Out West Arts: Performance at the end of the world

Roving reporter and man-about-town Ben Vanaman caught the final performance of Long Beach Opera's staging of Golijov's Ainadamar this weekend and filed this report.
The Long Beach Opera just concluded performances of its penultimate production of the current season, Osvaldo Golijov’s Ainadamar (Fountain of Tears), a lament “in three images” for the poet and dramatist Federico Garcia Lorca, a progressive who was assassinated by Spanish Fascists at the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War in 1936. A scrappy company known for its productions of contemporary operas and works outside the general repertoire, often staged in offbeat Southern California locales, LBO had intended to perform Ainadamar at the old Long Beach Press Telegram building, but was forced to move the production to the oft-used Terrace Theater when that site became unavailable. Perhaps this accounted for a performance that, while often enjoyable, sometimes seemed a little scrappier and more under-rehearsed than usual for this enterprising company, which can work wonders on a budget (as in a memorable Nixon in China from 2010 and even a surprisingly strong Akhnaten from last year).

One entered the theater to find a raked stage covered in fabric, its focal point a lone raised chair in center stage from which the character of Lorca’s actress friend Margarita Xirgu waxes tragic about the great loss of this man to her student-acolyte Nuria. Golijov’s score, an insistent musical poem of hauntingly lyrical and sometimes jarringly clangorous effect, draws on elements of various colloquial musical styles that have influenced the composer and which are a trademark of his compositional technique. At times, for example, one can almost hear the peal of a muezzin’s call, evoking the Islamic history of Granada, where Lorca lived and died. In one of the most effective moments of this score, Lorca’s murder is punctuated by gunshot-like bursts that transition into flamenco rhythms. The orchestra, hidden behind a scrim at the back of the stage, delivered a compelling reading of the score from first note to last.

Dramatically, however, the production was somewhat inert. David Henry Hwang’s libretto, which is essentially a prolonged reminiscence imposes limitations on what is possible in terms of design, movement, action despite its powerful content. Here, the result was a mixed bag. While the paraphernalia of stagecraft –the chair; the sheet- made it look like the sets came from the Dollar Store, there were some notable effects: striking lighting cues –blistering and brilliant when Lorca is killed; shimmering and ethereal when Xirgu breathes her last at the end- and an elevator that lifted the eight-woman “Greek chorus” from beneath the stage to comment on the sorrow of it all. When Lorca dies, slain alongside a bullfighter and a teacher, three dancers magically appear behind the fallen martyrs, pulled aloft in a striking coup de theater. However, one questions the wisdom of sending Xirgu down the hole at the end, sinking into the abyss rather than rising to join her beloved friend and comrade.

The vocal standouts of the evening were the tormented Lorca of Peabody Southwell and Ani Maldjian’s authoritatively-sung Nuria. Susan Hanson in the role of Margarita Xirgu was commanding in the middle of her range but a bit raggedy at the top, problematically resulting in protégé Nuria coming across as a more bold personality than her mentor. Golijov’s inspiration in making Lorca a “trouser role” has been noted. It certainly provides subtext to the story’s sexual politics, which is more glancingly marked by Hwang –and director Andreas Mitisek- in only one moment where presumed homosexual Lorca is seen flirting with a possible male lover. But the work carries power, from the beginning, where Xirgu prepares to reassume the lead of Lorca’s play “Mariana Pineda” in the final moments of her life, to the poignant conclusion, where Xirgu’s dying memories of Lorca are left in the hands of Nuria. Verbal history is the ranconteur’s trade, and Hwang beautifully draws on this tradition to craft a necessarily outsized portrait of one of the 20th Century’s greatest writers. But the company may have done itself an unwitting disservice by asking Gregorio Luke to read, in vivid and impassioned Spanish, three of Lorca’s greatest poems in a pre-concert talk. This reading took one’s breath away, setting one’s expectations almost too high for what the company could deliver. But that the evening was so generally satisfying overall speaks well of Long Beach Opera and its mission.

