Out West Arts: Performance at the end of the world

l-r: Dale Travis, Juan Ontiveros, Judith Christin, Jonathan Michie, Alek Shrader, Christine Brewer, & Mark Schowalter.
Photo: Ken Howard/Santa Fe Opera 2010

One of the unique things about the Santa Fe Opera is the way in which the seasonal monsoonal evening thunderstorms often provide added atmosphere to the operas that appear on their stage. I can remember a recent Salome and Billy Budd where nature provided uncredited scenic design with lightening and thunder. But things don’t always work out that way and Friday’s opening performance of Britten’s Albert Herring, though thoroughly enjoyable, was not assisted by the routine thundershowers during the performance. Besides watching incongruous mists of falling rain waft across the bright sunny English countryside on May Day, the inclement weather provided some acoustic challenges to the production as well. Albert Herring calls for comparably small orchestral forces and like it or not, sometimes you cannot simply out-sing and outplay mother nature.

Of course, with a superb cast that Santa Fe has assembled, one might think that possible. Everyone on stage is excellent, including the bright tenor of Alek Shrader in the title role. His more savvy peers, Sid and Nancy, are sung by an excellent Joshua Hopkins and Kate Lindsey who is paring her spectacular turns as Hoffmann’s Nicklausse with another attention grabbing, if smaller, role. Jill Grove proves her comic chops in a hysterical performance as Florence Pike. Also notable among the cast was baritone Jonathan Michie as the Vicar. He's one of Santa Fe's current apprentice singers who made his main stage debut after the originally cast Wayne Tigges was tapped to permanently fill in for the four villains in the concurrently running Les Contes d'Hoffmann. And, though it is not the central role in the piece, Christine Brewer’s Lady Billows gets deserved top billing. She’s famously known for her sense of humor in real life, and Brewer proved she can translate that into a fantastic comic performance. Granted, I couldn’t help feeling that one of the greatest living Wagnerian sopranos was slumming here in Albert Herring, but stage appearances from Brewer are not as common as one might like, so I’ll take what I can get.

The production itself, designed by Paul Curran, is fairly set-intensive even by Santa Fe standards, with full-fledged scene changes throughout and a cast of supernumeraries who move furniture like they’re loading a Mayflower van. The first half of the show is brisk and often quite funny. Sadly, though, Curran and, arguably, conductor Sir Andrew Davis let things flag a bit in the second half. After Albert’s inebriation, the self-reflection comes on a bit heavy for an arguably slight opera. And maybe it’s just me but the Albert/Sid/Nancy Sedgwickian triangle at the center of the plot seems a might trying. Usually the homoerotic subtext of Britten’s operas strikes me as being a product of his own time. But watching the quite handsome Shrader buddy-buddy with Sid and Nancy on the store counter was like substituting Singin’ in the Rain for Y tu mamá también.

But no matter your feelings about Albert Herring, this is a fine production that musically and theatrically lives up to the high standards Santa Fe has developed over the years. Hopefully when you go see it the weather will be a little more design compliant. The show runs through August 24.

Labels: Santa Fe Opera 10

Kate Lindsey and Paul Groves in Act III of Hoffmann
Photo: Ken Howard/Santa Fe Opera 2010

Les Contes d’Hoffmann arrived for the first time at Santa Fe Opera this month and true to the company’s history, they did not shy away from a modern and sometimes thorny staging for the work’s debut. Longtime Santa Fe collaborator Christopher Alden was given the task of bringing one of the strangest operas in the standard repertory to life under the musical direction of Stephen Lord. With so much of the opera’s action taking place in memory or dreams, there is a lot of design leeway here. Alden has placed all of the action in a late 19th-century beer hall complete with a most ironic painting of rolling green German countryside at the rear of the stage completely eclipsing the mountainous high desert and rolling thunderstorms of northern New Mexico. This late Victorian set will house all of the opera’s action with long tables and chairs being ushered around to form mini-stages and other elements in the tale sequences. Most of the principal cast members are onstage throughout the entire performance becoming more or less engaged in the action as their number comes up. It’s a logical device considering that Hoffmann’s casting largely relies in vocalists covering multiple parallel roles in each of the stories.

