BSO Presents ‘The Brightness of Light’: An Unforgettable Evening of Starry Lyricism

From Nov. 21 to 23, the Boston Symphony Orchestra presented a concert featuring Kevin Puts’s “The Brightness of Light,” a song cycle inspired by the life and letters of American artist Georgia O’Keeffe, with soprano Renée Fleming portraying the iconic artist and baritone Rod Gilfry as her husband and artistic collaborator, Alfred Stieglitz.

The concert opened with two Mozart works, the overture from his 1782 opera “Die Entführung aus dem Serail” — which translates to “The Abduction from the Seraglio” — followed by his “Symphony No. 36 in C major.” Also known as the Linz Symphony, both pieces provided a vigorous, high-energy start to the evening that provided formal contrast to Puts’s more amorphous, dream-like work. Music director Andris Nelsons led the BSO in fine form, and his exuberant conducting style shone through in the Linz. An absolute joy to watch and hear, he achieved impressive dynamic range with the orchestra and clarity in the most tittering, rapid runs throughout the piece.

However, the real star of the program was undoubtedly Puts’s 50-minute song cycle. Performed by a star cast, the tale of the ardent and later beleaguered duo of O'Keeffe and Stieglitz was expertly portrayed by Fleming and Gilfry respectively. Originally commissioned by the Eastman School of Music and premiered as a one-woman act with Fleming as O’Keeffe, the piece was later expanded to include the character of O’Keeffe’s husband, art collector Alfred Stieglitz, who began his liaison with O’Keeffe after she had sent him his art for review and display.

The libretto of “The Brightness of Light” was assembled from actual letter correspondences between the two. This masterful adaptation of actual biographical material resulted in peerless dramatic incision, conveying the different moods that O’Keeffe and Stieglitz went through as a couple and as fully-formed, sensuous individuals. The whole performance was also accompanied by ethereal projections of O’Keeffe’s artistic creations as well as snapshots from her domestic and creative life as an artist as well as her letters to Stieglitz — immersing the audience in a riveting multimedia experience.

As for Puts’s music, the scores were the perfect conduit for expressing the ineffability of two creative souls so helplessly intertwined yet striving for their own independence. Brought to life by Fleming’s liquid gold lyric soprano and Gilfry’s bellowing, impassioned baritone, the song cycle was spectacularly rendered by some of the operatic world’s finest voices. The introduction of the piece, titled “Introduction,” was a sumptuous elaboration on O’Keeffe’s first line and the opening line of the entire piece: “My first memory is of the brightness of light— light all around.”

This warm diffusion of light was soon broken by Puts’s expressive orchestral writing in “First Correspondence,” with lively percussion capturing the young O’Keeffe’s nerves reaching out to Stieglitz about her work and inevitably setting off his fascination with her. Weaving in and out of O’Keeffe’s subconscious, the movement explored her deep-seated cynicism with regards to language and preference for pictorial modes of expression. From the start, the portrait of O’Keeffe was one of tender vulnerability.

The next number, “A Soul like Yours,” was heartbreakingly beautiful, featuring a piano solo and airy strings floating on top. Mainly focusing on Stieglitz’s ruminations on his attempts and desires to understand O’Keeffe, this transitioned into an even more sensual duet between the two. Orchestral dissonances were all but too effective in expressing how terrifying and disorienting the passion between these two artists felt, though the work was not devoid of lighter moments. In “Violin,” for example, the concertmaster briefly abandoned all composure and provided an all-too-real enactment of a beginner violinist’s out-of-tune playing complete with awkward open string tuning.

Overall, the work was one of sublime beauty and ultimately unparalleled expressiveness. As the work progressed and the relationship between O’Keeffe and Stieglitz crumbled due to his infidelity and her own desire for artistic freedom, Fleming shone, particularly in “Taos” — the name of O’Keeffe’s artistic hideaway in New Mexico. She tackled the melismas written for her with fierce abandon yet utter control and brought out O’Keeffe’s more vulnerable moments, especially in “Friends.” Written with more prosaic language, the pared-down orchestration conveyed her solitude to a heartbreaking tee before transitioning into her parting shot in “Sunset.” The rhapsodic and poetic movement ended on a vanishing pianississimo, a testament to Puts’s genius in symbolizing O’Keeffe’s mythic transcendence, liberated by her art. Received rapturously by the audience, the Boston Symphony Orchestra’s versatility once more triumphed without question, tackling both the canon and contemporary works with both finesse and sensitivity.

—Staff writer Lara R. Tan can be reached at lara.tan@thecrimson.com.