Popular Culture Review Vol. 10, No. 2, August 1999 | Page 40
34
Popular Culture Review
Above the singers, an enormous screen (perhaps 100’ long and 30’ high)
vibrates with a series of disparate and haunting images, faultlessly projected in
stereoscopic verisimilitude. In a mountainous terrain, a series of helicopters flies
through the skies aimlessly, as if engaged in a reconnaissance mission without any
concrete objective. A series of attenuated tendrils, or sinews, lead to a decapitated
hand, which turns and gestures towards the audience, its fingers extending out into
space over the heads of the crowd, as a small knife traces the lifelines of the disem
bodied hand in minuscule rivulets of blood. A house drifts out to sea, past a dense
and lushly populated jungle, then past a distant, monolithic metropolis, and finally
past an enormous iceberg, while a sea serpent threatens to devour the house and its
inhabitants, who glide towards each other in a trance, on the rooftop of the derelict
abode. Notes Glass, creating “the animation was fim. I’ve always loved Robert’s
work, and to see it jump out of the screen at you is really exhilarating. It is truly
something that has to be seen to be believed” (Brown 53).
At other points in Monsters o f Grace, the images become even more ab
stract, as when a series of glowing lines stretch across the screen in ethereal slow
motion, creating a series of luminescent Mandarin paintings in the simulacric 3-D
performance space. What is most impressive about Monsters o f Grace, as I have
previously suggested, is that it can easily be taken out on tour in its “original”
form, with the original performers, rather than in an inferior “road company” ver
sion that dilutes and vitiates both the quality and intensity of the work. While
traditional opera relies upon hyperspectacle, with enormous sets and ornate cos
tumes, in addition to a company of performers. Monsters o f Grace signals the
dawn of a new operatic performance style, in which economy of presentation is
not allowed to affect the emotional impact of the work. When the Metropolitan
Opera presents La Traviata in Central Park as part of their annual summer series of
free presentations, for example, the visual aspect of the work is almost entirely
sacrificed in order to transport the performance into the public sphere. Sets, cos
tumes, even stage directions are almost entirely eliminated.
What results is only an approximation of the actual experience of wit
nessing La Traviata on stage at the Met, in which the performers must carry both
the burden of the spectacle and the rituals of presentation, without any aid from the
imposing physical sets they are used to inhabiting, and relying upon. By contrast,
one could easily imagine an outdoor evening presentation of Monsters o f Grace
being every bit as effective as one witnessed on stage; as long as the 3-D image
projection quality is maintained, nothing would be sacrificed. But to better under
stand the impact, and the prescient example that Monsters o f Grace presents for
contemporary audiences, a bit of history on both the performance piece itself, and
the careers of those involved in its production, is both instructive and necessary.
Philip Glass was bom in Baltimore, MD, and as a child, received a rather