I saw the Green­wich Music Festival’s impres­sive pro­duc­tion of Hans Warner Henze’s El Cimar­rón last night in Green­wich, Con­necti­cut, fea­tur­ing a singer, four dancers, and the Inter­na­tional Con­tem­po­rary Ensem­ble. Is it bad that I was inor­di­nately impressed by Claire Chase’s stun­ning vir­tu­os­ity, fash­ion sense, and melod­ica skills? The girl was jump­ing up to play per­cus­sion, run­ning back to her flute sta­tion while mak­ing click­ing and pop­ping sounds with her mouth, and blow­ing my mind with her bass flute. The rest of the ICE play­ers were of course amaz­ing, too. Dan Lip­pel bowed his gui­tar and pro­duced the most gor­geous tone dur­ing his solos;  Nathan Davis on per­cus­sion was insane-incredible; and Robert Ains­ley was a sharp con­duc­tor and charm­ing lec­turer to boot.

This piece is about the Cuban, cen­te­nar­ian, ex-slave Este­ban Mon­tejo, who lived through every major polit­i­cal change in Cuba in the late-19^th and 20^th cen­turies. Eugene Perry, as Este­ban, was cap­ti­vat­ing. He nar­rated the story, speak­ing at times, singing at oth­ers and speak-singing a lot.

That vocal qual­ity makes some peo­ple think it’s not an opera. Henze him­self called it a recital for four musi­cians. Fine. But to my mind, this pro­duc­tion counts for a sim­ple rea­son: the piece is pre­sented as a nar­ra­tive music-drama, and  the music, not the direc­tor, paces the drama. That to me is the major qual­i­fier. For instance, the dis­tinc­tion between book musi­cals and opera isn’t style. Style is a red her­ring. The prac­ti­cal dif­fer­ence is in direc­tion: the direc­tor just does more for the pac­ing of a musi­cal than she does for the pac­ing of an opera.

And it’s not that Eugene didn’t sing in Cimar­rón. Esteban’s sung lines were gor­geous, par­tic­u­larly when he sang about lone­li­ness and the kind­ness of coun­try peo­ple. It was espe­cially lovely because he didn’t use his La Scala tone: he made every effort to com­mu­ni­cate the words at all times. 10,000 points to Mr. Perry. How­ever, I grew frus­trated with the arbitrary-sounding, sprechtstimme-style text set­ting of parts of the nar­ra­tion, if only because Henze—and the Eng­lish translator—emphasize the strang-EST syl-a-BOWLS, obscur­ing the mean­ing of the words.

And I really wish that Henze would give Este­ban actual melodies at cer­tain spots. If I remem­ber right, he obliquely refers in the voice to folk-ish melodies in a bunch of places, but it’s like. Just do it. Give me a real melody in the voice where it’s appro­pri­ate, even in this awe­some uni­verse of clicky for­est spirit sounds. Henze does this more directly in the instru­men­tal music. He cov­ers an enor­mous range of style in the instru­men­tal music, inge­niously con­jur­ing Cuban, African, and Span­ish music through instru­men­ta­tion and rhythm. Plus, it’s so sat­is­fy­ing when he gives us a moment of a sim­ple flute melody over cycling gui­tar chords. So I just wanted a more direct ref­er­ence to folk melody in the voice.

Yes. yes, you did.

The dancers also made direct cul­tural ref­er­ences, each in their own ways. Oh my gosh I loved the con­trast between them. Tall white boy. Man with dreads. Beau­ti­ful woman. Ado­les­cent boy. The dif­fer­ences among types and among move­ment styles were stunning.

How­ever, the best thing about the dancers was the ver­sa­til­ity of their roles. I absolutely loved chore­o­g­ra­pher Zack Winokur’s abil­ity to intro­duce the dancers as pan­tomime char­ac­ters to whom Este­ban referred, and then to morph them into abstract, sup­port­ing fig­ures as the action moved on. They would assume new char­ac­ters, allude to ear­lier char­ac­ters, all while their move­ment styles con­tin­ued to evolve with the story.

Yeah for every­body serv­ing the story! Yeah Zack and Ted! Yeah Andrew, Manelich, Yara, and Jose! Cheers ICE and GMF!