There is a fair bit of obtuse and sometimes symbolic stage business as when Dr. Miracle surrounds Antonia with a giant funeral wreath or the many hazy mirrors that are lifted high or gazed into by virtually everyone throughout Act II and III. The stage-within-a-stage device is used for all three of the female roles creating the effect that all three women have some of the performance and doll like qualities associated with some of the other female characters. In fact, Erin Wall, who sings all of these roles in the production, is typically dressed in a number of Victorian costumes by other members of the cast while on these stages prior to her “performances” for her audience in the opera. Alden offers a large amount of psychological material to consider in this very attractive staging that is just about as off kilter as the libretto itself. It’s a good fit. And while not everything connects, it’s never boring.

The downside to Santa Fe’s new Les Contes d’Hoffmann is the overall quality of the vocal performances. As much as I’ve liked Wall elsewhere, she is seriously miscast as Olympia and Antonia. Her Giulietta is the strongest of the lot, but there’s little coloratura detail elsewhere. Paul Groves sings Hoffmann with an enticing angst and virility. Some of his top notes continue to strain and fade away, but not to the point where it’s unpleasant. The villains were covered by an adequately creepy Wayne Tigges who gets to repossess Olympia’s eyeballs gleefully throwing them across the stage. I was impressed with the energy and physicality of David Cangelosi as the four servants as well. But the audience came to its feet first and foremost for the marvelous Kate Lindsey. She reprised her superb performance of Nicklausse from late last year at the Metropolitan Opera with real flair and formidable acting ability. She’s immensely engaging to watch and her rich mezzo is perfectly suited to the part. I’m very much looking forward to the days when she’ll hopefully take her turn as Octavian. Vocal quibbles aside, though, this is a very worthwhile and thoughtful Les Contes d”Hoffmann with some beautiful orchestral work under Stephen Lord. It continues in beautiful Santa Fe through August 28.

Labels: Santa Fe Opera 10

Roger Honeywell and Carin Gilfry
Photo: Ken Howard/Santa Fe Opera 2010

It’s a great story. Lewis Spratlan, a composer and music professor at Amherst College, is commissioned to write an opera based on Pedro Calderón de la Barca’s 17th Century play La vida es sueño in the late 1970s. Before it sees the light of day, however, the producing company goes belly up in 1978, leaving Spratlan with a score that is all dressed up with nowhere to go. He shops it around with no success. The opera, called Life is a Dream, sits on a shelf until the late 90s when the composer and some supporters scrape together enough money to do two performances of a concert version of Act II which lo and behold wins the 2000 Pulitzer Prize. A big success, but oddly the offers do not start pouring in. But fate isn’t done with this opera yet, and when Santa Fe Opera shows interest in the work a number of years later, the stage is set for the world premiere that was 32 years in the making and which I attended on Saturday June 24.

Like I said, it’s a great background story. Sadly, that fact does not make Life is a Dream a great opera. And as thrilling as I’m sure it was for everyone involved. including Spratlan, librettist James Maraniss, conductor Leonard Slatkin, and director Kevin Newbury, it was a long, hard slog of an evening met with a decidedly tepid response. You should know that the Santa Fe audience is not unfamiliar with 20th-century music. Santa Fe has long been a national leader in bringing American and World premieres to its devastatingly beautiful theater for nearly a century. That Life is a Dream was picked up here should surprise no one. But despite many strengths and a lot of loving attention, the piece is weighed down with a wordy, confusing, and highly unpoetic libretto that gives the music no room to breath.

The music is precisely the kind of thing you’d expect coming out of an academic setting in 1970s America. Spratlan published an interesting piece in this weekend’s L.A. Times that describes the music better than I ever could, so read it here. It's a "pan-tonal" approach that, Spratlan notes, uses an outright 12-tone system at times. But Life is a Dream seems almost embarrassed by this fact and crushes the dark and conflicting music with reams of often didactic text that is delivered in a somewhat more spoken style than actually sung. The music is interesting and can easily sustain an opera of this length even if it doesn't come off as a personal and unique voice on initial listening. The music direction here was under Leonard Slatkin, of this year's earlier Met Opera La Traviata fiasco. Slatkin is a long-time advocate of 20th-century American music and was a perfect choice for this run. It's a difficult score and he exhibited none of the hesitancy or dis-coordination that dogged him in the press and on the web during his last high profile opera assignment.

