Wexford opera festival: operas of the past performed by stars of the future
There’s nothing quite like a right good disemboweling to grab an audience’s attention. Not some namby-pamby, sleight of hand, bloodless execution with fancy retractable blades.
No, no, I’m talking about the full blown, machete to the torso, chest hacking, twin-hand-delving, heart-stopping – well, actually, ultimately heart-flourishing – blood-dripping dispatch of Cim-Fen, an evil opium den owner, suspected child abductor, murderer and chief villain of Wexford Festival Opera’s production of L’oracolo, composer Franco Leoni (1864-1949).
#Cim-Fengotwhatwascomingtohim
This treatment is meted out at the hand of Uin-Sci, “ a learned doctor” – clearly came top of his anatomy class at Uni – the father of Uin-San-Lui, in love with Ah-Joe, the niece of the little boy’s father, a rich merchant, Hui-Tsin. Cim-Fen had also murdered Uin-Sci’s son, Uin-San-Lui. Got it so far??? It seemed less complicated when you watched it.
Phew, when Wexford wants to lay it on thick, it can. So thick in L’oracolo that director Rodula Gaitanou nearly overstepped the mark. He gilded the dramatic lily. Originally, the librettist, Nicola Daspuro, had Cim-Fen dispatched subtly in the 1905 premiere at Covent Garden, strangled by a pigtail while sitting on a bench. A policeman walking by didn’t even notice. I think the casual dispatch would have been more threatening.
The point of homing in first on a single detail in a packed festival, this year mounting two full-scale operas and a double bill, is to illustrate that Wexford is often about bringing long forgotten operas alive by injecting a shot of adrenalin when the original seems a bit prosaic. Machetes all round.
It’s a tried and tested formula. In the second part of the double bill – “Mala vita”, composer Umberto Giordano (1867 – 1948), renowned for “André Chenier” – the tragic, rejected, Cristina was originally scripted to fall in a faint at the door of the brothel from which her uselessly ambivalent lover, Vito – naturally a TB victim – was meant to rescue her.
At Wexford she knelt on front stage and blew her brains out with a gun she had secreted in her handbag. Must remember, if in Naples, to ask what extras attractive ladies carry in their handbags?
There is a risk in this bravura treatment, even of back catalogue verismo works which no-one knows. Cim-Fen’s dispatch verged on the ridiculous. At the performance I heard many in the audience stifling titters, and there were a few subdued groans – dodgy!
But, not so with Cristina and her concealed “purse carry” ending. It was truly shocking and left the audience stunned – success! Shock and awe works sometimes.
Both these operas were well worth reviving and were beautifully staged – and sung. Leon Kim, the Korean baritone, who sang Uni-Sci in “L’oracolo” and Annetiello in “Mala vita,” was exceptional; the chorus in hair-raising voice.
The same revolving set – a clever period building with décor reflecting the operas’ respective San Francisco and Naples settings – allowed seamless scene transitions, so the action flowed without interruption – important for short works and adding significantly to the dramatic effect.
“Dinner at Eight” – composer William Bolcom (1938 – ) and librettist Mark Campbell – was receiving its European debut and is a break with the older Wexford tradition of reviving the forgotten; on with new motley as well. It’s based on a George Kaufman and Edna Ferber 1932 play, made into a film in 1933 and now an opera in 2017, set in the Great Depression, but illuminating many dilemmas – moral and financial – that plague us still today.
Was it really an opera? Maybe it was a musical. Is that the beginning of Broadway song I hear? Well, no, the potential melody is quickly stifled. In fact, does Mr. Bolcom write music at all – or simply produce accompanying atonal sound – like forgettable, backdrop, plinky-plonk piano accompaniments to silent movies?
There was an insistent feeling throughout that Mr. Bolcom’s score was on the cusp of bursting into something memorable – but it never did. Think a loop of Cole Porter narrative, introductory bars that never develop into a memorable theme and you’ve got Mr. Bolcom – all recitative and no arias.
