San Francisco Classical Voice

OPERA REVIEW

Solid Decline

December 4, 2004

By Michael Zwiebach

Tom Dean and Lori Zook's determined, wildly optimistic Oakland Opera Theater, operating out of the tiny Metro Theater on Broadway and 2nd Avenue in Oakland, continues to swim in waters where companies with higher overheads will only go wading. On Saturday night they brought out their production of Igor Stravinsky's tuneful, darkly comic fable The Rake's Progress, the first production of this masterpiece in the Bay Area in four years. While the score's fiendishly difficult cross-rhythms occasionally caused problems, the overall artistic result should be called a success.

Tom Dean directed this production in a style that surely would have bothered Stravinsky � which is all to the good. Stravinsky and his librettists, W.H. Auden and Chester Kallman, based their opera on a series of engravings by the eighteenth-century English artist and social observer, William Hogarth. The engravings depict a morally lax young man's slide into sin and depravity, ending with his incarceration in a London madhouse. Some productions, beginning with the premiere at Venice's Teatro La Fenice in 1951, emphasize the frame of the story, distancing the audience from the characters. Stravinsky's offbeat word-setting (literally and figuratively) and Auden and Kallman's verbal virtuosity also encourage a formal view of the drama.

But in spite of all the elaborate precautions, audiences end up emotionally invested in the characters and tend to want to follow the story. Dean's production, updated to 1970s New York City and suburbs, allowed for that and presented the action in familiar � if not exactly cozy � surroundings. The three-tiered set designed by Garrett Lowe was like an enormous paned window that disclosed multiple rooms simultaneously. The street scenes and Sellem's auction were played in front of the set on the theater's main floor. It's an ideal way of preserving some of the show's comic distance in the new context.

The lighter side

Dean was at his best inventing comic bits, and some of the ideas were terrific: Ann Trulove riding a bicycle to New York was both a gag and true to her character. Sellem's auction, conducted on the TV set of "Let's Rake a Deal" was worth a smile, as was the "Bred-o-matic" � a microwave oven, set permanently to 6:66. The chorus put over some disco-like moves in the brothel scene, capped by Tom Rakewell's Travolta-esque entrance.

Some of Dean's decisions about character were less successful, but he was helped out by a fine set of principals. Jonathan Smucker's Tom Rakewell was completely airheaded but impossible not to like, especially with his impish grin. Smucker has crystal-clear tone with an easy top range and very light vibrato. The best thing about his vocal performance was his absolutely sure and accurate pitch. With heavier voices projecting into a larger space, you won't get the same clarity and discrete pitch on all the notes of the runs that Smucker provided. In his hands, the melodies were handled fluently and lyrically, never sounding difficult or overly angular, as they sometimes can.

Tom's true love Anne was played with engaging directness by Erina Newkirk. Newkirk's voice is a well-known quantity in the Bay Area, and she also negotiated Stravinsky's tricky vocal writing with aplomb. Although she was taxed by some of the low notes in her showpiece first-act aria, "No word from Tom," she sang it thrillingly, the voice smooth and steady throughout. (It's rare to find a singer who gets through that aria perfectly without the aid of digital editing.)

Diminished effect

The devil, Nick Shadow, was played by bass Martin Bell. Bell's voice has the captivating suavity necessary for the tempter who leads Tom to ruin, but he wasn't well-served by Dean's direction. The entire show lacked a sense of menace. It's not that Bell can't provide that musically, and the curse he hurled at Tom in his last scene was pretty terrifying. Rather, the problem was that Dean didn't attempt to deal with the uncanny elements in the show. Lines like "Dream, for when you wake you die" have an obvious edge to them that wasn't reflected in Bell's demeanor. In the same brothel scene, Nick turns back the clock to demonstrate to Tom that "you may repent at leisure." Stravinsky stops the forward momentum of the scene and puts that line in the bass' low register. Nick needs to be a little more predatory at this moment.

Anne's father, Trulove, is the opposite end of the moral spectrum, the practical man of business who has no patience with the laziness he perceives in Tom. Cliff Romig was a powerful anchor in the role, both vocally and physically. But we first see him in his undershirt, with a can of Foster's beer in his hand, watching Sunday football. This is exactly the wrong statement about the character. If Dean were looking for comedy in the character, he could have busied him with something, like a garden.

Alexis Lane Jensen was a vocally secure Baba the Turk, in spite of troubles timing a few vocal entrances. Baba is, unfortunately, straight from cartoons: the person in the role has to be funny and Jensen wasn't.

The chorus, trained by Susan Swerdlow, had a hard time with entrances and the counterintuitive rhythms. Still, they were bright and energetic. The orchestra consisted of twelve single players, which resulted in some unavoidable problems of balance and often didn't do justice to the score's complicated textures. But otherwise the players gave a fine and polished performance. Musical director Deirdre McClure chose humane tempos and held the show together musically.