Of course, only a composer of Bolcom’s stature–Pulitzer, NEAs, major commissions–gets to joke about being overexposed. His 1992 opera “McTeague,” also featuring Malfitano, got comparable attention, if not uniformly worshipful reviews. Critics who faulted Bolcom’s eclectic mix of styles then will find he hasn’t profited from their input. “A View from the Bridge” has tango rhythms, doo-wop, a second-act overture that sounds like the spookier parts of “Parsifal” and a Broadway-style showstopper called “The New York Lights.” Connect all this with recitative snaking through modernist dissonances, and critics are bound to wonder how it all hangs together. But aside from a few cheesy showbiz touches–one character’s only line is a Runyonesque “Yeh”–this is a powerful, moving work, with the dark passions of grand opera, down to the gloriously stagy death scene. And baritone Kim Josephson makes a creepily convincing Eddie Carbone, the dockworker undone by lust for his niece.
Bolcom, 61, loves talking about everyone from Mozart to Eddie Vedder; what has seemed to critics a willed eclecticism comes naturally. “I want a sort of national portmanteau style,” he says, “big enough to handle everything and everybody.” Much as he loves Verdi, his paradigm is “Porgy and Bess”: “For all its faults dramatically, it’s a great amalgam of popular and art music–as the first operas were.” And, Bolcom implies, as today’s opera should be. After “A View from the Bridge,” he’ll get no argument here.
