“My candle burns at both ends;
                     It will not last the night;
             But ah, my foes, and oh, my friends--
                    It gives a lovely light!"

                  -          Edna St. Vincent Millay

Seattle Opera’s production of Elektra is vivid and marvelous in equal measures.  The music and singing combine with an obvious attention to detail to create a memorable night at the opera.

The ground floor of the production is a 90-piece orchestra, expertly guided by Lawrence Renes.  Renes made it look easy.  For example,  the orchestra was just slightly forte when no one was singing, and then perfectly modulated in support of the song. 

This opera is famous for Strauss’s use of almost Wagnerian motifs, and the maestro served this musical aspect very well.

The production – sets, costumes, stage direction, lighting – is splendid.

The costumes enhanced and supported the drama.  As befits their low status, Elektra and Chrysothemis wore modest outfits.   Klytamnestra and her entourage, though, made a glorious (almost campy) entrance.  One’s eyes were immediately drawn to and glued upon the queen.

Aegisth’s beautiful tunic caught the eye for his brief but commanding time on the stage.

This is a one hundred-minute, one-act musical drama that takes place within the confines of a single set. 

The set consisted of the courtyard in front of the royal palace, the steps leading up to the huge entrance, a large window through which action inside the palace may be glimpsed, and an entrance, stage left, from which the most visually dramatic moment in the production materialized, Orest’s entrance, cowled and backlit dramatically.

Orest’s entrance is just one example of this production’s attention to detail.   Other lighting-related examples were seen by the fact that when Elektra sang of revenge, the stage was bathed in blood red.  When she sang of her murdered father, the stage became a royal purple.

The set allowed the performers freedom of movement and, through such touches as “stone” walls that appeared to be dripping, set a fitting dreadful tone.

All of this is necessary but not sufficient.  The singing must be glorious, or else this difficult music will fall flat.

All of the singers, from the gossipy servants who open the drama through Elektra herself, were striking.

Irmgard Vislmaier’s Chrysothemis achieved the right blend of resignation and hope.  She seemed to waver between accepting her dreary life and longing for escape to normality.  Her voice, as she expresses her longing for a husband and a family, was heartbreaking.

Rosalind Plowright’s Klytamnestra was a tour-de-force.   Although we know that Klytamenstra has been weakened by lack of sleep and horrible dreams, the queen that descended upon the stage was charismatic and powerful. 

As Elektra turned the emotional tide, predicting that her mother’s woes will cease only when Klytamnestra herself is sacrificed, Plowright seemed almost to shrink.

And yet when the scene ended, and Klytamnestra was energized by the news that her feared son Orestes is dead,  she picked herself up and swept off the stage, charismatic again. 

Alfred Walker’s Orest is earnest and convincing.  Walker’s marvelous voice makes one hope to see him again in a larger role.

Richard Margison’s role as Aegisth is small and adequately handled – although, in the one small area where voice and orchestra were out of balance, it was impossible to hear Margison over the orchestra as he cried for help from inside the palace.

The triumph of the night was the magnificent Janice Baird.  She played Elektra as a human.  An unhinged human (breaking into dance several times, at unexpected moments) but a human nevertheless.

Elektra is musically and dramatically challenging, a sort of Tour de France for sopranos.  Ms. Baird, who says she loves the role, is hypnotic.

Everyone who had the pleasure of attending Seattle Opera’s production of Elektra will remember the evening for a very long time.

-- Reviewed by Joel Grant





 

Thin plot or not this production, last seen in Philadelphia in 2004, was crafted with so much professional care that it was easy to suspend disbelief and enter into the spirit of the music.

Boyd Ostroff’s set was efficient and evocative of far-away places.  Leila’s arrival on a boat was cleverly staged.  Throughout the production, two diaphanous curtains were used to great effect.

In fact, Neil Peter Jampolis’ lighting was a highlight of the night.  At several points, the curtain/lighting combination gave the audience the illusion that we were underwater, sharing the pearl diving experience.   And when Nadir and Zurga sang “Au fond du temple saint”, the curtain and lights and behind-the-curtain supers were used to portray the actions they were singing about so tenderly.

The costumes were suitably evocative of a faraway place.  The male leads and many of the male chorus members were bare or almost bare from the waist up; surely the lack of a large spare tire must have been one of the selection critiera.

Special notice should be taken of Peggy Hickey’s choreography and the principal dancers, Bobby Brisco and Lisa Gillespie.  The dancing was expertly integrated with the action of the drama, and left one hoping to see these dancers at greater length some evening at Pacific Northwest Ballet.

