Nymphs, Fauns and Ubermensch

Respighi’s La campana sommersa

New York City Opera

Rose Theater

March 31, 2017

Elf-love seeks to turn an ordinary artisan into an Ubermensch
Photo credit: City Opera

A rarity came to the city in the form of Ottorino Respighi’s 1927 opera La campana sommersa – a poetic and highly symbolist fantasia. The sense of discovery was akin to that of experiencing Mascagni’s Iris last summer at Bard Summerscape. There is often a reason why so many works languish in obscurity. When dusted off with care, however, it turns out that some of the most minor of neglected works have much to recommend them and even demand another day in court.

The story begins amidst sylvan perfection during a building boom
Photo credit: City Opera

La campana sommersa opens in the manner of a fairy tale. We are in a mythical world populated by woodland creatures and nymphs, similar in tone and setting to the opening of Dvořák’s Rusalka. An amphibious being, known as l’Ondino, and a satyr, stunningly done up as half man, half goat, known as il Fauno, maraude around the landscape. Il Fauno boasts of having overturned a cart carrying a bell that was destined for one of the many new churches going up in the area. They’re in the midst of a building boom, which pleases the local wildlife none too much. As the titular campana sommersa suggests, the bell ends up at the bottom of the lake.

Feeling the pressure of gentrification, the woodland creatures send the bell below water
Photo credit: City Opera

The bell maker, Enrico, stumbles into the mythical woodland scene. Injured from the incident with the bell, Enrico elicits the loving regard of the elf Rautendelein. When his friends whisk him away for care in the human world, Rautendelein is overcome by the desire to join him there. So far we are squarely in the fantastic world of an opera like Rusalka, with many of its plot points intact, including its interdimensional romance.

But the drama here is surprisingly rich with a number of themes, most predominantly symbolic explorations of the contrast between the religion of mortal men and the natural order of things. After Enrico returns to his family in Act II and is magically restored to health by Rautendelein, Respighi takes us decidedly into Wagnerian territory. The act closes with a superhuman gesture on the part of the reinvigorated bell maker. Enrico is now ready to rise up and take on the gods, as Act III finds him living amidst the immortal creatures of the woodlands under an ubermensch delusion. 

The wife and kids our Ubermensch leaves behind
Photo credit: City Opera

A bit like Tannhäuser in an artisanal rather than poetic key, Enrico is forging bells (rather than writing verses) in a fit of hyperproductivity. He has a new church to fit out now. It’s a temple dedicated to a new religion of his own creation, one that will enrich all of humankind. His hubris earns him the disfavor of the actual powers of divinity that find a way to torment him with visions of the children he has abandoned and the wife who has drown herself in his absence. The bell at the bottom of the lake rings which brings him back to his senses. He curses his immortal elf lover and returns to the world of mortal responsibility.

Master of the new race makes plans for his new church
Photo credit: City Opera

Moving back into Rusalka territory, the final act concludes with Enrico seeking out his beloved Rautendelein (incidentally now married to the lizard-like Ondino) and he expires in her arms after one last kiss.

Maestro Ira Levin at the helm of the New York City Opera Orchestra (with elements of the Orchestra del Teatro Lirico di Cagliari) led a forceful interpretation of Respighi’s score. In the intimate space of the Rose Theater in the Jazz at Lincoln Center complex on Columbus Circle, the audience was ensconced in a sound that was lush and direct. The orchestra transported us to an otherworldly place.

The projections were always extraordinary
Photo credit: City Opera

Pier Francesco Maestrini’s stage direction in this visionary production was evocative. From start to finish the production took us to a parallel universe. There wasn’t a weak moment. Scenic and video designer Juan Guillermo Nova contributed a series of subtle yet highly effective animations and video projections were next level. The Met has dabbled in this kind of theatrical technology but rarely so successfully.

