San Francisco Classical Voice

Opera in the feminist and post-modern manner came to Marin County last week in performances of the works of British composer Judith Weir. A four-day retrospective of Weir's music, including four operas, was produced by the College of Marin's Music Department. Chamber music and a selection of films by and about her were also presented.

The two Weir operas seen on Saturday, the third day of the festival, were fairly strong post-modern indictments of traditional male protagonists. The hour-long work, Heaven Ablaze in His Breast, with its strong libretto and uninhibited musical setting, was the festival's outstanding work. Basing the opera on an E.T.A. Hoffmann story which was also a source for Offenbach's Tales of Hoffmann, Weir composed a score that highlights the fantastic, nightmarish character of the text, using comic parody, eerie choral sound effects, and mercurial textural changes.

The stage was filled with movement, as twelve characters and a supporting chorus were guided with superb skill by director John Sowle, imaginatively evoking the work's surreal atmosphere. The composer's eclectic and inventive musical setting was ably played by duo pianists Paul Smith and Jean Alexis Smith. Tenor Michael Mendelsohn, as the poet-student Nathanael, and soprano Linda Noble, as the mechanical doll Olympia with whom he falls in love, gave good accounts of these leading roles. Actor Dan Carbone was extremely effective in the twin speaking parts of the spooky Sandman and the frenzied Dr. Coppelius.

A twelve-minute opera for unaccompanied soprano,King Harald's Saga,was first on the program. The work is drawn from a medieval account of the Norse king's failed invasion of England, just a few weeks prior to the Norman Conquest of 1066. Besides representing eight different characters, the singer begins each of the opera's three brief "acts" with a spoken prologue summarizing what she is about to sing. Marcia Gronewald gave an expressive, beautifully focused performance of this fascinating and demanding piece. Composed in a modern though tonal style, the vocal writing changes in character with the different roles. These contrasts made the piece absorbing.

There was a perceptible common thread running through both of these operas, a re-evaluation of the conventional hero. King Harald is a medieval knight with a superstitious, power-hungry, egotistical, myth-making, brutish nature, given to bouts of excessive violence. Poet/student Nathanael in Heaven Ablaze..., bullies his long suffering sweetheart Klara into submission, while indulging in egotistical myth-spinning of fantasies of love and beauty, which ultimately destroy him.

The afternoon chamber recital of Weir's music, provided an opportunity to hear a harmonious alternative to this unenlightened behavior. Gentle Violence, for guitar and piccolo, is a short set of seven pieces depicting imaginary tai chi poses. On the same program was Roll off the ragged rocks of sin, which transformed a Bach aria into a parodic revival hymn. There were also several pieces inspired by folk material from around the world. Finally, the composer's short film, Hello Dolly, Goodbye Mommy, was a grotesque fantasy of a little girl's persecution by her family and her revenge on them.

Credit for mounting this unusual festival goes to Paul Smith, a fine pianist and head of the College of Marin's Opera Program, which presents a series of performances featuring contemporary works each summer and winter. The numerous other participants in the endeavor also deserve wholehearted congratulations for bringing this ambitious project off so well. Unfortunately, Judith Weir, ill with the flu in London, was unable to attend.

(Jules Langert is a composer and teacher who resides in the East Bay.)

©2000 Jules Langert, all rights reserved