Unearthing a Manhattan opera jewel to rival the Met
It’s not far, as the crow flies, from the Metropolitan Opera House, Lincoln Center, Manhattan Midtown, to The Flea Theater, Thomas Street, Tribeca; 25 minutes by rattly subway.
But, for a softie Met regular it might as well have been a different planet. Why the journey into the unfamiliar? To experience Benjamin Britten’s gritty chamber opera, The Rape of Lucretia, performed by the accomplished New Camerata Opera Company.
Fitting, that it was the day after seeing Wagner’s Gotterdammerung. From the Gods of Met Valhalla to the underworld Nibelung of The Flea Theater in 24 hours. New York counterpoint.
The Rape of Lucretia is a two-act work, libretto by Ronald Duncan, a Rhodesian born British poet and playwright, who also worked on Peter Grimes. It’s based on André Obey’s play Le Viol de Lucrèce. I shall assume that readers are familiar with the plot.
New Camerata is one of a number of small opera companies in New York that do a great job with teeny budgets, bringing quirky operas to parts the Met cannot reach.
Founded “with the mission of building new audiences for the art form through engaging, exciting and educational productions”, it has three arms; presentation of full length performances of cutting edge works, new or burrowed from the dusty cupboards of the repertoire; specially arranged and adapted children’s opera, Camerata Piccala; and online, short, operatic films, CamerataWorks.
It has a wider remit than my previous favourite quirky company, Loft Opera, which focused only on mainstream performance. Sadly, they seem to have gone down the financial plughole – Opera Obscura. And, they still owe me 30 bucks for a performance of Rigoletto that never happened! What a cheek.
‘Twas Loft who had the bonkers idea of staging Verdi’s Macbeth in the middle of Brooklyn Navy Yard in 2016. What a night! Characters bursting onstage from every side from the cavernous gloom of the echoing shipyard.
But, the bloody excitement of Birnam Wood coming to Dunsinane was nothing to the edgy F train ride back from no-mans-land Jay Street station at midnight. I shall miss Loft Opera and its zany outland locations.
Back to Flea Theater country. Tribeca, Soho and Greenwich Village jostle each other, the better to tell the story of fabled Manhattan. Walking past now gentrified brownstones, there is a feeling that a Beat poet still pounds at a typewriter behind every window. Edward Hopper is conjuring up his sad, voyeur canvasses of self-absorbed women in adjacent apartments. George Bellows’ dystopian conflict between pedestrian and train has resolved into the douce Highline garden walkway.
The Rape of Lucretia is dystopian alright. At Britten’s first staging at Glyndebourne in 1946 the censor dubbed it immoral – “No better than Lady Chatterley’s Lover”. Toning it down, some performances dodge controversy by conducting the rape scene off stage, or, at least, veiled.
New Camerata were no faint hearts. They clearly understood that The Rape of Lucretia has to depict, well… the rape of Lucretia. Sort of misses the point to go all prissy over the pivotal dramatic scene. The direct approach characterised this production throughout. Every moral dilemma, unfolding as the drunken action turns to violence, was minutely examined.
A difficulty of the piece is weaving in the Christian message Britten – whose relationship with Christianity was ever contradictory – tries to get across. It’s a sort of contemporary, sotto voce, commentary on events that have taken place 500 years before and, frankly, a bit weird. Violence confronts the audience. The chorus provides a background Christian critique. It’s a bit like having Mary Whitehouse whispering in your ear while watching Stanley Kubrick’s A Clockwork Orange.
This production innovatively cast ….. wait for it, an Artistic Sign Language Director, Amelia Hensley. Scrambling for a seat on arrival it became clear that a fair few had been reserved for the hard of hearing. Tough crowd for an opera. Was sign language going to get in the way? Ms Hensley was centre stage as an alter ego Lucretia, not cast into an off stage wilderness, gesticulating wildly.
I was dismayed. What a distraction! But I was wrong. The artifice worked well, Ms Hensley blending with the action and adding an expressive dimension to the Lucretia character.
The set was simple and shows what can be achieved for $3,000. Oversized, diaphanous drapes formed into shifts framed the action. Turns out costs had been saved by sticking the seams together rather than sewing them. “No one’s wearing them. Let’s do it cheaply”. Smart.
