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In her final season as artistic director, she presents a comedic Rossini pastiche, ‘The Sound of Music,’ ‘Carmen’ and a thematically linked double bill of ‘Taking Up Serpents’ and world premiere ‘Holy Ground.’

Keely Futterer in ‘Tenor Overboard

’PHOTO: KARLI CADEL/THE GLIMMERGLASS FESTIVAL

By Heidi Waleson

Updated Aug. 16, 2022 5:21 pm ET

Cooperstown, N.Y.

Francesca Zambello’s final season as artistic and general director of the Glimmerglass Festival reflects many of the initiatives that she pursued over her 12-year tenure, efforts to lift it out a period of doldrums and turn it back into a must-visit summer destination. Repertory innovations included classic American musicals staged with full orchestra and no amplification; new productions of recent and classic American titles; and the commissioning of Jeanine Tesori and Tazewell Thompson’s “Blue,” one of the best new operas of the past 20 years. In casting, she tapped famous singers, such as Eric Owens and Christine Goerke, to serve as artists in residence, and went out of her way to hire and promote BIPOC artists. She hired conductor Joseph Colaneri as music director to get the orchestra into shape. She developed a Youth Ensemble, commissioning some wonderful new operas for performance by young people, and she expanded the company’s community reach with visits to Attica (the maximum-security prison), as well as lectures, concerts and other events. 

During the pandemic, she improvised: an appealing series of short films in 2020 and an outdoor festival, complete with specially built chalets in addition to lawn seating in 2021. A constant presence on the grounds, Ms. Zambello exudes seemingly inexhaustible energy and enthusiasm, and under her leadership the festival has, for the most part, done the same. 

Ms. Zambello has a populist bent, and the surprise delight of 2022 was “Tenor Overboard,” a confection devised by playwright Ken Ludwig, Mr. Colaneri and dramaturge Kelley Rourke in which lesser-known Rossini extracts were repurposed as musical numbers in a new comic script. Mr. Ludwig’s book is old-fashioned and a little corny—a 1940s caper on an Italy-bound ocean liner featuring two sisters disguised as men, their pursuing father, a male vocal quartet, and an egomaniacal film actress—but the music, along with slightly massaged texts, is so wittily integrated that it doesn’t matter. Musical selections—all sung in Italian—are as varied as “La danza” (a famous Luciano Pavarottiencore, here arranged for male quartet); the Act I finale of “L’italiana in Algeri,” an a cappella mourning ensemble from “Stabat mater”; and a buffo number from “Il viaggio a Reims.”

Jasmine Habersham and Reilly Nelson in ‘Tenor Overboard’

PHOTO: KARLI CADEL/THE GLIMMERGLASS FESTIVAL

The game young cast played the comedy with aplomb. The standout singer was Keely Futterer as the daffy Jean Harlow-esque actress Angostura, who knocked out the bravura “Bel raggio lusinghier” from “Semiramide” (a Joan Sutherland staple) with total command. Mr. Colaneri’s effervescent conducting kept the fun bubbling throughout. Co-directors Ms. Zambello and Brenna Corner did the same, dropping in sight gags like a wandering gondola and an octopus that flies on board during a storm, aided by James Noone’s playful set, Loren Shaw’s clever costumes, and Robert Wierzel’s heavily saturated, colored lighting. Good comedies are in short supply: This show would make a terrific gala event, especially with a raft of top-flight Rossini singers. 

Ms. Zambello’s championing of American musicals started shakily in 2011 with “Annie Get Your Gun” but has gained strength over the years. Memorable productions include “Carousel,” “Candide” (which is returning next summer), “Oklahoma!” and “West Side Story.” Ms. Zambello has judiciously seeded the Young Artist program with musical-theater-trained performers (who know how to dance) and for the most part cast music-theater specialists as principals when necessary. 

Mikaela Bennett, Nadia Buttermann and Michael Mayes in ‘The Sound of Music’

PHOTO: KARLI CADEL/THE GLIMMERGLASS FESTIVAL

This year’s “The Sound of Music” was sumptuously produced. Clever backdrops enabled Peter J. Davison’s rotunda set to look convincing as both the abbey and Captain von Trapp’s elegant living room and Aleš Valášek’s costumes captured the period. Soprano Mikaela Bennett was vocally assured and charming as Maria; baritone Michael Mayes made Captain von Trapp’s metamorphosis from martinet to human being convincing; Alexandra Loutsion was an imposing Mother Abbess; Peter Morgan and Alyson Cambridge were nicely wry as Max and Elsa, the show’s cynics. Young Artist Tori Tedeschi Adams was a fine Liesl and the six younger von Trapp children were terrific, a credit to Glimmerglass’s work with its Youth Ensemble. Ms. Zambello’s direction made the Rodgers and Hammerstein show seem fresh rather than saccharine, and hearing the score played by a full orchestra, conducted by James Lowe, was a pleasure. 

Michael Mayes in ‘Taking Up Serpents’

PHOTO: KARLI CADEL/THE GLIMMERGLASS FESTIVAL

Ms. Zambello has a mixed track record in recent and classic American operas. Standouts, in addition to “Blue,” were revivals of mid-20th-century works—Kurt Weill’s “Lost in the Stars” with Eric Owens and Robert Ward’s “The Crucible” with Jamie Barton. This year, a double bill of “Taking Up Serpents” by Kamala Sankaram and Jerre Dye(2018) and the world premiere of “Holy Ground” by Damien Geter and Lila Palmer offered contrasting looks at religion and parenting.

“Serpents” examines the toxic relationship between Kayla (the wiry-sounding Mary-Hollis Hundley) and her father, a snake-handling Pentecostal preacher (the dynamic Mr. Mayes). Ms. Sankaram’s well-shaped score, with its repeating motifs, eerie whirly tube interjections and full-on praise services, powerfully juxtaposes Kayla’s longings with her dominating environment. The piece has been revised since its premiere at Washington National Opera and given a fuller production—by Chloe Treat, with a set by James F. Rotondo III—that clarifies some elements. However, I was chilled to see that Kayla’s liberation from her fear appears to include a future in snake-handling. 

“Holy Ground,” by contrast, is an earnest imagining of a contemporary Annunciation: How might a new Virgin Mary accept the responsibility of incubating the Second Coming? A comic band of archangels—decked out in brightly colored satins and brocades by Trevor Bowen—deputize their youngest, Cherubiel (the lively tenor Jonathan Pierce Rhodes) to make the ask. (They’ve already been turned down by 489 women.) Their target, Mary (an affecting Jasmine Habersham), who is in the process of being married—in effect, sold to an older man as breeder—and wants more from her life, starts off a no but gets to yes. The score, which includes skillful vocal writing, is tuneful but conventional; the comic and serious elements don’t quite jell. Lidiya Yankovskaya was the incisive conductor for both operas.

