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Review: 'Charlie Parker's Yardbird' rises

Several decades after Schubert's death at age 31, the composer became the subject of an eponymous operetta by Franz von Suppé. Maybe there's just something too tempting about genius cut short to let it sit there unexploited, which is the dynamic at work i

Lawrence Brownlee (seated) as Charlie Parker rehearsing with singers portraying Dizzy Gillespie, Parker's mother, and wives.
Lawrence Brownlee (seated) as Charlie Parker rehearsing with singers portraying Dizzy Gillespie, Parker's mother, and wives.Read moreTOM GRALISH / Staff Photographer

Several decades after Schubert's death at age 31, the composer became the subject of an eponymous operetta by Franz von Suppé. Maybe there's just something too tempting about genius cut short to let it sit there unexploited, which is the dynamic at work in

Charlie Parker's Yardbird

, given its world premiere by Opera Philadelphia on Friday night at the Kimmel's Perelman Theater. To loosely quote a melding of last lines of several characters in this chamber opera: Parker's music echoes as the unfinished symphony of a beautiful mind.

And yet Daniel Schnyder's haunting mirage of a score does not, thankfully, succumb to pastiche. The great strength of this piece is the music, whose aesthetic is as nimbly third stream as the Modern Jazz Quartet. Harlem-based Schnyder draws an array of 20th-century sounds from his 14-piece orchestra - jazz, Latin, Middle Eastern, classical at the upper end of the dissonance spectrum - but does so with incredible cunning. In an eerie mental-hospital scene where Parker is in a straitjacket, an alto flute slithers around in the creepiest corners of dissonance while the jazz world shines through from a realm just beneath. It's moments like these, and there are many, that make Charlie Parker's Yardbird a worthy new member of the repertoire.

Great characters

It's also what makes the opera (sold out in Philadelphia) worth some revision. The 90-minute, intermission-less piece, with a story and libretto by playwright Bridgette A. Wimberly, purports to be about Parker's quest to write his final masterpiece, for orchestra, which he undertakes in the hours after his death. But that thread, while dangled at the start and tied up (too neatly) at the end, gets very much lost in the middle as Parker's ghost relives some personal history. We hear from wives wronged, and from his mother, who fears for her self-indulgent son. Dizzy Gillespie makes an appearance, as does "Nica," Baroness Pannonica de Koenigswarter, the Rothschild scion and bebop's patroness.

Wimberly sets loose some wonderful characters, but they wouldn't have been half as compelling had they not been realized by several of the singers in this cast. Angela Brown as Addie Parker is astonishing. She has tremendous moral authority as Parker's mother, a power shown in the depth of her voice (dramatic soprano doesn't quite capture it) and a highly nuanced control of emotional inflections, alternately silken and rough-hewn. What this adds up to, technically speaking, is someone you didn't mess with, and the kind of singer-role affinity that is hard to imagine ever untangling.

Grand partnership

She has a terrific partner in Lawrence Brownlee, as Charlie. The scene where she's telling her son to get out of Kansas City is frantic - rhythmically dense, harmonically fascinating - and the two of them nail it beautifully. Brownlee is a wonder, as is the vocal writing. There is some jazz in the part - at one point, he mimes playing a sax while letting loose with a long and elaborate riff - but mostly Brownlee is asked to occupy the highest part of the tenor range in quick time, and he somehow manages to do it with grace while rendering the (English) supertitles superfluous.

Schnyder gives some of the opera's most beautiful music to Dizzy Gillespie, who, while imploring Parker not to ride that "tar horse" (heroin), sings amid a suspended, opiate haze. Baritone Will Liverman realized the part vividly by finding deep crevices of meaning.

A word about the orchestra: Much of the magic of the piece was happening in the pit of the Perelman, where there was a wide range of abilities among players led by the fine conductor Corrado Rovaris. Regardless, you felt there must have been a way to hear more of what was going on between the singers and instrumentalists.

Dead at 34, Parker never realized his piece for orchestra. His soul is set free at the end, as caged birds ascend along with scenery of block letters superimposed with images of jazz greats. It's a cornball ending. But a great piece did get written, by Schnyder, and perhaps with a few more tweaks - some tightening here, some more about Parker's elusive masterpiece there - it, too, can soar.

'Charlie Parker's Yardbird'

Composed by Daniel Schnyder, libretto by Bridgette A. Wimberly. Conducted by Corrado Rovaris with the Opera Philadelphia Orchestra. Directed by Ron Daniels.

Charlie Parker ................ Lawrence Brownlee

Addie Parker ................. Angela Brown

Chan Parker ................... Rachel Sterrenberg

Doris Parker .................. Angela Mortellaro

Rebecca Parker ........... Chrystal E. Williams

Dizzy Gillespie ............. Will Liverman

Pannonica de Koenigswarter ... Tamara Mumford

At the Kimmel's Perelman Theater, Broad and Spruce Streets. Additional performances (all sold out) Sunday, Wednesday, Friday, and Sunday. www.operaphila.org, 215-893-1018.EndText