We were hoping to hear tenor Fabio Armiliato in the role of Enrico but a pernicious sinus infection deprived us of his presence. Instead we got the tenor from the second cast, Marc Heller, who, it turned out, was the weak link in the cast, in my opinion. His was the only voice that was genuinely washed out by the orchestra. Heller just doesn’t have the strength to ride the wave of Respighi’s bold orchestral statements, laden with horns and big brassy gestures.

Soprano Brandie Sutton reinvigorates the mortal object of her affection
Photo credit: City Opera

Soprano Brandie Sutton as Rautendelein was strong and mysterious and full of playful desire. Baritone Michael Chioldi in the role of l’Ondino was one of the evening’s strengths. As some sort of water deity he had an authoritative and frolicking sound. Constantly dispensing with absurd locutions like “Brekekekex,” his presence was at once light and full of humor but also grounding and strong.

At the same level was tenor Glenn Seven Allen who sang the equally symbolic role of il Fauno. His instrument is loud and booming and masculine but warm and has an inviting quality that perfectly suits such a strange character. He both beckons your attention and repulses it since he is after all some kind of a horrific freak of nature usually known for having his way with water nymphs other spritely female creatures of the wild. All of the costumes were out of this world but Allen’s in particular was extraordinary.

L'Ondino and il Fauno commiserate over the changing landscape
Photo credit: City Opera

The whole production right down to the costumes was otherworldly. It was a feast of the senses. Entirely slavishly faithful to all of the phantasmagoria of the original libretto, the co-production with the Teatro Lirico di Cagliari was immaculately executed. The costumes were phenomenal and the use of projections for all of the backdrops, and even often foregrounds, transported the audience to a magical mystical place, the space of Teutonic myths where symbols collide.

A perfectly crafted and stunningly executed imaginative rarity, La campana sommersa was the most exciting and polished production to date staged by the newly revived New York City Opera.

– Lei & Lui

Italian violinist, composer and musicologist
Ottorino Respighi (1879-1936)

Russian vs. Italian Crime Passionnel

Rachmaninoff’s Aleko // Leoncavallo’s Pagliacci

New York City Opera

Rose Theater

September 8, 2016

Image credit: NYC Opera

New York City Opera opened its 2016/17 season with a double bill of Rachmaninoff’s Aleko and Leoncavallo’s Pagliacci. The core of the two plots is very similar: there’s a group of itinerant folks (a band of gypsies and a vaudeville-circus troupe, respectively), a love triangle forms along the way, and a jealous scorned husband kills both his treacherous wife and her lover. In one work the framing for the crime passionnel is very Russian (gloomy, melancholic, dark, nostalgic), in the other pretty much Italian (sunny, lively, funny, visceral).

A Russian ballet features prominently in Rachmaninoff's Aleko
Photo credit: Tina Fineberg/New York Times

I was never a big fan of Pagliacci per se, possibly because it’s usually paired with Cavalleria Rusticana, which I have always found more compelling, since nobody can rival a Sicilian drama of amorous jealousy. This time, however, the Leoncavallo work was paired with Rachmaninoff and for the first time I found myself raving about Pagliacci. When it comes to torrid murderous jealousy, an Italian opera will always, always beat a Russian one in my mind. Italians just do loud explosive jealousy better – must be the warmer climate.

The gypsies camp in an abandoned rail station
Photo credit: NYC Opera

But, Aleko in and it of itself was an interesting discovery. The score was in many instances sweeping, melodic and lively in a folkloristic, gypsy way. Many arias and duets were lovely and highly lyrical, the dramatic finale definitely chilling and heart-breaking. However, the whole package did not come together convincingly. While there were some highs (the thunderous bass Kevin Thompson in the role of the old gypsy, the chorus, the dance number), I could not get over the fact that the title character (bass Stefan Szkafarowsky) seemed miscast in the part. While vocally capable, he came across as too old of a husband for the young Zemfira (soprano Inna Dukach) and his jealous outbursts sounded tired instead of raging and not really convincing as he lay splayed out on the ground again and again. I almost feel like Szkafarowsky should have swapped roles with Thompson, both vocally and acting-wise. Finally, the simple sets looked good enough but had some cheap touches such as a huge papier-mâché mutton roasting on a fire that was just distracting and sad to look at. All in all, and maybe because this is a rarity, the singing and acting seemed less rehearsed than the far more popular Pagliacci.

