Nature provides the ideal backdrop for these operas that you can enjoy even during lockdown.
ByHeidi Waleson
April 28, 2020 4:29 pm ET
With the opera house off-limits and outdoor access limited, now’s the moment for online events that successfully combine the two. In March, the Industry, the boundary-breaking Los Angeles opera company, was presenting “Sweet Land” in Los Angeles State Historic Park when pandemic precautions forced the cancellation of half of the run. Fortunately, a video, available on demand, permits a much larger audience to at least approximate the experience of attending this remarkable work; the $14.99 charge helps the Industry weather the loss of its performances,
I saw “Sweet Land” live on March 7, and while the video can’t fully capture its visceral impact—the piece seemed to physically conjure the blood-soaked history of colonialism out of the land you were standing on—you can still get the idea. There are even a few pluses. The three-camera setup, with close-ups of individual characters, helps clarify the action in some of the more layered sections. Viewers can also take in both of the opera’s tracks: “Feast” (depicting Thanksgiving from the perspective of the conquered) and “Train” (doing the same for Manifest Destiny), which played simultaneously in the live version. Each video runs about an hour, and the double exposure to their common material, in addition to the scenes unique to each, deepens the experience and amplifies the raw, passionate violence of the tale, as the narrative of the Hosts is ruthlessly erased by that of the Arrivals.
Benjamin Britten’s “Peter Grimes” is inextricably linked with its setting, an isolated fishing village on the Suffolk coast. In 2013, to celebrate the composer’s centennial, the Aldeburgh Festival staged the opera on the beach. In the film of that production—available on MarqueeTV, which has free trial offers, as well as on Medici.tv—you feel as though you are there, especially since the sounds of the sea and the waves breaking over the pebbled beach are audible in the interstices of Britten’s sea-inspired music. The set, hugging the water’s edge, is a ramshackle-looking assemblage of platforms and boats; the storm clouds, the wind, and the lights against the gathering darkness intensify the opera’s portrait of a community huddling fearfully against the elements and turning on the presumed evildoer, the fisherman Peter Grimes.
Director Tim Albery’s concept updates the opera to 1945, the year of its premiere, from the mid-19th-century original setting, and hints of the war add an extra tinge of menace. The musical performance, conducted by Steuart Bedford, is excellent. You would never know that the orchestra was pre-recorded, and the superb cast stars Alan Oke, beleaguered and desperate in the title role, and Giselle Allen as a touching Ellen Orford. The supporting singers deftly portray the complex village society (the busybody, the quack, the alcoholic preacher, the good-time girls) and the fine chorus is terrifying when its members, wielding flashlights and homemade weapons, coalesce into a lynch mob in Act III.
Outdoor venues define some summer opera festivals; one example is the Aix-en-Provence Festival’s airy Théâtre de l’Archevêché, the courtyard of a former archbishop’s palace. The 2020 Festival has been canceled, but several operas from past seasons are available on demand through the website. Simon McBurney’s riveting 2017 production of Stravinsky’s “The Rake’s Progress” can be seen through July 10.
It boasts a splendid cast of young Americans: Julia Bullock is a luminous Anne Trulove; Paul Appleby, a tormented Tom Rakewell; and Kyle Ketelsen, a smoothly evil Nick Shadow. The updated production suits the open-air theater and the opera’s themes of false promises and the temptation of easy money and fame. The walls of the set, a plain white box, rip like paper as characters enter and exit, leaving gaping holes, and serve as screens for arresting contemporary video backdrops. Tom’s London establishment is a soaring glass penthouse against a crowded cityscape of lights; photos of Baba the Turk multiply like a giant Zoom meeting screen; tumbling stock prices scroll as Tom’s ruin is complete. In the haunting final scene, the mad Tom tries without success to tape the now-blank white walls back together. The poetic English text isn’t always as clear as one might like, and the only subtitles are in French and German, but it’s a small price to pay. Just Google the libretto and follow along.
The enormous floating stage on Lake Constance is the hallmark of Austria’s Bregenz Festival, and its “Turandot,” on YouTube, is all about spectacle. There’s an immense Great Wall of China, part of which tumbles down dramatically; boats deliver characters to the stage, which is filled with a swirling host of masked extras in Mao jackets, martial artists and fire jugglers; there’s a gruesome library of severed heads in transparent display boxes. Hang on for Act III and the show’s best singing: Riccardo Massi’s “Nessun dorma” and Guanqun Yu’s poignant rendition of Liu’s death scene. Then, for comic relief in a much more modest, but delightful, outdoor opera experience, try On Site Opera’s production of Mozart’s “The Secret Gardener,” staged in a New York City community garden, on YouTube through the end of June.
—Ms. Waleson writes on opera for the Journal.
AndyManshel.nyc 