Jonathan Pierce Rhodes and Jasmine Habersham in ‘Holy Ground’

PHOTO: KARLI CADEL/THE GLIMMERGLASS FESTIVAL

Glimmerglass was my third, and thankfully last, encounter with Bizet’s “Carmen” this summer, and the chaotic production by Denyce Graves, once an arresting Carmen herself, did nothing to mitigate the pain. As Carmen, the dry-sounding Briana Hunter undulated through sexy poses; as Don José, an undirected Ian Koziara seemed to think he was singing Siegfried; Symone Harcum’s vocal wobble marred her Micaëla. Bass-baritone Richard Ollarsaba (Escamillo) introduced some vocal richness; his eye patch, man bun and slinky suit also supplied some danger. Otherwise, Oana Botez’s costumes went overboard on flowered skirts; Riccardo Hernández’s bleak set, along with the bulletproof vests on the soldiers and a mystifying green jumpsuit for Carmen in Act 3, suggested some vaguely contemporary time period. Mr. Colaneri was the efficient conductor. For standard repertory shows, Ms. Zambello’s legacy is better served by the Native American-inspired “Magic Flute,” the commedia dell’arte “Barber of Seville” or, back in 2011, a “Carmen” directed by Anne Bogart that stripped this chestnut to its essence: a battle to the death.

Ms. Waleson writes on opera for the Journal and is the author of “Mad Scenes and Exit Arias: The Death of the New York City Opera and the Future of Opera in America” (Metropolitan).

The 2022 roster includes the world premiere of ‘M. Butterfly,’ plus productions of ‘Falstaff,’ ‘Barber of Seville,’ ‘Carmen’ and ‘Tristan und Isolde’–the company’s first Wagner in over 30 years. 

Kangmin Justin Kim and Mark Stone

PHOTO: CURTIS BROWN/SANTA FE OPERA

By Heidi Waleson

Aug. 9, 2022 5:34 pm

Santa Fe, N.M. 

This season’s Santa Fe Opera world premiere, “M. Butterfly” by Huang Ruo and David Henry Hwang, is an absorbing new incarnation of Mr. Hwang’s 1988 hit play, which was drawn from the true story of a French diplomat who carried on a 20-year affair with a Chinese, female-presenting Peking Opera performer without, apparently, realizing that his lover was a man. The two were tried for espionage in 1986: The Chinese lover was a Communist government spy. 

The play was ahead of its time, examining Western assumptions about Asians through the lens of gender, and using Puccini’s “Madama Butterfly” as a touchstone throughout. Today, gender fluidity and the orientalist constructs of “Madama Butterfly” are regular topics of discussion rather than shocking reveals. The “M. Butterfly” opera deploys them, through astute dramatic and musical choices, to investigate the political and emotional landscape of this story more deeply.

The diplomat, René Gallimard (baritone Mark Stone), tells the story through flashbacks from his French prison cell, still boasting of how he was able to enjoy the love of “a perfect woman.” He meets Song Liling (countertenor Kangmin Justin Kim) at an embassy party in Beijing in 1964 and is entranced by her singing of “Un bel di,” which reflects his fantasy of the submissive Asian and the virile westerner. That fantasy will persist throughout their relationship, even when his related geopolitical opinions—“Orientals will always submit to a greater force”—are proved wrong by events in Vietnam. 

Huang Ruo’s music slyly underlines the Frenchman’s point of view. There are hints of Puccini—a humming chorus, a snippet of the love scene. Sections focused on westerners have an insistent rhythmic edge as opposed to the gauzy, dreamy atmosphere of the scenes with Song. Brief clangs of Chinese percussion do warn us that there are other forces at work, as do the fervent People’s Liberation Army scenes. 

Yet the music, with its pervasive sense of ambiguity and instability, also asks us to wonder what Song is thinking, especially given Gallimard’s stiff, unromantic vocal persona. What slowly becomes clear is that Song, who is gay, an actor, and a member of the elite, has been forced to construct the character that Gallimard loves and spy on him in order to survive in a society that tolerates none of those things. Fans of John le Carré will relate. 

Mr. Kim, with his mellowly alluring sound, was extraordinarily adept at conveying artifice disguised as sincerity, even when he literally stripped naked. Mr. Stone’s performance as the pathetic dupe was courageously unsympathetic. Kevin Burdette, Hongni Wu and Joshua Dennis ably sang supporting roles; the chorus was lively as bored expatriates and Gallimard-mockers. Carolyn Kuan was the acute conductor. 

James Robinson’s precise staging clarified the complex web of time periods and motivations, aided by Christopher Akerlind’s pointed lighting. In set designer Allen Moyer’s mostly black-and-white palette, Song’s red boudoir—complete with divan, Chinese screen and fringed lamp—popped; so did Song’s colorful qipao and kimono, designed by James Schuette. Greg Emetaz created evocative scene-setting projections of cityscapes and Mao propaganda; Seán Curran’s choreography recalled “The Red Detachment of Women.” 

Santa Fe doesn’t usually do Wagner—just three productions of “The Flying Dutchman,” the last in 1988, in over six decades—so this season’s “Tristan und Isolde” was a major event. The orchestra, under the impassioned leadership of James Gaffigan, rose handsomely to the occasion. The show also provided a showcase for some impressive young Wagnerians—Tamara Wilson, a powerful Isolde with ringing top notes and whose tender “Liebestod” was worth the wait to the end of the evening; Jamie Barton, a playful Brangäne; and Nicholas Brownlee, a strong-voiced Kurwenal. Eric Owens brought gravitas and excellent diction to King Marke; Simon O’Neill’s harsh, steely tenor made for a very long Act 3, which is basically Tristan dying. 

The production took abstraction to boring extremes, with a set of geometric, mottled white walls (Charlap Hyman & Herrero), vaguely medieval costumes (Carlos J Soto), lighting that alternated between glaring white and stygian dark (John Torres), and pose-and-sing direction (Zack Winokur and Lisenka Heijboer Castañón). 

Quinn Kelsey

PHOTO: CURTIS BROWN/SANTA FE OPERA

Verdi’s “Falstaff” fared better. The production by David McVicar (director and designer) was staged with just the right comic flair on a Globe Theatre-inspired wooden structure of balconies and staircases; the final masquerade scene was a hilarious riot of grotesques. Quinn Kelsey was a superb Falstaff: His booming baritone and outsize stage presence perfectly captured the fat knight’s humanity along with his outrageous pomposity. The rest of the competent cast did not reach his level, though Eric Ferring’s aria as Fenton showed off his bright tenor; Paul Daniel conducted with wit and pizzazz. 

Jack Swanson, Kyle Miller and the Santa Fe Opera Chorus

PHOTO: CURTIS BROWN/SANTA FE OPERA

By contrast, Stephen Barlow’s antic production of Rossini’s “Barber of Seville” tried too hard for comedy. Expensive-looking elements included the set (a hollow, rotating head with a giant topiary mustache for Doctor Bartolo’s house), 15 chorus men in mariachi costumes to accompany Count Almaviva’s opening serenade, and six bullfighters getting haircuts in barber chairs to go with Figaro’s “Largo al factotum.” (Andrew D. Edwards was the designer.) Some of the anachronisms clashing with the mostly 18th-century costume design—such as Almaviva’s Mormon missionary disguise—were genuinely funny; others, like having Bartolo (Kevin Burdette) do a yoga routine in mid-aria, were distracting. The star of the show was Jack Swanson, whose ebullient tenor and imaginative vocal ornamentation made Almaviva enormously fun. As Rosina, Emily Fons’s best moment was the music lesson; conductor Iván López-Reynoso opted for speed rather than subtlety. 

Michael Fabiano and Isabel Leonard

PHOTO: CURTIS BROWN/SANTA FE OPERA

Director Mariame Clément’s dark take on Bizet’s “Carmen” suggested that the eponymous heroine’s much-vaunted freedom is an illusion and, like all women, she exists at the mercy of men. Some of the ideas resonated: The cigarette women were caged behind a chain-link fence and ogled by the soldiers like animals in a zoo. Others felt incoherent: such as a child Carmen introduced into the action, miming how little girls are conditioned early to play their adult roles; and the elements of a broken-down amusement park—a carousel horse, curtained booths, and a skeleton-festooned haunted house that appeared for a few seconds before rotating out of sight. (Julia Hansen designed the sets and costumes.)