The circus has come to town!
Photo credit: Sarah Schatz

When the curtain rose for the Leoncavallo opera after intermission, it felt like someone had turned the lights on and the real party was ready to begin. The sets were pretty much the same: a more or less abandoned train station with a wagon resting among weeds in the center and two simple wood houses on the sides. But, the Italian setting was inundated with a bright warm sunniness and truly felt like night and day when compared to that of Aleko.

The Fellini-esque elements were palpable
Photo credit: Film still from Federico Fellini's La Strada

At the very beginning, a woman in a short blonde wig came to the foreground under a stage light, playing a trumpet announcing the upcoming show within the show. And so it was clear that we were in for a La Strada (Fellini)-inspired interpretation. There are indeed points of contact between the opera and the movie: itinerant circus performers including a woman who is tied to an oppressive man turns her affections to another. Granted, Nedda is way more together than Fellini’s Gelsomina and Canio does have a softer and more sympathetic side than Zampanò. However, the suggestion that both works share a nostalgic helpless raw desperation is an interesting one and it was a treat to discover the different Fellini undertones. La Strada elements shined through mostly in the treatment of Nedda, who was cast as something of a Giuletta Masina type especially in the second half of the opera when she gets decked out in her vaudeville costume, again dons a bobbed blonde wig, and paints a dot on the tip of her nose.

Never double cross a clown
Photo credit: Sarah Schatz

Pagliacci’s cast was solid and compelling across the board, from the chorus of children to the leading roles. Tenor Francesco Anile as Canio had a bright, almost metallic sound that was great for the role. His Vesti la giubba was high and alive in its poignancy and in the final No, non sono Pagliaccio, his rage and violent desperation were utterly moving at the most visceral level. One could feel that this is a role Mr. Anile possesses entirely. His acting was extremely convincing too, delivering a complex Canio who was violent, yes, but also in love and crushingly devastated. Soprano Jessica Rose Cambio as Nedda was a delight, mastering the role both vocally and acting-wise and ranging from loving and free spirited (with her lover Silvio, here handsomely portrayed by tenor Gustavo Feulien), to feisty (with Tonio, baritone Michael Corvino), to tragically splitting herself in the last scenes between the cheerful vaudeville role of Colombina and her final moments defying her violent husband.

The abandoned box car becomes the makeshift vaudeville stage
Photo credit: Sarah Schatz

The two works shared the same artistic and creative team: James Meena (conductor), Lev Pugliese (director), John Farrell (scenic designer) Iidiko Debreczeni (costume designer) and Susan Roth (lighting designer), which was particularly impressive given the radical stylistic and musical differences of the two pieces. All in all this was a brave and diverse double bill that set an ambitious tone for the new season of the recently resuscitated company. The City Opera is back or so it would seem.

Fellini-esque costumes and make up resonate
Photo credit: Fellini's La Strada

Dun da da da! È arrivata City Opera!

– Lei & Lui

NYCO Strikes Back with a Classic Done Right

Puccini’s Tosca

NYCO Renaissance

Rose Theater

January 24, 2016

Tosca pulls out all the stops.
Photo credit: Sarah Shatz

NYCO Renaissance’s recent production of Puccini’s Tosca was a revival, a renewal and a rebirth in many senses. It was a return for the company on a number of symbolic levels; a return of the opera that the company debuted with back in 1944. It was also the return of the most classic production of this opera. NYCO Renaissance obtained from Casa Ricordi the exclusive North American rights to re-create Adolf Hohenstein’s set and costume designs, the very same ones of the original debut performance of Tosca in its 1900 Rome premiere in Rome. All of which makes this the perfect opportunity to reflect on the value of a truly traditional production for all the purists out there.

