In America, our musical theater works (such as broadway musicals) place a greater emphasis on the plot and words, rather than on the music. The plots are woven together with dialogue and acting, but are laced together with songs. When a song occurs, the plot basically stops running, held in a transfixed pause, to present some type of emotional expansion or a moment of commentary on the plot, such as a love song or an expression of feelings. When the song is finished, the plot is no longer rooted to that spot and scurries onward by way of acting once again.
Operas, however, are tremendously reliant on the music; it shapes everything. A songful out-of-time pause is called an “aria” and the plot rolls along by way of “recitative” or simply “recit” (following 'ordinary speech'). Unlike musical theater, however, everything in an opera is musical, including the non-aria recitations. The whole ball of wax is sung.
A significant portion of Purchase of Manhattan is akin to an opera. Though devoid of sets, props, and costumes, the soloists are performing as 3 particular characters in the storyline. The baritone sings as a Lenape ‘everyman’ while the soprano sings the role of Manhattan Island itself, personified. The tenor is the Dutch visitor General Minuit. Supporting the soloist roles are the 2 choruses, the usual westernized SATB chorus (Soprano, Alto, Tenor, Bass), plus an added chorus of American Indians vocalizing in a traditional indigenous style. All of the choruses sing from a perspective of the Lenape, except the basses who are supportive of the General Minuit (tenor soloist). This distinct part of the larger work could be considered an “opera” without question.
However, the “other” orchestral moments that portray the uncolonized pre-contact Manhattan, together with the threnodial “history of the island” one hundred years afterward, has little or no dialogue. The afterward history portion is really a ‘sung historical recounting’ shared by the soloists more than a dramatized scene. Furthermore, the conclusion of the opera mixes together a musically reinterpreted ‘condolence ceremony’ with an American Indian ‘welcoming song’ performed using indigenous “vocables,” the syllables that are not language but impart emotional feelings. Bearing in mind these “other” moments, with the collective ensemble of solos, chorus and orchestra, Purchase of Manhattan would not be considered an “opera,” but something more akin to an orchestral concert work, such as a symphony with chorus, or a concerto with soloists.
Because this new work, Purchase of Manhattan, is a hybrid work, existing someplace between opera and concert music, I’ve chosen the invented designation “concert opera.” Yes, it’s not wholly an opera, but neither is it a symphony! At the end of the day, with the license that artists sometimes embrace while reaching for alternate understandings of assumed events, or holding radically different perspectives on the current trends, an American Indian composer has created a concert opera. As a Mohican citizen, I must admit I am especially proud of the caliber Joe Bruchac (co-librettist) and I have achieved with this new artistic work. If you are able, please join us on November 20, 2014, at 7 PM, inside the Marble Collegiate Church, for the aesthetically unconventional Purchase of Manhattan—the concert opera!