Ardis Krainik, the Lyric Opera`s ambitious general manager, is confronted with this question as her company brings down the curtain on its 36th season: Can she continue to present the established works of the past up to the highest standards in today`s perilous economy, at the same time hooking her public on the finest works produced by the 20th Century?
The issue is particularly timely, for American opera companies have perhaps never more closely resembled museums, with their desperate adherence to an outmoded star system and increasing reliance on a safe handful of 19th Century masterpieces.
It is a mind-set the box office-conscious Lyric cannot escape, despite its ambitious effort to pump new life into a stale repertory with its artistic initiative portentously dubbed ”Toward the 21st Century.”
By casting Lyric in a leadershop role in the promoting of American opera and American-produced opera in the final decade of the century, Krainik has taken on a tremendous commitment, and she knows it. She realizes that she must move forward in an artistically responsible manner-but not so drastically that she breaks faith with her subscribers or contributors, or pushes Lyric to the brink of bankruptcy, as did her predecessor, Carol Fox.
Thus there`s the pressure to sell more tickets, to fill the 3,555-seat Civic Opera House to capacity, and then some. Fortunately, the 1990-91 season represented an extremely attractive proposition to a lot of Chicagoans. For the second season in a row, the company played to a solid 102.7 percent of capacity (the extra percentage represents return tickets that are sold a second time) in a season of 67 performances. Ticket sales reached $11.1 million-a record high for the company.
With every season, of course, the stakes get that much higher. This helps to explain why, a full seven months before the start of the 1991-92 season, thousands of would-be subscribers have received their glossy Lyric brochures adorned with the classic Danny Newman imperative: ”Subscribe now!” A risky program like ”Toward the 21st Century”-not to mention the other big ventures (a new ”Ring” cycle, for one) that Lyric is planning for the decade ahead-cannot proceed without warm bodies in the seats and money in the bank.
The 1990-91 season brought scattered grumbles that Lyric`s artistic record failed to keep pace with its strong financial performance. This reviewer found the artistic track record consistent with that of previous Krainik seasons, with good things outnumbering bad.
Moreover, reliable reports as well as radio broadcasts emanating out of New York and San Francisco indicate the track record is no better in those opera centers, and is, in fact, a good deal worse. Certainly nothing the Met did all year could rival the excitement generated by the Lyric`s innovative productions of Gluck`s ”Alceste” and Dominick Argento`s ”The Voyage of Edgar Allan Poe.”
”Alceste” was significant if only for the fact that it was director-designer Robert Wilson`s first production in a major American opera house. Even if the fusion of Gluck`s noble simplicity with the innovative theater artist`s postmodern decor and lighting could not convince everyone that
”Alceste” is more than an elevated bore, the cool, wondrous abstractions of his production provided a suitably grand showcase for the belated company debut of soprano Jessye Norman.
Of the season`s eight operas, ”Alceste” fared the least successfully at the box office, selling 101.71 percent of the available seats.
By comparison, ”The Voyage of Edgar Allan Poe” drew the largest business-103.05 percent, doubtless buoyed by a strong tide of turnbacks. The progressives among Lyric`s public might lament the fact that the company chose to launch its 21st Century initiative with a flawed opera whose musical gestures are really no more modern than Richard Strauss. Still, none could dispute the potent theatricality of the production or the searing brilliance of Frank Galati`s direction. This was the one Lyric show from the 1990-91 season that everyone had to see. It got the initiative off to a strong and promising start.
The season`s third new production, Donizetti`s ”Lucia di Lammermoor,”
was an above-average bel canto concert set in the middle of a bizarre, Eurotrash production by director Andrei Serban and designer William Dudley. June Anderson and Alfredo Kraus were largely upstaged by the leaning-tower-of- Lammermoor set.
No vocal performance last season was more miraculous than Kraus`; at 66, the ever-stylish tenor sounded as if he could keep on singing, gloriously so, for 66 more years. ”Lucia” played to an average capacity of 102.81 percent. The revivals of Mozart`s ”The Magic Flute,” Bizet`s ”Carmen” and Verdi`s ”Rigoletto” all tied for 103 percent attendance averages, although the Mozart clearly was the standout. All the childlike-fantasy elements of August Everding`s production came together as smoothly and enjoyably as they had done in 1986 when the show was new, while the singing and conducting were generally an improvement over the original. Newcomers Sumi Jo and Robert Lloyd brought high musical distinction to their roles.
