New World Symphony’s Artistic Director Settles In With Bold Opera Double Bill

Written By Michelle F. Solomon for Artburst Miami

In this, the second season for Stéphane Denève, who was named artistic director of the New World Symphony in 2022 after co-founder and artistic director Michael Tilson Thomas stepped down, he’s now comfortable enough to take some chances.

Those chances will be on full display when, for the first time in 36 years, fellows from the New World Symphony will be performing in an opera double bill under the direction of Denève on Saturday, Oct. 19 and Sunday, Oct. 20 at NWS’ home, Miami Beach’s New World Center.

The first is the one-act, 57-minute opera, Viktor Ullmann’s “The Kaiser of Atlantis” with a libretto by Peter Kien, about the dictatorial aspirations of the Emperor of Atlantis. It is the only surviving opera composed in a Nazi concentration camp where Ullmann and Kien were held at Theresienstadt. Ullmann and Kien had been rehearsing the project but on Oct. 16, 1944, they were taken to Auschwitz in what were called “artist transports”; the two perished there.

“(The music) is full of life and that’s a kind of paradoxical thing . . . and that it was miraculously saved,” says Denève. The complicated story of how the opera survived began when Ullman gave the score to Emil Utiz, the librarian at Theresienstadt and it passed through many hands, eventually ending up in an archive in Switzerland.

Dramatic, sarcastic and ironic, at times, Denève says it’s also funny, lyrical and loving. “For them, it was a way to keep alive . . .it’s quite amazing what they wrote,” he says.

The second opera at 39 minutes, directed by Bill Barclay, is Kurt Weill’s “The Seven Deadly Sins” with a libretto by Bertolt Brecht. Weill and Brecht collaborated in Germany in the late 1920s on “The Threepenny Opera” (notable for one of the songs known to many as “Mack the Knife.”)

“Sins” would be their last work together. In 1933, Weill and Brecht fled Nazi Germany. Weill was a German Jew, Brecht was not, but as a German poet, playwright and theater director, Brecht was in danger because of the biting political statements he made in his works, his Marxist stances and his criticism of the Nazi regime.

In the ballet chanté  (sung ballet), which Weill wrote for his wife, Lotte Lenya, a soprano, two Annas leave their Louisiana home to spend seven years in seven cities to make money to bring back to their family. While in each city they indulge in one sin for a year. George Balanchine was the choreographer for the original production.

“We have the first double bill opera that we will do fully staged with an amazing lineup of singers, costumes, lighting, choreography and video projections,” says Denève.

And, of course, there’s the symphony, made up of postgraduate musicians who competed and now have a coveted spot in the New World Symphony, a three-year fellowship training and experiential program as preparation for professional careers in orchestras and ensembles throughout the world.

Learning the two operas and performing them, says Denève, gives the fellows another valuable experience for their future careers. “They find how to accompany singers that are moving on stage, how to be flexible. Last year, I tried to incorporate more singing into the curriculum. I even made the fellows sing last year, sometimes they even sang in public. On a few occasions, we sang during rehearsal. Singing for me is key in music making,” he says.

Co-directing “The Kaiser of Atlantis” for NWS with Alexander Gedeon is Yuval Sharon, who Denève calls “one of the most important directors of our days,” adding that Sharon, the first American director to be invited to Germany’s Bayreuth Festival, where it annually stages the works of native son 19th-century composer Richard Wagner, who first performed at his festival in 1876. It was announced this past summer that Sharon will direct New York’s Metropolitan Opera’s Wagner’s Ring Cycle, quite an achievement.

And for NWS? “It’s really a coup for us having him here,” says Denève. Gedeon has worked with Sharon as associate director developing new productions at three U.S. opera companies.

Another coup is the soprano who will star in “The Seven Deadly Sins.” The roles are usually played by two different people — Weill’s wife sang Anna 1 in the original production and Tilly Losch, a ballet dancer and the wife of the man who commissioned Weill to compose the opera, was Anna II.

Danielle de Niese took on both roles when she performed with the London Philharmonic in March.

And she’ll be both singer and dancer again with NWS.

“I want to do both roles,” says the Australian-born, Los Angeles-raised singer during a Zoom interview from her home outside of London at Glyndebourne. Her husband, Gus Christie, is the executive chairman of the Glyndebourne Festival Opera. “It is quite a feat especially because of bringing the physicality to the dancer (Anna II). It’s a theatrical process, actually,” says de Niese.

She offers her take on the opera and Brecht’s writing. “He really asks you to examine the irony of doing what is right and whether doing what is right is right. It takes these parables of the Bible, and you get these real ‘aha moments’ when one sister is advising the other. . . It’s a story of capitalism, too. . . of the American dream, a story of questions, like what’s the price of finding that little slice for yourself?”

There’s a questioning, she says, that goes on for the audience when they are watching “Sins,” she says. “Miami is a place full of a lot of different influxes of cultures and many different opinions about what the American dream looks like.”

She imagines those in the audience will be emotionally invested not only in “Sins” but in both works. “I hope they have a lot of moments where they are just holding their collective breath.”

WHAT: Opera Double Bill “The Kaiser of Atlantis” and Seven Deadly Sins” with New World Symphony

WHERE: New World Center, Michael Tilson Thomas Performance Hall, 500 17th St., Miami Beach.

WHEN: 7:30 p.m., Saturday, Oct. 19 and 2 p.m., Sunday, Oct. 20.

COST: $25, $80, $110, $125, $130, $150

INFORMATION: 305-673-3331 or 800-597-3331, also nws.edu

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