Arjuna's Dilemma

Arjuna's Dilemma on the cover of the Spring 2009 issue of Opera America magazine.

"Composers of the current generation from all stylistic camps view categories as pointlessly limiting. Why shouldn’t they borrow from any musical tradition they choose to? Douglas J. Cuomo, for one, takes that stance in Arjuna’s Dilemma, an opera with an appealing and unabashedly eclectic score, based on the Bhagavad-Gita and presented at the Harvey Theater of the Brooklyn Academy of Music on Wednesday night. The production, directed by Robin Guarino, was the first full staging of this unconventional 70-minute work, which was developed over nearly eight years.

Mr. Cuomo has written music for classical ensembles, theater, film and television (notably the effervescent, salsa-tinged theme song to Sex and the City). In composing Arjuna’s Dilemma he immersed himself in North Indian music. The score boldly blends those Indian sources with diverse contemporary music idioms and hints of jazz... I liked the score best when Mr. Cuomo pushed the complexity to extremes, piling up Arjuna’s solos, choral counterpoint and instrumental textures to create haunting, astringent, multilayered music, with cluster chords in the electric keyboard and spiraling flights in the strings and winds.

Mr. Cuomo’s designation of Arjuna’s Dilemma as a contemporary chamber opera is as apt as any. Still, it is doubtful that the audience that gave an ardent ovation on Wednesday cared much about categories."—The New York Times (Anthony Tommasini)

"A genuinely original work...[Cuomo] clearly understands how music and dramatic action are coordinated... Cuomo handles the juxtaposition and sometimes superimposition of the various types of music with such skill that the opera has a sense of unity and purposefulness despite its diversity of styles. The musical development has a feeling of inevitability that keeps the listener fully engaged, but it's full of astonishing turns and is never predictable. Cuomo is also a natural vocal composer and his writing for the voice is simply gorgeous... Arjuna's Dilemma is an opera that should be explored by anyone with an interest in fresh new directions in music theater. Highly recommended." —AllMusic.com (Stephen Eddins)

"Arjuna's Dilemma has been created by a composer who trusts sound, a few fine voices and a few fine virtuoso instrumentalists, to reveal his message in the same way that the great opera composers trust the sounds will bring to us... Its meaning comes to us subtly, open to our different levels of understanding, on the beauty of the human voice, of melody working sinuously to take us into trance states while we meditate, line by line, on the brief story being told us...Arjuna’s Dilemma is a modern opera, a tale told through singing." —OperaToday.com (John Yohalem)

"In Arjuna's Dilemma, the sacred text is everything: foreground, background, action, touchstone... The cast of characters is pared down to a single man and the god in whom all being rests [Krishna]. What could be more intimate? What could be more cosmic?"—The New York Times (Matthew Gurewitsch)

"In this opera, [Cuomo] blends Indian classical singing, jazz improv, the busy minimalist-style patterns that appear to have entered the bloodstream of so many composers and the jewel-like tones of a four-part women's chorus, all worked into a seamless whole, like a golden Indian brocade...

It struck me that Arjuna's Dilemma has something a lot of new operas don't: appeal. Opera is an art form that was for many years the ne plus ultra of popular entertainment. That aspect of it is all to easy to lose sight of, as many current pieces show. Opera, to work, has to have a certain understanding of what drama is, and how it functions. But it also has to have an audience, and Arjuna's Dilemma...has a pretty good chance of attracting one."—The Washington Post (Anne Midgette)

"The composer Douglas Cuomo looks at war, and duty, from a more mystical perspective in Arjuna's Dilemma, a compelling opera based on the Bhagavad-Gita, the sacred Hindu text, set in a musical language that draws on Western and Indian styles...The opera will be staged at the Brooklyn Academy of Music in early November."—The New York Times (Allan Kozinn, discussing his picks for The New Season)

"Cuomo [is] a composer of serious intentions, as his haunting chamber opera Arjuna's Dilemma makes clear. The work's roots lie in Bhagavad Gita, the Sanskrit text that explores a discussion between the divine Krishna and worldly Arjuna, who searches his soul to come to terms with obligations as a warrior.

Cuomo's background in jazz and ethnomusicology appear to have given him the ideal grounding to create such an opera. His music embraces both Western and Indian classical music traditions, with voices used in notated chants and improvised episodes.