Veteran director Kay Walker Castaldo, making her Seattle Opera debut, did an outstanding job of extracting as much drama as possible from the libretto.  Although it seems a minor point, her ability to fill and clear the stage with the supers and chorus almost instantly was a great help in keeping the plot moving.

The one slightly odd touch was the transformation of Leila’s necklace into a bracelet.  Even as Leila was fingering her bracelet, she was singing about, and the super titles were talking about, her necklace. 

Musically, the evening was thrilling.

Gerard Schwarz, long-time musical director of the Seattle Symphony, kept the orchestra and singers in perfect balance and in good tempo throughout. 

No audience can attend a performance of  The Pearl Fishers without looking forward to “Au fond du temple saint.”    Burden’s and Feigum’s voices blended perfectly on this hypnotic duet.  This theme recurred several times, most romantically at the end, as Leila and Nadir prepare to leave forever.

William Burden, who is a very handsome man,  is a veteran Nadir, which he sang to perfection.  Burden has a lyrical tenor voice that seems to sit perfectly for singing French.  He reminded this viewer of Juan Diego Florez in that his top notes seemed so easy. 

Christopher Feigum’s rich tones as Zurga were exciting throughout, and particularly exciting as he nailed his third act aria “L’orage, s’est calme”.  It must be difficult to portray Zurba, who (by this reviewer’s count) has to out-Hamlet Hamlet  by changing his mind five times as he goes back and forth, holding the two lovers’ fate in his hands.

Mary Dunleavy, also debuting at Seattle Opera, sang a beautiful and heartfelt Leila.  Her easy middle was so clear and her phrasing so pristine that one felt tempted to move one’s head from side to side, the better not to miss a note.

One of the musical thrills was the Leila/Nadir duet in Act Two, where the two lovers re-discover each other and pledge their love, in spite of the fact that this places them in mortal danger.

Patrick Carfizzi impressed as Nourabad, a slight role but Carfizzi impressed with his convincing singing.  How nice it would be to see him in something more substantial; Carfizzi has sung quite a few lead roles, including Figaro in Le Nozze di Figaro  and Leporello in Don Giovanni.  One hopes for his return to Seattle Opera, as when he sang Frank in Die Fledermaus.

All in all, The Pearl Fishers, scheduled with eight companies this season, proved once again to be a splendid choice.


-- Reviewed by Joel Grant
 

Lepage’s fingerprints are all over this production.   The non-singing roles are played by actors  who travel the world playing the parts.  The conductors, orchestras and principal singers may change from locale to locale, but everything else – sets, costumes, a 6200 pound “lake” from which Bluebeard’s former wives emerge – springs from Lepage’s mind and workshop.

As hinted by Bluebeard’s prologue, which could double as a prologue for Erwartung  as well, Bluebeard is a psychological and ambiguous work of art.  Ostensibly, the action in Bluebeard is that the title character has brought his new wife, Judith, to his castle.

The castle has seven doors and the action of the opera proceeds as each door, at Judith’s increasing insistence, is opened.   Each opened door brings forth its own color and musical theme. 

The set features a wall, stage right, that becomes progressively taller from back to front, fostering an illusion of distance and perspective that, when the actors first enter the castle through a portcullis at the rear of the stage, is visually arresting. 

The interplay of scenery and lighting is world class.  Great lighting has been a continuing theme at the Seattle Opera this season, and the Bluebeard/Erwartung production is no exception.

John Relyea’s Bluebeard was sung with the great conviction, beauty, and power Seattle opera fans have come to expect.  A commanding figure at the beginning of the opera, as the opera progressed he seemed to shrink underneath Judith’s increasingly ardent demands that all the doors be opened.  In the end, Bluebeard was in command again, but it was a command resigned to oblivion.

Malgorzata Walewska’s Judith was alternately sensuous and determined.  She navigated the vocal lines artfully and with expressive power.

Bluebeard’s previous three wives rose out of a lake of tears (the three ton water tank) and in the end, are joined by Judith.  The last words are sung by Bluebeard to the effect that all is now darkness and oblivion.

Lepage’s stage, for both operas, is enclosed by a Klimt-like picture frame, emphasizing the symbolic nature of what is taking place on the stage by conjuring the illusion that we are watching a living painting.

Lepage’s frame was particularly appropriate for Erwartung, a short (35 minute) opera with one character, The Woman.  According to the libretto she is in a forest, alone, searching for her lover.  As staged by Lepage, she is in a straitjacket in a mental institution, re-living (or perhaps imagining?  or hallucinating?) a nightmarish scenario of jealousy, pain, and murder.

