The Stand-Alone

When the composer Elliott Carter presented the world premiere of his first opera, the one-act “What Next?,” at the Berlin Staatsoper in 1999, many critics were perplexed. Mr. Carter was 91 years old, had never written an opera, and was presenting his first with a literal bang — in the form of an automobile accident that started the show. So the question seemed to be, “what’s next?”The answer, however, was not another opera. Mr. Carter, now 98, never wrote another opera in the years following, and his lone, 40-minute work has become somewhat of a calling card. Beginning tomorrow, Miller Theatre will present the New York stage premiere of “What Next?” in a four-performance run; the final performance, on December 11, falls on Mr. Carter’s 99th birthday.As the revered composer himself recalled in a telephone conversation last week, the work was somewhat of a collaborative effort. “What Next?” might never have been written at all had it not been for the prodding of the conductor Daniel Barenboim. “He kept calling to ask, ‘How is that opera coming?'” Mr. Carter said. “I knew he would do a good job with it at the Staatsoper.”Mr. Carter initially had trouble choosing a subject, but eventually found inspiration in the Jacques Tati movie “Traffic.” “Finally I thought of one that everybody thinks about — an automobile accident!” For a librettist, Mr. Carter chose the music writer Paul Griffiths. “Paul is the one who decided on characters — a Zen Buddhist, a Lady astronomer, and so forth. One thing we had to do, since the opera starts with all the characters onstage, was get them offstage so they can make entrances, as in any opera. Otherwise there would be a lack visual variety.”“Elliott was insistent,” Mr. Griffiths said, “that the opera have a quality of lightness. He wanted to have fun writing it and wanted the audience to have fun too.” Mr. Griffiths also recalled that Mr. Carter wanted a rationale for having characters sing. “He didn’t like the idea of someone just knocking on the door and saying, ‘Hello, I’m Bill.’ The accident in effect shocks them into singing.“It also allows people to behave in strange and extravagant ways,” Mr. Griffiths continued.The director of the Miller Theatre production, Christopher Alden, likened the work to a play by Samuel Beckett. “It’s open-ended about what has happened and why they are together,” he said. “They’re trying to relate to each other and make sense of existence in the face of catastrophe.” “It’s less literal than a typical opera, more poetic,” he said. “It allows the audience to bring its own perspective.”Mr. Alden, who is known for his radical stagings, said that his approach to an unfamiliar work is not especially different from his approach to a well-known opera. In Mr. Alden’s production, the action takes place in a tunnel. “Like the Holland Tunnel,” he explained, “with overturned road barriers — an existential environment.”Though the opera’s truncated length is due in part to the elderly composer’s resistance to working on an evening-length piece, he has remained prolific in the decade since writing the opera. His most recent composition, his Horn Concerto, was given its world premiere by the Boston Symphony Orchestra just last month.The Miller Theatre production will be the opera’s fourth staging, but it has enjoyed 20 concert performances, including one in New York by Mr. Barenboim and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra in 2000.Normally, “What Next?” has been paired with another opera; a recent Munich production presented it with Puccini’s “Gianni Schicchi.” For the New York performances, the executive director of the Miller Theatre, George Steel, chose to preface it with what he called a “garland” of Carter chamber works played by various members of the opera orchestra.And, though it may be short, the opera compensates for its length with an unusual richness of detail. “It’s crammed full of specific moments,” Mr. Alden marveled, “with as many dramatic beats as you’d find in a whole Wagner opera.”

The Stand-Alone

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