But even a resurgent Slatkin had an uphill battle here. The main story of Life is a Dream deals with a prince, Segismundo, who is banished as a child by his father King Basilio when the ruler begins to fear he will be a violent and despotic ruler. After the prince has spent a lifetime in ignorance and captivity, his father begins to feel guilty and decides to drug the prince and bring him to court for a sort of surprise trial run as monarch. If he does well, fine. If he gets violent or loses it, they'll just drug him again, send him back, and tell him it was all a dream. Of course, this is what comes to pass and Act III deals with the actual end of Segismundo's captivity and his struggle to determine what is real and what isn't. It's an intriguing notion for an opera. Sort of a 17th-Century version of The Matrix. But somehow it's transformed into something frequently dull and tedious. Life is a Dream is weighed down with characters and subplots that are introduced and then never adequately resolved. There are two pretenders to the King's throne, as well as a daughter to the royal jailer, Clotaldo, who poses as a man when first meeting her father, for unclear reasons, and then spends the rest of the time demanding an equally incomprehensible justice from everyone.

The performances of the singers were all quite good, including Roger Honeywell as Segismundo, James Maddalena as Clotaldo, and Ellie Dehn as his daughter Rosaura. I was particularly excited to hear Carin Gilfry as Estrella in my second exposure to her singing since an all too brief appearance on stage in a duet with her father Rod Gilfry during a recital last year. The production by Kevin Newbury was smart looking, incorporating both a sense of the Spanish setting of the story as well as a contemporary feel. The stage is dominated by several tall planks that extend and retract from the side walls of the stage with yellow lights lining their edges. These contrast nicely with the fairy-tale Spanish-influenced costumes and the beautiful Santa Fe landscape which is always on display here. But visually pretty or not, this was a long two-and-a-half hours that left a lot in the audience decidedly wanting more.

P.S. An unrelated Santa Fe rant. - One of the many joys of being in Santa Fe is the great food. If you're here this summer, which you should be, I highly recommend that you avoid dining at Geronimo. After years of dining there, the 1990s decor and tired menu have succumbed to a staff who are apparently unable to handle something as simple as a reservation. There are so many great choices in town - don't wast your time and money there.

Labels: Santa Fe Opera 10

Kelly Kaduce
Photo: Ken Howard/Santa Fe Opera 2010

Puccini’s Madama Butterfly returned to the Santa Fe Opera in 12 years this month. Not that anyone was likely to have missed it considering how omnipresent the work is. But Santa Fe has managed to put together a show that is quite convincing and very involving if somewhat pedestrian in its scope. Director Lee Blakeley and his design team have gone for a minimal almost neo-realist look. While Butterfly is often an opera drenched in color, here it is gray-to-beige scale reproduction of turn-of-the-last-century Japan as if from some old photograph. The set is dominated by the square Japanese-American home of the sliding doors that will occupy Butterfly’s thoughts throughout the evening. It rotates at several pivotal moments revealing the cast inside as well as the moon and other effects with just the sliding of a few doors. Much of the action takes place downstage from the house, but it's an effective (if obvious) symbol. The acts change with little demarcation other than the arrival of power lines running through Butterfly’s front yard indicating that Trouble and in-home electricity arrived about the same time in Japan. It looks a bit odd, but arguably serves the same symbolic purpose.

The performances are of the typical Santa Fe quality, featuring some of the best and brightest American singers including Brandon Jovanovich as Pinkerton and Kelly Kaduce in the title role. What the two lacked in vocal fireworks was made up for in some part by the shrewd casting of the blond, tall and handsome Jovanovich opposite the petite Kaduce heightening from the beginning the sense of contrast in this ill-fated match. Jovanovich’s profile has skyrocketed over the last two year with meat and potatoes roles like Don Jose in big houses like the Met. I’ve liked him in L.A. and San Francisco on prior outings, but he did sound a little slow to start on the Friday I saw the show. Kaduce has made Butterfly one of her signature roles and she performs it admirably with much more zeal and emotion than what I’ve come to expect. This is not a Butterfly who is all about restraint. She gets royally pissed off when she is spurned and not simply going gently into that good night. Kaduce was just a wee bit shrill at times for my taste and I could have used a little more Italianate warmth along the way, but she certainly has the requisite power and sounded good outdoors. Anthony Walker led the Santa Fe Opera orchestra through a heavily-percussive performance that wasn’t mechanical but could have sounded a little bigger at times. Still, in all, this is a show that works far more often than it doesn’t. And while it may not have the lustrous color or cinematic scope popular for many contemporary Madama Butterfly productions, it’s focus on basic elements is satisfying.

Labels: Santa Fe Opera 10