Review: ‘Siddhartha, She’ offers a powerful retelling of a classic tale

Siddhartha, She, a new opera by Grammy Award-winning composer Christopher Theofanidis and librettist Melissa Studdard, will premiere at the Aspen Music Festival on August 2. The creative process for this multi-disciplinary and sprawlingly collaborative work has deep roots in Atlanta. Under the baton of Maestro Robert Spano, music director laureate of the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra, the new opus will feature movement by Atlanta-based choreographer Lauri Stallings, the founder and artistic guide of the movement arts platform glo.

While Colorado patrons will be first to witness Siddhartha, She’s full spectacle in the Festival’s Klein Music Tent, Stallings has given Atlanta audiences some compelling first glimpses during free, open work-in-process showings. The most recent was last Saturday, July 19, at the Goat Farm Arts Center. 

The heat in the vaulted, cathedral-like space of Goodson Studio, where Stallings was rehearsing moving artists Noëlle Davé and Mary Jane Pennington, was a bit shy of stifling and tested the upper limits of tolerable. To the right of the entrance, Stallings had set up a tableau of offerings to blunt the edge of summer’s swelter and welcome those who had braved it — cool, home-brewed hibiscus tea in a blue tin teapot, Chimes ginger candies, candles and calling cards adorned with photos of glo’s art and contact information.

Stallings is an intensely-focused and cerebral artist, and her work often actively resists aesthetic boundaries and (projected, perhaps, more than established) Southeastern cultural norms. At the same time, such homey touches and genuine Southern hospitality are always integral, expected aspects of a glo event. 

Like Stallings, multidisciplinary visual artist Anne Patterson, who is directing and designing Siddhartha, She, is a longtime collaborator of Spano’s, and she previously encountered Stallings through the choreographer’s work with the ASO. This is their first time collaborating on the same production, however.

Patterson acknowledged that, in conversation with Stallings, one sometimes has the sense she is using a slightly different language — or at least using language differently — reaching for depths of meaning and connection beyond the ordinary. Nonetheless, she said, “Lauri is so generous. She invites you in. You’re able to be vulnerable, and that’s a very lovely place to be when you’re making art like this.”

Siddhartha, She is based on Herman Hesse’s 1922 classic novel, Siddhartha — with a twist. Theofanidas and Studdard have recast the titular main character as female. 

“I couldn’t help but think about how interesting it might be to create a version in which more of the characters are female,” said Studdard. Reconsidering gender roles also allowed her to foreground respecting and achieving balance as a narrative theme. “Regardless of their gender, I tried to draw out both the traditionally ‘masculine’ and ‘feminine’ sides or energies of each character,” she said.

Within the musical composition, Theofanidis has done something similar with the masculine character of Gautama Buddha, who will be played by countertenor Key’mon W. Murrah. Countertenors are male opera singers who can handle the higher vocal range typically sung by female sopranos. “He has the most unearthly, beautiful voice. I wrote the part with him in mind,” said Theofanidis.  

As observers found their way into Goodson, Dave’ and Pennington rehearsed a section in which they embody the delirious love affair between Siddhartha and the courtesan Kamala. Stallings ported her laptop around so that Patterson, who joined via videoconference, could observe their coordinated partnering and tender embraces in a spiraling dance of courtship that ends with a passionate kiss.

Stallings and Patterson explained that the dancers will share the stage with a full orchestra, the main cast and a chorus of 24. An additional 40 chorus members will be placed in the audience. 

Siddhartha, She represents the latest evolutionary stage of a story Hesse himself shaped of narrative clay drawn from the ancient history of the Buddha. In a tale about transformation and impermanence, the dancers are shapeshifters, taking on multiple personae and layering their bodies with richly textured symbolic and literary references.

While describing the process for Siddhartha, She, Stallings paged through the notebook she keeps to document it. Interleaved among her own words and pictures, and a pasted-in watercolor sketch of a river by Patterson, are ephemera related to the final days of earthly life for Stallings’ father, Harry. He “transitioned,” as Stallings describes it, in the weeks leading up to the showing. “He is part of this, too,” she said. 

In addition to the sketches, Patterson provided rivers made of fabric and ribbon to guide Stallings in developing a gestural vocabulary that will mesh with other aspects of the production, including video projections by Adam Larsen, soundscape composition by Patrick Harlin, costumes by Margaret Ann Phillips and Patterson’s scenic installations.

The theme of transformation percolates through the opera’s design in a myriad ways. The ribbon river with which Pennington draped herself during rehearsal, for example, comprises recycled material from Blue Bliss, one of Patterson’s ribbon installations. Phillips and Stallings chose the dancers’ costumes from glo’s archives, selecting blue silk creations originally constructed by Stallings’ mother for the MOCA GA installation, the room for tender choreographies. 

“Blue isn’t a color that I usually work with,” said Stallings. “But when Margaret asked me if I had anything we could use, these immediately came to mind.” Stallings finds it fitting that, after being tucked away for years, “all of those stitches representing [her] mother’s tiny, repeated gestures” will have another life in Siddhartha, She.

Stallings will arrive in Aspen on Wednesday, July 23, and the moving artists, including Laila Rosen, will join her on Friday. Stallings will have just over a week to work in person with the entire cast and chorus, and she has plans to choreograph them into a collective embodiment of the river that leads Siddhartha to enlightenment.

If Stallings accomplishes her goal, it will be one of her largest “people mover” installations to date, and in yet another fitting transformation, will bring her “social practice choreography,” which often takes place out of doors in non-traditional spaces, onto the opera stage.

Spano said one of the reasons the collaboration has worked so well is he, Stallings and Patterson have a shared understanding that their job is to help Theophanidis and Studdard realize their vision. “We are midwives to what Chris and Melissa have created,” he said. “They are the head of Zeus from which Athena has sprung; this is their work we are trying to bring to life.”

While everything will move quickly in the days leading to the premiere, Siddhartha, She has been the work of years, even decades. Theofanidis said the seeds of the project were planted more than 20 years ago when he was working on ideas for a commission with Patrick Summers, artistic and music director of the Houston Grand Opera.

“Patrick sent me the novel,” Theofanidis said. “It didn’t happen then for a variety of reasons, but the idea for an opera based on Siddhartha resurfaced when Melissa, Patrick [Harlin], Anne, Robert and I were fellows at the Hermitage artist retreat.” The plan became more concrete during the pandemic when the group began having regular video calls to discuss it.”

“Relationships draw out of us art that we did not even know we contained,” Stallings said when reflecting on her numerous collaborations with Spano. Studdard agreed, describing the other collaborators’ time together at the Hermitage. “When you bring together artists from different disciplines, it kind of roughs things up, adding texture to the conversations that happen,” she explained. 

“We are all friends who have a deep trust in one another and our respective expertise in our own domains,” Theofanidis continued. “All art is a response to something else. The glue here is the drama of Siddhartha, She itself, and the desire we all have to see that on the stage.” 

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Robin Wharton studied dance at the School of American Ballet and the Pacific Northwest Ballet School. As an undergraduate at Tulane University in New Orleans, she was a member of the Newcomb Dance Company. In addition to a bachelor of arts in English from Tulane, Robin holds a law degree and a Ph.D. in English, both from the University of Georgia.