Crossing
“If reconciliation is to happen at all, ‘Crossing’ suggests, it has to be on this primal level, by way of the ghosts that we carry with us, yearnings that we share, phantoms that opera can explore beyond the reach of words. Aucoin’s ambition, it seems, is to create an art form saturated with poetry that ventures where poetry, on its own, cannot go.” – The New Yorker
“His score draws upon myriad modernist and Neo-Classical styles, with hints of Britten, Bernstein, Thomas Adès, techno and much more. With his acute ear and abundant technique, Mr. Aucoin deftly folds diverse musical strands into this restless score, which can shift from skittish frenzy to stretches of aching lyricism.” – The New York Times
“And as those who heard his A.R.T. opera ‘Crossing,’ about Walt Whitman’s nursing of the wounded and dying during the Civil War at the Shubert Theatre Friday night discovered, Aucoin doesn’t need to be compared to anyone. The piece is richly detailed, psychologically nuanced and philosophically provocative. Aucoin is very much his own man.” – WBUR
“…Aucoin has woven a rich tapestry of words and music…Taking words from Whitman’s own diaries and poems, Aucoin has skillfully fashioned a tautly structured libretto that is as grand and glorious as the poet himself…Aucoin’s musical voice is immediate and authoritative…A delicate colorist, he can conjure stars in a night sky or a river in flood. His word setting is adroit, demanding and frequently inspired.” – Limelight Magazine
“What is it, then, between us?” With this resonant question at the climax of “Crossing Brooklyn Ferry,” Whitman asks many things at once: what is his relationship to his contemporaries, his fellow men and women? What is his relationship to you, the reader, whoever you may be, whenever and wherever you may be reading his poem? And what is the relationship between the contradictory elements of his own self? The phrase “between us” itself has a double meaning: what is the relationship between us, and what stands between us, keeping us apart?
What is his relationship to you, the reader, whoever you may be, whenever and wherever you may be reading his poem?
In the moment that Whitman asks this question, he is in a state of unknowing: he wants to know, and needs to know. Crossing emerges out of my sense that Whitman wrote his poetry out of need – that his poetry is not, or is not exclusively, a vigorous assertion of what he is, but rather the expression of a yearning to be what he is not, or to reconcile opposing aspects of his identity. The person/persona/personality “Walt Whitman, an American, one of the roughs” is the living product of this need.
So, in Crossing, the Walt Whitman who walks the stage is not that familiar poetic persona. Rather, this is Whitman as I imagine he might have been to himself, starting from a midlife crisis which prompts his radical, heroic decision to drop everything and volunteer in war hospitals. Naturally, this Whitman is a fictional creation. Crossing is a musical fantasia which imagines and realizes the many forces – generosity, insecurity, longing, selflessness, bravery, unfulfilled sexual desire, a need to escape his own life, a boundless kindness – that caused a man named Walter Whitman, Jr. to forge an indelible embodiment of the American spirit in his poetry.
Rent or purchase Crossing
Listen to an excerpt from Crossing
BAM: Making Crossing
BAM: on Crossing Brooklyn Ferry
Crossing: A Lecture/Recital
Creators in Concert: Excerpts from Crossing
American Repertory Theater: Crossing