Stripped of her agency, Isabel Leonard’s Carmen seemed to be trying to disappear, though she sang the music well and even played the castanets skillfully during her Act 2 dance for her lover. This left the field wide open for Michael Fabiano, whose explosive Don José dominated the show. Even his “Flower Song,” gorgeously sung, with no hint of strain, felt of a piece with this characterization of a man whose confidence in his right to control a woman tips into insanity. Michael Sumuel brought easy power to Escamillo. Other pluses were the use of spoken French dialogue instead of recitative, which sharpens the story, and Harry Bicket’s sensitive conducting that took the orchestra beyond mere color and into commentary.

Ms. Waleson writes on opera for the Journal and is the author of “Mad Scenes and Exit Arias: The Death of the New York City Opera and the Future of Opera in America” (Metropolitan).

Gregory Spears and Tracy K. Smith’s new, luxuriously cast opera, which premiered in Cincinnati, depicts cousins at odds over family property in 2008’s American South and the complex history of their black ancestors. 

Reginald Smith Jr. and Talise Trevigne

PHOTO: PHILIP GROSHONG

By Heidi Waleson

July 26, 2022 5:24 pm

Cincinnati

What makes a narrative operatic, demanding to be sung rather than spoken? In the haunting final aria of “Castor and Patience,” given its world premiere by the Cincinnati Opera at the School for Contemporary and Performing Arts on Thursday, all the other characters fade away as Patience (soprano Talise Trevigne) sings: “What happened hasn’t left us. What happened is. We’ve got to tend to it. That’s what the ancestors tell us.” Here, music and the text deftly encapsulate the message of the opera, a richly layered tale about a black American extended family and its fraught relationship with land, history and obligation. But up until that moment, composer Gregory Spears (who wrote the justly praised “Fellow Travelers”) and first-time librettist Tracy K. Smith (a two-term U.S. poet laureate) only intermittently reached that standard. Much of “Castor and Patience” felt more like a play with accompaniment: “Death of a Salesman” with tunes. And without the death.

The complexities of Ms. Smith’s original story reveal themselves gradually over nearly 2 1/2 hours of music. Castor, who lives in Buffalo, N.Y., brings his wife and two teenage children to visit his cousin Patience at her island home in an unspecified Southern state. It is 2008; he is in grave financial difficulties and hopes to persuade Patience to sell some of their jointly owned land to bail him out. But Patience views the land as more than an economic entity: It connects her to her ancestors, the formerly enslaved people who bought it and the descendants who managed to hang onto it against all odds. For her, selling land to rich developers means cultural erasure, and she sees Castor’s alienation from those familial and spiritual roots as the true cause of his suffering.

And Castor’s suffering is intense, conveyed in several explosive arias by the imposing baritone Reginald Smith Jr. He is about to lose his Buffalo house, which was purchased by his father, who left the island when Castor was a child. He feels weighed down by guilt; emasculated by his failure to provide for his family; under existential threat from white people; and shadowed by an overwhelming sense of impending doom.

Raven McMillon and Reginald Smith Jr.

PHOTO: PHILIP GROSHONG

But the juxtaposition of this titanic pair—the shamanistic Patience and the disintegrating Castor—is embedded in a complicated web of other characters, all with their own issues, and expressed in a libretto that is mostly prose, with lines like, “Last week she turned up with a great big case of tissue boxes.” In one scene, Patience’s adult son West (baritone Benjamin Taylor) and Castor’s children Ruthie (soprano Raven McMillon) and Judah (tenor Frederick Ballentine) have an awkward conversation about feral cows and racial profiling. It’s interesting, and gives information about the characters and their situation, but you still wonder, why are these people singing?

The 36-member orchestra, led by Kazem Abdullah, supplies a subdued, minimalist underpinning, a gentle, tonal river that flows along under the voices with occasional outbursts of brass and percussion. When Ms. Smith turns to poetry, Mr. Spears writes vibrant, soaring arias that make us snap to attention. But in between, the pace often sags as the libretto, rather than the music, is tasked with building up the complete picture, incorporating many details that ultimately seem peripheral, and tending to tell rather than show. The ending is ambiguous, though since Patience gets the last word, we are urged toward the idea that if Castor’s family dropped the idea of selling the land, gave up their northern existence and remained on the island, everyone would be healed.

The opera was luxuriously cast. In addition to the charismatic leads, Jennifer Johnson Cano brought urgency to Celeste, Castor’s white wife; Mr. Ballentine was a wonderfully bristling Judah, struggling on the edge of adulthood; Ms. McMillon was affecting as his younger sister. Mr. Taylor, though hampered by the need to sing in a mask due to Covid-19 protocols, effectively made West the translator between the two worlds; as his sister, Wilhelmina, Victoria Okafor had two standout arias, both poignant explorations of how loss can be a blessing.

The five excellent ensemble members, each playing multiple roles, helped supply context from the past. In a scene depicting the family’s 19th-century, newly landowning forebears, tenor Victor Ryan Robertson had an arresting cameo about how freedom “gave work a different hue.” And in an 11th-hour revelation scene, set in 1966, Amber Monroe and Phillip Bullock, as Castor’s parents, Clarissa and Cato, explicated the very personal reason for their move to the North. Ghostly wisps of a hymn, “I’m not ready to go home, Lord,” kept all that history alive in the present-day scenes.

Director Kevin Newbury set out the conflicts clearly; set designer Vita Tzykun used scrims and S. Katy Tucker’s projections to evoke the trees and marshes of the island, as well as a few furniture pieces for the interiors and the ferry dock and rail that symbolized the island’s remoteness. Thomas C. Hase’s lighting helped create a sense of the past that is always present, while Jessica Jahn’s costumes captured the multiple historical periods as well as the characters’ personalities. Patience’s brightly colored, flower-patterned dresses made her stand out as the voice of the land—and, finally, perhaps, the winner of the argument.

Ms. Waleson writes on opera for the Journal and is the author of “Mad Scenes and Exit Arias: The Death of the New York City Opera and the Future of Opera in America” (Metropolitan). 

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The company’s 50th season highlights the strength of its programming with the premiere of ‘A Thousand Acres,’ based on Jane Smiley’s novel, and stagings of ‘Porgy and Bess’ and ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream.’

Elise Quagliata and Roger Honeywell

PHOTO: DUANE TINKEY

By Heidi Waleson

July 13, 2022 5:26 pm

Indianola, Iowa

Air travel being what it is these days, it was a challenge to get to central Iowa last weekend for the Des Moines Metro Opera’s 50th anniversary season. Still, an unplanned two-hour drive across the state, with lush green fields of corn and other crops unfolding mile after mile along the highway, proved an apt prelude to the world premiere of Kristin Kuster and Mark Campbell’s “A Thousand Acres.” Based on Jane Smiley’s 1991 Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, the opera, like the book, is about poison infusing that verdant landscape: the patriarchal toxicity of land acquisition and exploitation, and how women become the victims of the farmer’s heroic narrative. 

