Tenor Omar Najmi stars in the opera Adoration at the PROTOTYPE Festival in New York City. Photo by Maria Baranova.

Prejudice, love, collective judgment, and the uncertainty of truth. These are some of the major threads woven into Adoration, a new opera by Mary Kouyoumdjian and Royce Vavrek that premiered at New York City’s PROTOTYPE Festival last night. The marriage of music, text, sonic effects, and video reframing pushes audiences to question what is real, what is deceit, and what glimmers of truth we can glean from the world – or think that we have gleaned.

If this sounds disorienting, that is exactly one of the opera’s central conceits – one shared with its source material, the eponymous 2008 film by Atom Egoyan. (No prior viewing is required to enjoy the opera.) As events and persons are revisited, the initial impressions blur and then melt away like wax statues in a slowly heating oven. This sense of ongoing framing and reframing is enhanced in the direction by Laine Rettmer, which knits together diverse elements to constantly tease and play with impressions, as set pieces rotate and cameras insert charming and disturbing intimacies.

There are some rougher patches. Perhaps abetted by the extensive use of amplification, the vocal score frequently jumps between spoken and sung dialogue, which creates some recurring audibility issues and distracts more than it enhances. Vavrek’s libretto would make an excellent spoken play, but when set to music is unnecessarily verbose. Kouyoumdjian’s score as a whole is sumptuous, filled with vibrant musical color, and has little need for the numerous repetitions of dialogue. Less would be more, and create more space to enjoy the evocative soundscape traced in the weaving instrumental lines.

Amongst the cast, soprano Miriam Khalil is a standout, with several scenes that haunt the audience; Broadway actor Marc Kudisch also gives a particularly notable performance. Strong performances by baritone David Adam Moore and tenor Omar Najmi anchor the ensemble.

Whatever its aesthetics, Adoration delves deeply into several threads that are sure to have audiences talking afterwards – the secrets that we carry, the myths that we (re)write, and the instinctive and collective reactions that we both embrace and deny. That’s not a bad combo to ponder amongst friends and strangers, suffused by gorgeous music.

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Adoration runs through January 20 at The Sheen Center for Thought & Culture in New York, NY.

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Basil Considine

Basil Considine was the Editor of the Twin Cities Arts Reader from 2018-2022. He served as Performing Arts Editor and Senior Classical Music and Drama Critic for the Arts Reader's first five years, before succeeding Hanne Appelbaum. He was previously the Resident Classical Music and Drama Critic at the Twin Cities Daily Planet and remains an occasional contributing writer for The Boston Musical Intelligencer and The Chattanoogan. He holds a PhD in Music and Drama from Boston University, an MTS in Sacred Music from the BU School of Theology, and a BA in Music and Theatre from the University of San Diego.

Basil was named one of Musical America's 30 Professionals of the Year in 2017. He was previously the Regional Governor for the National Opera Association's North Central Region and the 2021-2022 U.S. Fulbright Faculty Scholar to Madagascar.

Latest posts by Basil Considine (see all)

• DC REVIEW: Anything but Business as Normal in the American Opera Initiative (Washington National Opera) - January 22, 2024
• NYC REVIEW: Spectacular Fulfillment in The Promise (PROTOTYPE FESTIVAL) - January 14, 2024
• NYC REVIEW: Adoration, Myths, and Reality (PROTOTYPE FESTIVAL) - January 13, 2024