It’s no accident of synchronicity that on the day that the New York Times ran a background piece about migrant workers encamped year-round in the woods of the Hamptons, the choral group MasterVoices presented a one-night revival of Ricky Ian Gordon’s opera The Grapes of Wrath, reprising the work they introduced to New York audiences in 2010.
Translations of Deuteronomy 15:11 abound, but in essence it says: “There will always be poor people in the land, Therefore I command you to be openhanded …”
MasterVoices artistic director Ted Sperling co-conceived and again conducted the semi-staged revival of this staggering piece, with some minor emendations and additions to Michael Korie’s concise and moving libretto.
The opera is based on John Steinbeck’s 1939 novel about the massive westward migration precipitated by the Dust Bowl disaster. Tens of thousands of tenant farmers were forced off their blighted lands. You may remember the book from high school as a dense, weighty tome, ending in a scene guaranteed to shock an adolescent’s sensibility. It was rendered here with soul-scouring passion by Mikaela Bennett as “Rose of Sharon” Joad.
It falls mostly to matriarch Ma Joad (Margaret Lattimore, resplendent of voice and stamina) to carry the emotional and physical load of the family’s fraught journey West. Exhausted, starving, they finally reach California’s promised land only to discover that foremen have been instructed to burn bumper crops in order to boost prices. “Shoot!” says Winfield, the youngest Joad (Gordon Henry, very natural). “If they just gonna waste ’em … Why can’t we tek’ em?”
Good question. Eldest son Noah – described as “a calm and puzzled-looking man who seldom spoke” – takes it upon himself to relieve the strain on the family larder. Christian Pursell sings this devastating soliloquy exquisitely. If you’re left dry-eyed, you are perhaps utterly devoid of empathy.
Tom Joad (Kyle Oliver) is ripe for radicalizing, and a “burnt out holy-roller” turned strike leader (Schyler Vargas, superb in several variegated roles) is the one to push him over the edge, saying: “Why not attack the need instead of the needy?”
In the interest of condensation, actors J. Smith Cameron and Joe Morton served as narrators, linking – and sometimes pre-encapsulating – the scenes enacted along the lip of the stage. In the background, a chorus some two-hundred strong sit ready to add reinforcement, beneath an array of vintage photographs smartly curated by Wendell K. Harrington.
While attesting to the authenticity of the historical record, the imagery also adds a frisson of immediacy. This same crisis can be seen all around us, daily: Only the identities of the underprivileged suffering at the bottom of the food chain have changed.
The Grapes of Wrath was presented for one performance on April 17, 2024 at Carnegie Hall. Information: mastervoices.org
