The opera begins with the reporter Nellie Bly posing as a patient in Blackwell Insane Asylum. It is 1897 and the tenth day of her confinement. She tries to convince the doctors that she is sane, but they won’t believe her. Kiera Duffy singing the role of Nellie stresses every atom in the auditorium and her voice hits my chest like a panic attack.
10 Days in a Madhouse is based on a true story and performed as part of the Opera Philadelphia Festival.
The central feature of the set is a gray octagon crowned with the orchestra; its horns and bows looking down like heavenly accusations on the injustice below. I really like this arrangement even though it runs contrary to the tradition began in 1876 by Richard Wagner and still universally practiced. It was him who thought it best to dig a hole and hide the orchestra halfway to Hades.
The sounds are lifted too by microphone, I like this less. My preference is an unadulterated voice and instrument, but I’m slowly coming around to contemporary works written with the tech in mind which can at times add some interesting textures and punctuations not heard otherwise. I remind myself opera has been changing and evolving since Monteverdi was in diapers and a Mozart born today certainly wouldn’t be working with cat guts…
The conductor Rene Orth sculpts the sound into an accordion-like form of dissonance to mirror Nellie’s distress alternating it between compression and expansion: Sounds that squeal then devour themselves like an ouroboros into blackness and ash. Sounds like gnats pitched into the ear. Sounds that bellow only to falter into a hurt squeezed from an empty belly with no more air left to give it voice. Sounds of de-huminization hidden and ignored by most. Sounds not to be heard by polite society. Sounds sequestered away onto what is now Roosevelt Island between Manhattan and Brooklyn, but then in 1897, Blackwell Insane Asylum.
All that remains of the asylum today is the octagon. I took a trip there recently (guided by the lovely Chaltin who didn’t trust my solo navigation). The island is a sliver that narrows to a small lighthouse where the river hits rocks and people fish and smoke recently legalized marijuana. To access the island when Nellie was confined was by boat only and the east river runs swift and deep so once admitted there was no safe escape to the world beyond. It was a true island prison. I think the smallness of the island surprises me because the abuse that took place there was so large. Difficult to think that such pain could be administered in such a small space; but, I guess a contradicting component of abuse is the intimacy that accompanies it.
Nellie’s presence is still felt on the island where a sculpture installation celebrates this courageous person who gave voice to the disempowered.
The opera offers intense heart-felt performances. Kiera Duffy for sure, broken but not defeated.
Lauren Pearl also brings a powerful presence to the stage in a dual role. As a patient, she runs circles around the rotunda like a focused thoroughbred. Around and around and around, I’m breathless watching her.
Repetition a well used trope in today’s opera and when the physical repetitions end the orchestra keeps the feeling going like an emotional echo. Pearl also plays the nurse who torments Nellie with a restrained intensity that admonishes to anyone nearby and anyone opening candy wrappers in the audience, you better not even think about it or else.
The patients all inhabit a sad self-awareness brought to life during a gorgeous aria from Lizzie who is played by marvelous Reagan Bryce-Davis.
It is a complicated dichotomy within the opera. Great beauty and melody at first and a longed for release from the earlier discordance, but it’s short-lived. The beauty is darkened by the content. It describes her baby dying while at work in the factory and then holding the baby for two days before authorities declare her mad and bring her to Blackwell.
The show is a painful history lesson.
The performers deserve a nice island getaway for giving so much of themselves. On second thought, perhaps not an island getaway, but maybe a nice place inland, without bars, fresh food, and nurses who don’t put pills down throats by force… Somewhere nice, somewhere say, like Santa Fe with some playful Rossini.
I read “10 days in a Madhouse” before seeing the opera, a book I think all humans should read.* The personal accounts in the book made today’s opera extra painful to watch and hard to write about. What Nellie describes is a horror framed in multiple levels of custody, harsh conditions, and even harsher staff.
Lizzie on her arrival is confined to the nicest part of Blackwell where the more docile patients stay. Beyond them is “the chain” where patients are chained together by the ankles. Then like a real life Dante’s “inferno” the next level is solitary confinement. All levels are subjected to dehumanization by the staff and sparse conditions.
She continually comments on the cold. Her clothes don’t fit and the blanket she is given won’t cover her feet and shoulders at the same time. She is vulnerable and abused and with the clarity of mind to see it all for what it is. It is the condition we find her at the beginning of the opera on the tenth day.
A chapter from the book titled “Choking and Beating Patients,” illustrates abuse at the hands of the staff reminiscent of the The Stanford Prison Experiment and the prison at Abu Ghraib. Two situations where guards abused the prisoners in their care. Numerous examples of capricious abuse are described. She adds that “this punishment seemed to awaken their desire to administer more.” The nurses became playground bullies. Were these guards born sadistic or just nurtured in a system that will innevitably corrupt any human’s better nature? The old adage “power corrupts,” coming to mind. It’s hopeful to see that there is a new focus in society for better training to help recognize and short-circuit this human tendency, but with much work still to be done.
At the end of the opera from atop the orchestra Nellie looks down and breaks the fourth wall to address the audience and advocate for the patients: “Most were not mad. They had no family. They were sick. Unlucky. Poor. Migrant… And they were kept. In the cold. No blankets. No food. No soap. No one should live like that not even the mad.”
Nellie Bly published her expose shortly after her confinement,’ and was brought before a court to testify to the conditions of the madhouse. On her word the judges did a tour of the asylum and even though the doctors at the asylum were tipped off and cleaned the place up before their arrival – it was a transparent attempt. The State soon after initiated changes in policy and put more money into the system and improved conditions for the patients.
Nellie was a courageous whistle blower who spoke for the many. Not only did her expose’ improve the quality of life for the women at Blackwell, but showed it’s possible to bend the will of the powerful to serve the will of the people.
We have a troubling expression in the school I teach that seems to go around each year that goes “snitches will get stitches.” It’s a manipulating expression perpetuated only by the bullies to help shield their misbehaviors and hold power over the meek.
Hooray for the “snitches” and “whistle blowers” like Nellie Bly who put themselves in harms way to safeguard the world for the powerless majority and toward a better future – for ALL.
So What is 10 Days in a Madhouse all about? Undercover reporter Nellie Bly goes to an insane asylum in 1897 to expose its terrible conditions.
Notes on the Production
Composer…………………………………… Rene Orth
Libretto………………………………………. Hannah Moscovitch
Conductor…………………………………… Daniela Candillari
Nellie/The Madwoman…………………. Kiera Duffy
Lizzie………………………………………….. Reagan Bryce-Davis
Dr. Josiah Blackwell……………………… Will Liverman
Nurse/Matron………………………………. Lauren Pearl
9/22
Opera Philly
* Man’s search for Meaning, Hiroshima, The Autobiography of Malcolm X, The Collected Speeches of Martin Luther King, and Van Gogh’s collected letters.
**Some notable whistleblowers have been Vera English (worker safety), Peter Buxton (public health ethics), Joe Darby (abu-ghraib), Karen Silkwood (worker safety), Daniel Ellsberg (Vietnam), Frank Serpico (police corruption), and W. Mark Felt (watergate)… If you ever need to write a book report on someone.
Nellie Bly goes on to do many more amazing things!