Frederica von Stade (Danny), Marietta Simpson (Martha)

At last we have an opera about Alzheimer’s, the irreversible, progressive brain disorder that afflicts thirty million people worldwide, and devastates their family and friends. This plague traumatizes so many people that it deserves to be explored, and Opera Philadelphia presented the world premiere of Sky on Swings to inaugurate its O18 Festival.

Composer Lembit Beecher and librettist Hannah Moscovitch collaborated to create a compelling vision of two women with Alzheimer’s, showing the disease at different stages. 

Their I Have No Stories to Tell You at last year’s O17 festival was promising; now they’ve taken a giant leap forward. Beecher’s music, especially, captures the confusion and anger that accompanies the onset of this disease. He is especially impressive in his writing for concerted voices, including a quartet who play medical staff and nursing home residents. Their harmonies and their dissonances are haunting. Beecher’s score explores fragmentary strands and shifting colors, which is perfectly appropriate for the subject.

Unlike last year’s opera which used ancient instruments, Beecher here employs an orchestra that features a string quintet with prominent passages for harp, vibraphone and — contrastingly — trombone.

Moscovitch’s words eloquently portray the grim facts, and point out that Alzheimer’s eventually destroys the ability to perform the simplest tasks, even the ability to swallow. They sugarcoat the final stages with a feel-good finale. Many operas, of course, end with tragedy, but I can understand the choice to avoid that when the subject is so close to the lives of audience members. Obviously, no one knows how much emotion is felt by such patients, and this opera chooses a romanticized view.

We meet Marietta Simpson as Martha, an institutionalized woman in an advanced stage of Alzheimer’s, and her visiting daughter. Martha hallucinates and is obviously frightened. Simpson pulls off the challenge of singing unintelligible sounds, rapid fire, with eloquence. Her mezzo voice, at the age of 59, is still warm and resonant. She regains the ability to express herself coherently late in the opera, and she sings beautifully.

We also meet Frederica von Stade as Danny, a highly-educated professional woman who has begun to forget things. (It’s unclear why this character is given a man’s name, unless it’s to indicate that Alzheimer’s afflicts both sexes, or to hint at a repressed homosexuality.) Her son, strongly played by baritone Daniel Taylor, administers a diagnostic word-finding test and is appalled when she fails it. Danny reacts with fury to the prospect that her intellect and personality will disappear. Her characterization indicates how Alzheimer’s seems to be most horrifying when it attacks people who are highly intelligent. Von Stade at age 73 still has a pleasurable voice and she acts compellingly.

The libretto then does a fast shortcut and Danny quickly is admitted to the same nursing home where Martha resides. Moscovitch missed an opportunity here to explore the pain of a person confronting the selling of her home and leaving behind the possessions of a lifetime. We also are deprived of seeing the harrowing ordeal of children who feel guilty that they cannot care for their parent in their own home.

Martha’s daughter is lovingly played by soprano Sharleen Joynt who has shimmering, floating high notes. She explains that she left her husband and is unattached, but this sub-plot is not explored. Some attendees will feel that the roles of the family members are underdeveloped.

Neither of the leading characters has a husband and this, too, cheats the audience. The anger of a spouse when he sees his life’s partner gradually disappear can be anguishing. This libretto, instead, shows one woman as a widow and the other as a divorcee.

Sky on Swings moves to a burgeoning friendship between Martha and Danny in the home. As other residents wander to and fro, we see these two bond as Martha recalls her long-ago infatuation with another woman.

Beecher’s warm and colorful music confronts a set by Andrew Lieberman that’s starkly white and grey plus an unsettling line of twisted neon. Joanna Settle directs with simplicity and Geoffrey McDonald conducts the eleven-piece orchestra with clarity and expressiveness.