Do not go gentle into the dying of the light.
Photo credit: NYTimes

Expectations were low after all of the lukewarm if not downright negative press I had read about it. But I mean really. What’s wrong with people? The January 24 show was great. Maybe it was just our cast or maybe at the end of the run things finally started to click. Because it was there. On the last night of the run, they pulled out all the stops.

NYCO Renaissance’s was a solid Tosca. The scenes were mostly comprised of beautifully painted backdrops oozing art deco charm. Costumes were traditional but together. The Te Deum in Act I was done right and truer to libretto than the way the current production at the Met stages it. And the Act III sets here actually resembled the actual Castel Sant’Angelo in Rome even if they placed it in the wrong side of the river. At least they gave us the Roman skyline. At the Met they don’t even give us a peekaboo view of St. Peter’s. There is something to be said for the classic approach no matter how meager the means. On the whole, it was a a very satisfying Tosca I really enjoyed. Sometimes one does not need to reinvent the wheel but just get the key stuff right, and a nostalgic wink to an opera’s first production is just a wonderful homage.

The NYCO Renaissance orchestra under the baton of maestro Pacien Mazzagatti did justice to the sweeping Puccini score. Both Scarpia and Cavaradossi were Italian and oh what a difference it makes when native speakers sing in their native language. The whole thing has a more fluid and refreshing vibe. Baritone Carlo Guelfi was an excellent Scarpia. He had a bitter snarly edge to his singing that was perfect for the character. Cavaradossi’s E lucevan le stelle (by solid tenor Raffaele Abete) left me singing this little ear candy ditty for the next several days.

Tosca surveys the damage.
Photo credit: Sarah Shatz

Latonia Moore’s Tosca all in all was excellent too. She absolutely owned her big sequence with Scarpia in Act II. She has a tender force. Her sound encompasses both the vulnerability of a victim and the don’t-mess-with-me resolve of a fighter and a hero. Her Vissi d’arte was wonderfully moving it took me by surprise. She managed to make me look at this classic aria with fresh eyes. Even if she could use a few more Italian language articulation sessions with the great Lucy Tucker Yates, hers was a refreshing and solid soprano who delivered on the big emotional numbers required by her role.

The Rose Theater venue in the Time Warner Center has potential. The views at intermission are to die for. It’s all quintessential New York City with sweeping Central Park framed by buildings and on this particular night there was even a golden full moon hung low in the sky just over the rooftops. However, some of the logistics can and should be improved. Patrons should be able to print their own tickets – which wasn’t an option when we purchased – and in any event no one should have to line up for over 20 minutes for Will Call before the show. That’s hardly a civilized way to start an evening at the opera.

With nothing left, the leading lady bids farewell.
Photo credit: Sarah Shatz

But to get back to the basics, let’s be honest. Opera is what we’re here for. The music is what really matters. And tonight the three principal singers sounded great. They brought all the big emotions. Tosca’s Visse d’arte captivated me. Cavaradossi’s E lucevan le stelle moved me to tears. Tosca’s big third act exit took my breath away. The production was classic but polished. And while I have never particularly cared for Tosca, I had a ball revisiting it. After all the critical trash talking in the press, on this final night of the run it seems clear: an opera for the critics it might not be, but, remaining true to its roots, the NYCO Renaissance might be an opera for the people after all!

Considering NYCO's past, we’re eager to see what their next steps will be.  

– Lui & Lei

The revival of a classic: Purists eat your heart out!
Image credit: NYCO Renaissance