The lack of musicality was a fatal detraction from the crisp setting and dressing by Alexander Dodge and Victoria Tzykun and the action-packed direction of Tomer Zvullin. The original idea of focusing the angsts of the characters, financial, social and emotional on a future dinner party set firmly in the calendar for a Friday “at Eight” introduces a timeline target for the strands of the plot. The show romped along to an inevitable moment of denouement. But, where is Leonard Bernstein when you need him?
In my Reaction preview I predicted that “Dinner at Eight” would be this year’s Wexford “bummer”, but that was maybe a bit harsh. It was an enthralling evening, but would have been improved had the orchestra not turned up.
I felt sorry for the singers. The likes of Puccini and Verdi wrote to allow principals to exercise their full powers. Here, the cast of excellent voices was left strangled. Good for them for putting up with it.
And, talking of my preview, I got the winner of this year’s Wexford opera races right. “Bravo”!!!! Well, “Il Bravo’, actually, composer Saverio Mercadente (1795 – 1870).
The “Bravo” is a masked assassin hired by the Venetian “Council of Ten” to anonymously dispose of their political rivals – by dagger or poison – and was last seen in Hampshire, admiring the 123 metre spire of Salisbury Cathedral ……… sorry, getting carried away. But, who now dare say 19th century verismo opera plots are incredible???
Set in early 19th century Venice, when under Austro-Hungarian rule the city had become a byword for corruption, dark intrigue and immoral shenanigans, the opera is an indictment of what can go on behind a masked society. Swap “mask” with “Twitter” and our hash tag hysteria seems more 19th than 21st century.
The plot is so complex I’m not going to treat you to a full synopsis. Actually, I’m not sure I understand it myself. Anti-hero, “Il Bravo,” swaps his identity with someone else a third of the way through, which makes it kind of difficult to follow. I’ve read the synopsis at least three times – and even seeing it helped only a bit.
Never mind. This was a tour de force – with Rubens Pelizzari (the Bravo), tenor and Yasko Sato (Teodora – actually the Bravo’s lost wife), soprano, deserving special mention. Again, the Wexford Festival chorus thrilled.
How do they do it? This is sleepy Wexford, home to a festival dreamt up by Dr. Tom Walsh, a local anaesthetist, in 1951, which after nearly 70 years is still going from strength to strength.
My merry band of 11 “Wexforders” had the pleasure of the company of Ger Lawlor, the Festival Chairman, at lunch in the incomparable nearby Ballyfane “Lobster Pot” (no lobster on the menu, of course!).
Mr Lawlor is a Wexford man through and through and therein lies a clue to the Festival’s success. The company is rooted in its community, makes copious use of voluntary effort and is thrifty – skillfully executing the transfiguration of the former “Theatre Royal” into Ireland’s “National Opera House” on time, on budget – and just before the 2008 crash that could have left Wexford with a half finished husk, like so many abandoned building projects that disfigured the Irish urban landscape. It is ambitious. The roll call of rising, talented soloists mean that opera lovers are usually seeing operas of the past performed by stars of the future.
Mr. Lawlor’s contribution to the Festival and his city was marked at the annual mass for the festival at Bride Street church – Ireland’s Roman Catholic roots still run deep, despite the church’s travails – where he was awarded a papal medal, “Pro Ecclesia et Pontifice”, recognizing 40 years of service to church music. There were over 1,000 in the congregation applauding him to the rafters.
He has conducted the church choir, of which he has been a lynchpin, since he was 17, and last Sunday the repertoire included one of his own compositions. He is soaked in Festival lore. So, when he demits office at the end of the year after a six-year tenure, his successor, Dr. Mary Kelly, more a conventional national establishment figure, has a hard act to follow.
But, follow it I’m sure she will – and in 2019 I look forward to Wexford Festival Opera – déjà vu all over again.