|
OPERA REVIEW
Mozart, Shmozart! Opera Center Goes Euro-trash April 19, 2002
|  By Olivia Stapp
The stage director of San Francisco Opera Center's La Finta Giardiniera, Roy Rallo, assures us in his program notes that the eighteen-year-old Mozart and his librettist "quite successfully explore the nature of sadism, self hatred, murderous jealousy and downright insanity, alongside the more conventional expressions of affection, and freely mix the comic with the macabre." Who knew?
For 257 years everybody has mistakenly thought this was a buoyant, stylish Mozartian free-for-all: some commedia, some stock characters, and some beloved 17th-century theatrical conventions (e.g., disguises, sexual ambiguities, masquerades, and a parade of mistaken identities). There is no real story line; instead, small scenes, each defined by its own musical completeness, expressing the particular sentiments of a character, in comic or dramatic style. And (as Rallo assures us further) here the seria (serious) arias are "free of the vocal excess that had come to plague the genre." Thank God!
(I guess that Idomeneo's entrance aria, Donna Elvira's "Mi tradi," and all the other spectacular seria arias Mozart later wrote that included fioritura were consequences of his unfortunate succumbing to this plague. But what could he do? The art of singing was at its dazzling apogee and, after all, even Mozart had to make a living!)
Rallo and his "creative team" — which includes himself, conductor Judith Yan, scenic designer Marsha Ginsberg, costumist Anna Bjornsdotter, and the lighting designer Geoff Korf — go about creating, in Rallo's words, "entertainment that speaks honestly to the intellect and to the heart and soul of what it is to be human." (I guess that in this production dedicated to "showcasing the 2002 Adler Fellows," the singers are not considered to be integral to the creative process; they merely serve "the concept." Whose showcase is it anyway?) He and Ms. Ginsberg create a "vernacular" space: a bright green room in what might be a low-class community center, run-down, grungy, suitable for beer-weddings. All the "honest" details are there: the Naugahyde couch and the TV in the lounge, the folding banquet tables, paper cups, plastic table cloths, sports trophies, balloons, silver masking tape to mend the run-down carpet, fire extinguishers, etc., and a few houseplants for the "pretend lady gardener" to trowel around in. Korf is an ingenious lighting artist and manages to give the whole the desired air of pervasive squalor. The costumist aligns suitably with "the concept" by dressing the singers in "Goodwill-absurd" style: mismatched argyle socks combined with men's spectator golf shoes and a black lace dress, for example, comprise the chosen ensemble for Arminda, the Milanese lady. The talented conductor, Judith Yan, relentlessly pressed her own "concept" of the tempi forward, giving neither leave to individual singer's scenic predicaments and vocal physiology, nor room for the thrilling vocalization that these very gifted singers had it well within their capacity to give. Surely, when she conducted at the National Ballet of Canada, she had to be aware of how fast the dancers were able to dance. Why then not afford these wonderful young singers the same consideration? All proper opera conductors do this.
Rallo's decided aim to show the nature of sadism was clear from the beginning of the work to its very climax. The singers are made to crawl, roll around on the floor, be upside down, backward, take their clothes off, be blindfolded, tied up and have all manner of indiscriminate sex while trying to sing Mozart's vocally demanding music. The excellent tenor, Brian Anderson, the Count Belfiore, is conceptualized here as a washed-out, laid-back guy who is afflicted with priapism and likes to sing great arias in his boxer shorts. In one scene Rallo's in-depth staging has the Count lick the golf shoes Arminda is wearing, and then let out with a healthy bark. Saundra DeAthos, the Marchese Violante, sang gorgeously in spite of the staged contortions, pitiless tempi and black-gartered corset imposed upon her. Sparkling Greta Feeney (Serpetta) shone vocally and, fortunately, gave some needed energy to the evening with her natural buoyancy. She is wonderful! The Mayor, the rich-voiced Brad Alexander, was quirkily frenetic and pulled off what he had to do with professionalism. The rest of the cast seemed dispirited and born tired: erotomania didn't seem to sit well with them.They had to disrobe repeatedly, but Kwang Shik Pang (Nardo), Michelle Wrighte (Ramiro), and Tiffany Abban (Arminda) still sang exquisitely, undeterred by the distracting, aimless meanderings usually going on during important arias. If you love Mozart, but are so bourgeois as to expect operatic staging to have, if not all, at least some small reflection of the values and beauty that the music exemplifies — Go! But close your eyes. These great young singers in this rarely-performed work are worth hearing. If on the other hand you want a taste of the already-passé 1970's German countercultural theatrical style — Go! But let's face it, it's "déjà vu all over again." If you're in step with modernists, deconstructionists and the like, who aim to discredit and degrade every absolute value — Go! But close your ears. The vitality, brilliance, and lucid musical intellect that was Mozart's might confuse you into believing that absolute beauty actually does exist. (Olivia Stapp is an opera director, formerly artistic director of Festival Opera (1995-2001), and has had a major international career as a soprano.) ©2002 Olivia Stapp, all rights reserved |