Sets by Adolf Hohenstein.
Image credit: NYCO Renaissance

Scarpia's salon.
Image credit: NYCO Renaissance

Being There: LaDoMA

The Life and Death of Marina Abramović

Directed by Robert Wilson
Park Avenue Armory, December 14, 2013

Marina Abramovic and funeral mask. 
Photo credit: BAM

Biography is not a genre that typically ends up getting played out on the stage. Yet, over the last year several biographical pieces have found their way to New York theaters. In early 2013, the Nature Theater of Oklahoma’s Life and Times: Volumes 1-4 brought to the Public Theater a 10-hour musical epic, based on the verbatim transcripts of a series of phone interviews with an ordinary Williamsburg resident, one Kristin Worrall, that recounts her journey through youth and young adulthood in minute detail, unabridged of all the likes, ums and ahs of colloquial speech. Over the summer 2013, biography on the stage came in the form of a dense and stimulating one-woman show, Sontag: Reborn, based on the early journals of Susan Sontag, that chronicles her creative, intellectual and sexual coming-of-age. New York City Opera staged the lives of two salacious female subjects: Margaret Campbell, the dirty Duchess of Argyll in Powder Her Face, late last winter; and the notorious centerfold in the eponymous Anna Nicole, this fall. Finally, by the end of the calendar year, the Park Avenue Armory brought us Robert Wilson’s magisterial The Life and Death of Marina Abramović (LaDoMA), which purports to give us a biographical sketch of its eponymous protagonist, but, nevertheless, winds up delivering that and so much more.

Billed variously as a free form or “quasi-opera” in the manner of Robert Wilson, under the spell of whose Einstein on the Beach I fell earlier this year as well, The Life and Death of Marina Abramović (LaDoMA) was most thrilling for its musical eclecticism. Experiencing it live, I was reminded of the fact that there is no reason why opera has to maintain slavish attitudes towards its traditional roots. Like so many of his theatrical collaborations, Wilson and his collaborators draw on just some of the many musical vernaculars that are available to a contemporary opera composer. In the case of this avant-opera, the soundscape consists of an intermingling of pop music, the rock ballad, Balkan folk music, electronica, modern minimalism, simulated orchestral music, and an assortment of other Dadaist noise experiments, like the sound of a snare drum rolling through the woods down a steep hill. As ever, Wilson runs the gamut.

The Balkan folk singer Svetlana Spajić. 
Photo credit: Robert Wilson website

Collaborators on the project are listed as Antony Hegarty (of Antony and the Johnsons); the experimental electronic duo, Matmos; the Balkan folk singer Svetlana Spajić and her group of traditional singers; and three other musicians performing live from the orchestra pit; with additional musical elaboration credited to Nico Muhly, among his myriad projects, of recent Two Boys fame.

Against such a variegated musical texture, Svetlana Spajić’s Balkan folkloristic singing really stood out. Her exotic Eastern European-tinged chants were phenomenal. The closing number of the first act – Scene A8, “The Green Apple” – featured a seemingly endless repetitive call-and-response arrangement of a traditional Balkan folk song that droned on beautifully with a small chorus of gypsy-looking women dotting the stage, standing virtually motionless, who sang with such feeling. I could have listened to them forever. They stood so still within Wilson’s choreography that it was hard to tell if the voices we were hearing were actually emanating from the bodies adorning the stark minimalist composition of Robert Wilson’s signature staging.

Robert Wilson's signature staging.
Photo credit: Joan Marcus

In classic Robert Wilson fashion, the lighting effects were immaculate from the moment you arrived. As the audience filed in to take their seats the stage was already impeccably illuminated and on full view. Three gorgeous long-legged dogs were seen wandering languidly between a trinity of bodies laid out on coffins as though at a wake, with their funereal-masked faces brightly lit. Patterns of three, as well as other Christological imagery, run through the show from beginning to end. Life, Death, Resurrection is the basic trajectory that it follows, as it proceeds in trinities and recurring trios of Marina Abramović figures.

After the show opened with Marina’s funeral times three, it became clear that this was not going to be your typical biographical stage show, but rather biography done Robert Wilson’s idiosyncratic way – the song sung by Antony in the first Kneeplay is, in fact, entitled Your Story, My Way. The life of the great performance artist, who also stars in the show, is broken up in his treatment. Rather than a monolithic chronicle of a “great woman,” he gives us the fragments of a life with its daily trials, doubts, insecurities, its familial struggles, phases of youthful rebellion and tireless search for selfhood amidst the domestic din of a life really lived like any other.

