemporary relevance of doomed love, betrayal, and political maneuvering continues to endear Henry Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas to modern audiences. But the recent staging of the 17th-century opera by Baldwin Wallace Opera Theater made a more direct connection to today’s political climate.
Last Thursday evening, Laura Carlson Tarantowski’s bright set design, beautiful in its classical symmetry, served as a perfect foil to the messy romantic tangles of Mozart’s La finta giardiniera, when Baldwin Wallace Opera’s engaging production opened for four performances in John Patrick Theater. “Welcome to a world of love, lust, disguise, joy, grief, and madness,” director Benjamin Wayne Smith wrote in his program note. “The plot can be confusing,” he added. No kidding!