At a time when political, social and economic walls are tumbling all over the world, the Gateway City`s innovative opera company has put up a wall that could be the prototype for operatic stage design of the future.
The Wall, as everyone down here is calling it, made its debut during the 17th season of the Opera Theatre of St. Louis, which runs through Sunday at the Loretto-Hilton Center on the campus of Webster University here.
Designed by Derek McLane, the Wall is a charcoal-gray brick construction of arches, doors and stairs that framed three of OTSL`s four productions this year: Benjamin Britten`s ”A Midsummer Night`s Dream,” Rossini`s ”The Turk in Italy” and Puccini`s ”Madame Butterfly.”
The one opera that chose to go its own way in a design sense was Scottish composer Judith Weir`s ”The Vanishing Bridegroom,” which received its U.S. premiere.
In a program note, Colin Graham, the esteemed British stage director who is OTSL`s artistic director, argues that most current opera design has become heavy and cluttered, disrupting the unity of sound and sight, distracting attention from the work that is being performed and, worse, encouraging audiences to be lazy onlookers rather than active participants.
Far better, he wrote, to have a spare, functional acting space in which the mind`s eye, provoked by the music and the singing, could provide the scene-painting. Hence the Wall.
Stylized enough to lend itself to virtually any style of opera presentation, it gives a unified look to the company`s season, Graham insists, without stifling the creative impulses of individual designers. It also serves, not incidentally, as an acoustical shell to enhance the projection of voices.
For a budget-conscious company dedicated to performing a varied repertory in English at a 950-seat university theater, creating an intimate, adaptable unit-set makes eminently good sense.
Whether the Wall becomes a permanent fixture here will depend largely on how successfully it liberates the imagination of future designers. Those who find it a hindrance, Graham explains, will have the option of building their own set.
Still, the evidence of the present season suggested the artistic director`s less-is-more alternative to ”designer opera” could be the beginning of an important new trend in music theater.
For ”A Midsummer Night`s Dream,” Graham`s 15th staging of a Britten opera, the Wall helped to transform the stage into a postmodern fairyland literally turned upside down.
For ”The Turk in Italy,” it became an antic attic filled with 19th Century bric-a-brac, including a huge portrait of Rossini. For ”Butterfly,” it kept a discreet distance behind various screens and props evoking the picturesque Japan of Puccini`s tragedy.
Graham has a proprietary claim on the Britten operas. A longtime associate of the composer`s, he has directed virtually all the Britten stage works, many for the St. Louis company. ”Midsummer” was easily the standout of the OTSL season, a ”Dream” such as operatic dreams are made of.
Graham`s positing of a topsy-turvy Central Park as the realm of Oberon, his queen Tytania, the sprite Puck and the other nocturnal spirits gave Britten`s musical distillation of the Bard a clever contemporary spin while subtly enhancing the moonstruck farce and tender romance.
Theseus (Scott Wilde) became a Mafia duke whose bodyguard/thugs scoured the park with guns and flashlights, looking for potential hit-men. Puck (Ward Saxton) and his ragtag band wore sneakers and sported painted faces.
As the mortal pairs of lovers-Hermia and Lysander, Helena and Demetrius-engaged in their confused romantic pursuits, they doffed their contemporary clothing in favor of vaguely Grecian shorts and togas-
symbolizing, no doubt, their attaining a more natural state of amorous bliss.
Graham orchestrated the interaction of the opera`s courtly, supernatural, rustic and mortal worlds brilliantly. It was beautifully sung and acted by a finely knit ensemble of young singers and actors under the baton of Robert Spano.
Among the large cast, Elizabeth Futral as Tytania and Thomas Barrett as Bottom made a memorable pair of mismatched ”lovers.” The real lovers were appreciatively taken by Kathryn Honan-Carter, Kevin Anderson, Virginia Browning and Stephen Combs.
Theseus and Hippolyta were Scott Wilde and Jennifer Jones. Oberon was Derek Lee Ragin. The rustics made a nicely differentiated ensemble. The costumes by Martin Pakledinaz were suitably lavish.
– Weir, Britain`s most successful woman composer, is perhaps best known in this country for her previous full-length opera, ”A Night at the Chinese Opera,” produced by the Santa Fe Opera three years ago.
”The Vanishing Bridegroom,” by contrast, draws its resonances from the bleak Highlands landscape of Weir`s native Scotland but, beyond that, from the haunted and haunting Celtic folk tales of that windswept region.
The 90-minute opera, for which Weir wrote her own spare libretto, loosely links three separate stories into a kind of family saga. Weir clearly is fascinated by the way strange, supernatural events thread their way through the domestic details of everyday life, creating a timeless folk tapestry.
Vanishing bridegrooms figure prominently in all three stories. In the first, ”The Inheritance,” a new bride confesses she had previously pledged her love to another. The groom returns her to her first love and disappears;
her lover releases her from her pledge and also vanishes. Waylaid by robbers, she returns to her groom, who accepts her.
In ”The Disappearance,” a husband (the bridegroom of the first tale)
disappears on the way to fetch a priest to christen his baby daughter.Sixteen years later the man innocently returns, as young as when he had vanished into the realm of evil fairies, now confronted by his grown daughter.
In ”The Stranger,” the daughter, now a young woman, is wooed by a handsome stranger who is really the devil in disguise.
A preacher draws a sanctified circle around her for protection. The devil tries to assail her, but her faith prevails and he is defeated.
Like the music of Janacek, Britten and Stravinsky, whose vocabulary she occasionally echoes, Weir`s score absorbs folklike elements-a weaving song for women`s ensemble, the dissonant drone of fiddles moving in canon-into a style both modern and traditional, austere and colorful, formal and expressive.
Weir`s chantlike vocal writing suits the sober directness of a narrative given more to action than character development. Her orchestra, conducted by Scott Bergeson, swirls with a hazy luminescence like the sun piercing a Highland fog.
The OTSL production stressed simplicity and restraint, both in the sad, still music of Francesca Zambello`s staging and Allison Chitty`s spare, intimate design.
Of the large singing ensemble, baritone John Brandstetter and tenor Brad Cresswell stood out with their vocally and dramatically assured performances. The action was so compressed and several singers` English diction so hard to follow (particularly Lauren Flanigan`s, vocally somewhat discomfitted as the Bride) that supertitles would have been welcome.
– St. Louis was less fortunate with its bow to Rossini`s 200th birthday, ”The Turk in Italy.” In all fairness, the work itself presents problems.
The libretto, which recalls ”L`Italiana in Algeri,” veers uncertainly between caricature and sentiment, and even with much music from Rossini`s top drawer, few modern productions ever manage to make its contrivances convincing.
The OTSL production, staged by Ken Cazan (who had directed last season`s brilliant Mozart ”Mitridate”) and designed by John Conklin, broke faith with the slender charms of the piece. It wallowed in overproduction. Bad jokes cluttered the stage.
To cite the worst example, Cazan had the rivals Fiorilla (the bright and nimble Erie Mills) and Zaida (the darkly alluring Kristine Jepson)
slugging it out in a boxing arena. Graham`s newfound vision for OTSL as a haven for visual and simplicity went unheeded.
David Evitts, the Selim, sang nobly even when made to look ridiculous. Kenneth Kieser, music director of the Illinois Chamber Orchestra, proved sensitive to both the effervescent and warm sides of Rossini`s musical personality and he drew crisp responses from the orchestra.
The spare, intimate design for the U.S. premiere of Judith Weir`s ”The Vanishing Bridegroom” was created without the wall.