Mr. Campbell’s libretto efficiently condenses Ms. Smiley’s story, a version of “King Lear” told from Goneril’s point of view set on an Iowa farm in the late 1970s. Larry, the patriarch, impulsively divides the family farm among his three daughters, Ginny, Rose and Caroline, and then descends into dementia. As his rage and erratic behavior sow discord and distress among the daughters and their husbands, the family’s buried history gradually comes to light. The deepest wound is Larry’s sexual abuse of Ginny and Rose when they were teenagers; additionally, Ginny’s five miscarriages and Rose’s cancer probably resulted from fertilizer and pesticide-polluted well water. Caroline, protected by her older sisters, escaped Larry’s ravages and became a lawyer; she, ironically, becomes her father’s ally in his fight to regain the land from Ginny and Rose. By the end, all but two of the main characters are dead or out of the picture; the farm is lost; and Ginny has escaped to a new life, free of the burden of those acres and all they mean.

Even at a generous 140 minutes of music, the opera feels crammed with plot—there are 16 scenes, plus a prologue and an epilogue—and the prosaic text gives the characters little opportunity to connect emotionally. At the same time, the arias, however vocally expansive, are accompanied by dissonant minimalist vamping featuring a handful of orchestral instruments. In the resulting harmonic astringency, everything starts to sound the same. 

Some moments do break through. Early on, mellifluous duets demonstrate the bond between Ginny and Rose; in a tryst between Ginny and Jess, an old friend who returns to the neighborhood after a 13-year absence, the underlying marimba beat and trumpet solo signal Ginny’s awakening feelings; and the harsh dissonances between voice and horns work well for the aria in which Rose tells Ginny about Larry’s abuse. Brief orchestral interludes between scenes also supply color and dramatic impulse, displaying Ms. Kuster’s skill as an orchestral composer; this is her first opera. 

Mezzo Elise Quagliata gave an impassioned performance as Ginny, a middle-aged woman painfully breaking out of her role as the obedient daughter who made breakfast for her father every day for two decades. Soprano Sara Gartland was excellent as the volatile, truth-telling Rose; Grace Kahl’s coloratura gave a self-satisfied edge to Caroline. Keith Phares, Taylor Stayton and John Moore did solid work as husbands and lover. As the raging Larry, tenor Roger Honeywell sounded strained and in extremis all the time, which may have been deliberate, but it was hard to listen to. David Neely was the effective conductor. 

The Pote Theatre at the Blank Performing Arts Center, DMMO’s home auditorium, is unusual. The orchestra plays underneath the large thrust stage, its sound emerging through a rectangular opening in the center, and the theater’s 467 amphitheater seats place the audience very close to the singers. Designer Luke Cantarella’s small, moveable sets—a kitchen, a porch—and evocative video limned the farm environment, and Valérie Thérèse Bart’s 1970s costumes aptly established the period. Director Kristine McIntyreused the whole space creatively. In the show’s most chilling moment, as Ginny cowered in her childhood room, replaying her recovered memory of Larry’s approach, her bed was so close to the audience that you could feel her terror.

Michelle Johnson and Kevin Deas

PHOTO: DUANE TINKEY

The theater’s intimacy made the Gershwins’ “Porgy and Bess” feel larger than life, given the powerful voices in the cast and the sound of the excellent 35-member vocal ensemble in full cry in this chorus-heavy show. Kevin Deas was a forthright Porgy, Michelle Johnson an ebullient Bess—her final flight made it even clearer how hard she had been working to conform to the “good woman” expectations of Catfish Row. As Serena, Leah Hawkins’s explosive, wailing, “My Man’s Gone Now” was a high point and the acrobatic Jermaine Smith brought out the malevolence beneath Sportin’ Life’s reptilian charm. Also strong were Jacqueline Echols (Clara), Norman Garrett (Crown) and Lucia Bradford (Maria); the veteran bass-baritone and native Iowan Simon Estes made his company debut in a cameo as Lawyer Frazier; of the featured performers, Demetrious Sampson Jr. was delightful as the Crab Man. All the singers were unusually convincing in the libretto’s dialect, and Michael Ellis Ingram led the impressive orchestra. R. Keith Brumley’s simple, representational set, Harry Nadal’s costumes, Robert Wierzel’s lighting and Tazewell Thompson’s idiomatic, thoughtful staging supplied a fitting frame for all this musical richness.

John Holiday

PHOTO: DUANE TINKEY

Benjamin Britten’s “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” was uneven. Elizabeth Askren’s conducting captured the score’s magic, as did countertenor John Holiday, a subtle, ethereal Oberon; Sydney Mancasola’s strident Tytania did not. Eight children played fairies, but they only sang the lullaby at the end of act 2, leaving the rest of the fairy music to four oversinging adult women, which radically altered its character. Of the lovers, Alexander Birch Elliott(Demetrius) and Tamara Gura (Hermia) were more persuasive than Isaiah Bell (Lysander) and Susanne Burgess (Helena). The rustics, led by the hilariously confident Bottom of Barnaby Rea, were uniformly strong. Chas Rader-Shieber was the witty director. 

Jacob A. Climer’s designs were especially noteworthy: In addition to his atmospheric forest, the fairies were splendidly arrayed in sumptuous, all-white Elizabethan garb; the lovers in purple and gold college colors, including cheerleader pom poms and a varsity letter jacket; the clever homemade outfits for “Pyramus and Thisby” included a wall woven out of beer cans worn by the hard-drinking Snout (Corey Trahan) and a headdress made out of a bellows for the bellows mender Flute (Michael Kuhn). Such high production values and careful casting make DMMO a find, however difficult it may be to get there. 

Ms. Waleson writes on opera for the Journal and is the author of “Mad Scenes and Exit Arias: The Death of the New York City Opera and the Future of Opera in America” (Metropolitan). 

Opera Theatre of Saint Louis’s spring season includes Tobias Picker’s new opera about neurologist Oliver Sacks’s patients suffering from sleeping sickness.

Katharine Goeldner, Andres Acosta, Marc Molomot and Jarrett Porter (foreground) in Tobias Picker’s ‘Awakenings’

PHOTO: ERIC WOOLSEY

By Heidi Waleson

June 27, 2022 5:54 pm

Webster Groves, MO

Opera Theatre of Saint Louis returned to full programming this spring for the first time since the outbreak of Covid-19 with a pair of new works originally intended for its seasons in 2020 and 2021, which were, respectively, cancelled and abridged. 

Tobias Picker’s “Awakenings” is a sensitive adaptation of the eminent neurologist Oliver Sacks’s 1973 book about a group of institutionalized patients who, stricken during the 1920s with encephalitis lethargica (sleeping sickness), had been locked into mostly speechless, motionless lives for decades. In 1969, using L-dopa, then newly shown to be effective in the treatment of Parkinson’s disease, Sacks “awakened” these patients, who had Parkinsonian symptoms, to near-normal functioning. Sadly, the drug’s effects were transitory and fraught with side effects, and the patients returned to their earlier states.

Sacks’s is a collection of detailed case studies; Aryeh Lev Stollman’s poetic libretto follows the basic narrative arc of the well-known 1990 film adaptation, framing it with a choral prologue and epilogue recounting the “Sleeping Beauty” fairy tale and zeroing in on three patients. Mr. Picker’s elegiac, autumnal score, with its eloquent writing for solo string players, treads delicately in these stories of unrealized possibility: Rose (Susanna Phillips), once an aviator with a fiancé; Miriam (Adrienne Danrich), whose infant daughter was taken from her; and Leonard (Marc Molomot), whose awakening is fraught with intense sexual feelings for the nurse, Mr. Rodriguez (Andres Acosta), and apocalyptic hallucinations. Leonard’s devoted mother, Iris (Katharine Goeldner), prefers him in his gentle, unawakened state; her line, “Maybe best to let him be” captures the ambiguity of this medical experiment and its outcome. 

