If you go to The Pigeon Keeper expecting the usual operatic fare of murder, emotional betrayal, sexual violence, kidnapping, and abuse, you’ll be disappointed. Instead, composer David Hanlon and librettist Stephanie Fleischmann have crafted a new opera that offers hope and healing, albeit with wistful sadness and gentle reminders of how trauma undoes people.
Set on a nameless Mediterranean island, The Pigeon Keeper is centered around a bereaved father, Thalasso (warmly sung by baritone Craig Irvin), and his 12-year-old daughter, Orsia (soprano Angela Yam in a bright, lively performance). Lost but emotionally ever-present is mother Philomena, who died seven years ago giving birth to a stillborn boy, Kosmo.
Thalasso, volatile in his grief, and Orsia are emotionally adrift. They don’t have much. Thalasso — whose name is the Greek word for “sea” — scrapes by as a fisherman, but there haven’t been many fish lately.
The Pigeon Keeper, which had its world premiere on Friday, March 7, at Fort Mason’s Cowell Theater, was commissioned through the Opera for All Voices initiative, a project led by Santa Fe Opera that includes several other American companies. OFAV’s goal of reaching audiences of all ages and experiences through new works that require only modest performing forces meant San Francisco’s Opera Parallèle was the perfect organization to present this first production.
When the curtain goes up on The Pigeon Keeper, you see a village street. Windows open at multiple levels in the walls, and pigeons — played by 17 members of the San Francisco Girls Chorus — begin to sing. Looking out of a tower window is the titular Pigeon Keeper (tenor Bernard Holcomb), singing to the birds in a language known only to himself.
Hanlon, who has written several previous operas (including another with Fleischmann), has a keen ear for melody and orchestration. The Pigeon Keeper is marvelously singable, and from an orchestra of just eight musicians — five strings, two wind players, a percussionist, all playing beautifully and conducted with sympathetic flexibility by Nicole Paiement — he conjures a panoply of appealing colors and textures. It’s easy to imagine a greatly expanded orchestration that would give the opera’s more dramatic moments even more impact.
As small as the island might be — and we don’t know its size for sure — there’s still plenty of room for social ills. Fleischmann’s excellent libretto paces the action beautifully, precisely delineating the characters. Those on one side of the island regarded those on the other with suspicion and even fear and hatred. We learn quickly that the Pigeon Keeper is an outsider, seen with that same suspicion.
Thalasso takes Orsia fishing on the anniversary of Philomena’s and Kosmo’s deaths, a sad tradition between father and daughter, and while they’re out to sea, they spot a huge school of fish and also a small boy (soprano Shayla Sauvie, an eighth-grade member of the SF Girls Chorus). They haul him in and bring him to land. He’s voiceless, unable to answer questions about who he is or where he came from.
Orsia becomes convinced that somehow he’s her lost brother, so she starts calling him Kosmo. She wants to make him a member of the family, but Thalasso, suspicious, refuses and gives her three days to find him a home.
Brian Staufenbiel’s unobtrusively clear direction supports the drama and fits well with the fairy-tale qualities of the story. As the characters wander about, Jacquelyn Scott’s lovely unit set transforms from beachfront to village street, largely through magical projections and lighting changes designed by Jessica Drayton. Lengths of blue cloth wielded by the choristers represent water. Y. Sharon Peng’s charming costumes suggest seaside warmth.
Orsia takes the boy to her neighbors, the Widow Grocer and Schoolteacher, both sung by Holcomb with chameleon-like flair and a husky, flexible tenor. These two villagers have their reasons, some good, some not, for not taking Kosmo in. He’s a stranger in town, and the island is having a refugee crisis — sound familiar?
Only the Pigeon Keeper has the heart to befriend the child, but here, Orsia’s fear of the man, instilled by her father, keeps her from allowing this, even though the two outsiders clearly have an affinity for one another.
Some mystery surrounds the boy. His coming brought back the fish, and for once Thalasso has a good catch. It rains for the first time in 300 days — did the boy bring the rain too? Is he Kosmo or some reincarnation or just a traumatized refugee?
All will eventually be resolved in this gentle fable, which comes to a dramatically and musically satisfying conclusion in just 80 minutes.
This story was first published in Datebook in partnership with the San Francisco Chronicle.
