Mascagni’s Iris
Bard Summerscape
Fisher Center for the
Performing Arts
July 22, 2016
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| Purity lives in a garden of constant euphoria Photo credit: Bard Summerscape |
Lui: The
Bard College campus in the Hudson River Valley with its monumental Frank Gehry
concert hall provided a bucolic yet sophisticated backdrop for a few of our
favorite things: a picnic on the lawn, the opening night of a long forgotten
Mascagni opera at Bard Summerscape, and some post-show raucous dancing in the
Spiegeltent (with idiosyncratic art nouveau signs over the entryway: “Magic
Crystal – The Ultimate Art of Entertainment”). Mascagni’s Iris is another one of those all but forgotten gems. And when gems
like these fall into oblivion, it always begs the repertoire question. No
matter the reason for its neglect, Iris proved to be an eye-opening,
mind-altering discovery.
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| The Spiegeltent at Bard Photo credit: Allegri con fuoco |
Lei: The
opera itself was enchanting, dreamy and powerful – a cross between Cavalleria Rusticana (several recognizable ideas between them), Pelléas et Mélisande (lots of symbolism) and a touch of Madama Butterfly
(scattered orientalism), which it actually precedes. I personally liked it so
much more than Butterfly though. Its dreamy sweeping score with
outbursts of dramatic emotion and, more importantly, its symbolist narrative
are so much more compelling than Butterfly’s (an opera I personally never cared much for).
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| Iris cares for her heartless father Photo credit: Bard Summerscape |
Lui:
After a grandiose choral hymn to the Sun, Light and Love, the translucent scrim
raises on a peaceful country scene. The magnificent, huge chorus (I counted
over 50 singers) appears on a bridge that crosses the entirety of the stage.
They look on while Iris and her blind father, Il Cieco, seem to be waking up
and begin to splash water from the spring on their faces. The chorus showers
them with dreamy leaves and golden rose petals from above. Iris is an innocent
young maiden who is rather provincial in her naïveté. A bit like Rigoletto’s Gilda, her father has kept
her out of the fray. Despite her sheltered life, Iris complains of having had a
bad dream about a series of dangers befalling her doll – portent of the evils
to come.
Lei: James Darrah's direction perfectly rendered the dense but often
banal symbolism of the piece through a series of well-executed stage ideas. The
scenic design by Emily Anne MacDonald and Cameron Jaye Mock was
simple but highly effective. With broad minimalist brush strokes they were able
to conjure a symbolic all white landscape that was flooded with the light of
the sun and enlivened by a constant shower of leaves that fell from all of the
onlookers in the chorus positioned on the bridge. Though there was little that
was explicitly Japanese about the design, they went for a fantasyland that was
more explicitly allegorical. Interestingly, the universe created for Iris by director Darrah is a highly
polarized – sets and costumes are either black or white in a very a-temporal
and abstract fashion.
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| The apple of every man's eye Photo credit Bard Summerscape |
Lui: Before
we know it Osaka, the spoiled rich prince and physical embodiment of lust, and
Kyoto, the brothel owner and symbol of greed, arrive. Osaka is immediately
smitten with Iris’s beauty and innocence. He has to have her. Kyoto comes up
with a scheme to kidnap and add her to his bevy of prostitutes. He sees profit.
The plan includes a deceptive play within the play by which they brainwash and
abscond with her. Next thing she knows she's in Kyoto’s brothel, that is so
different than her idyllic grounds that she thinks she’s in Paradise. Must be
all those half naked ladies strutting around amid glass see-thorough huts with
red lights… Iris may not be the sharpest tool in the shed, but ultimately she is
really too innocent for her own good. When Osaka attempts to seduce her, she
claims to only want to go home to her father, back to her little house and
beautiful garden. Like a Japanese Dafne, daddy’s little girl is desperate for
an escape route from this Apollo in pursuit.
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| Osaka barges in on the pimp and his new recruit Photo credit: Bard Summerscape |
Lei: Tenor
Gerard Schneider stole the show. In the role of Osaka, this young
Australian artist was the most impressive singer on the stage. From the moment
he opened his mouth I was truly transfixed and besotted with the sheer beauty,
power and virile sweetness of his singing. His is a soaring heart-wrenching
tenor, an Italianate tenore spinto of
the true romantic hero type. Osaka’s character is controversial and complex. In
a way he reminded me of Rigoletto’s Duca, as he sings so beautifully
that even if he is a crass seducer trying to get into the panties of a naive
young woman, one kind of cannot help falling for him. His music is so romantic
and he sounds so genuine that there must be something true in his declarations
of “love,” at least when the character is in Schneider’s able hands.
