There are, thank goodness, a few places in the civilized world where opera is still regarded as an art form rather than an industry consecrated to mindless star-gazing. One of those places is the Opera Theatre of St. Louis, which concluded its 15th season June 24 at the Loretto-Hilton Center with four productions in which thoughtful musical and dramatic preparation and the intimate scale of the 950-seat theater seem to go hand in hand.
Not that everything lived up to hopeful expectations, of course. The season`s single bow to the standard repertory, Mozart`s ”The Marriage of Figaro,” turned out to be a weak link, perhaps crippled more by backstage complications (by midseason, three different conductors had occupied the podium) than by any lack of ability behind the footlights.
St. Louis realizes that a commitment to 20th Century opera need not extend only to commissioning and producing new works; reconsidering certain basic operas of our time clearly is important also. This year St. Louis mounted a powerful new production of Benjamin Britten`s ”Peter Grimes” as staged by the company`s artistic director, Colin Graham. Though Graham has a long association with Britten`s stage works, this was his first ”Grimes” in America.
Recent productions of ”Grimes” at Lyric Opera and the Met (especially those in which Jon Vickers has taken the title role) have tended to give audiences a blindered view of the opera, inflating its musico-dramatic scale beyond the composer`s original intentions. The central achievement of this
”Grimes”-billed as only the second production in the 45-year history of the opera to use the same-sized forces for which Britten wrote it-was to reaffirm its human drama.
If Kenneth Kiesler`s conducting did not overwhelm the listener through the sheer attack and energy of Britten`s orchestra, the fault probably lay as much with the dampened acoustics of the partially covered Loretto-Hilton pit
(which has long needed renovation) as with the merely serviceable chamber orchestra of up to 45 musicians, drawn from the ranks of the St. Louis Symphony. More imposing was the chorus-the opera`s central force, despite its title-which rose to real eloquence at the end, after the hated outsider Grimes has taken his life at sea.
In this ”Grimes” the implacable sea was more than a backdrop-it was a metaphor for the suspicious Borough populace that rejects Grimes and hastens his destruction. Graham drove home the point in choreographed sequences he devised to accompany the sea interludes, which foreshadowed the fisherman`s descent into madness. And his weather-beaten unit set effectively evoked a claustrophobic sense of community through the simplest of means.
Martin Thompson in the title role was more than just a junior-league Jon Vickers: how good it was to hear this music really sung, like the anguished bel canto it is. If he tempered Grimes` brutish wildness with perhaps too few strokes of humanizing pathos, his portrayal succeeded in making the character`s anguish both gripping and real. Harlan Foss gave a sturdy accounting of Balstrode, although Christine Brewer`s sympathetic Ellen Orford was compromised by the singer`s failure to project the English text clearly. Of the several sharply drawn Borough busybodies, Matthew Lord, Richard Rebilas, Sheila Nadler, James Scott Sikon and Gregory Stapp made strong contributions.
The rest of the St. Louis season was reserved for comic operas:
Donizetti`s ”The Daughter of the Regiment,” Dvorak`s ”The Devil and Kate” (in its first American staging) and ”Marriage of Figaro.”
Nobody is going to advance a serious case for ”Daughter of the Regiment`s” being a comic masterpiece comparable to that composer`s ”Elixir of Love” or ”Don Pasquale”; the thin complications of plot are barely enough to sustain even two acts.
Still, voices and not plot are what make bel canto opera sing, and St. Louis cast its nets accordingly, building its Donizetti around a spunky little charmer from Canada, Tracy Dahl. As the eponymous vivandiere, Marie, Dahl was a delight. She has a thin, silvery, Mado Robin-like timbre and a superior coloratura technique that allows her to move gracefully and accurately within a wide range. No mean comedienne, Dahl had the audience caring as much about her as Marie`s lovesick swain, Tonio, sung by Stanford Olsen. He never forced his smooth and ingratiating tenor for effect, and one had no trouble understanding his diction, even if his tone paled in the famous string of high Cs that caps the aria ”Ah! mes amis.”
Both artists suited the purposes of director Michael Albano, who kept the action moving cleverly within Richard M. Isackes` sets, a whimsically surreal Tyrol of miniature trains, spires and picture-postcard Alps. They also were helped by Joseph McKee as the loyal Sgt. Sulpice and Elaine Bonazzi, in great form as the comic Marquise. Dana Krueger drew plenty of laughs in her high-camp cameo as the Duchess of Krakenthorp(”the sight of Niagara Falls I consider the second major disappointment of married life”). Stephen Lord conducted appreciatively.
There was the germ of an intelligent ”Marriage of Figaro” in St. Louis` new staging of the Mozart work, but it never quite sprouted. The essential problem seemed to be that the production by director Stephen Wadsworth (who gave OTSL a brilliant ”Alcina” three seasons ago) was more ambitious than an uneven and apparently tired ensemble of singers was able to sustain.
These days it`s almost a commonplace for directors to search for dramatic inspiration in the Beaumarchais play, with its biting political and social commentary. But Mozart`s music and Da Ponte`s text are more about the vulnerability of the heart than they are concerned with skewering the arrogant cruelty of a decadent aristocracy as represented by the Count Almaviva. Opera buffa? This had to have been the least mirthful ”Figaro” one has seen-everyone in the Almaviva household seemed thoroughly miserable-although no amount of directorial revisionism could prevent the audience from appreciating the irrepressible high spirits of the piece.
Kurt Ollmann`s Almaviva, bearing the conceptual burden of this oddly angry production, sang elegantly and commanded the stage with a fascinating kind of volatile grace. None of the other singers made so positive an impression, perhaps because they weren`t allowed to.
Rebecca Abram, the Susanna, fought a particularly unhappy battle with sagging pitch. Too much of the performance turned into a tug-of-war between stage and pit, although it must be noted that this was the able Joseph Rescigno`s first time up as pinch-hit conductor. The spare, chilly sets were by Thomas Lynch.
”The Devil and Kate” has heretofore defeated all attempts to export it to opera houses outside its native Bohemia; the St. Louis production showed us why. The music, which wants to break into rousing Slavonic dances at the drop of a boot, has its charming moments but is insufficient to redeem a libretto that is an ungainly muddle of folkish farce and lofty social idealism. At the end, the oppressed Czech peasants are set free-a timely theme, at least.
The cast included Phyllis Pancella (a former member of the Lyric Opera Center), Joseph Evans, Eugene Perry, Alexandra Coku and Wilbur Pauley.
Pancella is an enormously promising mezzo-soprano but she had little interesting music to sing. Director Francesca Zambello brought some inventive slapstick to the first two acts but didn`t seem to know how to cope with the opera`s sudden shift of dramatic tone in the final act.
Richard Buckley conducted as if this were an undiscovered masterpiece. Perhaps St. Louis will investigate Dvorak`s ”Russalka,” a far better Czech opera, one day soon.
