Prototype festival of new opera foregrounds pregnancy narratives and prison tales

Two monodramas stand out among the opening productions of the Prototype festival in New York, which is celebrating its 10th edition of new and experimental operas and music-theatre works. In Our Daughter’s Eyes, at the Baruch Performing Arts Center, grippingly relates the course of a pregnancy from the perspective of an elated yet anxious prospective father (known as the Man). The compelling libretto by Michael McQuilken (also the production’s director) is touching as it conveys the Man’s joy in keeping a diary and building a crib in his home workshop, but an unsettling dream gives rise to concerns; fears of his own inadequacy, and a struggle with alcohol, trouble him.

The music by the Pulitzer prize-winning composer Du Yun is atmospheric and sometimes sparsely textured, especially early on when it often consists of non-pitch sounds and individual sustained tones. Later, the five-person instrumental ensemble (conducted by Kamna Gupta) play with more continuity, as when arpeggios from a cello accompany bass clarinet in an interlude or during a drunken binge by the Man as all hell seems to break loose musically. Happily, Yun’s fluent and engaging vocal writing for the Man, the eminent baritone Nathan Gunn (a co-creator), facilitates a powerfully expressive performance that finds relief in a tender final scene. ★★★★☆

The Irish composer Emma O’Halloran’s half-hour Mary Motorhead, ably directed by Tom Creed in a world premiere at the Playhouse Theater at Abrons Arts Center, has similarities to In Our Daughter’s Eyes but functions on a more modest scale. Again, a trained operatic voice is front and centre, this time to relate the saga of a strong-willed but downtrodden young woman whose ill-fated personal relationships have landed her an 18-year prison sentence. (The libretto is by Mark O’Halloran, Emma’s uncle.)

Naomi Louisa O’Connell’s assertive portrayal of Mary, played out in a prison corridor, arouses sympathy, despite Mary’s lethal emotional volatility, because you sense that somehow she has the wherewithal to overcome it. O’Halloran’s instrumental writing consists largely of repeated patterns, often spiked by avant-garde twists, that dutifully support the dialogue. But her vocal lines are idiomatically conceived and allow O’Connell’s performance to soar. ★★★☆☆

In a double-bill with Mary Motorhead is O’Halloran’s Trade, also a world premiere and also with a libretto by Mark O’Halloran. Like Mary Motorhead, Trade is about ordinary Irish people — here two nominally heterosexual men who meet periodically for sex — but it proves less successful. The older man (Marc Kudisch), who pays the younger one (Kyle Bielfield) for their encounters, pours his heart out as well, but the dialogue is too banal and the pacing too slow to sustain the work’s 60-minute length, while Emma’s music lacks the potency to carry the day. ★★☆☆☆

David Lang’s Note to a Friend, another world premiere, looks promising later in the week.

To January 15, prototypefestival.org