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GRENDEL: TRANSCENDENCE OF THE GREAT BIG BAD. Music by Elliot Goldenthal. Libretto by Julie Taymor and J. D. McClatchy. Directed by Julie Taymor. Lincoln Center Festival, New York City. 15 July 2006.
Based on John Gardner's 1971 novel Grendel, the opera Grendel: Transcendence of the Great Big Bad features a modernist reinterpretation of the heroslaughtering- the-monster myth, inspired by the Anglo-Saxon epic Beowulf. Gardner's novel turns the medieval myth of a murderous beast's twelveyear war on King Hrothgar's court into a tonguein- cheek philosophical romp by retelling the Beowulf story from the monster's point of view-essentially a first-person existential monologue.
Julie Taymor and Elliot Goldenthal read the novel while in college in the 1970s. When they met in 1980, they discussed its staging. Over two decades later, the experience and reputation of this powerhouse creative team convinced the Los Angeles Opera and the Lincoln Center Festival to co-commission and coproduce the opera with a budget projected at $2.8 million. The resulting production argues for taking such leaps of faith: Goldenthal's varied and chancy aural landscape complemented Taymor's well-known visual conceptualization.
An award-winning composer for theatre, film, ballet, and orchestra, Goldenthal is renowned for the eclectic smorgasbord of musical styles he employs. In this, his first opera, Goldenthal draws on the decidedly nonoperatic genres of jazz, circus music, and hip-hop; the postmodern opera compositions of John Adams; and the classical musical signatures of Stravinsky and Wagner. To the New York City Opera orchestra's traditional instruments, Goldenthal added saxophones, electric guitars, and synthesizers. In addition, he composed music for the characters Grendel (in a marathon performance by bass Eric Owens) and the Dragon (performed as a terrifying diva by mezzo-soprano Denyce Graves) that vocally magnifies the supernatural nature of the characters. Both performers sang to the extreme upper and lower ends of their impressive ranges. Graves vanquished a seventeen-minute aria that began in the baritone range and built...