Lepage has not only put Erwartung in a mental institution, he has created three non-singing roles whose actions help to illustrate the dramatic environment. 

There is a gravity-defying psychiatrist, who appears and disappears at impossible angles next to, on the side of, crawling through and upon the same wall that was used so effectively in Bluebeard, The Woman’s lover (who at one point, stark naked, rolls across the stage) and the lover’s mistress, whose “white arm” beckoning the lover from a window seems to have been the breaking point for The Woman.

The entire effect was brilliant.  The audience was riveted for the entire performance.

Susan Marie Pierson handled the role of The Woman with amazing skill, particularly considering the difficulty of the piece.  Ms. Pierson qualifies as a supreme singing actor.  She sold the idea that she was a truly agonized person.

Evan Rogister, a 29-year old prodigy,  made a brilliant Seattle Opera debut.  Rogister came late to the production because Vjekoslav Sutej, originally slated to conduct, became ill and cancelled.

Rogister was recruited in October.  He was familiar with Bluebeard but not with Erwartung.  He had to learn this very difficult score in a matter of weeks and did so brilliantly.  The orchestra made this challenging music sound almost lyrical.

Michael Levine and the Canadian Opera Company’s costumes were just right.  In particular, the vivid red outfits worn by Bluebeard’s former wives were a perfect dash of color in the otherwise dank castle.

Seattle Opera’s choice to stage this production of these two operas is a sort of gift to their subscribers.  Bluebeard and Erwartung  are a wonderful change of pace and provided one of the most thrilling evenings of musical theater in this reviewer’s memory.

-- Reviewed by Joel Grant

This was clearly a well-conceived and well-rehearsed production.  There were moments of magic in which every element, dramatically and musically, came together.

The septet at the end of Act Two is a perfect example.  The singers all came to the front of the stage.  They were framed by creative lighting, and their well-choreographed moves provided an additional kick of energy to the already musically dynamic conclusion of this act.

What a way to segue into the evening’s only intermission.

Throughout the performance the singing was spot on.  Oren Gradus, a bass, gave a new and thrilling timber to Figaro, and his “Non piu a’ndrai” was wonderful.

Twyla Robinson’s Countess and Christine Brandes’s Susanna were impressive in their ability to sing their huge roles (Susanna in particular sings a lot of notes) flawlessly while acting and reciting with great skill and conviction.   Ms. Robinson made her company debut with this production.

Mariusz Kweicin’s Count justified his growing reputation as one of the world’s leading baritones.  His rich voice and convincing acting could alone validate the evening.

Daniela Sindam’s Cherubino was appropriately cherubic, and she pulled off her two arias with verve and style, teenage angst and all.

Everyone else – the reliable Arthur Woodley’s Dr. Bartolo, (in a costume that made him look like a grumpy Benjamin Franklin at the Royal Court in Paris), Joyce Castle’s hilarious and even touching Marcellina, Barry Johnson’s comic Antonio, and the two former Seattle Young Artists, Ted Schmitz and Leena Chopra - were impressive in their singing and their verve.

Maestro Dean Williamson not only conducted the 41-piece Mozartian orchestra with a sure and expert touch, but he accompanied the recitatives on the harpsichord.  An impressive performance indeed.

Peter Kazaras’s vision emphasizes the intertwined sexual and social politics of the complicated libretto.  Let us hope that stage directors never stop searching for fresh ways to present the classics. 

Susan Benson’s sets were nicely designed for simplicity and efficiency.  In Act Four, three statues and a bench supported the complex comings and goings (and misunderstandings) of the characters.

Connie Yun’s lighting supported the structure of the play (morning, noon, late afternoon, evening) although with a few exceptions, the lighting in this production did not play as important a dramatic role as the lighting in productions such as Bluebeard’s Castle.

Deborah Trout’s costumes were magnificent.  The men in particular – Figaro’s beautiful red livery and the Count’s several elegant costumes – almost lit up the stage. 

Joyce Degenfelder deserves a shoutout for her great wigs.  The wigs were so convincing one could almost believe that each singer just happened to have hair perfectly fitted for a crazy day in the eighteenth century.

In short, Seattle Opera’s production of The Marriage of Figaro is a fitting closure to their successful 2008 – 2009 season.  This summer brings The Ring Cycle, and next season features Verdi (La Traviata, Il Trovatore, Falstaff) as well as the world premiere of the new opera Amelia.

Stay tuned.