BLO

Midsummer Dreamscapes: Boston Lyric Opera’s “Dream”

For their final production of an acclaimed season, the BLO has given us a lucid Dream. That is, Benjamin Britten’s adaptation of A Midsummer Night’s Dream. As much as Britten and librettist Peter Pears left the story pretty much intact, the opera is much more interested in the fairy world, and after that the amateur stage of Shakespeare’s rustic players, than the Athenian court. And it’s here that the BLO (particularly set designer John Conklin, as it is in its many sets and scenery pieces that this production is most distinctive) took it and ran. We don’t get the typical fertile forest imagery of Shakespeare’s greenworld, but a psychedelic dreamscape where giant fluorescent neon circles descend from above the dark stage, so it glows like a black light poster. Some of the constantly changing scenery is based on children’s artwork gathered in a BLO outreach program and some resembles the trippy iconography of Salvador Dalí. Metallic orbs, different moons, spray-painted murals, and the Thonet No. 14 chairs of post-impressionist cafés float around director Tazewell Thompson’s stage.

Boston Lyric Opera Britten Midsummer Nights Dream

Nadine Sierra (Tytania) and Andrew Shore (Bottom) with members of the PALS Children’s Chorus (Erik Jacobs)

Some have criticized the scenic imagery of this Dream to be a little muddled, despite some unifying symbols that appear in different incarnations throughout the opera. Well, at least one symbol; the moon, which is really convenient in signifying the night, dreams, and fertility. Of course, the dreamscape isn’t just in the sets. Tytania is sexed up like a Barbara Eden fantasy and Oberon, with his leather vest and boots, looks like he belongs in a very different kind of fantasy. Just as Shakespeare’s three slowly converging plotlines begin to separate, Britten’s music (well played here by David Agnus and band) clearly demarcates the plots and characters, allotting the most fanciful motifs for the fairy world. He saved a special fanfare for Puck, a purely spoken role poetically played here by Karim Sulayman. Although he gets around a lot, I’ve always thought of Puck as clearly a citizen of the fairy world, but Britten made him so musically unique that, despite being subservient to Oberon, he’s like Leonardo DiCaprio in Inception; he’s the master of the dream world.

On the other side of this dreamscape is a hilarious rendering of the rustics’ production of Pyramus and Thisbe, which gets a long treatment at the end of the opera. I suppose it’s there, in a way, to wake us up. But even their rehearsal exits in the psychedelic dream space. Huge set pieces labeled “TREE,” etc. are wheeled out mimicking Bottom and company’s issues with the illusions of theater.

Since most of the play is here, and the language is all Shakespeare’s, the opera feels a lot like a production of the play and I think I’d actually like to see these sets used in a theatrical production. They’re so far from the plain Jane stock backdrop scenery we see in too many operas. A particularly large cast, mostly out-of-towners, act and sing well, channeling not only Britten’s music, but the original text’s characters. Acting is something this production does exceedingly well. Highlights include Nadine Sierra’s Tytania, John Gaston’s Oberon, Karim Sulayman’s Puck, and Susanna Phillips’ Helena.

Boston Lyric Opera Britten Midsummer Nights Dream

Chad A. Johnson (Lysander), Heather Johnson (Hermia), Susanna Phillips (Helena), Matthew Worth (Demetrius), Ann McMahon Quintero (Hippolyta), Darren K. Stokes (Theseus), Andrew Shore (Bottom), and T. Steven Smith (Peter Quince) (Erik Jacobs)

Sex and the City (of Rome): BLO’s “Agrippina”

Handel’s “Agrippina” describes the title character’s attempt to install her son Nero as emperor, or at least heir, to her husband (and uncle) Claudius’ throne. You might remember something similar from the last episode of I, Claudius (and Claudius the God), but Handel’s librettist Cardinal Vincenzo Grimani had his own take on things and it certainly isn’t one of a scholar or even a novelist. Grimani casts these historical figures in a hilarious comic light, one that the Boston Lyric Opera‘s current production (through the 22nd) teases every last laugh out of. Director Lillian Groag, as well as the rest of the cast and crew, have blended riotous comedy with exquisitely beautiful music and high production and musical standards. As many have said, technically speaking, it strays far from being a historically informed performance, but perhaps in its spirit it is more historically accurate than most period performance.

