Game of ThronesReviewIn a bid to make opera more accessible, the One World Symphony put on a programme of music inspired by the HBO show – and more or less succeeded
One of the most memorable parts Game of Thrones is the theme song, which has been covered by all sorts of people, including the Queen’s Guards. A lucky audience in New York got to sing the music along with a full orchestra thanks to the One World Symphony, which debuted its Game of Thrones-inspired “operasode” on Sunday.
Invented by One World Symphony artistic director and composer Sung Jin Hong, operasodes are programs of existing classical music compiled to compliment the themes and motifs of popular television shows. This marketing gimmick is meant to expose opera to an audience that wouldn’t otherwise be attracted to it – and, based on the number of young faces in the crowd at Church of the Holy Apostles the afternoon of the Super Bowl, it’s succeeding in its mission.
The church was a perfect venue for the concert, not only because of its acoustics, but also because it channeled some of the more baroque architecture we see in Westeros as represented on HBO. (Although in future it might be more appropriate to fill the room with candelabras and candlelight rather than sunlight streaming in through the stained glass windows.) The orchestra was in the spirit, with players wearing velvet renaissance festival dresses, breastplates, flowing capes and other regalia. Hong was dressed in a faux fur costume that looked borrowed right out of Jon Snow’s wardrobe.
To begin the program, soprano Laura Farmer came out in a perfect Cersei Lannister costume and wig and sang the “O smania, o furie … D’Oreste, D’Ajace” section from Mozart’s Idomeneo. The passage is also very Cersei, featuring a royal woman scheming the deaths of others to get her way.
The second number, O Death, Rock Me Asleep, a duet between mezzo-soprano Adrienne Metzinger and harpist Kristi Shade, was the best of the night. The lyrics are attributed to Anne Boleyn, who supposedly wrote them on the eve of her death while locked in a dingy cell, a place many on Game of Thrones are familiar with. This is the only song one could actually imagine hearing performed on the show, maybe in a montage of the many prisoners of the current king.
Tenor Jon Morrell did a fine if uninspired job singing a trio of passages from Wagner’s Die Walküre that concern incest in some way, a topic George RR Martin’s work also touches on.
The middle section of the program was perhaps the weakest. Hong asked members of the audience who had never been to a classical concert before to raise their hands. Of the several dozen, he picked two to come up and talk about themselves, and bassist Justin Lee then freestyled some funk songs based on their responses. The ditties were cute, but the audience participation was cringeworthy, especially for a group that was probably expecting a more passive experience.
Next Hong instructed the audience to sing the melody of the Game of Thrones theme song. When no one sang when they were supposed to, he asked the audience to stand up and conducted them with more direction. The orchestra then played the other sections of the song, filling it out to sound like we’re used to hearing it on our TV sets. While it was fun to show fans how the parts of the song come together and how they can be instrumental in its creation, it smacked a bit of a high school assembly, with everyone half-heartedly participating in an educational enterprise.
Lee then played an original composition on based called the Hodor Suite, inspired by Bran Stark’s bodyguard on the show. It was thin and predicated on the joke that Hodor is only mentally capable of saying his own name.
The second half of the 90-minute program got right back on track with baritone Fernando Araujo singing a selection from Verdi’s Rigoletto, an opera about a hunchbacked court jester who is similar to the “imp” Tyrion Lannister. Soprano Heather Green performed the final scene from Strauss’s Salome, again drawing parallels to scheming Cersei. Both performers were good, though the orchestra sometimes drowned out their voices.
The real standout, however, was mezzo-soprano Kristin Starkey singing The Field of the Dead from Prokofiev’s Alexander Nevsky. In it a woman surveys the dead men on the battlefield and wonders about the price of battle and what it means for her country. This woman could easily be Catelyn Stark or Daenerys Targaryen, but it was Starkey’s surprising voice and doleful phrasing that made this song effective even apart from this more fantastical milieu.
The wonderful program notes helped tie this all together, giving opera fans information about the show and, more notably, fans of Game of Thrones context for why these selections were chosen and how they are applicable to themes of death, battle and palace intrigue that make for such great viewing. Though the program was a little uneven, it was brisk and accessible, fulfilling One World Symphony’s mission to bring opera to the masses. It proves that new audiences can get excited about the work of Mozart if it is framed in a modern pop culture perspective. Maybe next time they can secure the rights to do a sing-along to the Rains of Castemere.
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