Music: Orchestrated Lewis Carroll

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Del Tredici's Final Alice is full of hearts and tarts

Since Lewis Carroll published Alice's Adventures in Wonderland in 1865, his Alice has stolen more hearts than the Knave did tarts. No more ardent Wonderlander exists than California Pianist and Composer David Del Tredici, 41, who has been in thrall to the book's "effortless whimsy" ever since, at age eleven, he sang the role of the White Rabbit in a school musical based on Alice. He has spent the past decade composing a series of works based on various Alice adventures. When several new orchestral works were commissioned for the U.S. Bicentennial, Del Tredici was ready—with the imaginary Alice, not Betsy Ross, as his muse. His creation, Final Alice, billed by the composer as both a "grand concerto for voice and orchestra" and an "opera written in concert form," has already thrilled audiences in more than half a dozen U.S. cities. Last week at New York City's Carnegie Hall, the Philadelphia Orchestra showed off Alice as a fantastical and captivating musical Wonderland, a patchwork of warm, catchy tunes and blaring dissonances as crazily charming as the Mad Hatter.

It begins with Soprano-Narrator Barbara Hendricks, 29, a Juilliard graduate, reciting the opening lines of the penultimate Alice chapter (the trial of the Knave for stealing the Queen's tarts) and ends with Alice's exit from Wonderland. As the orchestra loudly warms up, the White Rabbit bellows "Silence in the court!" and the instruments' din comically subsides. Then, for about an hour, the score seesaws between the basic narrative and funny, parodic arias that are often sweetly melodic and easy on the ear.

Overall, Alice is a bit long, too loud here and there, and a touch gimmicky: the stage bulges with strange percussive instruments used for special effects. The large orchestra, which includes brasses fit for Mahler or Richard Strauss, sometimes sounds like an elephant loose at a Victorian tea party. The trombones, trumpets and horns often drown out Hendricks, even though her voice is amplified. Still, Del Tredici has a winning ear. The eerie whoosh of a theremin, a primitive electronic instrument, signals Alice's alarming growth. Tempos slow down and shoot forward, keys slip in and out of place with perfect illogic. An orchestral fugue that accompanies the jury's strident deliberations builds from a contrapuntal quarrel among strings to a glorious jumble of trumpet snorts, tuba blats and whinnying violins. And, near the end, there is a lovely lullaby that evokes Carroll's affection for the real-life Alice, little Alice Pleasance Liddell — and everyone's nostalgia for the past.

In keeping with the mad-tea-party spirit, the Philadelphia Orchestra under Eugene Ormandy plays Alice with a kind of Jabberwocky joy. But it is Hendricks, in the bravura role that she premiered, who stirs audiences to stand up and cheer at every performance. She has a pure but commanding voice that readily conquers Del Tredici's difficult but dazzling octave jumps, enormous range and unbelievable strings of high notes. Alice lovers can look forward to a planned recording of Final Alice with Hendricks — and, despite the title, to at least one more Alice from Del Tredici.