San Francisco Classical Voice

It's not surprising. Hire a Hollywood director to do operas, and what do you get? The libretto is simply "original property" ripe for supertitle alteration, the original stage directions dispensable. Concentrate on plot above all, no subtleties to confuse the audience and cut back on the gate.

With William Friedkin directing Bluebeard's Castle and Gianni Schicchi, you get the Boston Strangler and a 30's bedroom farce — Bartók be-ghouled and Puccini post-Mussolini. Somehow, the brio of Puccini survives Friedkin's approach, but the profundity of Bartok is trivialized, nearly to the point of disgrace.

Friedkin, director of "The Exorcist," promises in the program notes a "nightmare of obsession, murder and ghosts." No matter that the libretto explicitly states that the former wives are still alive and march out on the stage, with Bluebeard prostrating himself before them. Instead, Friedkin treats Bluebeard as a psychopathic murderer having his designer, Michael Curry, make the wives'ghosts, laughable laundry-line sheets that flit around as puppets, like a Halloween spook show.

Bartók's only opera is meticulously constructed in an asymmetrical arch form keying on the fifth of seven doors. Each door sheds different kinds of light into the black hole of Bluebeard's castle (or psyche). Bluebeard's latest wife Judith wheedles keys for the doors and becomes more interested in the wheedling than what is revealed by the doors.

The action leads to a symbolic interpretation, that this is an allegory of a relationship between a woman and the troubled artist whose vision, when revealed from the depths of his soul, is not grasped by the woman. This leads to a regretful death of the relationship, not an actual death. The woman's failure of understanding is revealed by the fifth door, from which "light flows in a brilliant flood," revealing a "mighty kingdom." In the libretto, Judith "stiffly and absent-mindedly" replies, "Yes, it is a mighty kingdom" — in effect, "So what?" From this moment, all else is down hill.

In the Friedkin production, the arch form so important to Bartók throughout his life is destroyed. Dramatic focus is placed on a literal murder at the conclusion, utilizing a corny John Waters-like device of a red scarf that had been initially brandished in the prolog. Friedkin has Judith being bowled over by the fifth door and screaming away from the audience, dulling the true climax and not revealing her crucial failure of understanding.

Representing the castle with its seven doors is a challenge. Here, Friedkin and set designer Gottfried Pilz represent the succession of doors as a single central door. Since the one door must be repeatedly opened and closed, the dramatic effect of closing multiple doors toward the end, when Judith has lost Bluebeard and he shuts his mind off to her, is lost.

Further, the gradual illumination of the castle as each door lets in a little more light is not possible when one door serves for all. For the first three doors, only colors are revealed. Inconsistently, projected pictures appear behind the later doors, the last one an Auschwitz-like depiction of the previous wives as desiccated corpses. The doors are opened by waves of the hand, forcing multiple excisions of the word "key" from the Supertitle translations. The deletion of the keys makes it impossible to convey Judith's focus on the tangible here and now and contrast it with Bluebeard's more philosophical world view.

Then there is Bluebeard's costume. While Judith is in a bridal white dress of some formality, Bluebeard is garbed in a greatcoat that looks like it was made from an old gray army blanket. Without elegance of dress and demeanor, without any suavity and sensuality, it makes little less sense why Judith would take an interest in this man.

At least costumes improved when the curtain raised on the Puccini, even though the staging was wrong for that opera as well. Fortunately in this opera the staging is far less consequential for Gianni Schicchi not a symbolic affair but a comedy about a shyster and his greedy relatives. In a pointless effort to tie the two operas together, Pilz incorporated the same chandelier and spiral staircase. In the Bartók, the chandelier was on the ground (shades of "Phantom") and the staircase served no useful function unless perhaps to represent the "twisted" mind of the "murderer."

Schicchi was set in a bright art deco apartment. The view of Florence through a huge window lacked any identifying icons of that famous city. Above a balcony to the right hung three portraits, one of which concealed a safe containing the dying Buoso Donati's will. The other two were of Puccini and Richard Strauss (of all people). When Buoso gave up the ghost, one of the Bluebeard laundry-sheets popped up again, eliciting a few laughs.

Perhaps in keeping with the murderous and composer-bashing approach of the first opera, one of the relatives frantically searching for the will knocked the Puccini portrait to the floor. With Schicchi, now a 20th-century subject dressed like Harpo Marx, silly anachronisms emerged, as when he sang of the "newly arrived" Medici.

The flaws in staging and direction were compensated in part by some excellent performances. As Bluebeard, Samuel Ramey started off with a quite irregular vibrato and the direction had him overly restraining himself. Once into the Harpo outfit, Ramey shone like the fifth door should have done His perfect voice and infective antics thoroughly entertained. After Ramey's dour Bluebeard, Ramey's smile as Schicchi was a sight for sore eyes and a delight to the ears. Denyce Graves as Judith in the Bartók was in fine voice regardless of the directorial shackles.

Whitefaced Neno Pervan fell victim to Friedkin's perversity as the "Bard" (properly, a minstrel), being forced to recite a mistranslated prolog while being wobbly suspended on wires. Danielle DeNiese as Lauretta did a creditable job with "O mio babbino caro," and Rolando Villazon was a standout as her lover Rinuccio. The rest of the ensemble worked well together for comic effect — good direction for that at least.

Kent Nagano's conducting handled most of the nuances well, but he misbalanced the crucial sound of the sixth door of tears in the Bartók by not letting the celeste sound through. Further, perhaps at Friedkin's urging, he soft-pedaled the musical climax of the fifth door in favor of shifting the musical climax to the gratuitous asphyxiation of Judith. If he onlyhad put his foot down and instructed Friedkin on the proper approach to Bartók. But I would hazard little luck of persuasion when facing someone in a Hollywood director's throne-chair!

(Jeff Dunn is a freelance critic with a B.A. in music and a Ph.D. inGeologic Education. A composer of piano and vocal music, he is a member ofNACUSA and is a Bay Area correspondent for the journal 21st-Century Music.)

©2002 Jeff Dunn, all rights reserved