Philip Glass, Circus Days and Nights (2021)

A new Glass opera?  Don't mind if I do; do mind if I don't.  It's cool that he's still active in his mid-eighties.

This was comissioned by Malmö Opera and produced in partnership with Circus Cirkör, a Swedish circus company.  The libretto is based on a poetry cycle by the poet Robert Lax.  During the forties, Lax travelled around for a while with various circuses, and he wrote it based on his experiences with the Cristiani Family. As you'd expect, there's not really a plot here: we follow the building and performing and unbuilding of the circus.  Lax (represented here at two ages, as a young soprano and an older baritone) narrates and asks questions; the performers muse about their art.  And the whole thing is some sort of metaphor for the life cycle, apparently.

Whether or not it's super-profound, it's certainly entertaining.  The music is Philip Glass; no huge surprises, except that the prominent use of an accordion suggests a circus atmosphere (I think it would've been interesting to lean further in on that--stick a Wurlitzer and a calliope in there!).  And, as noted, also circus performers: jugglers, tumblers, acrobats, trapeze artists, even a human cannonball, doing real tricks, sometimes-hair-raising.  A pretty high barrier to entry if you wanted to put this on, and surely a claims adjuster's nightmare, but really cool.  A lot of people think circuses are lame, but as a counterpoint, I would point out that circuses are actually great when well-done.  I mean, aside from the animal abuse, but I think that's been more or less completely phased out these days.

If you want to see this, you can, but it requires you to actually plan.  It's being streamed online until the thirteenth, but as it if were a live show--you have to choose a date, and you have to watch it in real-time.  I do not typically watch operas at one in the afternoon (although, to be fair, that's the Met in HD also), but it was worth it.  And as mildly inconvenient as it is, I do have to admit that there's a certain je ne sais quoi to knowing that you're watching live.