Julia Wolfe: Fire in My Mouth

The composer Julia Wolfe's new multimedia oratorio concerns the 1911 Triangle shirtwaist factory fire. It was a prescient choice of subject. The fire -- which took the lives of 146 garment workers, most of them young immigrant women -- led to changes in workplace conditions and stirred debate over contentious issues of gender, labor and immigrants' rights. But how much progress has been made over the past century? That question hovered over the New York Philharmonic's premiere of Ms. Wolfe's ambitious, heartfelt, often compelling "Fire in my mouth" on Thursday, a month into a partial government shutdown driven by bitterness over immigration policy.

Ms. Wolfe took risks in writing this work, conducted by the Philharmonic's music director, Jaap van Zweden, and directed by Anne Kauffman. (It anchors "Threads of Our City," a series in Mr. van Zweden's first season as music director exploring immigration.) How does a composer depict such a horrific story without melodrama? How to underscore the powerful old film footage and photos that this production projected over the orchestra -- women dressed in ruffled shirts walking into factories; workers sitting at tables with sewing machines; the rubble of the decimated factory building -- without the music coming across as mere soundtrack?

The big things are right in this tautly structured 60-minute piece in four parts: "Immigration," "Factory," "Protest" and "Fire." In an affecting touch, the chorus is made up of 146 women and girls, members of the excellent chamber choir the Crossing (Donald Nally, director) and the impressive Young People's Chorus of New York City (Francisco J. Núñez, director).