In 1999, during the run-up to the premiere of John Corigliano's "Dylan Thomas Trilogy," the featured boy soprano experienced an unfortunate physiological event: his voice had changed. So 16-year-old countertenor Anthony Roth Costanzo was called in to fill the role. Costanzo was already a fan, already familiar with the composer's score for "The Red Violin" and his opera, "The Ghosts of Versailles." But now they were meeting face to face, for the first time, ahead of a touring premiere that would take them and the National Symphony Orchestra to Kennedy Center and Carnegie Hall.
The Washington Post described Costanzo "as eloquent and musical" but noted the "music is most likely best suited to a child's voice." It clearly didn't matter — Costanzo is now a lauded countertenor, who is successful by any reasonable metric. Most recently, he's enthused audiences in the title role of Philip Glass' "Akhnaten," buoyed the spirits of New Yorkers during the COVID-19 pandemic shutdowns with the New York Philharmonic's Bandwagon pop-up concerts, and collaborated with the legendary Justin Vivian Bond for the cabaret-opera-spectacular "Only an Octave Apart."
Now, he's coming back to Corigliano. They're friends now, and for the last decade the composer has been working with his husband and frequent collaborator, Mark Adamo, on a new opera: "The Lord of Cries," which embraces two familiar tales. On one end is Euripide's tragedy "The Bacchae," recounting the violent fury of Dionysus — god of wine and insanity and fertility — after a mortal ruler denied the god's divinity. At the other end is Bram Stoker's "Dracula," the vampiric horror that's become a bedrock of popular culture. In "Cries," the two elements come together in Victorian England, with Costanzo at the center of it all.
I caught up with the countertenor ahead of the Boston premiere at Jordan Hall. Below are excerpts from our conversation, edited for clarity and brevity.
James Bennett II: I want to get your perspective on how this production fits into your artistic life right now — where you're at with your career. Tell me about how you got involved with this.
Anthony Roth Costanzo: Well, I met John Corigliano and Mark Adamo when I was 16, and I was asked to step in at the last minute for a boy soprano whose voice had changed. But as I came into my own as a queer person, I found increasing resonance with his work — his AIDS Symphony and all of that. And we just became friends. This ["The Lord of Cries"] is a piece that was a decade in the making. And I'm really honored that he wrote this title role for me, and that I had the opportunity to work on it with him.
And you can tell by the way it's written that there's a certain amount of trust built in. For example, some of the note values — instead of being rhythmic, there are just black lines across the stave, meaning that I can hold it for as long or as short as I want. There's an element to certain aspects where he really is letting me be free, which is really exciting.
Bennett II: There’s "Dracula," there’s "The Bacchae." How are these stories coming together? Are there similarities?
Roth Costanzo: What this piece does is use "Dracula" as seen through the lens of this Greek tragedy, as kind of an allegory for a lot of different things — and that's what those Greek things are really good for — this idea of allegory. Thinking how I approach things [in] my personal life is this sort of queer aspect of Dionysius/Dracula, both of whom come down from the heavens as a sort of god and say, "I'm right, you have to listen to me. I am the person who has the knowledge," and everybody ignores them. And so they teach their disconsolate lessons in various ways.
In this particular retelling, we see John Seward wrestling with his friendship/love for Jonathan Harker, who is married to Lucy. And of course, Dracula, the stranger, sort of seduces Lucy — but not so much sexually, as much as getting her to let him in. And in so doing, I somehow feel that what this whole story circles around is a kind of repression that Stewart has of his own desire for Jonathan Harker. And then you have this stranger appear who is Dracula, who is very mysterious and terrifying and alluring and is a representation of all the danger that that desire represents to Seward. And by denying it, he winds up causing harm for so many people. And so the lesson learned is, as they keep saying: Ask for what you want, let yourself be who you are on some level, and don't deny people their place.
Bennett II: You know, I think there's something about Greek storytelling with Greek mythology and just how emotionally bound we can be to the stories that have been transmitted over centuries. "The Lord of Cries" I’m hesitant to use the word “mashup” —
Roth Costanzo: “Overlay?”
Bennett II: Yes, from "The Bacchae" and Stoker. What does the mythological aspect of that mean? What do you think of its persistence, whether it’s Euripides or whomever?
Roth Costanzo: I think that those stories are their own kind of Bible, you know what I mean? They're their own kind of fables. They are the foundation in many ways of storytelling for our time. I remember when I was at Princeton, I took a course called "Storytelling: From the Campfire to the Silver Screen." And we talked about how, you know, there were really only six stories from which all other stories were born. You know, we tell in some ways the same story over and over. Obviously, things get updated or things are told in a certain period, but these are such powerful and elemental stories that they need to be retold.
Bennett II: What can listeners expect from Corogliano’s music?
Roth Costanzo: I'll just say that John's score is really a masterpiece. You know, I do a lot of new work, and I think this is just incredible. It's sort of like a Wagnerian-sized sound that I compete with, which is an exciting challenge for me. But he also scales the orchestration down to the simplest and quietest of almost baroque melodies and compositional frameworks in certain moments. And it's just thrilling writing. I mean, his percussion, the inventiveness around the usage of percussion, conch shell, making wolf calls and all kinds of things that happen are fascinating. And it'll be really fun in Boston to do it with the orchestra on stage at Jordan Hall, so you can see the intricacy of the orchestration taking place before your eyes.
Anthony Roth Costanzo performing the Stranger's Aria from Act I, "The Lord of Cries."
"The Lord of Cries" is on stage Saturday, Nov. 19, at 7:30 p.m. at Jordan Hall.
