San Francisco Classical Voice

OPERA REVIEW

Opera Very Noir

June 12, 2005

Misha Didyk (Gherman)

Katarina Dalayman (Lisa)

Katherine Rohrer (Paulina)
Katarina Dalayman (Lisa)

Photos by Larry Merkle

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It was with Tchaikovsky's Pique Dame that the San Francisco Opera opened its 2005 summer season. Imported from the Welsh National Opera, this production divests the work of its original historical trappings, imperial Russia, and moves it to a land of the bizarre and macabre. The opera here is compressed to its core dialectic and is presented as a stunning work of theater, albeit with some miscalculations. Musically, conductor Donald Runnicles and his very excellent ensemble of singers and players, sustain the visual with spellbinding music making. This is a must see, and ranks with recent Bay Area artistic milestones like Robert Wilson's Black Rider and the Dublin Medea.

Adapted from a Pushkin novella, the story tells of an old countess, ("the Venus of Moscow") who is known to possess the secret of the three winning cards, knowledge she gained by agreeing to an assignation with a nobleman. Obsessed by the compulsion to learn the woman's secret, a young impoverished officer, Gherman, seduces her grandaughter Lisa in order to gain access to the Countess. Lisa is convinced of his love and consents to a tryst. She gives him a key, which will lead him through the Countess's room on his way to hers. He hides behind a screen in the old woman's bedroom as she goes through her evening ablutions, where, in Pushkin's words, "he is witness to the repulsive mysteries of her toilette." When he suddenly appears, she dies of fright. The Countess's ghost subsequently tells him the secret of the infallible cards: three, seven, and ace. Lisa becomes aware of what her gullibility has wrought, and commits suicide. In full-blown madness, his personality devoured by his obsession, Gherman gambles everything he has, only to lose on the very last card, which turns up . . . the queen of spades, the card of death. He believes that Countess has tricked him, and then he too commits suicide.

Over and over the directors Richard Jones and John Macfarlane careen head-on towards the dark and surreal; all gesticulation is lean, stilted, the sets black on black scrims, alternating with dilapidated claustrophobic rooms. The proportions on stage are often overly small, unbalanced, crammed. The stage designer shows us the work through the distorted lens of surrealism. It functions as a stark commentary on the lonely entrapment of addiction and corresponds to the hallucinogenic quality of the music. An adventurous use of false perspective in the officer's bedroom allows us to see him in bed from "above." Here he receives the ghostly message from the dead Countess, giving him the secret of the cards. Gherman runs off to the gambling table wild-eyed, still dressed in his pajamas like a desperate junky looking for his next fix. Other telling images: the chorus wooshes like the wind or a flock of birds from one side of the stage to the other, only to turn and enter again, creating a sense of derangement; the Countess crosses the stage at unexpected moments, staring ahead, finger pointed, as if in a hypnotic state. Visually the whole often looks like Pina Bausch meets Edward Hopper.

Chalk it up to the directors' over-inventiveness, but some major moments are spoiled — the suicide of Lisa, for one, where her means of death is "asphyxiation by plastic bag." The repetitious appearance of the ghost of the Countess as a huge skeleton, first in the officer's bed, and then through the skylight over the gambling table, causes the audience to titter. Ordinary awareness pokes in and the spell is temporarily broken for the audience; as well, too, it must be dispiriting for the singers to hear laughter during their most heart-wrenching scenes. One might think that directors of such facile imagination could come up with something better.

By way of generous recompense there is a genuine "coup de théâtre" in the act 2 ball scene which takes place during the divertissement "alla Mozart." Instead of the customary pastoral allegory, the directors create a puppet show, on a gaming table, stage front, in which the plot of the opera and its anguished characters are portrayed. The puppeteers from Lunatique Fantastique move the grotesque puppets as if by magic while, in the background, the singers dub in the feelings. The overall effect is eerie and fantastical.

The puppet Countess
Misha Didyk (Gherman)

(Olivia Stapp is an opera director, formerly artistic director of Festival Opera (1995-2001), and has had a major international career as a soprano.)

©2005 Olivia Stapp, all rights reserved