Sawyer and Shoptaw infuse their opera with a fascinating historical twist. They retell the story of Abraham Lincoln's assassination through the lens of the actors and audience members of "Our American Cousin," the comic production Lincoln was watching the night he was killed by John Wilkes Booth. Sawyer and Shoptaw extended the humor of the play into their opera. Not only are witty puns scattered throughout the libretto, but Sawyer's fundamental use of the bassoon and pizzicato cello helps to convey this goofy mood through music. However, extremely dark undertones brood under the opera's lighthearted façade. Sawyer and Shoptaw's musical commentary on the Civil War is chilling and thought-provoking.
As fairly typical of modern operas, Sawyer's overture is more or less a musical summary of the piece. It opens with a distant, mournful sound from the strings, while the woodwinds (mainly the flute) make whimsical interjections. Historically, the flute is used in opera to symbolize inner thought. Thus, Sawyer's focus on the flute indicates a flashback to the night of Lincoln's assassination. Figures in the bassoon and trumpet enter as the strings crescendo to an urgent and dissonant chord, foreshadowing this great tragedy. The tension of the overture climaxes with a trombone fanfare, which is intensified by repeated chromatic runs in the strings-the confusion and panic of the assassination and its immediate aftermath. The music finally winds back down into the reflective mood of the beginning, creating a wonderful feeling of unity.
The first act of "Our American Cousin" sets the opera in an historical context. Students from the Amherst College Concert Choir, who played the members of the audience at Ford's Theatre, recount the carnal horrors of the Civil War, while, backstage, the actors (most notably, John Wilkes Booth) engage in heated political debates. All of the dialogue seethes with racial tension. The establishment of such friction makes it especially poignant when the acting company's manager/leading lady, Laura Keene, enters the stage at the end of the act with a wish for the audience: "Emancipate your sorrows, losses, apprehensions;/for this balconied space of an hour/set them free." Keene's aria is especially eerie because the present-day audience knows that within an hour of the play, the nation would actually have been thrown into an even higher state of turbulence and sorrow.
Act Two is comprised of the performance of "Our American Cousin" and a comedy about Asa, a simple-minded, American "country bumpkin." Asa is being courted by Augusta Dundreary who secretly wants his inheritance for her scheming mother. The dialogue of the play is filled with historical references which 17th-century Americans would find highly amusing. It mocks British stereotypes of America with exaggerated "hillbilly" accents and songs about "possum herdin'." In the aria, "Oh mercy!", Sawyer and Shoptaw highlight the ironic fact that Lincoln sees Asa as a caricatured version of himself.
The foreboding mood of Act Three is a striking contrast to the lighthearted comedy of the previous act. In a mad rage, John Wilkes Booth plans his crime, reciting lines of Latin and Shakespeare. The menace of his plot is intensified by the orchestra's syncopated, erratic-sounding playing. The music builds in intensity until Lincoln has been shot, at which point it shifts to repeated eighth-note pulsations, creating a feeling of alarm and commotion. Lincoln's laughing exclamations of "Oh ho mercy!" are transformed into the audience's cries of "Oh mercy! Merciful Jesus!" after Lincoln is shot. The repetition of these two small words is subtle, but extremely powerful. It fits with the opera's paradoxical theme that tragedy is always inherent in comedy.
Sawyer and Shoptaw's "Our American Cousin" is gripping, entertaining and provocative. Judging by the audience's hearty standing ovation, I believe many others shared my sentiments that Amherst College was privileged to have been the site of the world premiere of such a brilliant work of art.