Gary Poster, with essential assists from Galyn Norwood, Phiroon Phihakendr, Jose Quijada, Pavandeep Kalra. It seems like half an hour. The lovely production could be moved to the stage of the Metropolitan Opera without much apology or revision. They put dew on the music of another young man, long dead, and roses in its notes. It's good to see the vertical lines of transmission in such good shape, after the damage that's been done on the horizontal.
Culture likes to work on the vertical axis, by accumulating tradition.
About 35 years ago, however, we pivoted around to the horizontal. Not far from the theater where I saw the opera, I went into a large chain record store that sells the accumulation of the horizontal culture. In the democracy of trash, Jeffrey Dahmer achieves afterlife as Hannibal Lecter. The atmosphere of mutilation and stupidity and sickness and unhappiness and emptiness is suffocating. It is the culture of Columbine.