Enigma Chamber Opera’s director Kirsten Z. Cairns on “Curlew River”: “We’re all looking for the ferryman.” Charles Bandes photograph
A woman loses her son. Despairing, she seeks him out everywhere. Finally she takes a ferry, crosses a river, and there she finds the truth.
Benjamin Britten’s chamber opera “Curlew River” may sound like an adaptation from Greek mythology, but in fact the work has its origins in the Japanese Noh tradition. Britten had traveled to Japan before composing “Curlew River,” and its deliberate, meditative style also characterized much of his later work.
Enigma Chamber Opera stages “Curlew River” this weekend at the Cathedral Church of St. Paul in Boston. Two live performances, Oct. 22 and 23, will be followed by a one-week virtual window to see the performance online, beginning Oct. 29.
Enigma’s artistic director Kirsten Z. Cairns directs an all-male cast that includes Matthew DiBattista, Aaron Engebreth, James Demler, Linus Schafer Goulthorpe and David McFerrin. Edward Elwyn Jones conducts a seven-piece orchestra from the organ.
This marks Cairns’s third Britten production. She was assistant stage director of Boston Lyric Opera’s “The Rape of Lucretia” in 2019, and Enigma produced “The Turn of the Screw” in January 2020. Enigma also produced Mozart’s “The Impresario” during the pandemic, a successful virtual performance during some of the most trying times of the shutdown.
The live audience will need to be masked, and show proof of vaccination or a recent negative Covid test. The cathedral is huge, and ticket-holders will have plenty of space.
“The cathedral can hold 400,” Cairns says, “but we’re only having 180 in the audience. We can space the chairs out unconnected, and people can move them. All the singers are fully vaccinated, and also need to have a negative test on the day of the first performance.”
Enigma Chamber Opera reached a wider audience with the pandemic performance of “The Impresario,” and the one-week livestream of “Curlew River”—available for free on YouTube—gives Cairns a chance to reach that audience again.
“Streaming enables a small group like ours to be of interest to a far wider group,” she says. “We will film both nights, and Peter (Torpey, set and lighting director) will edit a version. It will only be up a week—because of the Britten estate. We have supporters all over the world, and we want them all to see our work.”
“Curlew River” premiered in 1964. It begins a trilogy of works that Britten subtitled “Parable for Church Performance”—a trilogy that Cairns hopes to complete. Besides the soloists and chamber orchestra, the score calls for a chorus of eight—which proved to be a challenge.
“Trying to hire the chorus,” Cairns says, “singers who did this part-time before—those are the people who had to give up on singing.
“So I rethought it, and we’ve pared the chorus right down to two people. It lends itself well to how I want to stage this. We had plans for art festivals in different countries before this all started, so we originally wanted a small production, portable.”
Britten had visited Japan in the 1950s, and also explored Christian themes in many of his works. “Curlew River”—at heart a translation by William Plomer of a storied Noh drama—takes aspects of Christian mythology and steeps them in Noh theater practices.
“It’s about a woman who had her child stolen,” Cairns says. “She’s wandering, going through the incredible trauma of having a child kidnapped. She finds people to help her.
“Britten had a Christian message in mind—we are all wandering and confused, but there will be people to help. I’m not sure I’m wandering, but we’ve all been traumatized. We’re all looking for the ferryman.
“People will go, ‘Yes, that’s Britten,’ ” she says. “Very percussive, the pace is slow. There are some beautiful things: the Madwoman has a cry, the cry of the actual curlew, when she’s wandering like a bird in flight. Then her song changes, to when the curlew is on the ground. Once she’s grounded, the song changes.
“It’s a meditative space, reflective,” Cairns says of the work. “That’s why it appeals to me. Not necessarily for what Britten had in mind, but for what it means to us now.
“What is this world going to be, coming out of the pandemic, coming out of racial divisions? This is a piece we need.”
Enigma Chamber Opera presents Benjamin Britten’s “Curlew River” Oct. 22 and 23 at the Cathedral Church of St. Paul, 138 Tremont St., Boston. The performance streams on YouTube for one week, beginning Oct. 29. For tickets and information visit enigmacurlewriver.eventbrite.com.
Keith Powers covers music and the arts for Gannett New England, Leonore Overture and Opera News. Follow @PowersKeith; email to keithmichaelpowers@gmail.com.