Dramatic tableaux worked well: In an early scene in the institution’s dayroom, the joy of the newly revived patients is expressed in lilting waltz time; in act 2, as the patients and staff celebrate the miracle cure with a party, a sudden switch into jagged, uptempo dance music triggers Rose’s relapse into Parkinsonian symptoms, signaling the ultimate failure of the drug. At times, the libretto becomes too poetic and takes the score with it: A quintet scene in the New York Botanical Garden about the discovery of love sags. The addition of an awakening theme for Sacks (Jarrett Porter), who did not publicly acknowledge his homosexuality until shortly before he died in 2015, felt grafted on, in part because Sacks’s musical personality was muted. His love for his patients comes through, but their stories and struggles are more immediate.

Standout singers included Ms. Phillips, whose generous soprano and vivid acting captured Rose’s understanding of her state—a woman in her 60s who still feels that she is 21 years old. Mr. Acosta brought a bright tenor to Mr. Rodriguez, the apex of a triangle of unrequited love—Leonard’s for him and his for Sacks. Mr. Molomot’s high, jagged tenor gave Leonard’s transformation believable dramatic instability. Roberto Kalb’s conducting deftly balanced the transparent orchestration. 

Allen Moyer’s simple set—some moveable glass panels and misty projections—established locations, mostly in the hospital; James Schuette’s costumes evoked the period. James Robinson’s astute direction incorporated telling details—Leonard, newly awakened, ecstatically smokes a cigarette; Miriam, her L-dopa losing potency, has arm tremors—and Christopher Akerlind’s lighting took the story into brightness and then back into shadows. 

***

Melissa Joesph, Zaikuan Song, Raquel Gonzalez, Thomas Glass and Jesus Vicente Murillo in the new performing edition of Stewart Wallace and Michael Korie’s ‘Harvey Milk’

PHOTO: ERIC WOOLSEY

Stewart Wallace and Michael Korie’s “Harvey Milk” had its world premiere in 1995 at the Houston Grand Opera. The story of the first openly gay elected official in San Francisco, who was assassinated—along with Mayor George Moscone, by his fellow city supervisor Dan White—in 1978, the opera was a big, sprawling show, a three-act pageant of gay liberation. The new two-act version, commissioned by Opera Parallèle and OTSL, has radically trimmed the number of secondary characters, the size of the orchestra and some of the scenes, narrowing the focus to Milk and his mythic resonance. Just in case we don’t get it, there’s a white-clad Messenger aligning Milk with Moses, the prophet who does not get to enter the promised land.

It still doesn’t quite work. Act 1 packs in a lot and feels long: Milk’s closeted New York youth and its tropes—opera, clandestine trysts in Central Park, secret lovers, fear of police harassment—are juxtaposed with Kaddish-chanting Holocaust refugees, reminding the Jewish Milk that silence equals death. After the Stonewall uprising, we get Milk, now out and prominent in San Francisco, entering politics, and we meet his antagonist, Dan White, ex-cop and fireman, clinging to the good old days. Act 2 has a tighter story arc, as Milk and White clash on the Board of Supervisors and White, frustrated and outmaneuvered, takes revenge. 

The musical material is diffuse, with episodes seeming unrelated to each other, and the words take precedence. Some of the big chorus numbers, like Stonewall and the Milk Train campaign, have jaunty energy, and moments like when a trio warns Harvey to watch out for Dan White snap into focus. However, the arias meander, Harvey’s love duets don’t feel erotic, and the sound of the Kaddish doesn’t read as Jewish, diluting that thematic reference.

Baritone Thomas Glass played Milk with an insouciant irreverence; tenor César Andrés Parreño, a company Young Artist who valiantly replaced a Covid-positive colleague for all but the first performance, brought a chilling edge to White. Bass-baritone Nathan Starkwas so distinctive in three different roles—the leather-clad Horst in New York, the Teamster who joins Milk’s San Francisco campaign and the back-slapping Moscone—that I didn’t realize it was the same singer. Tenor Jonathan Johnson was sweet as Scott, Milk’s lover; countertenor Kyle Sanchez Tingzon stood out as the Messenger (the voice type switch from the original baritone was a plus). Carolyn Kuan was the skilled conductor.

Mr. Moyer’s design centered on a row of closets used for quick changes and in the end, symbolically empty; Mr. Akerlind’s lighting, also symbolically tended towards purple. Seán Curran choreographed and co-directed with Mr. Robinson, bringing the group scenes to life, though Mr. Schuette’s low-budget costumes meant there was not a single drag queen at Stonewall. 

***

Bizet’s “Carmen” is everywhere this summer; how to make it new? OTSL’s production was performed in a clunky English translation by Amanda Holden. As directed by Rodula Gaitanou, it featured a Carmen (the forthright Sarah Mesko) demonstrating her free spirit by riding a motorcycle and wearing pants, and a pregnant Micaëla (Yunuet Laguna, prone to oversinging). Adam Smith, as Don José, also oversang, though his Act 4 sublimation of toxic masculinity into madness was arresting. Christian Pursell, a stalwart Escamillo, seemed the most at ease of the principals, and Rachael Nelson, a flamenco dancer, enlivened act 2. Cordelia Chisholm’s basic set—a wooden wall and pole—and modern-day costumes testified to a limited budget. The show’s best element was the lively orchestra, under the incisive leadership of Daniela Candillari. 

Ms. Waleson writes on opera for the Journal and is the author of “Mad Scenes and Exit Arias: The Death of the New York City Opera and the Future of Opera in America” (Metropolitan).

The festival returns to a full performance schedule after two years with works including ‘Omar’ by Rhiannon Giddens and Michael Abels and Yuval Sharon’s production of ‘La Bohème’

Jamez McCorkle as Omar PHOTO: LEIGH WEBBER

By Heidi Waleson

May 31, 2022 5:42 pm

Charleston, S.C.

Spoleto Festival USA has returned to a full performance schedule this spring—after the cancellation of its 2020 season and a reduced version in 2021—with a new general director in place. Mena Mark Hanna, age 37, the son of Egyptian immigrants and a scholar of cultural imperialism in the arts, came to Charleston from Berlin’s Barenboim-Said Akademie, where he was the founding dean and a professor of musicology and composition. Revised perspective was a theme of the 2022 Festival’s operas, notwithstanding the fact that the marquee event, the twice-postponed world premiere of “Omar” by Rhiannon Giddens and Michael Abels, was conceived and developed by Mr. Hanna’s predecessor Nigel Redden, who retired after 35 years. 

“Omar” is about Omar ibn Said, a Muslim scholar who was captured from Futa Toro (in present-day Senegal), transported to America, and sold into slavery in Charleston in 1807. His autobiography, written in Arabic in 1831, survives. Ms. Giddens, a virtuoso vocalist, fiddle and banjo player, and songwriter, is devoted to reviving American black roots music. She wrote the libretto; to expand her musical vision into an operatic structure, she enlisted Mr. Abels, best known for his scores for films by Jordan Peele.

