Flipping the Format

Peter Burwasser on Classical

by Peter Burwasser

It's a concept seemingly fraught with peril, with cultures poised to clash in an ugly way. Here's the plan: Take a bunch of hip-hop-style poems, written by angst-ridden inner-city adolescents, set them to music with an amplified string quartet and piano, and have opera singers perform them. Ouch, you say? And yet it worked, given life by the superb talent of four local composers, and, especially, the gritty panache of our talented young poets.

This was Hip H'Opera, a new joint venture of the Opera Company of Philadelphia, Arts Sanctuary and New Freedom Theatre. The students come from an Art Sanctuary program called North Stars, and they read their works before the musical versions were heard. The quality of the material was variable, but the passions were always at the surface, and at best, the words conveyed a keen awareness of environment with wit and innate theatricality. Consider this stanza from 11th-grader Lydia Davis, which fairly dances off the page:

Takin' it back

Everything has a bassline

From sass-aid-flavored fried chicken

Hot sauce, greens on the side

To cordon bleu, 5 star status, high profile.

Other students reflected on neighborhood bleakness, such as 12th-grader Shayday Festus, who writes with knowing irony that "Hip Hop is us!" There is even room for more universal themes, such as the war between the sexes, as when Robert Denson complains, "Your aria makes me stay far away. Your hooks choke me. Your chorus drops me."

The quartet of composers is made up of well-known artists, here and abroad. Jay Fluellen, Diane Monroe, Rolando Morales-Matos and Monette Sudler all have academic training as well as broad experience in the nonclassical world. They displayed careful respect for the dramatic intentions of the words they set, seemingly without ever displaying any sense of condescension. The singers, all drawn from the cast of OCP's recent production of Porgy and Bess (none of the leads participated), tended to dominate the presentation as soon as their big, impeccably trained voices sounded out, but one can only imagine the thrill of the young writers to hear their work expressed by such an imposing combination of big-league talent.

The ambience of the magnificent Church of the Advocate, a French Gothic design at 18th and Diamond now brightened by the stunning 1970s African-American-themed murals of Walter Edmonds and Richard Watson, abetted the event in no small way, as waves of inspiration echoed within the limestone walls.

(p_burwasser@citypaper.net)