As ”Carmen” settled into its run over the holidays, the show rather resembled a sick ward. Star Tatiana Troyanos had bowed out because of an inner ear infection and various principal singers called in sick. Partly because of all these comings and goings, Vera Calabria`s revival of the justly famous Jean-Pierre Ponnelle production lost some of its verismo-style punch. Emily Golden, Troyanos` replacement, proved too lightweight a Carmen for a big international theater, although Neil Shicoff (Don Jose) managed to provide some vocal compensation.
Even so, the artistic nadir of the season was unquestionably
”Rigoletto.” Lyric dusted off its tired Sandro Sequi-Pier Luigi Pizzi production from 1971 and threw this shabby concert-in-costume on stage with no galvanizing conductor, no Gilda worthy of an international house and, worse, not so much as a bow in the direction of the new critical edition of Verdi`s score, published by the University of Chicago Press.
The revival of Tchaikovsky`s ”Eugene Onegin” paled by comparison with the 1984 ”original cast” version, despite soprano Anna Tomowa-Sintow`s sensitive portrayal of the heroine, Tatiana. The staging by director-designer Pier Luigi Samaritani kept the dramatic voltage low, and not even Bruno Bartoletti`s conducting could make much difference. ”Onegin” drew an average attendance of 102.1 percent.
”The Girl of the Golden West,” on the other hand, turned out to be greatly superior to the ”original cast” version presented here in 1978. Marilyn Zschau as the pistol-packin` Minnie and Placido Domingo as her bandit- lover Jack Rance brought the Wild West romance cherishably alive, while Hal Prince`s cinematic production remained a delight. It drew a respectable 102.51 percent attendance.
Next season will bring two other works by Puccini: a revival of the Hal Prince ”Madama Butterfly” and a new David Hockney production of
”Turandot.” The latter will star Eva Marton and Lando Bartolini for the first eight performances, running Jan. 11 to Feb. 2, 1992; Galina Savova and Bruno Beccaria will replace them on Jan. 28 and 31. Bartoletti will be the conductor, with William Farlow taking over the directing chores from the originally-announced Lotfi Mansouri.
Next season will also bring the initial installment of the European segment of Lyric`s 21st Century program: the Chicago premiere of Sergei Prokofiev`s 1929 opera, ”The Gambler,” starring Sheri Greenawald and Jacque Trussel, with Liviu Ciulei directing. Bartoletti, who had previously given the Lyric premieres of Prokofiev`s ”Angel of Fire” and ”The Love for Three Oranges,” will conduct. Based on a story by Dostoevsky, this is a powerful piece of music theater and its inclusion in the Lyric schedule is something to anticipate.
Counterbalancing this 20th Century European classic will be a relatively recent American work, Samuel Barber`s ”Antony and Cleopatra,” written in 1966 for the opening of the new Metropolitan Opera House. Catherine Malfitano and Richard Cowan will take the title roles, with Richard Buckley conducting and Elijah Moshinsky directing.
Presenting works like the Barber and Argento hardly qualifies Lyric Opera for museum status; neither do they brand Krainik as a particularly daring artistic innovator, leading her flock boldly into the promised land of new opera. The general director as much as concedes the point when she says: ”I don`t ever want to be bland, or to ram (contemporary opera) down anyone`s throat. But I do want the public to come into the century we are in without fear-to help our public accept 20th Century opera.”
At the same time, Krainik concedes that finding appropriate American works with which to flesh out the rest of Lyric`s 21st Century program will not be easy.
Part of the problem is that few contemporary American operas have established their durability and/or artistic worth as have their European counterparts. And so, while Lyric has been able to fill in many of the openings in the European portion of its ”Toward the 21st Century” initiative (Debussy`s ”Pelleas et Melisande,” Stravinsky`s ”The Rake`s Progress,”
Berg`s ”Wozzeck” and Janacek`s ”The Makropoulos Case” are either being discussed or have been announced for upcoming seasons), the American agenda is still subject to a great deal of internal debate.
Perhaps the Lyric-commissioned opera by William Bolcom, based on Frank Norris` ”McTeague” and scheduled for its world premiere here in October 1992, will give the Lyric some of the ballast needed to weight the American side of its operatic equation. One hopes so. Before then, a good many American companies will be nervously chewing their fingernails right along with Krainik, hoping she succeeds in her plan before the museum mentality engulfs everyone.