Labels: Long Beach Opera

Surrealism was the theme for the second production of Long Beach Opera’s 2012 season, a double bill of Martinů’s The Tears of a Knife and Poulenc’s The Breasts of Tiresias. The company, and its artistic director Andreas Mitisek who also served as conductor for the evening, went for the laughs on Saturday during the first of two performances at Long Beach’s Center Theater. This wasn’t a bad strategy for two reasons. First, surrealist works, such as the source materials for these short operas, often rely heavily on humor and ironic juxtapositions to make their points. Second, as my fellow-blogger George Wallace pointed out, Long Beach Opera has a more consistent track record with comedies or at least comic interpretations of more dramatic works. (Vivaldi’s Motezuma, Kurka’s The Good Soldier Schweik, and Shostakovich’s Moscow, Cheryomushki come immediately to mind.) And within this framework, this current production does achieve some level of success if it does so by overlooking the darker, more inherently complicated aspects of both pieces.

The first piece on the program was the quick 20 minutes of music that make up Martinů’s The Tears of a Knife. In it a young woman, sung by Ani Maldjian, falls in love with the corpse of a hanged man. Despite her mother’s pleas that she instead marry a neighbor, who turns out to be Satan, she goes ahead with her plan. She is eventually disappointed by the one-way affair and kills herself hoping to be reunited with her lover in the afterworld. She is, only to discover that he, too, has actually been Satan all along. The troupe including Suzan Hanson as the girl’s mother and Robin Buck as Satan reached for the humor in this scenario, but it never seemed to connect in Ken Roht’s attractive staging. Part of the issue here was the diluted sound of the chamber sized orchestra which, as with previous LBO performance in the Center Theater, keeps them at the rear of the stage behind a scrim. The jazz-influenced score doesn’t have a lot of time to make its impact, and musically the performance seemed dull and unfocused.

Luckily, Poulenc’s adaptation of Apollinaire’s play The Breasts of Tiresias, which was both longer and larger, seemed a more natural fit for the resources at hand. Poulenc's sly wit shines through in what is often very accessible, tuneful music that Mitisek and the orchestra had a firmer grip on. Maldjian returns to play Thérèse, a woman so enamored with feminist ideals that her breasts turn into balloons and float away turning her into Tirésias. Her husband, Buck again, is so frustrated by this and his inability to meet the cultural imperative of procreation, he elects to generate 40,000 of his own offspring through the miracles of modern science. Hilarity ensues and there is a requisite happy ending. Roht’s staging comes alive with a chorus that at times appears as party goers and then later surfaces as a legion of infants who write novels about Mme. Butak among other artistic endeavors. Roht is a choreographer by trade, and the sense of movement and physical space is strong. There are some video elements designed by John J Flynn that are projected behind the cast, including images taken from Magritte, in case we failed to get the point otherwise. The cast is more certain in these proceedings including a wonderful duet between Doug Jones as M. Lacouf and Benito Galindo as M. Presto. All of this is wrapped up in candy colored outfits and scores of balloons for a conclusion that may be a tad more crowd pleasing than it needs to be. Long Beach Opera has managed a view of surrealism that is very much tuned into the humor found in the strange and unreal, but not always so in touch with the scary and dangerous side of the same coin. The program repeats on the 17th of this month.

Labels: Long Beach Opera

One certainly can’t fault Long Beach Opera for a lack of ambition and reach. The company’s 2012 season opened Sunday with a new production of Piazzolla’s Maria de Buenos Aires, a show that the company did before in 2004 but under much different circumstances. I use the word “show” intentionally considering that it’s a stretch to call Maria de Buenos Aires an opera. The plotless, open-ended structure consisting of little more than a series of songs – Horacio Ferrer’s obtuse poetic lyrics against Piazzola’s tango music. There is a central character Maria who becomes a prostitute, dies, and then returns later on in another form. There’s also a spoken part, El Duende, whose text could be taken any number of ways. Of course, leaving so much room for interpretation makes the work powerful, but in the end it’s only as great as what one puts into it.

LBO’s artistic director Andreas Mitisek puts quite a bit into the show. The action is grafted onto Argentina during the late 70s and early 80s, a time of domestic terror when the county’s military government used state-sponsored violence to suppress political dissidents and thousands of citizens literally disappeared from the streets. Maria becomes a idealistic woman who falls in love with a rebel, a composite character called Payador. They are married and happy until Payador is arrested for his protest activities. Maria engages in a search for her husband in a seedy underworld and eventually is sexually assaulted by the police and taken into custody where her downward spiral continues despite eventually coming into contact with her former husband. The El Duende character in this version becomes an older version of Payador remembering the life of his lost love in a series of flashbacks.

