THE NEW YORK TIMES
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May 28, 2002, Tuesday

THE ARTS/CULTURAL DESK
OPERA REVIEW; Quirks and Microtones For Antics of Peer Gynt

By ANNE MIDGETTE

John Eaton has been writing operas for more than 40 years, and it shows. He knows how to do it. In the 1980's, he was known for works like ''The Cry of Clytaemnestra'' (performed at the San Francisco Opera) or ''The Tempest'' (Santa Fe); since 1993 his operas have been crafted for his own chamber troupe, the Pocket Opera Players. This Chicago-based company, accompanied by the New York New Music Ensemble, made its New York debut last Tuesday evening at Symphony Space in Manhattan with a double bill of two of Mr. Eaton's works: ''Peer Gynt,'' already heard in New York in the 1990's, and ''. . . inasmuch,'' a premiere. They were creative, antic, quirky and enchanting.

Conventional wisdom associates Mr. Eaton with electronics -- he collaborated with Robert Moog for nearly 20 years on developing a touch-sensitive keyboard -- and microtonal music, both of which (again in conventional wisdom) would seem to make him off-putting to audiences. Not so. True, his music is not easy; but the use of microtones serves primarily to expand his expressive palette. And expressivity, with superb attention to nuance and detail, is the real point of the exercise. (Both works, incidentally, were scored for acoustic instruments.)


Sometimes this came across on the most rudimentary level, abandoning formal musical structure altogether. For example, the clarinet, in the title role, sometimes expressed its scorn in a sound that came across very much like a Bronx cheer; and when Peer raped and then abandoned the bride Ingrid, the cello that played Ingrid keened in descending glissandos. (''Stop groaning!'' the clarinet player said.) The next moment Mr. Eaton would present an intricately wrought passage of great sophistication and beauty like the love duet between Peer and Solveig.

''Peer Gynt'' isn't really an opera in the strict sense, because there are no singers; Mr. Eaton has described the genre as ''romps for instrumentalists.'' Led by the wonderful Jean Kopperud, a clarinetist able to play while doing a backward somersault, as Peer, the musicians of the New York New Music Ensemble, which originally commissioned the work (the first of Mr. Eaton's ''pocket operas''), delivered spoken lines; assumed Ibsen's roles, from trolls to monkeys; and played Mr. Eaton's music, from articulate solos to interwoven ensembles, literally without missing a beat.

But Mr. Eaton also writes very well for the voice, as he demonstrated in ''. . . inasmuch.'' The libretto, by Estela Eaton (Mr. Eaton's daughter), is original in every sense, a contemporary fairy tale of linguists exploring language and communication on a tropical isle, all lured by three parrots who sing beguilingly in a lost Aztec language and provide the voice of the princess Zamala, who cannot speak without them. The parrots (a cross between the Rhine Maidens and the Andrews Sisters) are at one point kidnapped by a character determined to make his fortune by booking them as the musical entertainment on a cruise ship.

Mr. Eaton's vocal writing isn't easy, either, and it terribly challenged Mark J. Meier, the tenor who sang the lead role of Adam, who sounded as if he were deliberately assuming a funny nasal voice. But Jeffery McCollum and Sharon Quattrin, in the roles of the linguistics professor Mediana and her husband, Esperanto; Hyoun-soo Sohn, the embodiment of a beautiful princess, with a mellow burnished mezzo; and the three parrots, Bridget Wintermann-Parker, Ms. Quattrin and Antoinette Arnold, all sopranos, showed that there was plenty here for good singers to sink their teeth into, rewardingly.

The music ran the gamut from jazz (backing up the cynical linguist Schwa, played by Stacia Spencer, a miked jazz singer) to the parrots' brand of close harmony, which was neither close nor conventionally harmonic.

Both operas, too, had ambiguous endings; Peer may or may not be redeemed, while Adam leaves the island without Zamala, who sends her parrots sadly away and tries to learn to speak herself. Mr. Eaton, one could say, doesn't like his stories or his music facile. Which is precisely their appeal.

Published: 05 - 28 - 2002 , Late Edition - Final , Section E , Column 1 , Page 5