A chorus of ghoulish hospital patients. 
Photo credit: Lucie Jansch

“The Story of the Big Nose,” Scene A2, is just one such moment that elevates the particular to the universal. While Marina Abramović’s nose does play a particularly prominent role in her unique beauty, it is precisely this kind of formative memory that most of us have to carry around with us as part of our baggage. Part of growing up and finding ourselves includes an ongoing process of recognizing and accepting the idiosyncratic imperfections that make each of us unique. An intentional head injury is how Marina went about tricking her mother into finally seeking out a medical solution to her insecurities, though her plan was foiled. She winds up in an eerie bureaucratic hospital room, which is staged by Wilson as a hauntingly systematic game of leapfrog over lines of miniature hospital beds played by a gaggle of ghoulish in-patients, but her broken nose never procures the plastic surgery her heart so desired, much to her chagrin. The story is at once devastating, heartwarming and humorous.

The devilish MC.
Photo credit: Lucie Jansch

There were other moments of humor too, like the first full-fledged narrative reminiscence in Scene A1, “The Story of the Washing Machine.” Narrated by the demonic Willem Dafoe who played the overlord and MC for the entire evening, the scene was acted out with the exaggerated gestural visual language of mime, like many of the rest of the acting performances – that is, anytime the actors were not just standing still, or rolling down the stairs naked, backwards, and in slow motion, the dominant acting style was mime. In “The Story of the Washing Machine,” we are given a glimpse of a surreal domestic world from the point of view a child who is intrigued by the magical activity of the one big household appliance that spins and spins. She loves watching it spin until one day she gets stuck in it. Beyond the initial shock of the adults who were present for the accident, she only really seems to remember how her mother scolded her for her carelessness – a big theme in this portrait of an artist is the problematic and tension-driven relationship she had with her mother.

Close encounters with a washing machine. 
Photo credit: Robert Wilson website

Much of the show has an artifice heavy self-consciousness to it, a signature Bob Wilson stiffness to it that bespeaks the great master’s attention to detail, his perfectionism, his indulgence in the illusion of theatrical experience. There are moments where Mr. Wilson’s theater of endurance for his actors comes vividly into contact with the Abramović method – in one incarnation or another. At least that’s what I made of the highly meditative, though physically exhausting exercise Willem Dafoe put himself through in Scene B3, the disintegration loop, as he runs back and forth at an angle on the stage while counting out the rhythm of his actions, referring to himself in the third person. It was intense though uniquely imprecise in its choreography and so the fatigue of the human body shined through, the fallibility of the flesh. This seems to be an approximation of just some of what Abramović has put herself and her pupils through over the last several decades in order to achieve the incredible feats of endurance she has accomplished.

Willem Dafoe singing Willem's Song. 
Photo credit: Robert Wilson website

This brief repetitive running interlude then served as a transition into the series of scenes that set up for her death. What came next – in this my experiment in “being there,” namely, my attempt at conjuring in writing an experience I lived in the flesh – was the scene in which Marina was rolled out on her pedestal, lying recumbent on something like an elevated Roman triclinium. As she reached the center of the stage, a glorious low-lying layer of smoke seeped majestically out from either side of the proscenium. At first the layer of smoke looked like the sea flowing violently with all the force of Mother Ocean onto the stage to engulf our fearless freak of a narrator, Willem Dafoe. Then as the two sides of the fog cover collided and combined into one uniform but still dynamic undulating body of smoke, it looked like a view of the clouds from above, as though we had somehow ascended with Marina up above into some level of the heavens. The effect seemed so simple yet it was so profoundly perfect, so neat, so clean, so beautiful. It was a glorious moment of repose, despite the slightly grating off-key singing of our narrator. This is his big musical number, where he gets to sing Willem’s Song. Needless to say, he’s not a great singer, though it too does have a haunting off-kilter beauty to it. 

And then there’s the seeming non-sequitur interlude about the Wolf Rat.

