Within the opera, wickedly goaded alongside by the hallucinatory Aegean solar, a sordid quartet of characters regularly hacks away on the layers of propriety that loosely bind them whereas actually hacking away on the newly excavated archaeological ruins of historical Mycenae. Within the theater (NYU’s Skirball Heart the weekend earlier than final), our personal curiosity drives an curiosity in an “undiscovered” work that holds tantalizing promise. It’s the primary and solely opera of Nadia Boulanger, famend composer however much more famend pedagogue and, arguably, the den mom of postwar classical music within the Western world.
Blocked from its scheduled 1914 world premiere on the Opéra Comique by World Struggle I and present solely in piano-vocal type (its orchestral components destroyed through the struggle), La ville morte obtained each a brand new orchestration and a high-profile trendy outing from New York-based Catapult Opera (this weekend-long run of performances was preceded by a site-specific premiere run on the Greek Nationwide Opera in January).
Boulanger wrote the work together with her mentor Raoul Pugno (although the extent of the collaboration on the rating stays unverifiable, based on this system notes) and its through-composed chromaticism smacks of Debussy with a way of inside drama on the micro-level harking back to Ravel. In brief, La ville morte looks like an exceptionally worthy opera, one that might simply scale to a bigger theater to accommodate the bigness of its libretto’s feelings with out shedding any of the musical specificity this chamber presentation gave it (although Robin Guarino’s manufacturing lacks a lot of a way of exact environment).
I say “looks like,” although, as a result of Catapult’s admirable and essential presentation felt like extra of a suggestion of the work itself. The orchestration, commissioned from Joseph Stilwell and Stefan Cwik below the supervision of certainly one of Boulanger’s last-standing protégés, David Conte, manages to each unrewardingly tease the illusion of the opera’s certainly lush authentic setting whereas failing to ascertain a lot attention-grabbing interaction of the harmonics inside itself.
One wonders, for instance, why the 11-player pit (staffed by the Talea Ensemble) was so dominated with treble devices (two violins, and viola, along with flute, clarinet, and oboe) but missing in percussion. In a piece that belongs to a household of opera that attempted to wipe the concept of secco recits off the map, why does the piano have such a outstanding position? To say nothing of the vocal writing, which meanders alongside to exulting heights, the rating has some pretty orchestral passages underscoring such idyllic moments as staring up right into a starry night time sky or murdering a virgin then hiding her physique, and conductor (and Catapult Opera Creative Director) Neal Goren led them with simply the correct amount of forward-moving energy. However the general impression remained that of an impression, incomplete, missing within the density we count on from the composers of each Boulanger’s social milieu and the opera’s personal musical milieu. A extra strong orchestration, commissioned by Siena’s Accademia Musicale Chigiana by Mauro Bonifacio in 2005, is well findable on-line and a extra coherently strong setting of the rating.
Extra virile and decisively intact was the work’s libretto, a largely trustworthy adaptation of Gabriele D’Annunzio’s first play La città morta (which opened initially in French – written for Eleonora Duse however premiered by Sarah Bernhardt! – although the id of its French renderer is an unresolved matter as D’Annunzio’s French was so-so at the moment). Seldom are there occasions of significance for these of us concerned about D’Annunzio’s theatrical works, so this opera proved a very thrilling event that I had anticipated eagerly since its pandemic announcement.
Impressed by D’Annunzio’s Schliemann-era Greek excursions (additionally event for the start of his affair with Duse), the opera’s libretto interweaves 4 characters working on differing ranges of sexual perversion and vatic naïveté. The pitifully ignorant Anne (who’s blind – right here sung by mezzo-soprano Laurie Rubin, herself blind and, whereas a restricted actress, most persuasive when singing in her darkly spinning decrease register) is married to the poet and author Alexandre (Jorell Williams, a baritone, the steadiest voice of the quartet however essentially the most missing in any discernible type or finesse). Alexandre has adopted his pal, the lusty (and lustful) archaeologist Léonard (Joshua Dennis, whose coated sound has a successful mixture of burliness and textual specificity, bringing a a lot wanted dose of grandeur to the afternoon) to Greece.
Léonard occurs upon a cache of gold and artifacts from Agamemnon and firm which not directly units unfastened a cascade of curses and concupiscence that pits Léonard’s harmless and childish sister Hébé (hardworking soprano Melissa Harvey within the opera’s largest position, with a wiry, patchy sound) concurrently as the item of adulterous affections by Alexandre, quasi-maternal/lesbian sentiments by Anne, and incestuous longing by Léonard. Ultimately, after a prolonged, agonized monologue which Dennis delivered with ferocity, Hébé is drowned in a jealous rage by her brother and because the two males rush to cover the physique, Anne, in a fabulously D’Annunzian coup-de-thèâtre, regains sight simply in time to look in horror upon her murdered confidante.
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The invention, Anne’s horrible, tenuously plausible miracle proper because the curtain is concerning the fall, is a second of fortissimo cataclysmic horror within the opera’s rating quite than arcane perception. Whereas D’Annunzio’s superhuman sympathies posit Anne’s miracle as an overcoming or enlightenment by means of witnessing, in Boulanger and Pugno’s studying, it’s figuring out itself that spells doom.
Maybe I’m indulging my D’Annunziophile tendencies an excessive amount of after I say that Boulanger’s studying of this scene resembles how I felt encountering her opera on this iteration on the Skirball Heart final month: marvel for the chance to listen to it, however terrible eager for what seems to be irretrievably misplaced.
Images: Valeria Isaeva
