These factors, again in turn, connect to what still seems to me the essential failure of most contemporary operatic writing—the inability to musically identify with characters in a way that makes us feel something for them. The anonymous author of the “In Focus” feature of the Met’s program booklet evidently believes Adès has done something of that sort. “Despite the ensemble nature of the work,” he or she writes, ” . . . a unique musical personality differentiates each character,” and I guess I did pick up some distinctions of general stance or mood among them. But I felt nothing for them. Terrible things happened to them, and they sang about their feelings, and three of them actually died, but I remained an onlooker in objective mode.

That had me thinking, later, about Verdi. I thought about Violetta’s “Ah, fors’è lui” and Gilda’s “Caro nome.” There are two arias from adjacent operas of Verdi’s middle period. Beyond their general stylistic congruence, they have specific similarities. The vocal settings of the roles are close enough that both are often sung by the same singer. The placement of the arias in relation to the process of our coming to know the characters is nearly identical, and both are introspective musings on awakening to true love, the object of which has just departed in an atmosphere of excitement. Musically, each is built on an instantly memorable tune that starts with a descending line marked by halting little rests, and  soon leading to heart-stopping suspensions on what is enharmonically the same note in the upper-middle range (A-flat/G-sharp). The setting is such that a technically competent soprano can make every word clear, while playing expressively with the broken syllables. Helpful with that is the fact that although a distinguishing feature of Verdi’s earlier development is his tireless and often fascinating search for twists on introductory and accompanimental orchestral figures, here they are of the simplest. These characters are very different, and our involvement with them to this point has been different, too. Yet in these first confessional moments, by economical and even conventional means, we are immediately drawn to them, and would never mistake one for the other. Or, if Verdi seems too confrontational a selection given Adès’ stated attitude, how about Mozart? Do you need color-coded dresses to tell Donna Anna, Elvira, and Zerlina apart? Did you ever?     

It might be said that all these choices of texture and word-setting are appropriate to  Angel’s subject—that is, that these personae have no complexity of individual personhood, no identities deeper than their social functions. If that’s the point, however, the opera paints itself into a corner. The early scenes set up the characters as an unsympathetic, if not repellent, group. But no sooner do we understand that than, if we are not to lose interest entirely, we must begin to find something in common with at least a few of them. And I quite admired the crossing-guard ingenuity with which the director, Tom Cairns (also the librettist), kept the wheel turning to bring each woman front and center for her vulnerable moment (the women only, though; the men never get the chance to be “in touch”) despite having no earthly reason for being there—as shamelessly presentational as any direct-address aria in an opera buffa, but sort of pretending to not be. At these moments I understood that I was meant to discern the common humanity of these previously silly ladies. But their music never took me past the tip-of-the-hat level of recognition.