It’s a bold take on the work and Mitisek and his players have put together something that looks incredibly good. The entire performance is given behind a scrim over which black and white images of stock footage from the period is projected alongside imagined scenes between the principal characters. There’s also a wall of faces of the “disappeared” that slowly rains down in random segments over the performances opening music. The cast itself, all amplified throughout, sounded great. LBO favorite Peabody Southwell sang Maria with clarity and real energy in a very physically demanding staging where she is often dancing or in physical conflicts with others. Her young lover was the equally enjoyable Gregorio Gonzalez who handled the show’s only other singing role in this version. The spoken part of El Duende went to Gregorio Luke who was commanding even with the evocative poetic lines he was given that rarely related to the action on stage. The members of the Nannette Brodie Dance Theater were always present providing the dance material that is commonly found in staged versions of Piazzolla’s score.

But despite how good this looked and sounded, and as much as I admired Mitisek and company’s bold adaptation, I found the whole thing rather wanting. Mitisek claims in his program notes that he “wanted to go deeply into the soul of this work and give it a contemporary meaning beyond clichés and stereotypes.” But I’m not sure that whitewashing the more unseemly aspects of Maria’s character to make her a revolutionary lover and symbol for all the good aspects of a nation’s spirit is necessarily avant-grade. Mitisek continues, “Maria is the ultimate metaphor for the heart and soul of Argentina and also a symbol for love, hope, fear, and resilience.” Fair enough. But none of that makes her necessarily very interesting or human as a character. Instead the complexity of the woman, and if taken symbolically the country she represents, is watered down to a sort of populist propaganda with a veneer of exotic sexuality tossed in for good measure. Long Beach Opera’s Maria de Buenos Aires is certainly attractive and professionally done, but it doesn’t quite deliver on the radicalism implicitly promised by its own premise. There's another performance on Saturday February 4th at The Warner Grand Theater in San Pedro.

Labels: Long Beach Opera

Robin T Buck and chorus Photo: Keith Ian Polakoff/LBO 2011

As readers of Axel Feldheim’s excellent blog, Not for Fun Only, may know by now, my San Francisco Ring cycle viewing was broken up with two trips back to Los Angeles in between performances. And while good old-fashioned gainful employment had something to do with it, so did the desire to see the final production of Long Beach Opera’s 2011 season, David Lang’s The Difficulty of Crossing a Field in its first Southern California performance. After seeing it on Saturday, I’m incredibly glad I did. Undoubtedly one of the strongest productions I’ve seen this year, LBO and its Artistic Director Andreas Mitisek put on a hugely thought provoking, elliptical, and ultimately overwhelming work. Who would have guessed that little over an hour of contemporary music would have outpaced the emotional impact of a 15-hour grand opera in the same week?

Difficulty is based on a page-long story of the same name by 19th Century American author and critic Ambrose Bierce which originally appeared in a San Francisco newspaper in 1888. It obliquely describes events surrounding the disappearance of a slave owner in the antebellum south in broad daylight and in full view of his wife, daughter, neighbor, and slaves while crossing an empty field. The story is not a mystery, but a fleeting rumination on the various perspectives of those who viewed the disappearance and its aftermath. The work is ironically prescient considering that Bierce’s own end is shrouded in mystery, having traveled to Mexico only to vanish himself with no record of his life, death, or further existence after 1913.

Suzan Hanson Photo: Keith Ian Polakoff/LBO 2011

Lang’s take on this shortest of stories enriches it without losing an ounce of its mysterious functioning. While the text shaped by librettist Mac Wellman, is often quoted directly from Bierce, it is done with frequent repetition and shifting voices within the cast. The music is scored for a string quartet, the Kronos Quartet at the time of the premiere, and has three major vocal parts – Mrs. Williamson, her daughter, and Boy Sam, a slave of the Williamson’s neighbor Arthur Wren. Wren and Mr. Williamson have speaking parts in the piece and there is a small chorus of slaves. The narrative jumps, shifts, and again folds in on itself over its length, eliciting much deeper strains of meaning from the original story and drawing out a whole well of emotion out of America’s history with slavery in a rather precise and condensed package. Lang and Wellman add other strange touches as well, including an extensive part for the Williamson daughter, and textual elements such as a list of common household objects that are repeated by different characters at different times representing perhaps a memory of the past, or in other contexts, the names of slaves. It’s a profound and bewitching piece given a gold star treatment by the resourceful Long Beach company.

