PALO ALTO, Calif
–
On a gorgeous, balmy Sunday afternoon in the San Francisco Peninsula
city of Palo Alto, the West Bay Opera presented its final staging of
Gounod’s FAUST at the 428-seat Lucie Stern Theatre.
The Spanish-mission style theatre, with its beautifully
manicured rose garden and warm acoustics, serves as an ideal venue
for a fantastical, romantic drama that saw its premiere in 1859 at
the Théâtre Lyrique in Paris.
By contemporary accounts, the opera as first
seen at Théâtre Lyrique was hardly the same work as conceived by
the composer Charles Gounod.
The producer cut, shortened, and rearranged the music
according to his whims. The show became a great hit; only commerce, not art, was
served. No such
liberties, thankfully, were taken by the West Bay Opera in their new
production of FAUST.
Despite the reduced forces (seven violins instead of the
original forty) and three major cuts (the ballet, Walpurgisnacht
scene, and Marguerite’s spinning-wheel song), the drama played out
smoothly and excitingly for the most part, thanks to a cast of
young, fresh, and vibrant voices.
Singing the role of Faust was tenor Gabriel
Reoyo-Pazos, whose strong, sizable voice is perhaps too much for the
character of a brooding philosopher.
It is a curious voice in some ways.
While its main preoccupation seems to be overpowering the
orchestra and bringing down the house with its stentorian tones, it
also gives us singing of great delicacy and refinement (albeit too
rarely) that we could never have anticipated from it.
Faust’s Act II romance “Salut demeure chaste et pure”,
sung with honeyed mezza voce by Mr. Reoyo-Pazos, conveyed a
dreamscape of pure, idealised love, only to be rudely awakened by a
loud high C at the end. In
the Love Duet with Marguerite, the singing ran the gamut of loud to
louder, with ravishing soft high notes interpolated few and far in
between. One was
unsure whether to blame the singer or Gounod’s librettists for
making a simpleton out of Goethe’s complex philosopher.
As Méphistophélès, veteran bass John Minágro
displayed a highly suave, polished vocalism that is perhaps better
suited for the light basso-cantante roles of Rossini than the
sophisticated, meaty role of the devil.
The Golden Calf song in Act I wanted more swaggers and power.
The Serenade came off beautifully – too beautifully, in
fact – without any suggestion of sardonic humour that is a sine
qua non in any Mephistophelean characterisation.
The great Méphistophélès’s of the past – Pol Plançon,
Marcel Journet, Feodor Chaliapin – all combined elegant singing
with great acting that is the epitome of the French style, a
tradition that is sadly all but lost to today’s
‘international’ school of singing.
Soprano Deborah Mayhan was a superb Marguerite.
Gounod’s infatuations with the figure of Gretchen in
Goethe’s drama inspired him to write some of the most sublime
melodies (“O silence, ô bonheur”) for the lyric voice.
Ms. Mayhan’s Marguerite painted a picture of feminine grace
with her lithe figure and cascading blonde tresses.
Vocally, the fullness of tone and tastefully managed vibrato
not only charmed the ear but also revealed the vulnerable nature of
Marguerite. When
the music calls for purity and clarity, such as during the Jewel
Song, the voice shone forth like a brilliant sapphire—from a
well-turned trill and a rapid scale in the beginning, to a brilliant
trill and a ringing high B at the end.
On the other hand, when the goings-on get rough as in the
Church Scene, where Marguerite is tormented by Méphistophélès and
his infernal choir, the voice acquired greater resonance to rise
over the orchestra and chorus in a cry of despair (“Seigneur!
accueillez la prière”) To
be sure, Ms. Mayhan still has some way to go if she was to conjure
up the memories of her famous predecessors for the listener–
Geraldine Farrar, Licia Albanese, Victoria de Los Angeles, Anna
Moffo, Mirella Freni. Many
of her verbal and musical inflections were less than satisfactory.
“Et voici le jardin charmant” from the Prison Scene was a
model of phrasing, but not “Je veux t’aimer et te chérir”
in the Love Duet (both phrases set to the same melody by Gounod in a
stroke of genius). All
caveats aside, this was admirable singing from someone so young.
Michael Taylor as Marguerite’s brother
Valentine possesses an ample, rounded baritone that was heard to
great effects in the air “Avant de quitter ces lieux”.
The dramatically charged singing in the Death Scene sent
chills down one’s spine and recalled the great Giuseppe De Luca.
Siébel, a young man in love with Marguerite, is a breeches
role gallantly portrayed by mezzo-soprano Sonia Gariaeff. Rounding out the cast were Jesse Merlin’s well-acted
Wagner and Constance Howard’s delightful, scene-stealing Marthe
Schwerlein.
Maestro Henry Mollicone, an opera composer
himself, drew some expressive playing from a reduced chamber
orchestra of twenty-eight players.
Notable was the lovely violin solo in the Garden Scene by
concertmaster Kristina Anderson.
All too often, however, the playing sounded scrappy and
careless, as in the case of several botched entrances by the horns,
and contrasted sharply with the elegant phrasings eminating from the
stage. The chorus
sounded appropriately ragged and inebriated as drunkards in Act I,
and inappropriately so as soldiers in Act III.
The sets and stage directions are efficient
rather than memorable. The
painted sets are comprised of three basic units: two on stage sides
representing Faust’s study and Méphistophélès’s underworld
abode – the latter also doubles as Marguerite’s house—and one
massive painted church in the center with a door that swings open
(read: tacky). At
times, the director seemed to be trying too hard for laughs.
The Act II Quartet features a hilarious love chase.
Later, in the Church Scene, we are shown Marguerite being
tied up in iron chains, with a gloating Méphistophélès standing
behind her (read: kinky).
In the end, what mattered was the exciting,
exuberant singing of a fine young cast.
It goes to show that opera, when stripped of its pompous and
often ridiculous trappings, is really about the art of singing and
acting through the voice.
Truman
C. Wang is editor of Classical Voice.
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