Arts & Events

On Saturday evening, February 12, Cal Performances presented the West Coast premiere of the opera Iphigenia, with music by Wayne Shorter and libretto by esperanza spalding. Shorter, a major force in jazz since his work in the 1950s with Art Blakey and The Jazz Messengers, then with the Miles Davis Quintet, before he went on to found the group Weather Report and later to form his own quartet, had always wanted to compose an opera. Now, at age 88 and no longer able to perform on saxophone due to frail health, Wayne Shorter has realised his dream by writing the music for the opera Iphigenia. He also found in bassist and vocalist esperanza spalding the perfect collaborator, who helped Shorter develop this opera loosely based on the play Iphigenia at Aulis, the last tragedy written by Euripides. In spalding’s libretto, Iphigenia, the daughter of Agamemnon who is sacrificed to assuage the goddess Artemis and allow the Greek fleet to sail against Troy, becomes multiple Iphigenias. Indeed, she becomes the embodiment of all women, caught up in a world where men wage war and sacrifice women to their ambitions. 

Cal Performances was one of several co-commissioners of this opera, which received its world premiere in Boston on November 12, 2021, then had two performances in December at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C.. For its West Coast premiere at Berkeley’s Zellerbach Hall, Iphigenia was performed by the original soloists plus the Berkeley Symphony conducted by Clark Rundell. Liliana Blain-Cruz directed, and sets were by noted architect Frank Geary. Montana Levi-Blanen designed the costumes. 

The cast of singers featured esperanze spalding, soprano as the lead Iphigenia; Samuel White, tenor, as Agamemnon; Brad Walker, baritone, as Menelaus; and Tyler Bouquet, tenor, as the priest Kalchas. The multiple Iphigenias were sung by soprano Eliza Bagg, soprano Nivi Ravi, soprano Alexandra Smither, mezzo-soprano Kelly Guerra, and contralto Sharmay Musacchio. All these singers were excellent in their respective roles. Brenda Pressley performed the speaking role of Artemis disguised as the Usher. Artemis’s most important line is her admonition to all the Iphigenias that they “remember who you are.” 

Wayne Shorter’s music is basically of two sorts: swaggering, bombastic orchestral music for the Greek warriors champing at the bit to go to war, and more refined trio jazz performed by Shorter’s rhythm section from his quartet, featuring Danilo Pérez on piano, John Patitucci on bass, and Brian Blade on drums. The bombastic warrior music dominated Act One, and as Act Two began, a scrim fell away and we saw and heard the jazz trio offer more delicately nuanced musical fare throughout Act Two. Memorable moments of staging included one where an Iphigenia in Act One was forced to dance with first one then another and another of the Greek warriors before she willingly went to her death. One memorable line in the libretto offered the assertion by an Iphigenia that men wage war for dominance not knowing they are earth. Another thought-provoking line came in Act Two when an Iphigenia recounts how her lover sought to capture her essence and make it permanent by bottling her essence as a perfume, not realising that she embodied permanence all along, as all women do. 

In Act Three, we find ourselves embroiled once more in the myth, and now esperanze spalding as Iphigenia mouthes the words expected of her, namely, that she willingly goes to her death for the glory of Greece. Meanwhile, Agamemnon, Iphigenia’s father, has second thoughts about sacrificing his daughter, and he gets into a fight, a veritable brawl, with Menelaus, his brother. It is not clear whether in the end Iphigenia is sacrificed, as esperanze spalding sings a hauntingly wordless song and is joined in solidarity by all the other Iphigenias. The ending is, as esperanza spalding wanted it to be, open-ended, ripe with possibilities.