Mitisek turned the musical direction of the evening over to Benjamin Makino who led the Lyris Quartet and a wonderful chorus with stand-out solo turns from Amber Mercomes and Dabney Ross Jones. The soloists included Suzan Hanson as Mrs. Williamson, Eric B Anthony as Boy Sam and Valerie Vinzant as Williamson’s daughter. All of them availed themselves beautifully in Lang’s halting, haunting post-minimalist score. Best of all, these performance took place in a wonderfully designed and visually commanding production directed by Mitisek. I was a bit puzzled about how the company intended to pull off such a small chamber piece in the comparatively large Terrace Theater in Long Beach. Well the answer turned out to be by having the audience seated on stage while the company used the seating of the auditorium as its empty field. A long catwalk, lit from below, bisected the auditorium in the center running from the rear of the house to the foot of the stage. The chorus was stationed at points along the catwalk among the field of seats and would at times reach out or interact with the other cast members. The lighting, from below the catwalk became hazy and created a shimmering heaven above on the Terrace Theater’s geometrically patterned ceiling. The effect of the cavernous and mostly empty auditorium was unsettling and oppressive at times.

The three principal soloists were then placed on the orchestra riser and lifted up and down into view of the audience. Hanson’s Mrs. Williamson was placed atop a ladder, rising several feet above the stage with a huge flowing dress that occupied much of the available space to emphasize her alienation from the rest of the world. Vinzant was placed either atop a mattress or later on large sheets of drawing paper opposite Mrs. Williamson with Anthony’s Boy Sam in between. The characters floated in and out of view in a dream like state that not only complemented the music but the layered, shifting words of the text as well. It was a superb evening of opera and one that managed that achievement without a big twist or surprised ending, but one with little more than the power of suggestion and an ability to mimic the interior patterns of our own minds.

Labels: Long Beach Opera

From Long Beach Opera's Moscow, Cherry Town Photo: Keith Ian Polakoff 2011

Operetta is not what most listeners think of when they hear the name Shostakovich. The most prolific of 20th-century Russian composers has a reputation for the severe, despite the significant amount of “lighter” music he wrote for films and other projects. So his lone operetta Moscow, Cheryomushki might be hard to place at first glance. Which is likely one of the reasons that go-your-own-way Long Beach Opera was attracted to the piece in the first place. Moscow, Cheryomushki, which premiered in 1959, is a comedy about the bureaucracy around moving into a new public housing project. I’m not kidding. The heroes of the piece are a collective of common workers who have been assigned to live in Cherymushki, the brand new state of the art concrete skyscraper. They are thwarted by a trio of pleasure seeking petty bureaucrats who stand in their way until a collective garden and magic bench intervene. I’m not kidding. It’s madcap in a Russian way that is narratively disjointed even in the English-language version of the libretto translated by British opera impresario David Poutney. But if you want to see for yourself, there is an excellent Russian-made 1963 film version of the piece that is worth seeing.

But it’s really Shostakovich’s great music that is the selling point here. Sure, the music is more easily accessible than his great symphonies and other stage works. But, the catchy songs that make up the score are filled with invention - folk music overtones and rapid dramatic changes in tone and color that are undeniably familiar to anyone who has heard the composer’s work before. Shostakovich knows how to make a common melody sound like so much more with a sardonic twist or subtle internal commentary, and this is one operetta with some bite to it. Artistic director and conductor Andreas Mitisek led a spirited and quite ribald performance from the thirteen member orchestra filled with horns and percussion in excess of the few strings.

Mitisek often wears multiple hats in the Long Beach Opera productions and considering how well they come off, it says a great deal about his talents. This time around, however, he passed the stage business baton to director Isabel Milenski and Set Designer Jian Jung to make sense of Cheryomushki’s peculiarly dated storyline. The Russian constructivist look of the set was charming. However, I did feel that the economic limitations the company always faces, may have gotten the better of them this time around. The single set with its limited number of props left little to differentiate between scenes making it hard to understand what was going on at times. Vocally, it was a strong evening with new faces to the LBO fold. Valerie Vinzant sang Lidochka, a museum guide who hopes to move into one of the new high rise apartments with her father. She's a recent graduate of the Domingo-Thorton Young Artist Program at Los Angeles Opera and has made notable appearances with her bright, easy sound successfully around town including Musica Angelica's recent semi-staged version of Mozart's Zaide. Vincent Chambers sang a solid Sergei, the chauffeur who falls for Liusia, a crafty construction worker. I was also taken with some of the LBO veterans as well, including the very amusing Suzan Hanson and Robin Buck who team up to play the villainous Vava and Barabashkin respectively in some of the comic highlights of the evening. And while a Soviet-style light comedy might not be everyone's musical cup of tea, Moscow, Cheryomushki certainly stands up musically with its operetta kin and LBO made the most of its hummable melodies and familiar comic tropes.