The autobiography is short on detail, so Ms. Giddens imagined Omar’s inner and outer lives. Act 1 has action: his capture and transportation; the slave market; Johnson, his cruel first owner; and his escape. Act 2 is more about atmosphere and philosophy: Omar’s Arabic writing on the walls of his jail cell in Fayetteville, N.C., leads Owen, a local plantation owner and devout Christian, to buy him with the intention of converting him. Omar, who died in 1864, still enslaved, did indeed convert; the opera fudges that point, and trails off into musings on commonalities between the two faiths.

Laquita Mitchell as Julie PHOTO: LEIGH WEBBER

Ms. Giddens also invented some supportive female characters—Omar’s mother, killed in the raid where he is captured, remains a steadying, pious voice in his head; Julie, an enslaved woman, guides him to Fayetteville; Owen’s young daughter tells her father about Omar’s writing (“like a little flock of birds in the sky”) and his praying. Still, the opera is more a collection of tableaus than dramatic scenes. Some of those, particularly the chorus numbers, are powerful: the voices of captured Africans who died at sea; a weary work song on the Johnson plantation; a jolly dance on the Owen plantation. 

However, the tonal, lushly orchestrated score is pleasant but bland. There’s African drumming and some fiddling, but no banjo, and the fresh twang of Ms. Giddens’s compositional voice seems drowned in treacle. Even the arias, impassioned and often well-shaped, feel like ballads blown out of proportion, and the occasional jarring end rhymes (betrayed us/raid us) would make more sense in a music-theater setting, with spoken dialogue and songs, rather than an operatic context. In the libretto, Omar is urged to “tell his story,” but this softened depiction of a hideous time, and particularly the lack of clarity about how he might have struggled with conversion, pushes the piece into uplift territory, which seems odd for the subject.

After Jamez McCorkle, the affecting Omar, injured his leg in rehearsal, director Kaneza Schaal restaged the show around him in a wheelchair in Act 1, contributing to the feeling of stasis in scenes that should have crackled with tension. (In Act 2, when Omar is no longer fleeing, Mr. McCorkle stood and walked gingerly.) Cheryse McLeod Lewis and Laquita Mitchell brought soaring passion to Omar’s Mother and Julie; Malcolm MacKenzie differentiated Omar’s two owners nicely; Adam Klein was strong as the folksy Auctioneer. Conductor John Kennedy ably led his large forces; the chorus was particularly fine. Production designer Christopher Myers and set designer Amy Rubin implied locations using simple materials— mostly draped fabric and projections that included Arabic writing, period images like slave auction posters, and a video of black people square-dancing. The costumes by April Hickman and Micheline Russell-Brown cleverly evoke period dress in Africa and America; they are decorated with Omar’s Arabic script. 

Matthew White as Rodolfo and Lauren Michelle as MimiPHOTO: LEIGH WEBBER

Yuval Sharon’s production of Puccini’s “La Bohème” offers an unusually fresh take on a chestnut: The acts are played in reverse order. It’s not just a gimmick—it works. With John Conklin’s simple set—a tilted, rotating disc; a few bits of furniture—no intermission, and a cut in Act 1, the story becomes one of swift, fleeting youth, the bareness of the characters’ physical lives contrasted with the richness of their dreams. We also leave the performance with the memory of Act 1’s explosion of hope and promise, rather than the story’s sad conclusion, and the rich-voiced Lauren Michelle (Mimi) and the poignant Matthew White (Rodolfo), nicely warmed up at the end of the evening, did their most fervent singing as brand-new lovers. 

The interpolated Wanderer (George Shirley) succinctly narrated the scene changes; his time references (“two months earlier”) underlined the brevity of this love affair. Mr. Sharon’s acute direction accentuated the relationship game-playing of Musetta (Brandie Sutton) and Marcello (Troy Cook); Schaunard (the standout Benjamin Taylor) and Colline (Calvin Griffin) were also a couple here, markedly calmer than the other two. Kensho Watanabe conducted the sometimes overly exuberant orchestra. Jessica Jahn’s modest period costumes and John Torres’s atmospheric lighting were right on point.

Karim Sulayman and John Taylor Ward in ‘Unholy Wars’PHOTO: LEIGH WEBBER

“Unholy Wars,” conceived by the Lebanese-American tenor Karim Sulayman, seeks to reframe the “otherness” depiction of Middle Eastern people by European Baroque composers. The centerpiece of the 70-minute show is Monteverdi’s “Il combattimento di Tancredi e Clorinda,” in which the crusader Tancredi kills the Muslim warrior Clorinda, whom he loves, because he does not recognize her in their nighttime battle. (In her final moments, Clorinda asks for Christian baptism.) Other pieces by Monteverdi and his contemporaries surround “Combattimento,” tracing a story of a man falling in love with a beautiful “Woman of the East” and then mourning her death. 

Mr. Sulayman, soprano Raha Mirzadegan and bass-baritone John Taylor Ward sang the music with stylish elegance and intensity, accompanied by an excellent period-instrument octet led by violinist Julie Andrijeski. The reframing, subtle but palpable, came through in the staging, directed by Kevin Newbury and with water and sand to stand for desert and sea; the brief interludes of haunting electronic music by Mary Kouyoumdjian that separated the Baroque pieces, leaving space for contemplation; the choreography by Ebony Williams, performed by the eloquent dancer Coral Dolphin and the singers (who were impressive in the battle choreography); and the mesmerizing black-and-white animated drawings of Kevork Mourad, in which Jerusalem kept being built, destroyed, and then built again. The program’s love story felt like a metaphor for the fate of the city and its people. Mr. Sulayman delivered the show’s final aria, “Lascia ch’io pianga” from Handel’s “Rinaldo” (a century later than “Combattimento” but based on the same literary source), as an exquisitely naked lament for the loss of freedom. Then, during Ms. Kouyoumdjian’s postlude, the city rose again.

Ms. Waleson writes on opera for the Journal and is the author of “Mad Scenes and Exit Arias: The Death of the New York City Opera and the Future of Opera in America” (Metropolitan).

Anthony Davis’s opera about the iconic Black Power figure starts a nationwide series of engagements in Detroit. 

Davone Tines as Malcolm X (center)PHOTO: MICAH SHUMAKE / DETROIT OPERA

By Heidi Waleson

May 23, 2022 5:22 pm

Detroit

In 1986, when Anthony Davis’s opera “X: The Life and Times of Malcolm X” had its world premiere at the New York City Opera, its title character was still considered a highly polarizing figure, remembered more than two decades after his 1965 assassination as a fiery speaker who talked about race war and white devils. The opera house, a traditionally white environment onstage and off, seemed like an uncomfortable venue for his story. “X” nonetheless sold out its four performances—and then basically disappeared. 

Times have changed. In the last decade, new works by black creators telling the stories of black characters slowly started to appear on opera stages, a trend that accelerated after George Floyd’s murder in 2020 and reached a broad public consciousness when Terence Blanchard’s “Fire Shut Up in My Bones” opened the Metropolitan Opera season last fall. Now “X” has been resurrected by a consortium of opera companies and given its first major, fully staged production since that premiere nearly four decades ago. Detroit Opera (formerly Michigan Opera Theatre), the leader of the consortium, opened the production on May 14; I saw the second performance on May 19, where it got a standing ovation from what appeared to be a substantially black audience. The show will be mounted at Lyric Opera of Chicago, the Metropolitan Opera, Opera Omaha and Seattle Opera over the next three years. “X” will also have a semi-staged performance by Odyssey Opera and the Boston Modern Opera Project on June 17. The opera will then be recorded, for release on BMOP/Sound.