Agrippina (soprano Caroline Worra who, in addition to rich powerful arias, brought a lot to her recitative), a femme fatale empress who sleeps with a gun under her pillow, hears false news that Claudius has died at sea and quickly moves to put her faux-hawked man-child of a son Nero (countertenor David Trudgen, with a piercing voice he pushed into the upper ranges–the role is historically for male sopranos) in the throne. Just as she enlists the assistance of her clowny freedmen Pallas (David McFerrin) and Narcissus (Jose Alvarez), who both have the hots for her, Claudius returns safely thanks to a heroic rescue by the boyish officer Otho (countertenor Anthony Roth Costanzo, with a sweet, soft, and wavering voice) whom Claudius has named his heir as a reward.

But, Otho is a lover not an emperor, and has his eyes set on Poppea (soprano Kathleen Kim, who delivered an outstandingly acted comic performance along with her deeply colored voice–characteristics that match the mostly fun and lighter music Handel gave the role). Nero and Claudius feel perfectly comfortable with power and Poppea and most of the plot is centered around Poppea’s bed after Agrippina manipulates her into being the crux of a plan to ensure Nero is named heir. This is where things get funny and the slapstick really kicks in. There’s even a ’round the bed chase!

Nero/Nerone (David Trudgen) (Jeffrey Dunn for BLO)

John Conklin’s set (originally designed for Glimmerglass Opera along with the beautiful and numerous costumes) features at least four cardboard cutout busts of a young Claudius that are swapped in and out, almost as if the real Claudius is on-stage watching these satiric historical reflections–even the dim dinner jacketed one of himself (bass-baritone Christian Van Horn). In one aria, Agrippina elegantly dances around three smaller ones.

Perhaps the biggest triumph in this production is making all the comedy work consistently, even though the opera itself moves quite slowly. As one expects, long arias (and other portions of music) are devoted to elongated character development where the narrative (mostly carried by the recitative) pauses. This leaves singers on stage with little to do but sing. Of course, that’s not bad, but in a production trying for comedy, the laughs are going to come from character interaction. Here, they’ve filled many of these comic holes in with props and gags; Poppea furiously brushes her hair, Claudius gets undressed and dressed again and has some trouble with his shoes, Agrippina generously pours drinks.

Agrippina is a comic romp of a crowd-pleaser that represents another great installment in the BLO’s solid season, which continues on April 29th with Britten’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream.

Poppea (Soprano Kathleen Kim) and Claudius/Claudio (Christian Van Horn) (Jeffrey Dunn for BLO)

Death in Atlantis: The BLO”s “Emperor of Atlantis”

Boston Lyric Opera is nailing it with its Opera Annex productions. Last year’s Turn of the Screw was a hugely anticipated smash hit and this season’s production of Victor Ullmann’s The Emperor of Atlantis is something of a surprise hit, continuing the record of sold-out runs. Obviously, the BCA’s Calderwood Pavilion doesn’t make quite as interesting an annex as Turn of the Screw‘s Park Plaza Castle, despite set designer Caleb Wertenbaker’s efforts with strings of work lights and sheets of white plastic to make the theater appear under construction, and the whole production ad hoc–like it is in some unheated South End warehouse. They’ve already meta-ized the whole idea of an annex production…but I’m sure constraints outside the scope of artistic merit limit location choice.

Although Emperor was an outstanding success, the first course of the night came off lukewarm. Commissioned to fill the hole Emperor, which only comes in at about an hour, leaves in a full program, Richard Beaudoin’s The After Image takes death much more seriously and much less embodied than the program’s feature. The music has chops, but the heady libretto, drawn from the texts of Rilke and the like, doesn’t mesh so well with the cabaret comedy of Emperor. Director David Schweizer attempted to connect Emperor with this story of a girl singing to a photograph of her dead father and the photo singing back, with a bit of performance art consisting mainly of mock ushers and some comic housekeeping announcements that did little but confuse people. What did work splendidly was The Emperor of Atlantis character of Death (Kevin Burdette) appearing on stage during the applause for After Image to applaud the cast with a superiority befitting of his character. The mock ushers returned again to tear down sheets of plastic, exposing Caleb Wertenbaker’s set that made the theater appear even more like an annex than it began as.

