Courtney Bryan’s Suddenly Last Summer Praised for its “Otherworldly Soundscapes”
Bryan’s new opera, based on the play by Tennessee Williams, has been met with acclaim following its world premiere at Bard SummerScape.
Courtney Bryan’s Suddenly Last Summer garnered praise for its innovative blend of opera and spoken theater, following its world premiere at the Fisher Center LAB at Bard on June 25–July 19. Based on Tennessee Williams’s Southern Gothic drama, the work features a libretto by Gideon Lester and director Daniel Fish, and centers on a young woman’s account of a traumatic past as powerful relatives attempt to control the narrative.
Critics particularly noted Bryan’s vivid sonic world. The Berkshire Eagle praised Bryan’s “intriguing, sometimes otherworldly, soundscapes,” while The New York Times highlighted how the music evokes the “sultriness of New Orleans,” with chords that “build one note at a time, like sunlight emerging from around a corner” and melodies that “melt with downward glissandos.”
Fish’s production brought music, spoken theater, film, dance, and visual art together, “piling storytelling onto storytelling in a way that only opera, a synthesis of all art forms, can,” according to The New York Times. Together, Bryan’s music and Fish’s staging transforms Williams’s psychological drama into a production described by Splash Magazines as “visually stunning and musically moving.”
Suddenly Last Summer is next presented this fall by co-commissioner Opera Philadelphia on October 22-25 at the Forrest Theatre, with soprano Mikaela Bennett returning as Catharine Holly, director Mikhaela Mahony, and conductor Nathan Koci on the podium.
The New York Times
“smooth eclecticism, emotional immediacy”
“Bryan, a composer who reveres musical traditions but presents them in entirely fresh ways, is making her opera debut, true to her artistry, by approaching the art form on nothing less than her own terms.”
"Chords build one note at a time, like sunlight emerging from around a corner; melodies melt with downward glissandos"
The Berkshire Eagle
“Bryan created intriguing, sometimes otherworldly, soundscapes, especially in downward scales on the flute that gave way to a fleeting saxophone or in a brief and jolting deployment of foreboding French horn.”
Berkshire on Stage
“ravishing score”
Rural Intelligence
“Bryan’s powerful score is wonderfully melodramatic at times, variously creating feelings of urgency, anxiety, and fear.”
Splash Magazines
“This visually stunning and musically moving production strips down the story to a confrontation between image and power versus and truth and vulnerability.”
“The music conveys the horror and the tragedy.”
> Further information on Work: Suddenly Last Summer
Photo: Maria Baranova / Fisher Center at Bard