Labels: Long Beach Opera

Jochen Kowalsi in the title role of Akhnaten Photo: Keith Ian Polakoff/LBO.

A friend of mine who’d seen a new production of Philip Glass’ Akhnaten on its opening night last weekend gave me an assessment prior to my seeing the second performance in the run on Sunday. “It was well done, but it’s not opera.” Or at least not what she considered opera. And to be fair, à chacun son gout. But then again Monteverdi and Handel probably would have said the same thing about Madama Butterfly or Tristan und Isolde. (In the former case they would have been right.) But like it or not, Glass’ Akhnaten is indeed very much an opera and nearly a quarter of a century after its debut, it arrived on the West Coast for the first time in a complete form. Need you ask? Who else in Southern California but Andreas Mitisek and Long Beach Opera would even attempt this. (Well, the Los Angeles Philharmonic once would have, and did in a partial concert performance in 2006, but that was a different time…) Akhnaten, like Glass’ Einstein on the Beach and Satyagraha, reflects on the life of a person who radically changed the way the world around his thought. True story - shortly after ascending to the throne, the son of Amenhotep III changes his name to Akhnaten and for the first time asserts a monotheistic religion for the people of Egypt compelling them to abandon their many idols. Glass' libretto, a potpourri of different texts in different languages, chronicles the outlines of these monumental changes more than it follows a narrative sequence of events. The scenes that make up the three acts are more ceremonial or processional, although they are often wrapped in some gorgeous, hypnotizing music.

LBO as usual did a remarkable job on an unbelievably small budget with Mitisek playing most major roles from conducting to directing except the actual singing. More on that later, but the other person providing a major influence on the success of Sunday’s performance was interactive video designer Frieder Weiss. The sets were minimal with chorus, dancers, and cast dressed in white and lightly colored casual clothes that when accompanied with some Hieroglyphic-inspired poses were more suggestive of Egypt by way of Robert Wilson than say Aida. (Yes, that’s a good thing.) There was a single riser with a lengthy slanted platform attached to it that served as the only prop outside of some cardboard boxes. But Weiss provided an amazing amount of varied and near constant interactive video that was projected on scrims either in front of or behind the stage action. Thousands of little lights dashed about in response to the vocalists’ movements in some 21st-century version of Brownian motion. The effects were often quite grand and beautiful despite their simplicity and general lack of color, providing context in scenes where the libretto was somewhat more obtuse. It seemed almost shocking to me how much LBO could do with a small budget and the simplest interactive video considering the hugely ineffective and far more expensive vision of “interactive video” Robert Lepage has offered up in his vision of Das Rheingold for The Metropolitan Opera earlier this season. (Note to the Met and Lepage, this is how you do it.)

Musically, the evening show was also quite satisfying. Glass’ music is far more difficult to play than it sounds, at least in terms of stamina, and the orchestra hung in there through the first two acts, which were presented together before the intermission. Most of Akhnaten is built around the chorus who sounded quite good as well. Most notable of the soloists was a last minute replacement. Jochen Kowalski who sang the title role in the first performance on March 19 was announced as ill. However, given the short notice between performances, he still acted in the production on the 27th with Akhnaten’s countertenor part sung by Darryl Taylor. Taylor, like all of the soloists, was mildly amplified and he often was forced to perform while sequestered away on darker corners of the stage with the score. He was superb however and managed to stay on pace with both conductor and Peabody Southwell who was cast as Nefertiti in all of the duets. You couldn’t really ask for more, except more rehearsal time to get him in costume on stage. Let’s hope we see much more of him in that position at LBO and other stages soon. But in the meantime, Long Beach and L.A. were lucky enough to have him and everyone else in this very engaging and beautiful work - call it what you will.