Soprano Kathryn Skemp (Soldier Girl), tenor Julius Ahn (Solider), tenor John Mac Master (Harlequin), and mezzo-soprano Jamie Van Eyck (Drummer) (Jeffrey Dunn for BLO)

Andrew Wilkowske gave a Chaplin-esque performance as a great dictator safely hidden away in several levels of well furnished scaffolding as he wages a bloody war against the world, giving orders over the phone. Frustrated with the Emperor’s “motorized, gas powered legions” Death, no longer able to keep up, calls it quits and refuses to let anyone die, leaving helpless legions of “living dead.” Here, they’re basically portrayed as contemporary zombies, sans the usual gore. (I guess Ullmann and his librettist Petr Kien beat that trend by about sixty years.) Death only breaks his strike when the Emperor agrees to sacrifice himself, thus ending his war.

Emperor was written while Ullmann and Kien were locked up inside Terezin concentration camp and, on top of that, they were sent to Auschwitz soon after trying to put it on. As much as the BLO has worked to produce the opera under its own merits, rather than as a piece of Holocaust art, it’s incredibly difficult to ignore its historical context. Satire can be a tricky thing to read, but the opera’s thesis on death as a relief from an in-between undead state is disturbing when one considers where it was thought up. The libretto has the walking dead begging for death, referring to it as holy law and as a means to teach life’s joy. “Thou shall not take the name of Death in vain” is even sung. When death does come, it’s lamely represented by a dozen or so zombies blowing out candles, but their undead state is gruesomely and simply represented by continual falling as they walk towards the front of the stage.

I don’t really know what to make of this and the other reviews I’ve read haven’t either. The opera’s satire is so complex that we wish death upon those it was initially unnecessarily thrust upon in war, through the noble act of the man solely responsible for that war. And the end of that war and the slaughters it would have caused, only come with the merciful slaughter of the undead. Where once the Emperor killed so many in malice that he provoked Death himself, his change of heart brings him to give the world back its death in an act of benevolence.

Burdette, Wilkowske, John Mac Master (as Death’s harlequin companion), and Jamie Van Eyck (as the pro-war Drummer and the Daughter in After-Image) all offered exceptionally well sung and acted performances. Vocal highlights included Kathryn Skemp as the Soldier Girl. The accessible music is more or less a pastiche of quotations of Weinmar-era cabaret, the relevant political anthems, Germanic themes, and Weill. It’s highly cinematic and was augmented here with some creative digital effects that played on the idea of technological warfare.

Tenor John Mac Master (Harlequin) and bass Kevin Burdette (Death) (Jeffrey Dunn for BLO)

BLO Does Britten in a Real Live Castle

Seeing the Boston Lyric Opera’s production of The Turn of the Screw in the Park Plaza Castle and perusing the press literature on their demographics, outreach, and special events, is enough to convince me that they’re moving the the direction every opera company (and for that matter, every high-culture producer) wants to move in. Upon close inspection, this Castle reveals some kitschy ornamentation–painted on windows and doors by bielings (their website tells half the story)–but these designs are relegated to the back of the house, near the coat check. The front of the house, where the opera was staged, made for a perfect “annex” in which to stage Britten’s classic. In fact, the venue was the set. BLO’s additions were minimal; a low runway stage with a black and white tiled geometric pattern around an above-ground orchestra pit, the governess’ desk, and a projection screen which neither the Globe or the BMInt seemed to like. The rest of the slack was picked up by this cavernous space (I’ll refer you to the Globe‘s preview as well as the BMInt‘s for the details), with its massive stone backdrop and proportionately massive clock above the stage–not that I was looking at the clock.

Overall, I liked the BLO’s use of video (illustrated in the photos below). The wide screen complemented the angles and width of the stage and its size did justice to the expansive space that brought this chamber opera right out of the chamber. What we saw was usually straight out of 1970s video art in its aesthetic and content, with cast members performing pedestrian acts like getting dressed, playing with toy soldiers, or drinking tea. Of course, Peter Campus didn’t shoot in a widescreen format that rivals CinemaScope. The projections, other than giving us something to look at during Britten’s instrumental interludes, were economically used in drumming up clever (on the part of director Sam Helfrich) counterpoints between the action on-stage and the action off, in this opera which really doesn’t supply us with enough information to fuel much action, but rather depends on communicating impressions of suspense, foreboding, spookiness, and the general sense that something is askew at Bly House. The videos enhance this, providing us with scenes not described in the libretto and even a few flashbacks to before the governess’ arrival. The reliability of the video’s narrative is, like so much else in the opera, never confirmed.

