Civilization & Its Discontents / Michael Sahl, Eric Salzman

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SAHL-SALZMAN Civilization and Its Discontents • Karl Patrick Krause ( Carlos Arachnid ); Candice Earley ( Jill Goodheart ); William Parry ( Derek Dude );...


SAHL-SALZMAN Civilization and Its Discontents • Karl Patrick Krause ( Carlos Arachnid ); Candice Earley ( Jill Goodheart ); William Parry ( Derek Dude ); Paul Binotto ( Jeremy Jive ); Michael Sahl (pn, org); Cleve Pozar (dr, perc) • LABOR LAB 7089 (44: 21)


Here’s a blast from the past. Michael Sahl and Eric Salzman’s collaborative opera (words and music by both) was recorded by Nonesuch in 1978, and, as far as I know, has not appeared on CD until now. The question is, why now , or even why now? (The booklet notes mention an apparently isolated 1999 production in Amsterdam, but I think it has lain dormant since then.) References to Patti Smith are not the only thing that makes Civilization dated. The characters speak hip psychobabble that pseudo-intellectuals engaged in during the 1970s, usually moments before they signed you up for Erhard Seminars Training. Indeed, the (admittedly ironic) refrain of this opera’s first scene is “If it feels good, do it!”


The creators’ lengthy booklet note, reproduced from the Nonesuch LP, anatomizes opera as an art form, but that’s beside the point. (There was an air of trying too hard about this work from the get-go, and that certainly has not been mitigated this time around.) Civilization is a theater piece that works very well on the radio, in your home, or in your car. It opens and closes in the Club Bide-a-Wee, in New York, where we meet Jill, Derek, and Jeremy. They spout trite clichés straight out of Psychology Today (yesterday) and air their insecurities. In the long middle scene, Jill, an aspiring singer/actress, takes Jeremy back to her apartment, but their would-be hookup is interrupted by telephone calls and by the reappearance of her roommate and boyfriend, Derek, with whom she had quarreled earlier. Instead of fighting each other, Derek and Jeremy (an agent who represents a woman dressed as a singing chicken) close a business deal, and Jill, frustrated by their lack of machismo (her word, not mine!), attempts to kill herself with an electric kitchen knife she had received in the mail from her mother. Deus ex machina Carlos Arachnid arrives in the nick of time to put everyone back on track by giving each of them a special word. In the final scene, we are back in the club. Jill, Derek, and Jeremy seem to have found peace, although it’s really just a variation of the first scene’s psychobabble. They were self-centered and annoying when we met them, and they remain that way as we leave them.


The more I listen to Civilization , the less I am sure what point Sahl and Salzman are trying to make. Just what (or who) is being satirized here? I think the deepest thing one can say about Civilization is the recursive statement, “Shallow people are shallow.” Maybe I am taking it too seriously! I find it highly entertaining, albeit in a repellent way. The music, in a variety of styles, but definitely tending more toward musical theater than opera, gets deeply into your head. So does much of the text. Civilization is an arch work that might have been composed by cynical psychology grad students, after having overdosed on commercial jingles.


With the exception of William Parry, this is the opera’s original cast. Only Karl Patrick Krause (who died in 2008) was an operatic singer, although his is the least attractive voice. The quality of the voices almost doesn’t matter, though, as what matters far more is the cast’s acting ability. Everyone works hard to put across Sahl and Salzman’s sarcastic rant against … well, against something . (The stars of Seinfeld could have performed this opera.) To be honest, they succeed. Furthermore, every single word of the text can be understood. (The claustrophobic engineering assists with that.)


Civilization and Its Discontents is too clever for its own good, maybe, and it plucks awfully low-hanging fruit, but I keep coming back to it, and that must mean something.


FANFARE: Raymond Tuttle


Product Description:

  • Release Date: January 31, 2012


  • UPC: 790987708920


  • Catalog Number: LAB 7089


  • Label: Labor Records


  • Number of Discs: 1


  • Composer: Sahl, Salzman


  • Performer: Krause, Earley, Parry, Binotto, Sahl, Pozar