Philip still can still taste the brains of a friend killed nearby in a sniper attack. His adopted mother waits outside, but he can’t deal with seeing her while his mind remains at the battlefield, where it is impossible to tell an innocent boy or his veiled mother from terrorists. A prisoner of post-traumatic stress disorder, he seeks something beyond numbness but is terrified of what that could unleash.īased on the experiences of Christian Ellis, who was the opera’s story consultant, Philip sits on his hospital cot like a caged animal ready to attack at the slightest provocation. Just as pain overpowers all other sensations, there can be few subtleties in “Fallujah.” A Marine, Philip, is home from the front and spending 72 hours in a veterans hospital under suicide watch. Suicide, however, is the seductive step for forgetting. Locating the laceration is the uncertain first step for healing.
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With the help of a terrifyingly authentic performance and the atmospheric music of Stokes (a Canadian composer with experience scoring documentary film), “Fallujah” is opera operating like an open wound, oozing pain and hopelessness. See more of Entertainment’s top stories on Facebook >
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But these are ultimately victims caught up in a chain of events they can neither comprehend nor control, only make worse. Marines and Iraqis alike know that “war made me,” a refrain that haunts Heather Raffo’s potent libretto. In Tobin Stokes’ “Fallujah,” said to be the first opera written about the Iraq war and given its premiere by Long Beach Opera over the weekend, U.S. But it is a special hell for those expected to fight without understanding why, as it is a special hell for civilians caught up in the battle, unsure who are the good guys and who are the enemies.