The “family’s” trip to church is countered by shots of Quint and Miss Jessel in bed on the movie screen. Quint and Miss Jessel make out on-stage (à la A Streetcar Named Desire with Quint’s wife beater and cigarette) while the governess and Mrs. Grose drink tea in silence on-screen. The most explicit artistic intention in the production was to intensify the opera’s sexual content. In addition to the sexualized relationship between Quint and Miss Jessel, Emily Pulley’s governess not only desires the guardian’s guidance, but develops a desire for him, singing about this mysterious uncle as she lay provocatively sprayed out on the stage floor. The production certainly didn’t tread lightly over the implied relationship between Quint and Miles and there’s even some suggestive clutching of Flora by Miss Jessel.

Flora (soprano Kathryn Skemp) and Miles (treble Aidan Gent) say their prayers while Quint (tenor Vale Rideout) and Miss Jessel (soprano Rebecca Nash) have an intimate moment behind the scenes

Flora (soprano Kathryn Skemp) and Miles (treble Aidan Gent) say their prayers while Quint (tenor Vale Rideout) and Miss Jessel (soprano Rebecca Nash) have an intimate moment behind the scenes

All this nebulous sexuality pulls one deeper into the opera’s mystery. We hear of “tragedy,” “revenge,” “evil,” and some incident at Miles’ boarding school, but nothing is ever explained or resolved, neither in music or plot. It’s this Hitchcockian lack of information that makes it so intriguing. It’s really all about creepiness and confusion; not the feeling that something is behind the door, but more that there’s something around the whole room. The fact that no “evils” are spoken of, gives opera companies a lot of freedom, and while some operas date themselves with plot elements inapplicable and nonsensical to modern audiences, The Turn of the Screw avoids such problems with the fact that evil (if left unsaid and as an abstract concept) is timeless.

We got a particularly ghostly Quint (Vale Rideout) and a bone chilling explicit spookiness about Miles (Ryan Williams & Aidan Gent). Flora, much because she was sung by adult Kathryn Skemp with a powerful adult soprano, seemed like one of Grady’s twin girls in The Shining. As she played cat’s cradle, she maintained an aloofness only matched by the ghosts. Flora, with particularly creepiness, carried a stuffed pig in front of her as she and Miles marched and sung to Tom, Tom, the Piper’s Son, in a similar manner, they rose up the set’s steps with their hands clasped in prayer on their way to church–not in innocence, but with a creepiness worthy of a better psychological horror flick.

Also very much amplified here, was the battle between the servants to possess the children in artificial family units to compensate for their lack of children (and the children’s lack of parents). In one particularly well directed scene Quint, Miss Jessel, and the children position themselves in a Sears Portrait Studio family pose, as the two interlopers attempt to abduct the children into the blinding Poltergeist-esque light on the left side of the stage, which Quint first emanated in his initial appearance to the governess. Their family portrait is broken by the governess rising to the stage up the shadowy stairs on the stage’s right. The production accentuates the governess’s doting and possessiveness of Miles, creating this bizarre and sexualized family dynamic.

I’ve ignored a lot here, as it’s such a rich opera and was such a rich and innovative production. I’ll close with compliments to conductor Andrew Bisantz and his musicians, particularly Ina Zdorovetchi on harp and Damien Francoeur-Krzyzek on piano & celesta, and the cast in general for their wonderful renditions of Britten’s 12-tone harmonies.

Mrs. Gross (mezzo-soprano Joyce Castle) frets while Miss Jessel (soprano Rebecca Nash) and Quint (tenor Vale Rideout) indulge Flora (soprano Kathryn Skemp) and Miles (treble Aiden Gent) behind the scenes

Mrs. Gross (mezzo-soprano Joyce Castle) frets while Miss Jessel (soprano Rebecca Nash) and Quint (tenor Vale Rideout) indulge Flora (soprano Kathryn Skemp) and Miles (treble Aiden Gent) behind the scenes