Chamber opera on a grand scale, such was San Francisco’s alternative opera company, Opera Parallèlel’s Doubt — two nuns, and a priest and the mother of a gay black male child have at it.
It was librettist John Patrick Shanley’s adaptation of his 2005 Pulitzer Prize winning and 2005 Tony award winning play Doubt: A Parable. No stranger to important credits Mr. Shanley had already earned a screenplay Oscar for his 1987 film Moonstruck.
Doubt: A Parable is very loosely based on Mr. Shanley’s own childhood experiences as seen through the lens of Broadway theater and later his 2008 Oscar nominated (adapted screenplay) Hollywood film. Thus, we suppose, it wishes to recreate a mid-1960’s ambience — Mr. Shanley was born in 1950 — as the play’s central character (unseen in this version of the opera) is about to graduate from middle school to high school.
What was once an explosive topic — molestation of boys by Catholic clergy — has now become but a part of the general battles we wage within many diverse issues (critical race theory, me-too, child abuse, income inequality, LGBT, etc.). Though this sense of déjà vu did not lessen the tensions that were at the heart of Mr. Shanley’s discourse, namely the suppressed (or not) eroticism of those beings who take a vow of chastity, versus the magnanimity of a mother’s love.
It was a return to the days when the librettist got top billing, Mozart’s musical settings of lesser import to his now irrelevant playwrights. Mr. Shanley’s libretto is nothing if not slick. Very slick. It is, as a stated parable, filled with aphorisms. It self-consciously plays with allusions to the world of parables, and it mines a plentitude of symbolic imagery — the sea, storms, winter, a crow, etc. As well it focuses on minutia — fingernails, sugar lumps, ballpoint pens — adding a hint of reality to the parable.
While it is cast in prose it ends with in poetic rhyme — “noël” was chanted by the accusing nun Sister Aloysius to the “all is well” sung by Father Flynn, who likes his long fingernails and moves to a new Catholic school.
Unlike the Simon Stone staging of Kaija Saariaho’s Innocence at San Francisco Opera where the reportage inherent in the libretto overwhelmed the magnificence of the musical score, here the score held its own against the considerable textural tensions exploited in the libretto. Like Opera Parallèle’s Harvey Milk last season, Doubt the opera composer Douglas J. Cuomo (no relation to the NY political dynasty) has recast his original orchestration for the Minnesota Opera 2013 premiere into a reduced instrumentation able to fit onto a side of the small stage (no pit) of the Presidio Theatre, a space shared with the production itself.
There was now only one percussionist (instead of three) who doubled on a cranked wind machine, there were the five individual string voices instead of full symphonic forces, plus two horns and one trumpet, and individual winds who doubled as needed. It was a very colorful display, filled with minor-seconds used melodically or simultaneously to create the libretto’s constant sexual tensions and the poetry of its brutal concerns. Mr. Cuomo is a cross-genre composer who gave us the theme song for the TV show Sex and the City as well as background music for myriad films and TV episodes.
Without reservation, the opera Doubt was a formidable exposition of very real music.
Specific on-stage doublings were the alto saxophone associated with the priest and a viola associated with the angst of the accusing nun, this conceit by stage director Brian Staufenbiel occurred only in the initial moments of the opera. The staging was a straight forward telling of the story, many poignant moments occurred, among the more striking was the humility of Father Flynn falling to his knees in the face of the accusations leveled by Sister Aloysius (lead photo) as if he were guilty, exemplifying our doubt, and maybe his doubt as well.
As is often the case at Opera Parallel, casting was exemplary. Father Flynn, the central personage of Doubt was sung by baritone Matthew Worth, Santa Fe Opera’s Valentin. A fine singer with a rather light, boyish timbre Mr. Worth well filled the pants of a sexually ripe priest who ably dribbled a basketball and relished describing the hip movements of his young players. Sister Aloysius, the accusing nun, was sung by dramatic soprano Rhoslyn Jones. Of steely voice, steely presence and unerring pitch she well personified the sexually starved nun who demanded the downfall of a man for complex reasons that were not shared, though we did know that she had once been married to a man who was killed in WWII.
Opera has long been colorblind, thus the charming presence of black soubrette Naomi Steele, soon to join the Opernstudio at Berlin’s Komische Oper. She oozed innocence in a purity of voice as the young Sister James who is consumed by the idealism of youth. The libretto however makes it obvious that a person of color could not have been a teacher in a New York Irish/Italian neighborhood in the 1960’s.
Mezzo soprano Deborah Nansteel was a sympathetic Mrs. Miller, the mother of the parochial school’s only black student, Donald Miller. Her son was never physically present, though texturally he was always present. Consumed by an unwavering love of her son, she coldly presented her facts — her son is gay, he is beaten by his father, she is content that her son is looked after and shown affection by the priest, regardless of suspicions.
Conductor Nicole Paiement oversaw the excellent ensemble of players who executed the score that was at once obviously difficult and surely musically rewarding, each of the players awarded much solo opportunity.
The minimal sets were designed by Jacquelyn Scott, projections were by Jessica Ann Drayton who provided the lighting as well. Costumes were designed by Y. Sharon Peng.
Michael Milenski
Presidio Theatre, San Francisco. May 29, 2026.
All photos copyright Stefan Cohen, courtesy of Opera Parallèle.