By a fortunate combination of circumstances I was last night able to attend the dress rehearsal of Evan Ziporyn's new opera 'A House in Bali' here in Ubud. I'm not quite sure about the etiquette of critiquing a piece on the day of its premiere, so I'm not going to say that much about it, except that I think this is going to turn out to be a really wonderful thing. My artistic radar starts to ping whenever I see big, ambitious cross-cultural collaborations such as this one, bringing together New York post-minimalism, Western opera, and about four or five different forms of Balinese dance, drama and music into one great melting pot.
Except that this is not a melting pot piece at all, rather the opposite; this is a piece which puts cultural clash at it's heart, both in terms of subject matter and more crucially in terms of the music, where Ziporyn very conciously and brilliantly collides two virtuosic, rhythmic, hi-speed ensembles, a gong kebyar directed by Dewa Ketut Alit and the New York post-minimalists the Bang on a Can All-Stars. The pacing and overall shape of the opera seems very good, but without any synopsis and without having read the book the experience was a bit hard to figure out what was going on.
The piece premieres today and tomorrow here in Ubud, sold out but maybe stand by tickets available. The American premiere is in California in September; if it were to come to the UK I would go and see it again.
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