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| Iris holds strong Photo credit: Bard Summerscape |
Lui: The
only catch is that here – unlike Gilda, Butterfly or Santuzza – the girl does not
fall for her seducer, no matter how lovely and ardent he sounds, no matter how
many jewels nor how much luxury he throws at her. Which makes Iris so much more
interesting and powerful, despite her undeniable status as victim. From a
narrative perspective, Iris’ innocence and naïveté are even more enhanced by
her resisting Osaka’s attempts at seduction. Aside from being enchanted and
lured by the play within a play in Act I, the heroine here does not falter and
does not really fall for the evil, lusty, decadent and greedy men who surround
her. Her purity remains unblemished. For what it's worth, Iris remains
intransigently true to herself – a character study in integrity. As a result,
the symbolism of feminine innocence spoiled by a corrupt male world comes
across in an utterly powerful way.
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| Osaka continues to pine for his Iris Photo credit: Bard Summerscape |
Lei: The
slimy Osaka very quickly gets bored of Iris’ prudery. He lets her go and
encourages Kyoto to send her home, but the world is a big, scary,
self-interested place and she's not going to get off that easy. If she will not
cooperate with brothel house rules, Kyoto threatens to punish her by throwing
her into the sewer. Bass-baritone Douglas Williams in the role of the brothel’s pimp sported a very un-Japanese long
platinum blonde wig over a plunging low-cut dark tunic that abundantly exposed
his chest and embodied the hideous villain with steely yet thundering disdain
and outbursts of violence. The other villain in the story is Il Cieco (The
Blind One), Iris’ father here played by bass Matthew Boehler with an almost repulsive yet magnetic force. When
he arrives to the brothel and finds his daughter in it with any angry mob that
is fighting for deflowering rights, he throws a fit of rage and disowns her.
Her father’s scorn is what really pushes poor Iris over the edge and, unable to
bear it all, she throws herself into the sewer.
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| The red light district in "Tokyo" Photo credit: Bard Summerscape |
Lui: In
one of the most visually stunning moments of the production, during the musical
interlude that introduces Act III, Iris can be seen behind the translucent
scrim falling imperceptibly slow through the fog from the ceiling of the stage
to the floor. It was incredibly dreamy and surreal. She falls in slow motion
for five solid minutes through the mists of the sewer air. This is where she
officially ends up in her deepest darkest cave. Act III then opens with the
sewer urchins, who represent the quasi-disembodied vices of her prior pursuers,
complaining of their lot in life though they somehow carry on in their lives
still in the apparent pursuit of hope. Like their brothel frequenting
counterparts above ground, these low-lifes are constantly on the lookout for
treasure amidst the gloom and the grime. Iris regains consciousness after her
fall and now thinks she is in Hell (finally she starts to figure it all out),
where she grovels for a while until at the very moment she is about to give up
the ghost she has a sun-filled epiphany and is suddenly and gloriously
apotheosized in a blaze of solar splendor. Cue the hymn to the Sun from the
opening of Act I and you have an incredibly powerful finale that somehow
manages to lift you up in just the moment when you thought you had reached rock
bottom.
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| Iris on the verge of dropping into the sewers of the city Photo credit: Bard Summerscape |
Lei: The
last sequence truly had the stature of grand opera: the orchestra explodes in
an outburst of powerful, inspiring music, matched by the chorus in full cry,
with a ray of sun making its way through the dark cave and embracing Iris, who
dies in ecstasy and almost ascends to heaven in a saintly or martyr-like
fashion. In a way, it reminded me of Verdi’s Giovanna D’Arco’s finale.
Lui: Iris
is truly one of those demanding tour de force characters requiring the singer
to really expressively ride a massive orchestration. Soprano Talise Trevigne
rose to the challenge and embodied
beautifully the naïveté, purity and strength of the title role. True, the
character is highly symbolic and at times almost coo-koo and always very
clueless, but, if one gets into the whole symbolism and allegory of it all,
Iris is truly the sweetest and more compelling of heroines. Ms. Trevigne played
Iris with childlike enchanting grace and was particularly memorable in her
doomsday dream arias and the final apotheosis.
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| The apotheosis of Iris Photo credit: Bard Summerscape |
Lei: A
resounding thank you to maestro Leon
Botstein for unearthing this Mascagni gem and leading with force and nuance
the solid cast and American Symphony Orchestra. Hopefully this brilliant
rediscovery of Iris will inspire
other opera houses to produce it too. Looks like it was also just revived in
Montpellier with Sonya Yoncheva in the title role, so, who knows, there may be
more Irises on their way in the
future!
– Lui & Lei
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| For Iris life is but a dream Photo credit: Bard Summerscape |
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