The Pageantry of a Klutz's Mind

By William Bender

The American millionaire Gene Henderson is perhaps the first white man to make the climb over the mountains into the tiny jungle village. That impresses the natives. So does the look of him. He is 6 ft. 4 in. and weighs 230 Ibs. To the black men, his florid face has many colors, and his nose is big enough, by his own boast, to "smell the whole world with." Henderson is also a psychological mess. His quest is for knowledge of Grun tu molani (the way to live). What he carries with him is the doom of self-doubt. "Well, Your Highness, you've got a good thing here," he says to Itelo, prince of the gentle Arnewi. But in a vainglorious attempt to rid the Arnewi of a plague of frogs, Henderson blows up their only reservoir. They cast him out of their mini-Eden along with his companion Romilayu, who had warned in vain: "Perhaps it better to guide no other than yourself."

American Composer Leon Kirchner, 58, began the work, based on Saul Bellow's novel Henderson the Rain King, 18 years ago and finished it just before its premiere last week at the New York City Opera. The rather surprising title --the name of Henderson's second wife --came about because United Artists owns the rights to Bellow's title, and Kirchner feared a lawsuit. That is one problem avoided, but only one.

Pristine Chants. Lily is a brilliant flop. A professor at Harvard and a 1967 Pulitzer Prize winner, Kirchner concedes the opera's transparent comment on American intervention abroad. In fact, he once considered (and wisely reconsidered) calling it Why We Were in Viet Nam. What he has produced, however, is a 91-minute, one-act work in which Henderson simply fails to come alive as an operatic hero. Possibly he is too rambling, too widely split a character to be captured in the broad terms that opera thrives on. Certainly Kirchner, who conducted the premiere, has come up with nothing musical to match the rich flow of language in Bellow's novel. Instead, he has given Henderson a kind of Sprechgesang (the style of half song, half speech developed by Arnold Schoenberg) in which to rant and rave.

Bellow's Henderson is a man of vast comic incongruity. Kirchner's hero (even though splendidly performed by Bass Ara Berberian) is a one-dimensional klutz. The pity is that there is so much good music in Lily -- the Bartokian orchestral evocation of the jungle, the sweet, pristine chants of the natives, the often amusing coloratura chirping of Lily (Susan Belling).

In essence, Kirchner has produced music for a pageant -- the pageantry in this case being the external processions of Henderson's mind. Sensing this, Director Tom O'Horgan (Hair, Jesus Christ Superstar) has rolled out the ribbons and ordered up some eye-catching costumes from Designer Randy Barcelo. The first entrance of the natives has a typically splendiferous O'Horgan touch. The sun rises to reveal Princess Mtalba sitting high atop a pyramidlike structure. Then the queen is discovered in a formal pose just below her. Then the entire population of the village emerges from under the queen's matriarchal robes. It is also a nice touch to portray the native people (but not the leaders) with dancers and tuck the chorus away in an upper balcony. But, sad to say, all to little avail. William Bender

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