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OPERA REVIEW
After 20 Years, Delilah and Samson
September 22, 2001
Photo by Ken Friedman
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By Thomas Grey
Appropriately lavish production values and the similarly sumptuous voice of mezzo-soprano Olga Borodina provide ample rewards in San Francisco Opera's current staging of Camille Saint-Sa”ns's entertaining, if sometimes creaky, biblical extravaganza Samson et Dalila that opened Saturday. Utilizing the 1980 production by the French director Nicolas Jo”l, set designer Douglas W. Schmidt, and costume designer Carrie Robbins, the current revival looks new in many respects (so far as memory serves), with new stage direction by Sandra Bernhard.
Borodina's performance as the Philistine siren, Dalila (Delilah) fully lived up to the high standards of the 1980 performance, with its classic pairing of Placido Domingo and Shirley Verrett in the title roles. Sergei Larin, as Samson, however, was no match for Domingo in his long-time signature role. Larin did his best to rise to the occasion in the climactic moments at the end of Act 2 (the great scene of Samson's seduction and betrayal) and the final cataclysm in Act 3. Vocally more consistent were the baritone Timothy Noble and the German bass René Pape. Noble played the extensive, if dramatically somewhat inert, role of the High Priest of Dagon. Pape was his counterpart, the "Old Hebrew" who serves as the voice of Samson's conscience, attempting to counteract the lure of Delilah's nefarious charms.
A blue and gold scrim-curtain with Assyrian motifs, framed by an elaborately constructed proscenium arch of pillars and bas-relief in the same vein, set the tone for a visually opulent production. It takes its cue from the lusher side of Saint-Sa”ns's score, with its late-Romantic orientalism and rich, post-Berlioz orchestration. The other side of the score, drawing on the oratorio tradition of Handel and Mendelssohn, occasionally found itself upstaged — but perhaps gratefully so — by the combined effects of sets, costumes, and lighting. Thus the sober lament of the enslaved Hebrew people at the opening of Act 1 emerges from the deeply saturated hues of dawn breaking over the desert landscape, dominated by the Philistine temple (pitched at an alarmingly expressionist angle) and a monumental winged idol. Similarly, an eclipse of the sun, accompanied by ominous grey mists, warning the Philistines of the power of the Hebrew God, easily overpowered the stolid reproach by the Philistine satrap, Abimelech (Scott Wilde), to the rebellious Jews.
Elsewhere, production and performance values maintained a good balance, especially in the second and musically strongest act. The sultry atmosphere of the orchestral prelude, depicting the setting sun and hints of the gathering storm that will later erupt at the denouement, was exquisitely captured in background projections. Throughout the act, Thomas J. Munn's lighting scheme accomplished wonders. Dappled purple shadows and lowering storm-clouds accompanied the ominous nocturne of Delilah's short aria, "Amour, viens aider ma faiblesse." Douglas W. Schmidt's design for Delilah's elegant tent-like abode aptly mixed desert exoticism with a whiff of the belle-époque Parisian bordello. In keeping with the décor and the musical tone of the act, Olga Borodina emphasized the darker, sultry hues of Delilah's part, holding much of her power in reserve. (Even at Delilah's entrance in the "flower" scene of Act 1, "Voici le printemps," Borodina immediately commanded attention through richness and depth of timbre rather than volume.) During the extended seduction of Samson, Borodina offered a virtuosic modulation of dynamic-expressive levels. At first her singing was light and cajoling, pulling back at times to a near whisper before gradually building Delilah's famous siren-song, "Mon coeur s'ouvre à ta voix," to its irresistible climax. Sandra Bernhard's staging kept Samson mostly upstage, helping balance Sergei Larin against Borodina. A gradual exchange of positions cleverly plays out Delilah's domination of the Hebrew hero, inexorably reduced to a kind of infatuated doll or marionette under her expert manipulation. Larin offered an effective account of Samson's declamatory lament opening Act 3, as the blinded, powerless captive of the Philistines toils at the millstone. The setting in a great, multi-vaulted Piranesi-like dungeon was, on the face of it, a bit counterintuitive. A subterranean millstone? But the scene, as such, was impressive. The light, streaming down from a large, round grated aperture overhead, created an affecting image of the "lumière du ciel" that is now denied him, and in some sense became a displaced image of his own blinded eyes.
The interior of the temple of Dagon provided an appropriately campy setting for the famous "Bacchanal," though the massive serpentine idol of Dagon and a series of other sculpted images and lamps left little space for Michael Smuin's alternately sensuous and frenetic choreography. The collapse of the Temple of Dagon at the end was impressively managed: two columns are dislodged by Samson, followed by an avalanche of debris with flames in the background, projected on the scrim. What was designed to create a quick and agreeable frisson or coup de theatre had, in the context of recent events, a distinctly unsettling effect. (In retrospect, even the piquant orientalisms of Saint-Sa”ns's score, such as the improvisatory "muezzin-call" or the slinky "snake-charmer" theme of the Bacchanal, seemed to have become more problematic, even for those of us not previously invested in post-colonial critiques of such repertoire.) Under the direction of conductor Emanuel Joel (no relation, apparently, to production director Nicolas Jo”l, though also French born and based), the San Francisco Opera orchestra did full justice to Saint-Sa”ns's expertly crafted score. It ranges from those "piquant orientalisms" to passages of calm dignity and pathos, and the seductive lyricism of Delilah's music, always the core of the opera's appeal. The part written for the obsolete "ophicleide" that doubles Abimilech's angry denunciation of the rebellious Hebrews in Act 1 was performed with panache by principal trombonist Macdowell Kenley on a baritone horn. The San Francisco Opera chorus served well the extensive choral component of the work, on and offstage, and singing and acting, except for, sometimes, the difficult job of projecting clearly the French text (especially difficult in the slower, quieter numbers). The current production treats Samson more in the epicurean vein in which it was conceived, rather than broaching any of the ethical and political problems one might develop from it. Nonetheless, it made a strong case for the opera's continuing stageworthiness and ample musical rewards. (Thomas Grey is Associate Professor of Music at Stanford University. He is author of Wagner's Musical Prose: Texts and Contexts, and editor of the Cambridge Opera Handbook on The Flying Dutchman and the Cambridge History of Opera.) ©2001 Thomas Grey, all rights reserved |
