Show tunes and Cole Porter, sung by his mother when she was cooking; big band and Ella Fitzgerald on the radio; the Beatles, Stevie Wonder, the Supremes in his rock and soul-infused student years of the 60s. This melodic litany fired the imagination of the young John Adams (b.1947), growing up in New England, all but oblivious to the avant-garde parings being gobbled up by fellow composers. The union of text, rhythm and melody, each syllable precisely notated, was the crucible in which Adams’s own setting of the English language was forged.
Nowhere does this prove more vital than in his latest opera, Antony and Cleopatra, taken from Shakespeare and, despite streamlining, retaining the complexities and Elizabethan cadences of the original. The work was premiered, to an admiring but muted critical response, at San Francisco Opera in 2022 to launch that company’s 100th season. Last weekend the opera received its European premiere at the Gran Teatre del Liceu, Barcelona, this time conducted by the composer. The American soprano Julia Bullock, unable to perform in the US premiere, made her debut as Cleopatra, with the Canadian bass-baritone Gerald Finley returning as Antony. These two star performers have worked closely with Adams before. He created the work with their voices, stage personalities and, helped by an intimacy coordinator, their convincingly molten chemistry in mind.
