A Flowering Tree

John Adams brought his unique and surprisingly jubilant opera A Flowering Tree to the Mostly Mozart series in Lincoln Center. Lisa bought me a ticket for my birthday! I love the gifts of experience. 

The opera is a lovely take on a rather tragic folk tale of a girl, Kumudha, who can turn into a flowering tree when two pitches of water are poured over her. Unfortunately this magical talent is exploited by her family and then the prince she marries ultimately pushing her into a deforming situation. 

The stage was split with the orchestra on the left and the tiered platforms and chairs for the performers on the right. Everyone was dressed in Asia colors and textiles. The platforms were painted to look like slices from geodes. The chorus would often be seated around the platforms but ebb and flow onto the platforms for key pieces and crescendos. And if all this activity wasn't enough, the spiky-haired director, Peter Sellars, added dancers to the mix. Each of the main characters had a lithe dancer shadowing them and added an interpretative visual to the action and movements. I found this brilliant and engaging particularly during the second half when Kumudha is half human, half tree. 

I found the libretto and music wonderfully enchanting in the first half. The majority of the story is sung in English. The narrator was solid and nicely restrained in his delivery. The leads were also careful to not get too showy yet nicely sang with proper emotion. Sometimes the movement of the chorus on and off the stage seemed pushy and rushed but I liked the addition and their libretto sang in Spanish. The music in the second half seemed to not serve the story as well. It appeared Adams threw in a more percussion pieces and then ended with something more avant-garde bordering on Philip Glass. I felt the story ended with jubilance and restorative joy, not slight discords and loudness. But while I would have preferred a more enchanted ending, I loved the performance overall, particularly the wonderful addition of choreography and dancing to the storytelling.