[Dixielandjazz] Music to Smell by

[Stephen G Barbone]

Maybe we should try Sight plus Sound plus Smell for our own OKOM  
Gesamtkunstwerk?

Cheers,
Steve Barbone
www.myspace.com/barbonestreetjazzband

June 2, 2009 - NY TIMES - by ANTHONY TOMMASINI
Opera to Sniff at: A Score Offers Uncommon Scents

Wagner strove to create a theatrical form in which all the arts —  
poetry, music, visual imagery, drama, spectacle — would combine in a  
Gesamtkunstwerk, a unified work engaging every dimension of human  
perception.
But there is one sense that Wagner never thought of activating: smell.  
Typically, the only time scent becomes an element of an operatic  
experience is when someone in the next seat is doused with too much  
cologne or emanates odors associated with the underwashed body.

A breakthrough of sorts took place on Sunday night at the Guggenheim  
Museum with the premiere of “Green Aria: A ScentOpera.” This beguiling  
30-minute work was the result of a two-year collaboration initiated by  
the writer and director Stewart Matthew with the composers Nico Muhly  
and Valgeir Sigurdsson and, critically, the French perfumer Christophe  
Laudamiel, who has created fragrances for Ralph Lauren, Estée Lauder  
and other companies.

The Peter B. Lewis Theater was packed for this premiere, part of the  
museum’s adventurous Works & Process series. In the piece the creators  
meticulously paired prerecorded music with an orchestrated array of  
more than 30 distinctively named fragrances. Indeed, the scents,  
whether subtle, pungent, intoxicating or stinky, became this opera’s  
characters, with names like Absolute Zero, Runaway Crunchy Green and  
Shiny Steel.

The technological challenge was coming up with a way to deliver the  
scents to audience members. As Mr. Laudamiel explained during a  
preperformance panel, if the scents were just dispersed from the  
stage, even aided by a big fan, they would take up to 50 seconds to  
spread through the auditorium, making it impossible to coordinate a  
specific fragrance with a musical phrase.

The problem was solved by affixing to each seat in the theater its own  
scent microphone, as it was called, an adjustable tube that could be  
placed as close as desired to your nose. Mr. Matthew urged everyone to  
relax and breathe naturally.

Mr. Matthew wrote a scenario from which his perfumer and composers  
worked. There is no spoken or sung script, just a nebulous story:  
Technology joins forces with Nature; Evangelical Green preaches the  
gospel of modernism, forging a manmade world where “scents sound,  
touch and pour,” to quote the précis. But, as “Green Aria” proved, the  
sense of smell powerfully affects the perception of music.

At the start, the opera’s dramatis personae, five elements and 18  
supporting characters, were introduced. As each name was projected on  
a video screen, the audience heard the music and smelled the scent  
associated with that character. Fire + Smoke had crinkling electronic  
sounds and a piercing, burnt-ash scent.

In a comic touch, it was announced that the character of Fresh Air was  
indisposed, and since no replacement existed in New York, the role  
would be performed by Clean Air, which combined a bracing, clinically  
pure scent with wistful music, rather like Copland in his bucolic  
Americana mode.

Once the opera proper started, though, the house lights were turned  
off, and the audience, sitting in near darkness, experienced an  
abstract drama of sound and scent. The eclectic music was episodic yet  
subtly flowing, with skittish flights; contrapuntal passages where  
dueling voices were pushed to wide extremes of register; steely  
electronic agitation; and calming harmonic writing for dusky,  
sustained strings.

At the end the characters took curtain calls, in effect, when their  
names were flashed on the video screens, and the audience got one  
final whiff of their scents. The loudest ovation went to the faintly  
sulfurous, aptly named Funky Green Imposter.