More “Our Town”

I just returned from the world premiere of an opera based on Thornton Wilder’s play Our Town. With music by Ned Rorem and a libretto by J.D. McClatchy, this opera is lovely, emotionally moving, and I thought very true to the spirit of the play. I’ve always been fascinated by the relationship between different art forms: how they are similar, where they differ, and how they are related to each other. I was impressed and intrigued by the way the libretto distilled the essence of the play; even though some scenes and characters were cut, the elements that gave such meaning to the story were all there. The music was gorgeous; in the last act in particular, I thought that the way the dead sang was somehow what they really would sound like, if they could sing and we could hear them. The whole experience captured very well the core emotions and experiences of the play, which to my mind is an excellent expression of what it means to be thinking meat. It was very satisfying to see the play transmuted so well into another art form. Afterward someone, I think McClatchy, said something to the effect that at the heart of the play was the emotions in Emily’s heart, and if the creators and cast and crew had transmitted those emotions to us so that we experienced them too, then they had done their jobs. That struck me as a pretty good description of one of the roles of art.