The Roots of Opera in Church

In High Concept terms, you might call it “Early Music Meets Andrew Lloyd Webber.”

“Daniel and the Lions,” one of the most dramatic surviving examples of the liturgical dramas that flourished in medieval Europe, comes to the Immanuel Presbyterian Church in Los Angeles next Saturday afternoon as part of the Da Camera Society’s Chamber Music in Historic Sites series. The performance by New York’s Ensemble for Early Music offers Angelenos a rare opportunity to see a fully staged production of a work that contains the roots of opera and Western drama.

This is not the first time “Daniel” has appeared in Los Angeles--its most recent performance was at Ambassador Auditorium in Pasadena in 1985--but it is the first time that local audiences will be able to see the work staged, as befits its origins, inside a church.

Immanuel Presbyterian, on the corner of Wilshire Boulevard and Berendo Avenue, was matched as closely as possible to the music. Designed by Chancy F. Skilling and H.M. Patterson, Immanuel Presbyterian, which opened for worship in 1929, is, according to Sites director MaryAnn Bonino, a good example of neo-French Gothic church architecture.

Its dramatic, almost exaggerated verticality, with a 205-foot tower and an 80-foot vaulted sanctuary ceiling, approximates the style of France’s Beauvais Cathedral, where the surviving version of “Daniel and the Lions” was transcribed between 1227 and 1234.

Still, the operative word is “approximate,” and that’s true not just architecturally; it also applies to the ensemble’s general approach to “Daniel and the Lions.” Although most early church musical dramas consisted mostly of chant or song, this production contains such theatrical elements as special-effects lighting and a three-person lion puppet and is accompanied by a wide variety of early instruments both familiar (if the shawm and rebec can be considered familiar) and rare (the trombamarina, or “nun’s fiddle,” a buzzing one-stringed instrument).

The ensemble has made something of a specialty of the more stripped-down, “authentic” church dramas. “Our other productions are like moving stained-glass windows,” says lutenist and singer Paul Shipper, an longtime ensemble member who plays two roles in “Daniel.” “A lot of medieval drama is stark, without much action, and [uses] emblems instead of costumes.”

Led by harpsichordist and musicologist Frederick Renz, the Ensemble for Early Music rose from the ashes of New York’s Pro Musica Antiqua in 1974. Since then, it has recorded two CDs of medieval dance music and staged such medieval music dramas as “Sponsus: The Parable of the Wise and Foolish Virgins” and “Herod and the Innocents.” The group performs regularly at New York’s Cathedral of St. John the Divine, the Cloisters and the Metropolitan Museum of Art. But it has also gone as far afield as Hong Kong, Edinburgh, Athens, Krakow and the Spoleto Festival in Italy.

“Daniel” translates particularly well, Shipper says. “It’s extremely international in its appeal, maybe because it’s not in the language or the exact culture of any one country or maybe because it’s a really good show.”

According to Renz, “Daniel” is inherently more dramatic--and more amenable to modern theatricality--than most of the other religious pieces that EEM presents.

“The music for [other] plays is revised liturgical chant,” he says, “but in ‘Daniel,’ the tunes are more secular; some can be traced to the ‘Carmina Burana.’ These songs traveled from town to town, similar to pop hits. The ‘Daniel’ play is the furthest stretch from liturgy [that still is liturgy]. It was done by students of monks and not [originally] performed in the church proper, but maybe in the adjoining refectory.”

The play is actually two Bible stories in one, both revolving around the biblical character Daniel in the Old Testament. In the first, the Babylonian King Belshazzar (one of Shipper’s parts) and his court celebrate the conquest of Jerusalem and the removal of the sacred vessels from the Jewish temple. Suddenly, three words materialize in the throne room--the famous writing on the wall--which Daniel, a Jewish prophet summoned to court, deciphers as a warning of coming doom. After the Persion King Darius invades, kills Belshazzar and conquers Babylon, Daniel is thrown into the lion’s den. Daniel, who is famously spared by an angel, emerges and prophesies the coming of the Messiah.

Originally, “Daniel” was a New Year’s play, Renz continues, a big event at the end of the semester for students. In fact, the prelude begins with the words, “We the students of Beauvais Cathedral present this play. . . .”

“Seminary students had to learn Latin,” Renz says, “and it was a semester project to translate Chapters 5 and 6 of the Book of Daniel into Latin verse and set it to music. I wouldn’t be surprised if the root of liturgical drama itself was to teach [the Bible to] the students and the congregation.”

If the ensemble has taken “Daniel” further than the seminary students ever did--the “writing on the wall,” for example, is realized through projection, and the lion puppet is nearly life-size, requiring one person to operate its head and one each for its two front paws--it has still tried to stay close to the primary sources and to let the material speak for itself. For instance, the absence of specific notations for the “Daniel” songs allows Renz and company to take some musical liberties with the piece while still remaining true to its original style. Gregorian chant, popular at the time, requires that each note have the same duration, but Renz has added rhythms to “Daniel’s” music, using the internal evidence of the text and justifying it by the fact that the music also had secular underpinnings.

“If you say the poetry out loud,” he says, “it’s extremely rhythmic, so the rhythms of the music and the text just naturally fall into place.”

Still, chant is the sound that predominates, along with early polyphony, and the production features 12 vocalists accompanied by three players who switch off on the wide variety of period instruments.

“We pair up instrumental sounds with the action in the play,” Renz says. The lion is introduced by a type of drum that, when played correctly, sounds like a roaring lion. The angel is introduced by tuned carillon bells.

He justifies the addition of instrumentation as a dramatic element by evidence taken from paintings, stained glass and treatises of the time, some of which show performers playing instruments in church, even though that wasn’t always considered proper.

By the 14th century, such productions as “Daniel” had begun to mutate anyway, becoming too large and unwieldy for church presentations. The presentation of both liturgical dramas and miracle plays was taken over by secular guilds and performed outdoors or in theaters. During the 16th century, such entertainments would evolve even more as the Florentines developed the beginnings of what we know as opera today.

For Renz, paying attention to the research about a play like “Daniel” is crucial, but so is the underlying imperative of all performance: pleasing an audience.

“You go to this thing and it speaks immediately to you,” he says, “whether you know Latin or not, whether you care about Christian history or Bible stories. It mainly entertains.”

*

“DANIEL AND THE LIONS,” the Ensemble for Early Music, Immanuel Presbyterian Church, 3300 Wilshire Blvd. Date: Saturday, 4 p.m. (lecture, 3:15 p.m.) Prices: $18-$27. Phone: (310) 440-1351.