“X” is a significant work, genre-exploding in its form and musical voice. Its subject matter now seems less revolutionary. We have grown accustomed to operas based on modern day public figures, ranging from J. Robert Oppenheimer, the architect of the atomic bomb, to Anna Nicole Smith, the gold-digging Playboy model. Malcolm X fits right in, and the opera concentrates more on his message of black self-empowerment than on his more incendiary rhetoric. 

Charles Dennis as Young Malcolm and Whitney Morrison as Louise, with dancers Christopher Jackson, Jay Staten, Eric Parra and Andre MalcolmPHOTO: MICAH SHUMAKE / DETROIT OPERA

Structured by story author Christopher Davis and librettist Thulani Davis, “X” follows the packed trajectory of Malcolm’s life. Act 1 depicts his Midwestern childhood, upended by his father’s violent death and the breakup of his family; his life as a young street hustler in Boston; and his conversion to Islam in prison. In Act 2, having shed his “slave name” of Little to become Malcolm X, a disciple of Elijah Muhammad of the Nation of Islam, he becomes a leader in the movement. In Act 3, he breaks with the NOI, makes a pilgrimage to Mecca, takes the name El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz, forms his own movement, and is assassinated at the Audubon Ballroom at the age of 39. 

However, the piece is more incantatory than narrative. In many of its scenes, only one named character speaks, backed up by the singers of the vocal ensemble, who echo key words and phrases, and repeat them over and over. In its best moments, the experience is like participating in a ceremony, a slowly unfolding realization of meaning and integration into a community. In the pit, where an improvising jazz ensemble of nine players, including trumpet, saxophones and vibraphone, is embedded into the orchestra, a complex, polyrhythmic pulse drives the evening. 

Mr. Davis’s powerful, hugely varied score cements each vignette in its mood and purpose. Malcolm’s mother, Louise, expresses her terror about the racist assaults the family has experienced in a winding, blues-tinged, chromatic aria; the hustler Street seduces Malcolm into a life of crime with a jaunty swing; the hallucinatory chorus of prisoners chanting “Allahu-Akbar” as Malcolm is drawn toward Islam nods to free jazz and Middle Eastern melisma. In one of the most powerful scenes, as Elijah Muhammad chastises Malcolm for disobedience and for being “too big for the Nation,” the choral repetition of “Betrayal is on his lips” acts like an orchestral bass line, driving the split between the two men. 

Ronnita Miller as Ella, Charles Dennis as Young Malcolm and Victor Ryan Robertson as Street PHOTO: MICAH SHUMAKE / DETROIT OPERA

Bass-baritone Davóne Tines was a gripping, theatrical Malcolm, making the most of the character’s monochromatic, declamatory vocal line and physically embodying his transformation from bitter hustler to magnetic, instinctive spokesman. (The adult Malcolm first appears an hour into the show; his vulnerable child self, predominantly a dance role, was ably performed by the pure-voiced Charles Dennis.) Tenor Victor Ryan Robertson got the best solo music and put it across: He was a sweet-toned seducer as both Street and Elijah Muhammad. Whitney Morrison’s metallic soprano turned shrieky in the higher ranges of Louise’s aria; she did better with the sympathetic loyalty of Betty, Malcolm’s wife. Ronnita Miller’s opulent mezzo made his sister Ella, who rescues him from foster care, a soothing presence. Joshua Conyers was stalwart as Malcolm’s brother Reginald, who introduces him to Islam. The hardworking 12-member chorus could have been sharper in the ensembles. Kazem Abdullah was the adept conductor. 

Theatrically, the opera has some longueurs, particularly when the choral repetitions go on too long. Director Robert O’Hara, best known for “Slave Play,” exacerbated those issues by stressing the opera’s mythic qualities and eliding its specificities of time and place. His interpretation made sense with the text’s rhetoric about Black self-determination; designer Clint Ramos’s Afrofuturist spaceship, suspended at the top of the set, signaled that hopeful future as well as providing a handy canvas for the mostly abstract video projections by Yee Eun Nam. Most of the performers took the curtain call wearing t-shirts with the “X” logo rather than their costumes, further shifting focus from the past to the present.

However, the playing area below the spaceship—an open space backed by a small, gold-framed proscenium stage—had to serve for every location, whether it was a dance hall, a prison or a street corner. As a result, some of the vignettes ran together, as in Act 2, when excerpts from five speeches by Malcolm, each with a slightly different message, seemed piled on top of each other. A riot scene heard in the orchestra, staged with four male dancers, was vague to the point of incomprehensibility; in other scenes, the dancers, choreographed by Rickey Tripp, added useful texture to the stage pictures. In the absence of set changes, Alex Jainchill’s lighting helped define context, as did Dede Ayite’s costumes, which limned Malcolm’s transformation from country bumpkin to hustler in a blue zoot suit to the elegantly tailored dark suit of the final scenes. Here Malcolm, declaring himself a man of peace, comes into his own; ironically, the opera ends abruptly with the gunshots that killed him. 

Ms. Waleson writes on opera for the Journal and is the author of “Mad Scenes and Exit Arias: The Death of the New York City Opera and the Future of Opera in America” (Metropolitan).

Brett Dean’s interpretation of Shakespeare’s tragedy has its North American premiere at the Met. 

Jacques Imbrailo as Horatio and Allan Clayton as HamletPHOTO: KAREN ALMOND / MET OPERA

By Heidi Waleson

May 18, 2022 5:37 pm

New York

I was ready tolove Brett Dean’s “Hamlet,” which had its North American premiere on Friday at the Metropolitan Opera. The video of the show from its 2017 Glyndebourne debut was gripping, a vertiginous journey inside the protagonist’s disintegrating mind. But in the Met’s much larger theater, Neil Armfield’s intimate production receded while Mr. Dean’s cacophonous orchestra, conducted by Nicholas Carter, expanded into a barrage of sound. By the end of the long (105-minute) first act, when Hamlet confronts his mother about her marriage to his uncle, the murderer of his father, it had become nearly impossible to focus on the singers or the action.

Mr. Dean and librettist Matthew Jocelyn pared Shakespeare’s play to 12 scenes, drawing from different versions of the text and mixing up the lines—Hamlet’s first words are “or not to be,” a fragmentary reference to the famous soliloquy that normally appears in Act III. The audience is expected to know the basic story and experience it as Hamlet’s nightmare rather than as a straightforward narration. Familiar snippets of text leap out, not necessarily connected to others. Even in this streamlined version, many words remain, leaving the listener to try to seize and comprehend them as they go by, not always successfully.

But it is the brassy, volcanic orchestra that drives this show. Extra musicians in the boxes next to the stage create antiphonal effects around the audience; electronics provide creepiness for the ghost scenes and others, while a chorus of eight singers in the pit adds an additional stratum of sound. Much of the solo vocal writing is angular and layered into the orchestral texture; the listener is grateful when a musical section catches the ear, such as Hamlet’s descending scale as he tells Ophelia “I did love you once,” or the brief, haunting quartet that echoes Gertrude’s phrase “Mad as the sea.” Other leavening ingredients include the accordion that accompanies the scenes with the players and the gravedigger; the cluelessness of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern is emphasized by making them a brace of twittery countertenors.