Labels: Long Beach Opera

Suzan Hanson in Medea
Photo: Jim Farber/LBO 2011

Long Beach Opera dove head-first into its 2011 season last week honoring its tradition of presenting some of the most unusual operas in the most unusual places. 2011’s first production was Luigi Cherubini’s late 18th-century treatment of Medea, which the company had mounted in a vacant furniture showroom space in the Bixby Knolls neighborhood of Long Beach, CA. Perhaps the most important composer to have worked in Paris throughout the time of the Revolution, Cherubini’s operas were hugely influential for a whole generation of later composers including Beethoven, Wagner, and Weber. Yet despite this heritage, his works are rarely seen in the contemporary repertoire. So to have Cherubini’s Medea show up in Long Beach is a special event indeed, and the company under the guidance of Andreas Mitisek definitely put together a memorable take on this neglected masterpiece.

Ani Maldjian in Medea
Photo: Jim Farber/LBO 2011

Medea, like so many other operas, has lived on in many formats and languages. LBO’s Mitisek and the soprano Suzan Hanson, who stars in the title role, continued this tradition by adapting Cherubini's score to their own artistic purposes. Shortened to a single act in 10 scenes and around 100 minutes, the performance trimmed a good bit of music associated with the work. Furthermore, the libretto was streamlined and translated into English with spoken dialog favored in between the arias as Cherubini initially intended as opposed to the recitatives that had been used for later revivals of the work. This did have the benefit of keeping the action focused in a manner similar to Salome or Elektra. Unfortunately, this particular translation of Medea was pointedly plain and unpoetic, and didn't pack the punch of either of Strauss' works. But while the libretto seemed uninspired, the rest of the performance's qualities were strong making this revival a worthwhile excursion.

Long Beach Opera has repeatedly proven their remarkable ability to do more with less, which I was immediately reminded of on entering the EXPO Warehouse. Here in the middle of a darkened warehouse was a dramatic, stark, and modern set. A large central cluster of steel risers dominated the room lit mostly from below and surrounded by candles. The stage was surrounded on all sides by the audience with Mitisek and his orchestra placed off to one side. In fact, both the set design and conducting, as well as the lighting design and direction, were all under the guidance of Mitisek, causing one to marvel at his range of abilities in bringing this performance to life. His conducting of the orchestra was comendable as well, highlighting the rich orchestral feeling that so clearly inspired Cherubini's peers and successors.

The cast entered and took their positions atop the stage where they remained throughout, lying down when not called for in the scene. The first scene contained an exciting coloratura aria sung by Dirce, Jason's new wife, who was performed by Ani Maldjian. She exhibited excellent control and milked this solitary moment for her character with real gusto, playing up the adolescent, inebriated characterization in the production. Shortly after this, Dirce is joined by Ryan MacPherson who sang Jason in his white tuxedo jacket, and the Creon of Roberto Gomez in a black leather duster coat. Medea is accompanied by three women who act both as friends and fates in this production and were sung by Peabody Southwell, Ariel Pisturino, and Diana Tash. All provided excellent support in the cast, and Southwell's featured aria came off splendidly.

But the heavy lifting in the show was done by Suzan Hanson in the title role. She spends virtually all of the production atop her perch in the center of the set and rightly maintains herself as the central focus. This is a challenging part favored by legendary sopranos from Callas to Gwyneth Jones. Hanson gave a strong and very committed performance that was great fun to watch. She projected her character's rage and heartbreak beautifully throughout. Sadly she was plagued by an unfortunate ill-fitting costume meant to contrast with the contemporary garb of the rest of the cast. Yes, it, along with the large tribal tattoo that covered her right side, did highlight her otherness in contrast to the other characters. But, the huge amount of draped fabric would have resulted in a first-round elimination on Project Runway. Hanson was forced to spend most of the show maneuvering knots or bolts of fabric and it was often distracting. She did her best to rise above the garment, though, and gave a memorable performance. Once again the ambition of Mitisek and LBO impressed their audience with an operatic rarity. And while Medea may not have been shocking or frightening, it was lovely to hear and see even in this most unusual of spaces.

