Post Industrial Players

The Rise and Fall of the First World is an evening-length, bilingual chamber music drama set in the United States and Brazil. It is the third part of a trilogy of chamber music dramas written by composer Michael Kowalski for his music theater group, The Postindustrial Players. The first part of the trilogy, the one-act Still in Love (1996), was a collaboration with Los Angeles-based playwright Kier Peters. The second part of the trilogy, Fraternity of Deceit (1998), was an evening-length piece set to a libretto by the composer. Both works had their Off-Off Broadway premieres in New York City and are available on commercial CDs from the Equilibrium label.

The libretto of the current project is a collaboration between the composer and the Brazilian writer Helena Soares Hungria. It is a major work in two acts of approximately 150 minutes total duration, scored for soprano, mezzo, tenor, and bass, accompanied by a virtuoso chamber ensemble consisting of string quartet, acoustic piano, synthesizer, multiple percussion, and winds.

The plot traces one year in the lives of Paula and Mark, siblings from Chicago, Illinois, and César and Filomena, siblings from São Paulo, Brazil. Filomena and Paula, who were roommates and best friends in graduate school, have introduced one another to their respective brothers, and a double marriage ensues. The first act concludes just before the couples' very expensive double wedding reception in Chicago, hosted by Mark, who, in addition to being Paula's brother and Filomena's new husband, is the quite prosperous and equally ruthless "Pizza King of Cicero, Illinois."

The second act picks up the story six months later on the Brazilians' family farm in rural São Paulo state, where the two couples were to have spent their honeymoon. The honeymoon has turned into a self-imposed exile, with Mark fighting a case of income tax evasion in the US, César vainly trying to hatch schemes to rescue the family farm from bankruptcy and confiscation by the land reform movement, and the two women fighting frustration from having abandoned their careers. The newly sour relationships among the four friends are further aggravated by Mark's sudden interest in a shady business deal in northeastern Brazil. Suspicions that Mark also has a new romantic interest cause a rupture between him and the two Brazilians. Meanwhile, Paula's disenchantment with Brazil leads to her gradual estrangement from César. The last scene shows Filomena back in her São Paulo city apartment, preparing to return to work as an industrial designer. In spite of, or perhaps because of the calamitous events of the previous year, she has achieved a new level of self-possession and wisdom.

The first act is sung in English with Portuguese surtitles. The second act is sung in Portuguese with English surtitles. This is more than a bow to current fashion. The piece is very much about the problems of being a foreigner, about linguistic fogs, and about the confusion of image and reality which confronts anyone who tries sincerely to comprehend a new culture. It's also a head-on encounter with issues of gender, marriage, family politics, and the struggle to make a living in a not-quite-globalized world.

The music is in perpetual flux between brief flirtations with atonality and passages of melodic churning that call to mind Richard Strass, Puccini, and Kurt Weill at their wilder moments. The relentless forward thrust of the music and action is resolved in climactic arias, duets, and quartets based on Brazilian and North American pop and jazz. Brazilians will be able to spot stylistic nods to Tom Jobim, Ary Barroso, Jacob Bittencourt, and rural emboladas. North Americans will pick up various shades of the blues and fleeting references to Old Hollywood.

Epigrams in lieu of a program note . . .

Étrangement, l'étranger nous habite: il est la face cachée de notre identité, l'espace que ruine notre demeure, le temp où s'abiment l'entente et la sympathie. De le reconnaître en nous, nous nous épargnons de le détester en lui-même.

Strangely, the foreigner lives within us: he is the hidden face of our identity, the space that wrecks our abode, the time in which understanding and affinity founder. By recognizing him within ourselves, we are spared detesting him in himself.

Julia Kristeva, Étrangers à nous-mêmes, translated by Leon Roudiez

A vida real é um sonho, só que de olhos abertos (que vêem tudo destorcido).
Real life is a dream, just with the eyes (which see everything distorted) wide open. —mk

Mas, mesmo fragmentário e dissonante e desafinado, creio que existe em tudo isso uma ordem submersa. E! Existe uma vontade.
But however fragmentary, dissonant, and out of tune, I believe that there exists in all of this an underlying order. And! There exists the will. —mk

Clarice Lispector, Um Sopro de Vida

But just as personal egoism, when it transcends a certain limit, begins to devour itself, so too does the egoism of a conservative class.