Review: In “Ruinous Gods,” exquisite voices are aloft on a gloriously innovative score

A young girl trapped in an endless sleep emerges from an orange-glowing, poppy-growing orb. An amiable crow sports some fine upper-body plumage and serious pipes. A party-hardy billionaire itches to zip to the moon. A supersize stuffed bunny gets its moment in the spotlight, too.

All this and more converged on the stage of the College of Charleston Sottile Theatre as Spoleto Festival USA let loose its 2024 lineup with the world premiere of Ruinous Gods.

The hypnotic, narrative-driven new opera composed by Layale Chaker in collaboration with librettist Lisa Schlesinger embarks on an otherworldly journey melding myth, wide-ranging music and, yes, the stuffies of childhood— all to gain a deeper understanding of the psychological fallout experienced by refugees.

With direction and dramaturgy by Omar Abi Azar and Maya Zbib, Ruinous Gods was co-produced and co-commissioned by Spoleto Festival USA, Opera Wuppertal and Nederlandse Reisopera. It is the first operatic work created by Chaker and Schlesinger.

It helps to know the basics on resignation syndrome before the curtain goes up. It is associated with some displaced children when learning they would not be granted asylum in their new country. They then slipped wholly from the waking world, sequestered in a deep sleep for weeks, months or even years.

In Ruinous Gods, that child is 12-year-old H’ala (Teryn Kuzma), a backpack-slinging kid set to make a movie at her school, until her future is upended. She then quits the conscious world altogether. Based somewhat on the myth of Demeter and Persephone, H’ala has found her way to the underworld though her own dream state, joining her guide Crow (Karim Sulayman). There, they meet other world-hopping birds, Swift and Blue Dove, along with similarly hapless denizens draped in blankets.

Folding in the timely and the timeless, Chaker’s recitative-rich score swirls around the singing, a blending of styles from ancient chants to a high-energy crowd-pleaser of a number, It is an evolution of Chaker’s previous compositions that were informed by Arabic maqam, Western classical music traditions, Middle Eastern influences, jazz and improvisation. This entrancing new work unfurls in a finely layered sonic tapestry whose varied influences are seamlessly woven together, all the while intensifying with the twists and turns of the tale.

And it works. The score demonstrates that if these styles can wholly coexist on a Sottile stage, perhaps the divergent cultures from which they are sprung can live in these liminal spaces, too.

In Ruinous Gods, that assertion begins with the opening scene, which lands us immediately in uncharted terrain bridging the ancient and the contemporary. The Spoleto Festival USA Chorus, under the direction of Joe Miller, gathers in a proper tiered grouping on one side of the stage, books in hand, at times mildly swaying as they bathe the space in an Aramaic hymn. On the other side, an almost futuristic glowing bubble, which calls to mind a geodesic dome, holds a lone girl.

We then meet a pair of officious white-coated physicians, Dr. Overcast (Sharmay Musacchio) and Dr. Undertow (Leroy Davis), there to grasp this strange sleep subduing H’ala, and med-splaining it all to her distraught mother Hannah (Taylor-Alexis DuPont.)

Like Alice down the rabbit hole, her foray is punctuated by childhood references, the large stuffed white rabbit, which here is toted on stage by spine-tingling soprano Sarah Shafer; direct nods to the beginning reader classic, “Are You My Mother?”; and fable-friendly anthropomorphic birds, too.

So it’s an altogether uncommon frontier this atmospheric work has forged—vibrant backdrops and costumes giving way to the darkened underworld’s massive, somewhat phallic rock of an overhang. And while the opera is anchored in a form of trauma that today is both grave and global, the trance that is Ruinous Gods is far from a gut punch.

Line by line, we course through the story, punctuated by prose from the mournful and poetic , like “sleep is death’s brother” and “history erases us” to the bracing, like “Europa was founded on rape,” while deploying a slew of f-bombs, too. At the same time, Ruinous Gods eschews standard operatic forms— no rote traditional arias or duets here. In their place is an abiding, often-mesmerizing, fugue-state of a march through its fantastical happenings.

And, oh, those voices. Each is as distinct and as it is spellbinding. As H’ala, soprano Teryn Kuzma embodies sheer innocence, a resonant, emotive entree to this young girl’s harrowing plight. As a helpless, heartbroken mother, Taylor-Alexis DuPont displays gorgeous gravitas. As Crow, tenor Karim Sulayman is a marvel to hear, his astounding crystal-clear vocals worth the journey in and of itself.

There are times when the thrust becomes more pointed, even ham-fisted – the menace of America from its ever-present fighter planes; the meddling medical interference that wrests a daughter from her mother; and an antic send up of a certain modern magnate in the form of a money-mad, galaxy-trotter called Jeb Fezos.

Your best bet with Ruinous Gods is to open your mind and ears and take this rarefied ride on its own, unprecedented terms. Chuck any expectation of the amp up to an operatic catharsis—a Western notion it could be argued. There is a satisfying finish with the excellent Spoleto Festival USA Chorus, once again performing Aramaic hymn, joined on stage by a children’s chorus who then scamper down both aisles. The culmination with H’ala also lives in a liminal space, mitigating the elegiac and the uplifting.

Settle into the sounds and the words, the shiny feathers and gleaming orbs, of this wondrous, sometimes wacky world, which at times does inch unwittingly toward the parodic in its mashup of tragedy and childhood trappings. It can be hard feeling all the feels while facing down a big stuffed bunny. Perhaps we have not yet been schooled in reconciling them.

Set aside standard notions to make way for new sounds and modes of artistic expression. Like the majestic Crow, they can take us to crucial places, ones that may even help us bear witness as the most fragile among us take flight.