As Hamlet, tenor Allan Clayton is on stage in nearly every scene, physically and vocally expressive in conveying the character’s anguish and confusion as he thrashes around in seemingly constant delirium. Hamlet’s only point of stability is his friend Horatio (the sympathetic Jacques Imbrailo), to whom he can speak rationally. In perhaps the opera’s most moving moment, just before the final scene, he tells Horatio that he will win the duel with Laertes, yet his plain, fatalistic delivery suggests that he knows otherwise. The orchestration lets up on its assault for a breath, and the intimate moment carries. More of those would have been welcome.

The rest of the cast was equally committed. Rod Gilfry’s chilly, evil Claudius was mesmerizing. In Ophelia’s mad scene, Brenda Rae, smeared with mud and wearing only a man’s tailcoat and underwear, exploded with rage and sexuality. Sarah Connolly played Gertrude like a woman nearly catatonic with repressed guilt; William Burden made Polonius forthright and proper rather than comical; David Butt Philip was an aggressive Laertes. John Relyea brought a distinctive spin to each of his three roles: the ominous Ghost, the amiable chief Player, and the eerie, whistling Gravedigger. Aryeh Nussbaum Cohen and Christopher Lowrey (Rosencrantz and Guildenstern) were creepily effective as Claudius’s unwitting tools.

Mr. Armfield’s production emphasizes the opera’s theme of mental disintegration. In Ralph Myers’s set, the panels of a plain 18th-century-style room break apart and are reorganized differently for different scenes; sometimes we see their reverse sides, as if we were backstage. Even the ceiling drops to create the gravedigger scene; it rises again as the room is reconstituted for the mayhem of the finale. Jon Clark’s lighting differentiates the supernatural scenes from the “real” ones; cleverly, sometimes the difference isn’t entirely clear. Several characters wear white-face makeup, adding to the disorientation. Alice Babidge’s costumes are inspired by 20th-century styles, with the men in black evening dress and the women in straight-lined, couture satin. Only Hamlet looks different, a creature apart in black T-shirt, jeans and pea coat, and Mr. Clark’s lighting zeroes in on him, the perpetual skeleton at the feast.

In Mr. Armfield’s direction, nothing is ever quite realistic, whether it’s Hamlet leaping around the stage like a child playing hopscotch, or the chorus lined up and facing forward, rigid as automatons. Then, in the final scene, the lights go on and we see where this has all been leading: Hamlet, set up by Claudius to die in his duel with Laertes, kills his tormenters—including Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, who had it coming—one by one. Revenge, and his own death, are both accomplished, and in this version there is no Fortinbras to pick up the pieces. It’s a stark and compelling conclusion, and with a bit less enthusiasm from the pit it might feel more like catharsis and less like a relief.

Ms. Waleson writes on opera for the Journal and is the author of “Mad Scenes and Exit Arias: The Death of the New York City Opera and the Future of Opera in America” (Metropolitan).

György Kurtág’s first opera, adapted from Samuel Beckett’s one-act play and completed at age 91, is filled with compassion for its four aged characters

Frode Olsen

PHOTO: SEBASTIEN MATHE

By Heidi Waleson

May. 12, 2022 5:16 pm

The bleakness of György Kurtág’s opera “Fin de partie” (“Endgame”), now playing at the Paris Opera’s Palais Garnier, could be a commentary on that theater’s ornamental excess: The opera’s four aged characters, trapped in a claustrophobic existence and waiting for an end that never seems to come, seem like the remnants of a civilization that collapsed under the weight of its own exuberant egotism. Yet Mr. Kurtág, who adapted and streamlined Samuel Beckett’s 1957 play into his first opera, which he completed in 2017 at age 91, has found beauty in that bleakness. The composer has deftly amplified and elaborated on the music of Beckett’s original French text with his own, building a new level of emotional resonance. Beckett’s bitterly comic banter remains, but Kurtág’s version is filled with compassion for these characters mired in exhaustion, desolation and especially old age

Hilary Summers and Leonardo Cortellazzi

PHOTO: SEBASTIEN MATHE

They are not easily lovable. The blind, wheelchair-bound Hamm is a crotchety, self-important bully. He has no patience for his bickering, legless parents Nell and Nagg, who are confined to trash cans, or for the servant Clov, who wearily tends to the other three. Yet in Mr. Kurtág’s hands, we can feel for them. As portrayed by the remarkable bass Frode Olsen, Hamm becomes a tragic, Wotan-like figure, acting powerful, yet utterly powerless. When Nell (the touching contralto Hilary Summers) and Nagg (the beguiling high tenor Leonardo Cortellazzi) reminisce about the past, including the tandem-bicycle accident that cost them their legs, their laughter is built into the score, as is the mutual affection that suffuses their banter. The setting of Nell’s recollection of a day on Lake Como draws out the sound of the French words and phrases, such as “On voyait le fond ” (We saw the bottom), to make it even more wistful and elegiac. And when Clov (baritone Leigh Melrose) finally explodes in frustration about the feelings he’s never understood or expressed, we see the humanity of a character who, up until then, was a limping, awkward drudge.

Under the skilled leadership of Markus Stenz, the orchestra of 67 creates a precisely chiseled sound world, with low instruments prevalent, arranged like chamber music rather than in noisy tuttis. The opera starts with bleats of brass; fragments of melody are interspersed with silences. Individual characters sometimes have orchestral partners, like the bassoon that accompanies Nell or the low brass and muted timpani that take Hamm from domineering posturing to anguish. Instruments not commonly found in opera orchestras—a twangy cimbalom, two accordions, a steel drum—have a bracing, astringent effect, folk-like and ironic at the same time.

Leigh Melrose

PHOTO: SEBASTIEN MATHE

Director Pierre Audi devised the incisive production for the opera’s world premiere at La Scala in 2018. It went next to Amsterdam before arriving in Paris, all with the same splendid singers, who play off one another like a family. Designer Christof Hetzer’s stark, black scenery matches the opera’s tone—it shows the exterior of a simple hut, which rotates for every scene, providing a slightly different perspective—and Urs Schönebaum’s lighting is by turns glaring and gloomy. There are just a handful of props—a ladder, an alarm clock, a pole with a hook on the end.

The performers stand out against this desolate backdrop, their vivacity all the more remarkable since three of them use only their upper bodies. Details neatly reinforce character: Hamm’s sleeveless vest gives him a thuggish air, while Nagg’s hair, standing up in tufts, is of a piece with his comedic demeanor and the lengthy Borscht Belt joke that he tells, complete with voice imitations, about a tailor taking three months to make a pair of pants. Clov’s lurching gait and repetitive movements—in the first scene, he carries a ladder to a window, climbs it, descends, carries it to the other window, climbs, descends—make his ability to walk seem less normal than the stasis of the other three. Mr. Melrose is skilled at being off-kilter: At the end, when Clov has been dismissed and has supposedly left the stage, he stands frozen in place, clutching a suitcase and a sheet, poised for flight, throughout Hamm’s final monologue.

Even with these arresting performances, the piece feels slightly too long at two hours. Yet perhaps this is the point. As Hamm says at the outset: “It’s time it ended, and yet I hesitate to end.” Mr. Kurtág’s alluring score keeps the audience trapped in this suspended moment, in sympathy with these people who, despite the profound limitations and miseries of their lives, still want those lives to continue. The orchestral epilogue, which again begins with a wail of brass and fades into silence, hints scarily at the nothingness that is the alternative.

Ms. Waleson writes on opera for the Journal and is the author of “Mad Scenes and Exit Arias: The Death of the New York City Opera and the Future of Opera in America” (Metropolitan).

Le chemin de St. Jacques from Cahors to Moissac and Paris