The cold detachment of the surreal surface of Robert Wilson’s abstraction cracks dramatically when Antony comes out in the show’s emotional climax, and sings with such feeling: “My skin is a surface to push to extremes... But when will I turn and cut the world.” The sensation is a tingle that pierces the soles of your feet, runs through the body and up the spine leaving in its wake a trail of goose bumps on your arms and down your neck.

Sorting through the scattered fragments of a life. 
Photo credit: Robert Wilson website

The narrative thrust of the fragmentary piece, which builds in fits and starts according to the familiar Wilsonian alternation of “Scenes” and what he calls “Kneeplays,” slowly falls apart over the course of its nearly three-hour run time. Dates and facts are eventually presented out of order as Willem Dafoe’s surreal narrator figure begins to give up even trying to keep things in order by the end. Death and resurrection take over, universal biography is subsumed by the hagiographic impulse, and everything is swept away by the transcendent musical image of a volcano of snow. Antony’s angelic voice taking us into the snowy ether, as those three familiar Abramović figures hover over his head, like a trinity of transubstantiated Virgin Mary statuettes, and he sings: “I want white breath. I won’t ever rest. I’ve become a volcano of snow.”

Marina's funeral prologue (times three).
Photo credit: Park Ave. Armory

The assumption of a trinity of Marinas. 
Photo credit: Joan Marcus

It was a cold and blustery night when we were released from the show’s spell. Back out on streets of the city the gorgeous volcano of snow that had been erupting all afternoon to the tune of some six inches of accumulation had given way to a more unpleasant sleety rain that was threatening to transform prematurely all that snowy white crystal powder into big puddles of messy, wet slush. Fortunately we had the depth of vision and perfectionism of Robert Wilson’s genius to keep us warm even as we struggled to keep dry. The Life and Death of Marina Abramović, if nothing else, is a reminder of the variety of musical vernaculars available to the composer of contemporary opera: folkloristic singing, pop music, minimalist modernism. And that is a lesson that I cannot emphasize enough. Robert Wilson and his variegated team of collaborators told her story, his way.

– Lui

An Infernal Happy Ending

La descente d’Orphée aux enfers

By Marc-Antoine Charpentier

Gotham Chamber Opera - St. Paul’s Chapel, January 5, 2014

Photo credit: Richard Termine

Every opera has a musical passage, an aria or a duet that gives it its raison d’être: a focal point for the feeling a composer desires to evoke with the piece. In the case of Marc-Antoine Charpentier’s La descente d’Orphée aux enfers, the crux of emotions is found in Orpheus’ plea for Pluto’s mercy. In his attempt to persuade the god of the underworld, Orpheus appeals paradoxically to Pluto’s humanity, his ability to empathize with his plight. Charpentier’s Orpheus is both master rhetorician and singer, and tenor Daniel Curran, who sung this part in Gotham Chamber Opera’s recent production, endowed his embodiment of the lovelorn poet with many moments of gut-wrenching beauty, especially when his voice reached up into the higher range. Considering the beauty of the music Charpentier gives Orpheus to sing, it is clear how he might be able to penetrate Pluto’s “cœur impénétrable.” 

Photo credit: Richard Termine

One thing that baroque opera does particularly well is the lament. And the plaintive beauty of Orpheus’ petition to Pluto, which Curran sang with a level of refinement and style that seemed to temporarily stop time, achieved several moments of this particular baroque vocal artistry. Another element of this genre that keeps me coming back are the choral ensemble pieces. This is always where I tend to feel the debt of opera to Ancient Greek theater. Charpentier composed a series of ensemble pieces for his chorus of young men and maidens in the first act, penitent souls and harpies in the second, which provided the backbone for the whole opera. Against this multilayered vocal texture, Orpheus, the heart and soul of the piece, is really the only vocal part that comes to the fore.

