| OPERA Go West, Young Sorceress April 30, 2002
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By Janos Gereben
The Federal Ketchup Advisory Board should be pleased: production frequency for Handel's Alcina is similar to the flow of their product. As Ogden Nash put it (about ketchup, not Handel), "You shake and shake and shake the bottle, first none comes, then the lot'll."
Honestly now, when did you last see Alcina? Sure, in the decades after 1735, she showed up, but lately, especially in the US, nada. Comes 2002 and in San Francisco, a lot'll.
Donald Pippin's Pocket Opera revived its 1974 Alcina on Sunday.
The Stuttgart Opera's recent production is coming out on DVD this month.
The San Francisco Opera, now headed by former Stuttgart co-director, Pamela Rosenberg, is bringing that production, including some of the cast, into the War Memorial in November.
I wonder if the SF Opera's vast resources can succeed in improving on Pippin's three-penny version in Temple Emanu-El, an impressive demonstration that talent and passion will win out in the end. Unlike his rather awkward "semi-staged" version of La Rondine and other operas recently, Pippin here went back to the tried-and-true concert presentation, wisely saving the trouble of presenting repeated transformation of a whole island. Six singers, with score in hand, the Pocket Philharmonic of a string quartet, two oboes and Pippin on the harpsichord — c'est tout and, truly, c'est bon. Alcina has a mother lode of musical gold, but it's "tough Handel." Even the Pocket faithful first failed to fill the small Martin Meyer Auditorium and then departed in large numbers as the opera unfolded, however well it was performed. Will SFO fill 3,000 seats, SEVEN times? Cut by more than an hour (by eliminating a minor character, some repetitions, and all recitatives), Alcina still runs three hours, including two brief intermissions. Pippin substituted his inimitably droll narration for the dialog, moving the story forward delightfully.
The story of Alcina desperately needs both being moved and, more, illuminated by Pippin's wit and psychological insight. Still, the Stuttgart way of putting the characters into tuxes and cocktail dresses, have them grope and hit and shoot each other — that's not it. For more on that, see below. Alcina is a kind of companion piece to the much more popular Ariodante. The two operas take episodes from Ariosto's Orlando Furioso, Alcina using the sixth and seventh cantos of the great phantasmagorical epic. The title character rules over an island, populated by animals and vegetation all of which are transformed ex-lovers of the sorceress with big appetite and no merci. As in The Tempest, various characters show up on the island, disguised, transgendered, seeking and despairing. Everybody falls in love with the wrong party. The great hero Ruggiero (sung by a mezzo) fails to recognize his lady love, Bradamante (dressed as a man), even after she reveals herself in two recitatives and several, increasingly angry, arias. When finally she proves her point (sort of) by partially undressing, Pippin's comment was that this "gives enormous scope to the innovative director eager to galvanize an audience." Apparently, Pippin has been too busy to see regietheater operas, which need absolutely no excuse for undressing and stuff.
There may be far more profit in conveying the sense of Ariosto's poetry, which creates sheer beauty from even a dental chart: "As if between two vales, which softly curl, / The mouth with vermeil tint is seen to glow: / Within are strung two rows of orient pearl, / Which her delicious lips shut up or show. / Of force to melt the heart of any churl, / However rude, hence courteous accents flow: / And here that gentle smile receives its birth, / Which opes at will a paradise on earth." Isn't that more sexy than grope-bang-shoot? There is no need to disclose more of the story, but you may want to know that it includes some colorful aborted transformations, such as Alcina toying with the idea of turning Bradamante into a mongoose (which, I thought, was known only in India at Handel's time) and Alcina's wanting to become an ocean wave herself. As in Hansel und Gretel, all former humans are restored in the end, en masse.
For the first time in my experience, here was a uniformly superb Pocket Opera cast, without a weak link, and with two sopranos SFO should be lucky to have — Karen Anderson in the title role and Marcelle Dronkers as Morgana. Anderson's big, bright sound lacks warmth in her otherwise impressive upper register, but Dronkers has it all: precision, projection, intensity, a consistent legato and a vibrato both pleasant to the modern ear and acceptably Baroque. Mezzos Elspeth Franks (Ruggiero) and Heidi Waterman (Bradamante) both managed to go beyond the constraints of a concert performance, acting through their voices, with small gestures. Franks has an unusually bright soprano top to a genuine mezzo voice. Waterman has gorgeous middle and low notes, but minor problems with agility in the higher range. Tenor Baker Peeples and bass Stan Case did well with the roles of Oronte and Melisso (the latter cut to near-insignificance in the opera against its prominence in the poem). Except for a beautiful cello obbligato in the third act by Teressa Adams, the Pocket Philharmonic was not at its usual best. The violins, especially, ranged between inadequate and unidiomatic. Some of the blame must go to Pippin, who is modest to a fault. In his self-effacing ways, he planted himself upstage at the harpsichord, behind and singers and, worse, behind the band. To make his frequent comments, he walked downstage, then returned to his seat, breaking continuity and concentration each time. As a result, there were serious entrance and intonation problems. It's amazing what havoc a small logistical error can create.
The DVD of the Stuttgart production (Arthaus, EuroArts) has no musical problems, only visual pollution/distraction, with piles of broken furniture and pointless/puzzling/attention-dividing objects. The singers are made to move constantly, so they push, pull, pace, run, jump, grope, throw objects at each other. For this, they had TWO dramaturges. Roy Goodman conducts, Jossi Wieler and Sergio Morabito are the directors; sets and costumes by Anna Vielbrock. This is the same production team that's coming to San Francisco, with the addition of Anna Viebrock as production designer. There is good news about the cast, also duplicated between the videotaped production and the one due here in November (making their local debut): Catherine Naglestad (the superb, vocally-theatrically stunning Alcina), Alice Coote (Ruggiero), Catriona Smith (Morgana), Helene Schneiderman (Bradamante), Sarah Castle (Oberto) all sing exquisitely, under the same impossible staging conditions San Francisco got a taste of at the SF Opera Center's La finta giardiniera. Bernhard Schneider is the Stuttgart Oronte, the role to be sung by Toby Spence here; Michael Ebbecke is the Melisso on the DVD, David Pittsinger has the role in San Francisco. A funny note in the sad news about the staging is that Coote, dressed as a man, looks like a twin brother to Ian Bostridge.
(Janos Gereben, a regular contributor to www.sfcv.org, is arts editor of the Post Newspaper Group. His e-mail address is janos451@earthlink.net.) ©2002 Janos Gereben, all rights reserved |