The score is a mesmerizing blend of vocal and instrumental possibilities. Arjuna is assigned to a tenor who must negotiate high-lying lines, tender gestures and dramatic points, all the while singing in Sanskrit. The role of Krishna is divided between an Indian vocalist and a chorus - on this recording [members of] the remarkable female ensemble Anonymous 4 - that sings in English.

However Arjuna's Dilemma unfolds in the theater, it is a gripping experience on compact disc. The excellent performers include tenor Tony Boutté as Arjuna, Amit Chatterjee as Krishna and an instrumental ensemble that features the adventurous string quartet known as Ethel." —Cleveland Plain Dealer (Donald Rosenberg)

Kyrie from On Earth, Peace: a Chanticleer Mass

"Cuomo’s Kyrie is one of the most musically striking of the newly commissioned movements. His eclectic use of speech juxtaposed with tightly chromatic clusters is hugely effective musically, as well as awe-inspiring for the security with which Chanticleer performs it." —All Music Guide (Stephen Eddins)

"Chief among the mass’s attractions is the "Kyrie" of Tucson-born Douglas J. Cuomo. Bay Area-raised, the New Yorker’s equal facility with the sacred and the profane (his oeuvre extends from a sacred cantata on the Bhagavad Gita to the theme for the TV series "Sex and the City") has created an irresistible work that moves from heavenly simplicity to contrapuntal complexity." —San Francisco Examiner (Jason Victor Serinus)

"American composer Douglas Cuomo’s Kyrie began the series of commissioned works auspiciously. The work’s architectonic structure is a palindrome. Cuomo builds outward through countertenor cluster chords, unison and octave chanting over Arvo Pärt-esque oohs and hums, a well-sung tenor solo, and a more dissonant Christe section. Everything then goes backward. Cuomo’s 36-fold Kyrie managed not to seem overly long" —San Francisco Classical Voice (Thomas Busse)

"In one of the more striking passages, the American Cuomo sets plainsong against shimmering tone clusters in the Kyrie." — Barnes & Noble (EJ Johnson)

"In the Kyrie it was Eric Allatore whose rich bass practically set the basillic vibrating. A fine spun backdrop that evoked the slow melting of a brilliant pane of glass, the effect was rather awesome." —San Jose Mercury News

Atomic Opera

"Not the least of its strengths is a musical score by Douglas J. Cuomo that blends electronically treated classical fragments and vintage kitsch into an eerie sound track that suggests the breaking down and reconstitution of matter into something ominous and uncontrollable." —The New York Times

"A supple score/sound design from Douglas J. Cuomo is whimsical and witty for the satiric sections — loved that mambo beat for the 50’s stuff -- but easily turns stark and dramatic to underline the serious times. A long aria of lament about Hiroshima is sweet, scary, and lingers on in one’s memory, especially as passionately sung by Mia Kim" —Backstage

"Set in the middle of this cock-eyed kaleidoscope is a haunting elegy to Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The operatic aria is gloriously delivered by Mia Kim, alone and nearly immobile center-stage, clad in red dress and Japanese robe. The song — part of Douglas J. Cuomo’s excellent score and sound design — provides an arresting contrast, the critical mass so important to popping nuclear reaction." —New York Newsday

Homicide: Life On The Street

"Douglas J Cuomo's off the wall score would never be conceded . . . Homicide's title series music is unlike that of any other series before or since." -- Left Field Cinema blog

Other features and interviews

Sibelius Takes Composer Douglas J. Cuomo beyond Stage, Screen and TV
February 2005
http://www.sibelius.com/news/doug_cuomo.html

Are there things you can write in a film score that you can’t write for the concert hall?
February 2003
http://www.newmusicbox.org/page.nmbx?id=46hf02

Doug Cuomo -- Writing the theme of "Sex and the City"
Captured at the BMI Film TV Awards 2003
http://www.bmi.com/podcasts/container/133198

Schott Signs Douglas J. Cuomo
April 2008
http://newmusicbox.org/article.nmbx?id=5545#DJC

Douglas J. Cuomo Signs with Schott Music
April 2008
http://www.schott-music.com/news/archive/show,1958.html?newsCategoryId=