Photo credit: Richard Termine

The approach to sets and costumes was on the minimalist side, especially when compared to the recent pyrotechnics of Gotham’s spectacular Baden-Baden 1927, which in many respects was on a whole other level. Here poor male chorus members had to sport very un-manly costumes (pastel colored shirts and berets, poison ivy belts) in Act I, though the ladies had better luck with flowing gowns and scarves that achieved lovely effects with the simple yet effective choreographies.

Photo credit: Richard Termine

I enjoyed the irony of staging a descent to the underworld in a church, with the bonus special hellish effects of the ground trembling under the audience’s feet, courtesy of the NYC subway. The subway’s low shuttering rumble seemed perfectly timed with the narrative on at least two occasions as the story unfolded. Gotham’s set choices were simple, yet made great use of the space. The addition of a white spiral staircase to connect the stage to the church’s balcony created two dynamic levels of action – most effective when divinities “up above” were involved, Apollo in Act I and the Pluto-Proserpina couple in Act II. The series of translucent white canvases around the stage served as screens for computer-animated graphic projections that started as airy clouds when things are all bucolic and happy, then transitioned to very Inferno-like underground roots that seems to pump with blood like veins when the action moves to the underworld. The canvases also served as space dividers between the singers and the musical ensemble, which was rather unusually hidden away behind the stage and only visible to the public as a group of silhouettes.

Photo credit: Richard Termine

Act II was more successful, both visually and vocally. The Dantesque projections and gruesome damned souls were a great contrast to the almost psychedelic joyful tones of Act I. In the underworld the breezy light voices of virtually the whole cast were overshadowed by the power of Pluto, who brought some manly thunder to the otherwise gracious singing. Bass Jeffrey Beruan’s Pluto was sensational. His deep, dark, rich voice filled the space effortlessly, and towered over everybody else. As king of the underworld, Beruan's characterization ranged from intransigent authority figure to hopeless romantic when he finally concedes to Orpheus’ plea.

Whether or not there were other acts that went missing, it is striking that what remains of Charpentier’s two act cantata is a positive take on the myth that conveniently disregards the tragic end of the story. We are left with an optimistic belief in the viability of resurrection. And religious imagery is, in fact, present elsewhere as well. In Charpentier’s version, Eurydice is dancing in the garden with her cohort of young maidens on the eve of her wedding to Orpheus when she stumbles on a snake that leads to her fall.

Marc Tansey, Still Life, 1982

 Unlike the standard tragic denouement that is conspicuously missing from Charpentier’s optimistic truncation, this version of the myth of Orpheus holds true on the promise that art is able to betray death, that through artistic expression one is able to achieve immortality. In line with the promotional poster for the Gotham production, though nature inevitably fades and a bouquet of flowers eventually wilts away, its representation in the artist’s painted still life will live on forever. So Charpentier’s Orpheus and Eurydice live happily ever after.

Photo credit: Richard Termine

Gotham’s treatment of the ending does not let the couple off so easy. During the concluding musical interlude, as the reunited lovers ascend the spiral staircase together, Orpheus gives us a glimpse of his fateful lack of self control: he looks back too soon to lay eyes on his irresistible love. And this is the fleeting freeze frame this production engrains on our mind’s eye at the last moment before the house lights suddenly and dramatically cut to black, though the libretto and the score only ever get so far as depicting in music and in words the joyous reunion of the young couple. There is an insistence on presenting the conclusion of the tragic story, thus giving us closure, but at the same time undermining the message of the promotional poster: namely, that art saves. Instead, we are reminded of the fact that the artist is also just as capable of irremediably losing that which he regains.

With all this hype around Gotham Chamber Opera right now with everyone waiting for the company to fill the vacuum left by New York City Opera, this production serves as a reminder of their actual caliber. As ever, musically they are truly remarkable and consistently worth following, with a variety of talented young voices always vital and fresh. But their productions are not always at a level one comes to expect from the major leagues. The beauty often lies in the inventiveness they always manage to muster with their many ad hoc venues. They’re still a young company that shows heaps of promise but still has room to grow and we’re eager to track their growth.

- Lui & Lei

Michel Martin Drolling, Orpheus and Eurydice, 1820