Labels: Long Beach Opera

Act II of Nixon in China at Long Beach Opera
Photo: Keith Ian Polakoff/LBO 2010

Loving opera is often about learning to accept the imperfections in things. Take John Adams’ Nixon in China, which received its second production in this area this weekend after nearly two decades. This time it was from the never-say-die Long Beach Opera company, which has managed to bring music to life almost by sheer force of will at times even in these rockiest of economic waters. And yet, even in this admittedly small-scale production, the brilliance of the piece shines through. It is both a spectacle, and a deeply satisfying work of art that takes on very big topics with perspective and insight. Nixon in China starts out with the processional arrival of Nixon’s aircraft in 1972 and his introduction to China’s premiere Chou En Lai. This is followed by scenes of philosophical and political debate as well as a number of speeches about good will and history. By the start of Act II, though, things become more and more surreal and metaphorical with the same polemical debates now reenacted in another set of events during Pat Nixon’s choreographed visit to sites in the Chinese countryside. Eventually, Act III develops as an extended reflection on how these primary characters became who they are. Alice Goodman’s beautiful libretto may be one of the best English language librettos outside of the collaborators’ of Benjamin Britten. This is not an opera of plot as much as one of ideas specifically tackling how we all can get along when sometimes we don't even share the same language or ideological frame of reference.

By now Nixon in China has received numerous productions all over the world including several locations in North America. And, still to this date, the original Peter Sellars and Mark Morris production continues to cast a very long shadow on everyone that has followed in their footsteps. Even in Long Beach, the three-hour work comes complete with a plane fuselage and gangway in Act I. However, designer Wilhelm Holzbauer and director Peter Pawlik do manage some of their own surprises such as Mao’s three secretaries appearing as floor lamps. The sets are minimal, but striking in their color scheme and layout. What’s more, LBO clearly pulled out all the stops by their standards recruiting a sizable chorus and full orchestra for these performances. Company General Director Andreas Mitisek, led the ensemble in a spirited and caring performance. Everyone is miked throughout the show, but anyone with a passing appreciation of Adams’ music knows this is not unusual. Vocally, most of the cast was solid. I particularly liked Suzan Hanson’s Pat Nixon who held her own against Ani Maldjian’s commanding Chiang Ch’ing in Act II.

Granted, this is not a dream performance of Nixon in China by any means. Much could be improved upon with more resources and time. But for an important work not often seen in this area, this production is one that is well worth seeing. There is one other performance on March 28 in Long Beach.

Labels: Long Beach Opera

Matthew DiBattista and Alex Richardson
Photo: Keith Ian Polakoff/LBO 2010

“Opera,” as Eddie Izzard opined at the Nokia Theater in downtown LA this weekend, can be described in sight and sound as "rich people watching large people shaken by small people.” And while this assessment still holds some truth, particularly here in America, there may be no company fighting it more than Long Beach Opera. This lone wolf of an organization continues to do much, much more with much, much less than virtually anyone I know of. LBOs productions are certainly not to everyone’s taste. The programming under artistic director Andreas Mitisek, is decidedly more outside the standard repertoire than any of those of the company's peers. The productions are not about opulence and glamor, which irks the kind of people that like to be “transported.” (I have long wished that opera would in fact transport these people somewhere. Hopefully a somewhere far away from me, but it’s a small world after all.) Nevertheless LBO is exceedingly good at making compelling and interesting opera that is almost always worth considering even when it isn’t always a complete success.

This weekend in Santa Monica the company offered the second performance of Robert Kurka’s The Good Soldier Schweik. The opera, which premiered at New York City Opera in 1958 adapts Jaroslav Hasek’s 1920s satirical novel about war and the military in WWI for the lyrical stage. A probably half-witted young private, Schweik, is drafted into the army where his naïveté unwittingly benefits him in numerous comical situations. He’s a Candide of sorts, winningly sung here by Matthew DiBattista. In fact the quality of singing in the production was quite good overall. The eight other members of the cast play a huge number of roles that swirl around Schweik’s episodic adventures until he finally reaches the front lines. The music is mid-Century Americana. Kurka’s orchestration calls for no strings and gives the feel of a military band. Sadly, the music is perhaps the least intriguing thing about this piece, although the orchestra, under the direction of Mitisek made the most out of what they had to work with and did provide a handful of very satisfying passages.

