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OPERA REVIEW
September 18, 2005
Pat Kirk
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By Janos Gereben
Salem's horrendous late 17th century witch trials begat Arthur Miller's
melodramatic play, The Crucible, in 1953, with clear and
obvious references to the machinations of Sen. Joseph McCarthy and the House Un-American Activities Committee. Miller's play begat Robert
Ward's relentlessly overemotional opera of the same title in 1961, now
produced by Opera San Jose, even as the local alternative media mutters
darkly about the story's possible connections with the era of the Patriot
Act.
Can a straightforward account of history such as this cause the
scratching of heads? The linear progression may be clear, but how do
you square "horrendous," "melodramatic" and "relentlessly
overemotional?" Two important answers to that solve the problem as if
there were none. The audience Sunday afternoon in the California
Theater had its hands busy with thunderous applause — a rather
amazing event at a contemporary opera. As to Opera San Jose, it just
took those potentially disparate elements of the work, and did its
collective very best with them... and it.
Both Miller and, especially, Ward tend to turn the spectacle of a society
turning plain evil of fear and superstition, unleashing false accusations
and the destruction of lives, into a potboiler, an overwrought soap. Text,
characters, music combine for a high level of hysteria, spiced with a bit
of sex and encouraging characters to lurch about as if just dropping in
from a local production of "The Drunkard." There are few resting points
in the play, and none in the opera, so the company's successful
production must receive A's for both effort and stamina.
With a practical and wise invitation to San Jose Rep's Timothy Near,
Opera San Jose secured an outstanding theater director to take charge of
Salem-in-the-South-Bay, and she keeps the melodrama in motion,
turning the (mostly) young singers into veritable thespians. In the pit,
Anthony Quartuccio presides over a hardworking orchestra, which does
equally well with the score's variable nature, be it symphonic, folk, the
blues or Broadway — all sounding pretty much the same, and very
pleasant.
Elizabeth Poindexter's authentic (if anachronistically clean) 17th century costumes do wonders for Kent Dorsey's spacious set design, which combines Danish modern surfaces with stage-high glass tubes lit from within. Surely, the tubes "mean something," but no luck so far finding what that may be. The large cast — mostly company regulars — does admirable work, musically, dramatically and, up to a point, in diction. Obviously well coached and trying their best, the singers are helped in the all-important task of communicating the text by supertitles (usually serving translations, but here presenting the English text). Ward's vocal writing is so difficult that if you look away from the supertitles, you'll have a hard time figuring out what is being sung — and that's not a diction problem. In the Sunday afternoon cast, the husband-and-wife duo of Jason and Michele Detwiler sang John Proctor and his wife, casting a spell during their long, pivotal duet, with the weight of drama (and similarity of situation) reminiscent of Fricka subjugating Wotan in the name of "what is right." Sandra Rubalcava sang and acted memorably the central character of Abigail Williams (whose passions and treachery, rather than the rot in Salem society, make the Miller-Ward world go around). Rubalcava, the Detwilers, and many of their colleagues make Opera San Jose a special place to hear still-young, already-accomplished singers on the stage. However nasty characters the Rev. Samuel Parris and Thomas Putnam may be, Christopher Bengochea and Douglas Nagel made them sound good, although both were moving rather awkwardly. Susanna Uher gave a committed performance as Mary Warren, the girl whose changes of the story and testimony create the story's pivotal shifts. Among the score of singers, Judith Skinner's scary Tituba, and Jesse Merlin's and Mary Anne Stanislaw's Francis and Rebecca Nurse (the couple representing sanity and goodness) did outstanding work. Among the "good" and the "bad" cardboard figures, it was refreshing to observe (and hear) Carlos Aguilar's Reverend John Hale, acting and singing the play's least predictable character impressively. For performance schedule, see http://operasj.org/crucible0506.html.
(Janos Gereben, a regular contributor to www.sfcv.org, is arts editor of
the Post Newspaper Group. His e-mail address is janosg@gmail.com)
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Jason Detwiler (John Proctor)
Jason Detwiler (John Proctor)
Judith Skinner (Tituba)