Justin Bischoff, music director, attacked Britten’s score with gusto, never letting up on discordant clashes and unsettling the audience throughout – reinforcing the violence and abuse unfolding on stage.
Is the opera any good? It isn’t staged very often. In the right hands – New Camerata’s – the audience is treated to a powerful 110 minutes of deeply unsettling drama.
Britten wrote the Lucretia role for English heroine contralto Kathleen Ferrier, so Lucretia had to have plenty of oomph.
Allison Gish in the title role was a knockout. Her denial of Tarquinius’ advances were a series of desperate crescendos which never strayed into harshness and in stark contrast to her gentler approach in the earlier action, when innocence is yet to be betrayed.
As Collatinus, Andrew Dwan had easily the most distinctive of all the male voices, his ringing baritone filling the auditorium. His power did not prevent him from delivering gentle lines – in contrast to his more vulgar co-actors who rampage throughout. Rampaging is all they do. They were good at it.
The joy of a compact 120 seat auditorium was the intimacy of the action and being blown away by the voices of Ms. Gish and Mr. Dwan; two true standouts.
Hot to nail a horse’s mouth briefing for Reaction readers, I had contacted New Camerata beforehand to hustle a scoop. As they would be busy dismantling the set to ready The Flea for another performance, it was suggested I attend a Camerata Piccala production the following day at a midtown primary school and “meet the gang” for coffee after. You’re kidding!
I went. Peter Rabbit, Donizetti reduci – with bunnies, audience participation, memorable tunes and Mr McGregor brandishing a toothless rake. The teeth fell out (of the rake) during the performance. Mr McGregor picked them up afterwards and stuck them back in. Economy.
This had the kids rapt. Here was opera being made accessible, fun, adroitly done. Educational outreach is part of the company’s mission and attracts much needed funding. Over coffee afterwards the missionary fervour came through. They are building a new generation of opera-goers. The New Camerata troupe takes its responsibility to the art form seriously.
New CamerataWorks is a parallel effort to reach beyond the confines of place and theatre audiences. The inaugural output, made for YouTube in 2017, is an opera short, The Prince von Pappenschmear. Composed by Peter Engelbert, libretto by Adam Laten Willson, the work was scored for New Camerata Opera soloists, clarinet, violin, cello and piano.
Um, …. it’s not comedic. Set in Nazi era Germany, the story follows “an exciting undercurrent of women’s liberation in an historic Jewish gynaecologist’s office. These contrasting elements create an intriguing mix of absurd farce and surrealist imagery”.
Hang on, hang on, bear with me, it’s more engaging and less po-faced than it sounds, tipping its hat to Louis Bunuel, the Spanish surrealist film maker. For starters, video 2 gave me a new onomatopoeic word, klatch, a talkative gathering of women. I know exactly when I’m going to deploy it in earnest! Probably when I’m next mixing with woke folk.
After our coffee house get together, Stan Lacy, and “the entire artistic committee” brought me up to speed on New Camerata’s Charles Ives project. I’m a huge fan of Ives. Anyone who can be the Tesla of the mutual life insurance business, while also arguably the most atmospheric composer of the early 20th century, paving the way for Leonard Bernstein in sound painting – listen to Central Park After Dark if you don’t believe me – floats my boat.
The Ives Project is an ambitious nine-part adaptation of his songs. In Mr Lacy’s own words: “The Ives Project is a bit further down the page. These were recorded with brilliant pianist and noted Ives scholar, Neely Bruce. Paul Ashey brings a veering and individual vision to the works. Two more episodes are due to be released in the coming weeks, Evening, and Children’s Hour”. Three are online already.
The Ives Project series comes to completion next season and there will be a screening and live performance of all nine videos next spring, in conjunction with the main-staged production. I have my diary out.
The Met’s fleet of lorries lumbers north to Canada, ferrying the Ring Cycle’s precious $16m whirling plank set into storage. The New Camerata team stuff their Piccala props into the back of an SUV on East 87th Street and head – to the future.
The company is driven by a mutual love for the opera medium. Cost does not compromise quality. Innovation is rife. They attract talent. They deserve to succeed and they are succeeding. More power to this Manhattan opera jewel.