Grendel: The Transcendence of the Great Big Bad (review)

Based on John Gardner's 1971 novel Grendel, the opera Grendel: Transcendence of the Great Big Badfeatures a modernist reinterpretation of the hero-slaughtering-the-monster myth, inspired by the Anglo-Saxon epic Beowulf. Gardner's novel turns the medieval myth of a murderous beast's twelve-year war on King Hrothgar's court into a tongue-in-cheek philosophical romp by retelling the Beowulfstory from the monster's point of view—essentially a first-person existential monologue.

Julie Taymor and Elliot Goldenthal read the novel while in college in the 1970s. When they met in 1980, they discussed its staging. Over two decades later, the experience and reputation of this powerhouse creative team convinced the Los Angeles Opera and the Lincoln Center Festival to co-commission and coproduce the opera with a budget projected at $2.8 million. The resulting production argues for taking such leaps of faith: Goldenthal's varied and chancy aural landscape complemented Taymor's well-known visual conceptualization.

An award-winning composer for theatre, film, ballet, and orchestra, Goldenthal is renowned for the eclectic smorgasbord of musical styles he employs. In this, his first opera, Goldenthal draws on the decidedly nonoperatic genres of jazz, circus music, and hip-hop; the postmodern opera compositions of John Adams; and the classical musical signatures of Stravinsky and Wagner. To the New York City Opera orchestra's traditional instruments, Goldenthal added saxophones, electric guitars, and synthesizers. In addition, he composed music for the characters Grendel (in a marathon performance by bass Eric Owens) and the Dragon (performed as a terrifying diva by mezzo-soprano Denyce Graves) that vocally magnifies the supernatural nature of the characters. Both performers sang to the extreme upper and lower ends of their impressive ranges. Graves vanquished a seventeen-minute aria that began in the baritone range and built to the high soprano range, peaking just as she tells Grendel to "scare them to glory." Both characters had additional musical expressions of themselves, allowing for far greater tonal variety and range than a solo singer could achieve. Grendel often sang with three shadow Grendels, and the Dragon had her three dragonettes riffing at the end of her tail.

The striking and evocative libretto by Taymor and the poet J. D. McClatchy was sung (and occasionally spoken) in either contemporary English or in Old English (with supertitles for both). Many of the modern English lyrics were lifted verbatim from Gardner's prose novel, and several of the Anglo-Saxon lyrics were taken directly from Beowulf. Grendel and the Dragon sang in contemporary English, making the monsters one of us. The royal court and the chorus of warriors and their women sang in Anglo-Saxon, distancing them from their human audience. Beowulf (dancer Desmond Richardson), a man of brief and brutal action, was silent. The male chorus members, Noh-like, sang his lyrics for him. As a result, the traditional hero of the story became the most alienated.

The difficulty of mounting an opera with no production history is an exceptionally risky undertaking, and Grendel's Wagnerian grandeur compounds that challenge. Fifteen principals, twenty-four dancers, forty-eight adult chorus members (Concert Choral of New York in the New York production), and ten child chorus members (Los Angeles Children's Chorus) composed the cast. Taymor conceptualized and directed with an unflinching devotion to the operatic idea that more is more, a principle well suited to her style. As would be expected of this director, she employed staging practices and design elements seldom seen in opera and utilized cutting-edge computerized stage technology.

Taymor is celebrated for her use of puppets, and Grendelfeatured dozens. Designed by herself and Michael Curry, the puppets ranged from handheld warriors, to dancers transformed into Forlorn Beast puppets, to a giant Bread and Puppet Theater–style rod puppet of Grendel that towered over the set. The integration of human performers and puppets of various...