LBO’s production was broad, aiming for many laughs, which it mostly got through the very crafty direction of local theater legend Ken Roht, who also provided the evening’s choreography. The minimal set involved few props and relied on scenic video projections for the most part. But Roht created a very physical production that actually worked quite well in the space. The opera was both witty and light on its feat and despite the episodic nature never dragged. So while The Good Soldier Schweik may not be an important opera in its own right, it is a significant piece of American opera history, and LBO should be commended for bringing it to light in a season focusing on American composers. Next up for LBO will be John Adams’ Nixon in China, which will return to the Southland for the first time in two decades on March 27 and 30. And if you’d like a little more preparation, you’d be advised to check out a live appearance by John Adams in conversation with Andreas Mitisek at LACMA on Monday February 1.

Labels: Long Beach Opera

Courtney Huffman as Teutile in Montezuma
Photo: Christine Cotter/LAT 2009

Long Beach Opera celebrated its 30th anniversary on Saturday. And in the company’s own plucky style, it did so with plenty of nerve if not the steadiest of hands. The occasion was the first of two performances of Vivaldi’s Montezuma, a Baroque chestnut lost for over two centuries until it was rediscovered in a nearly complete format in 2002. In fact, this was the work’s US premiere and while neither the circumstances nor the setting were ideal for a Baroque opera, there was something ultimately very appropriate about it all. Musical resources were marshaled from Los Angeles’ own Musica Angelica Baroque Orchestra who performed under the company’s director Andreas Mitisek. Probably the biggest disappointment of the evening as that this very capable group was placed far at the back of the stage behind all of the action making the sound seem distant and creating real problems for the cast who were unable to see the conductor without the assistance of video monitors which still didn’t quite keep everyone in tempo all the time. Of course Mitisek was also handling all the harpsichord chores so his hands were undoubtedly very full.

Also, in the LBO fashion, just because it’s a special occasion all around and resources are scarce, there was no backing down for director David Schweizer, who went for a provocative concept production anyway. The story is typical Baroque territory – Montezuma, King of the Aztecs, has been defeated by the Spaniards under the leadership of the General Fernando. Montezuma demands his wife and daughter kill themselves in defiance, but they do not. His daughter has fallen in love with Fernando’s brother and soon, Montezuma’s wife is leading a rebellion of her own against the Spanish. Schweizer moves all of the opera's action to a museum exhibit of Aztec artifacts where the attendees at an opening reception are drawn into the roles and events of the story in a dream-like way. It’s not really meant to be a total frame shift, but it does provide for a variety of self-referential tongue and cheek moments. It wasn’t bad looking, and the concept didn’t overwhelm the piece, but the low budget approach did strain things at times. Above all this action was a large video screen used not only for subtitles, but also a video montage of footage from everyone from Sergei Eisenstein to cheesy Hollywood films referencing this same historical period. At times the video appeared to be part of the exhibit, at other times not. But it was well edited and always interesting to look at, sometimes risking outplaying the cast on stage. Of course since only the arias were sung in Italian with newly added recitatives and other dialogue in English, one’s attention was drawn back to the proceedings.

There were some enjoyable performances in the cast – particularly those of Peabody Southwell as the young lover Ramiro and Courtney Huffman as Teutile, his lover and Montezuma’s daughter. In fact, in perhaps the oddest bit of the staging, the pants role of Ramiro was tweaked to imply that the character may, in fact, be a woman and that this relationship is a lesbian one. Their wedding scene was even accompanied by a video image of Lindsay Lohan and reported paramour Samantha Ronson. Huffman vamped about the stage casting Teutile as an impetuous and defiant young woman looking for the spotlight. I was also fond of Caroline Worra’s Asprano, Montezuma’s general. She has a wonderful sequence where she sheds her business attire to don feathers and a quasi-Aztec war garb. It was hysterical in a good way.

Still, despite this, the rest of the cast was not as strong, and there was as much cringe inducing vocalism and not. Still this and the low budget production values did lend an ironic air of authenticity to the whole evening. Vivaldi’s operas were often presented in less than ideal circumstances with the available people and props on hand at the time. In a spirit probably not too dissimilar from LBO’s approach, it was often more about getting the work on stage than anything else. These were not the kind of garrish Baroque fantasies that directors like Copley and Ponelle deal in. LBO's Montezuma is lean if not always mean. This brash if sometimes clumsy evening owes more than might be apparent to its composer and this production is worth it, despite all the shortcomings. There is one more performance on Sudnay April 5th in Santa Monica.

Labels: Long Beach Opera