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OPERA REVIEW
The Pilgrim's Progress June 16, 2006
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Double Blessing By Mark Alburger
Like Athena or Venus, a new music-drama company has emerged well-nigh fully
formed — but the classical allusions may best be left aside, given the group's name and its first undertaking: Trinity Lyric Opera in the West Coast
premiere of The Pilgrim's Progress (1949) by Ralph Vaughan Williams.
The production, which opened on June 16 for a three-day run at the Dean Lesher
Regional Center for the Arts in Walnut Creek, was a mostly solid undertaking
that made a case for the composer as one of the most important voices of his
time.
Setting John Bunyan's 17th century bestseller (second only to the Bible in
its day) had been in Vaughan Williams's mind since at least 1906, but it took
more than 40 years for him to complete the work, to
less-than-completely-enthusiastic reception at Covent Garden in 1951. Characterized by its creator as a
"morality," rather than an "opera," the work has some relationship to both G.F.
Handel's oratorios and Gustav Mahler's Symphony No. 8 second-movement setting
of the final scene from Goethe's Faust, as a piece straddling the sacred and secular, the spiritual and story-driven.
In Trinity's production, a gorgeous set — from production designer (and
principal violist) Patrick Kroboth, featuring a pseudo-stained-glass floor and
six reflective columns — set the stage for the capable bass Kirk Eichelberger, whose John Bunyan functions almost as a solemn Kurt Weillian ballad singer to frame the drama. Music Director John Kendall Bailey was a sure hand throughout the evening, shaping his orchestra (including lithe on-stage harpist Agnes Lee) into something far beyond a mere pickup ensemble in most cases. His additional pre-performance work as choirmaster was also telling, as the chorus provided beautiful sonics and visuals throughout. If this is heaven, count me in.
Certainly Jason Detwiler, as the Pilgrim, wants in, too, and he succeeds,
carrying off this demanding musical and physical role with beauty, grace,
power, and sympathy (try keeping your poise with that backpack/symbolic-musical "burden" on your back). His Evangelist counterpart, Jason Sarten, proved an able and reverent second, and four singers (Andrew Park, John Burton, Mike Rhone, and Joe Raymond Meyers) provided comic relief as the Pliable, Obstinate, Mistrust(ing), and Timorous neighbors. The Three Shining Ones (Diane Squires Weber, Nicole Takesono, and Michele Detwiler) lived up to their names both in vocal prowess and physicality, here abetted as throughout by costume manager Dannie Gober.
Much in the method, but not the manner, of Sergei Prokofiev, who recycled
music from his religiously provocative Flaming Angel into a Symphony No. 3, Vaughan Williams, not seeing a production of Pilgrim at hand, incorporated much of Act I into his Symphony No. 5. Other examples come to mind, including Harry Partch's preliminary sketches for Delusion of the Fury into And on the Seventh Day Petals Fell in Petaluma. In each case, for those familiar with the staged and nonstaged versions of the music, happy and weird associations abound and light is further shed on a composer's character.
Vaughan Williams — laborer on The English Hymnal (1906), Fantasia on Christmas Carols (1912), and Job (1930) — was characterized by his second wife, Ursula, as "an atheist during his later years at Charterhouse and at Cambridge though later he drifted into a cheerful agnosticism." One would never guess this from Act I, Scene 2 (The House Beautiful), which is so over-the-top heavenly, "what-ho-cheerio" positively English (Edward Elgar and Vaughan Williams crony Gustav Holst come to mind), and yet dramatically inert, that one wonders where the composer can possibly go from this eternal happy end. Turns out, however, that there are Robert Frostian miles to go before one sleeps in eternal rest. Who is on the Lord's side?, Who will take the straight-and-narrow path?, Here am I, send me — and off the Pilgrim goes in shining armor, white robe, and magic weapons to an "Off to see the Wizard / Labors of Hercules" adventure. Amazing how the archetypes collide. In Acts II and III, Vaughan Williams confirms that this is decidedly of the theatre, rather than the cathedral. The former, staged perhaps as the big man intended, featured giant shadows of a Lord of the Rings Balrog / Don Giovanni Commandant devil by the name of Apollyon (take that, Greek mythology), with the amplified resonance of the wondrous Jon Minagro, who plays malevolence wickedly well, whether he is cast as the Police Inspector in Giancarlo Menotti's The Consul or an ancient Egyptian in Philip Glass's Akhnaten. The chorus writhed black and red on the stage in a marked departure from their holy white linens in Act I, as the Anti-Keening Men and Women. Act III further confirmed that wanton is simply more fun. While ears and eyes can glaze at times in the holy rolling of Act I, the evil chromatic fight music of Act II and Act III's Vanity Fair that begins the fare after intermission is compelling indeed, the latter's silly "Buy! Buy! Buy" birdie text notwithstanding. Virtually all the supporting characters get their opportunity to schtik and shine (well, given the context, maybe simmer is better), including the oily Lord Lechery (Adam Flowers), vain Worldly Glory (Michael Mendelsohn), and the knockouts Madam Wanton and Madam Bubble (Nicole Takesono and Nanette McGuinness), plus Pontius Pilate and Simon Magus (Ron Kistler and Raymond Herbert). Eichelberger was particularly compelling as his own evil twin Lord Hate-Good, and, my, doesn't the Pilgrim come across as a bit of a prude after all. One wonders what Ursula (decidedly Vaughan Williams's junior), whose good-wishes note to the company was included in the program, would have thought of it all. Detwiler is thrown in jail for being a party-pooper, but, as in a couple of old Star Trek episodes, he's got a get-out-of-jail-free card, and off he goes again to the Delectable Mountains. The pace slows despite fine contributions from A Woodcutter's Boy (Max Vicas) and Three Shepherds (Minagro, Park, and Nikolaus Schiffman). Some of this represents the earliest music Vaughan Williams wrote for the morality, and indeed 40 years seems to pass as these Biblical standbys get their due. A Celestial Messenger (Joe Raymond Meyers) nicely delivers an arrow in the chest to the Pilgrim, and with the final river's crossing (the Styx), we're home. Vaughan Williams and this production do not linger at the House Beautiful gates this time, and the final transfiguration is more that of rest than triumph. The ambiguity extends to the opera, of course. As Vaughan Williams said after its premiere: "They don't like it, they won't like it, and perhaps they never will like it, but it's the sort of opera I wanted to write, and there it is." He said something similar about his Symphony No. 4 (1934) years before, to the effect of, "I'm not sure I even like it. But it's what I intended to write." In any case, again in reference to the morality, "Take it or leave it." But the achievement of Trinity Opera is less ambiguous. Here is a new company, evidently aided and abetted by Opera San Jose, given notice in the credits, that is making fine progress as pilgrims for music drama.
(Mark Alburger is an award-winning ASCAP composer of concert music published by New Music, editor-publisher of 21st-Century Music Journal, oboist, pianist, vocalist, and music critic.)
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Jason Detwiler
Jason Sarten (Evangelist,
Kirk Eichelberger (John Bunyan,
John Kendall Bailey (Principal Conductor,