US stage debut for Elliott Carter's opera What Next?
(July 2006)
Elliott Carter's first and only opera, What Next?, receives its American stage premiere in a production at Tanglewood Music Center on July 27 and 28; Carter champion James Levine will conduct.
What Next? tells the story of six characters - five adults and a child - who in the aftermath of an unspecified catastrophe ("perhaps a car crash"), regain consciousness and try to remember who they are, how they are related to one another, and where they had been going. In Paul Griffiths's surreal, pun-filled libretto, the adults bicker, complain, and reminisce, but never actually listen to each other. It falls to the child to ask the question that might rescue them all. What Next? premiered in Berlin in 1999 with Daniel Barenboim conducting; he also led concert performances with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, in Chicago and at Carnegie Hall. But Tanglewood's staging, directed by Douglas Fitch, will be the first in this country. The program also includes Stravinsky's Mavra.
In the meantime, one can hear What Next? in an outstanding release on the ECM label, with Peter Eötvös conducting a cast led by soprano Valdine Anderson, accompanied by the Netherlands Radio Chamber Orchestra.
"The piece is as convincing on disc as it is on the concert platform, and the music, especially the vocal writing for the sextet of characters, is Mr. Carter at his most playful, virtuosic, and profound," wrote The Economist.
Elliott Carter's first and only opera, What Next?, receives its American stage premiere in a production at Tanglewood Music Center on July 27 and 28; Carter champion James Levine will conduct.