| March 27, 2013
OPERA
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Songs of Sex and Madness “Powder Her Face,” “Turn of the Screw” by NYCO at BAM, “Salome” in Palm Beach escape
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ew York City Opera’s r ecent winter season at BAM showed a company rising like a phoenix from its own ashes. While its old productions were broken up and auctioned off as souvenirs, George Steel’s new vision for the company took shape. No longer competing with the Met, NYCO focused on boutique repertory in smart, hip, highconcept productions. Thomas Adès’ 1995 “Powder Her Face” a fragmentary, dr eam-like exploration of the empty, sybaritic, and scandalous life of Margaret, Duchess of Argyll received a presentation worthy of an international festival. Unlike Adès’ heavy, effect-laden score for “The Tempest,” “Powder Her Face” has a light, playful touch and a clever, insightful libretto by Philip Hensher. Adès’ musical style mixes Britten into an acidic cocktail of Stravinsky, Weill, and Berg. Director Jay Scheib’s multimedia production followed Margaret, who never seemed to change over five decades, through a series of elegantly appointed, interchangeable hotel suites while live video feeds were projected on the walls. The action was enlivened by the appearance of a nonsinging chorus of 25 nude men representing the nymphomaniac noblewoman’s many extramarital lovers. The sardonic, cynical tone of the piece deepened into real heartbreak as the Duchess, old and alone, comes to the realization that the only people in her life who were nice to her were paid for it. As Margaret, British debutant Allison Cook had an icy Charlotte Rampling beauty and cool, even mezzo-
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The flick, from p.25
sorts begins. The two men, along with Rose the projectionist, all have a passion for movies. The possibility the theater will be sold and its 35mm projector will be replaced by digital projection is anathema to them. It doesn’t help that new management could also shut down their ticket scamming. As with Baker’s other plays, no real resolution is achieved; the story lies in what we learn about the characters. What in her other plays is moving, however, becomes ponderous in “The Flick.” Clocking in at three hours and 15 minutes, the play is bloated to the point of self-indulgence.
soprano intriguingly at odds with the character’s aggressive sexuality. Tenor William Ferguson played various waiters and hangers on — including one bellboy inveigled into onstage fellatio — with protean ease. Bass Matt Boehler was equally versatile as various authority figures, including the cuckolded Duke and hotel managers with unpaid bills. Coloratura Nili Riemer as the Maid handled Adès’ often awkwardly angular and highlying vocal writing with ease. Conductor Jonathan Stockhammer elicited assured playing from a muchimproved and more polished and cohesive orchestral ensemble.
pilgrim headed south to Florida. Palm Beach O p er a p r esent e d St raus s ’ “Salome” in three consecutive per formances over one weekend
— with no cast changes! It starred two ladies once familiar to New York audiences but absent for several seasons — soprano Erika Sunnegårdh and mezzo Denyce GravesMontgomery. Sunnegårdh’s Judean princess was a coltish teenager who descended into full-scale dementia that climaxed in a chilling final scene where the severed head of John the Baptist drenched her white shift with blood as she fondled it. The Swedish-American’s voice is a top-heavy lyric soprano with a middle register too small and colorless for Strauss’ wide-ranging vocal writing. Her untiring silvery top register sailed through the climaxes. Graves-Montgomery injured her hip backstage just before the show and sang Herodias in a wheelchair stage right while assistant director Fenlon Lamb mimed the blocking onstage. She is anything but vocally incapacitated. A Bumbry-esque cannon of a middle register shot out huge, high-energy sound waves. Even if Graves-Montgomery’s register extremes were roughly attacked, the notes were still there. R yan McKinny’s tall, muscular, loincloth-clad Jokanaan was more powerful visually than vocally — his medium-weight baritone was attractive but lacked messianic force and fervor. Thomas Moser as Herod was musical and elegant if underpowered. He was clearly conserving his vocal energies during the weekend marathon. Roberto Pater nostro conducted with iridescent jewel-like sonorities. Renaud Doucet staged the opera in a borrowed traditional set but brought fresh, sensible ideas to the table — for example, it was the Page who executed Salome at the end in revenge for Narraboth’s suicide.
a sketch of him. Director Sam Gold, who has done finely detailed work on Baker’s previous plays, isn’t helpful here. If a plays has silences of several minutes, they must be employed judiciously and, during them, the actors need to work hard to keep the story alive. Here, too many times the play simply stops dead. Matthew Maher as Sam turns in a fairly pr edictable per for mance as an embittered white man on the brink of middle age whose life is going nowhere. Aaron Clifton Moten is interesting as Avery, a black man whose knowledge and passion for movies is the only thing that seems
to animate him. He is truly a lost soul, even oblivious to the awkward sexual advances of Rose. Louisa Krause is understated as Rose and gives the most complex performance in the evening, moving beyond the cliché of another tough girl whose abrasiveness hides vulnerability to show us a young woman whose insensitivity makes her life a tiny tragedy. But Rose is the only character we see inside of — and she’s on stage for the least time of the three. In Baker’s other plays, we want to know more about the characters. In “The Flick,” we’re likely to feel they’ve overstayed their welcome.
N Y C O l a s t p re s e n t e d B r i t t e n ’s “ Tu r n o f t h e Screw” in 1996 in a Mark Lamos
production that suggested the ghosts haunting Bly were figments of the Governess’ sexually repressed and increasingly unhinged imagination. In the Lamos production, John Conklin’s expressionistic Victorian settings became increasingly “Cabinet of Dr. Caligari”-surreal as the protagonist descended into madness. Sam Buntrock’s new production for NYCO updated the action to England circa 1980, and in the manner of Stephen King, the paranormal seeped into the dark hidden corners of seemingly ordinary suburban life. Quint appeared as the reflection in the screen of a tube television set or in an upstairs bedroom window. The ghosts here were real, and the Governess remained sane, if increasingly emotionally fragile. Sara Jakubiak sang the Governess with sensitivity and a flawless British accent. Tenor Dominic Armstrong fielded a seductively rich lyric tenor sound as Quint and as the Prologue.
Baker pounds us over the head with her messages, and the bleak poetry she finds in the quotidian becomes tedious. She seems incapable of trusting her audience to understand her intention in any way other that unspooling it in real time, creating a product that is a little too ersatz Warhol. The theme that people working in menial jobs must be inherently flawed comes across as elitist, and her conceit that people immerse themselves in movies and trivia to compensate for other things lacking in their lives is unoriginal. The character of Sam is just lazy playwriting; in 195 minutes, the audience deserves more than just
COURTESY: PALM BEACH OPERA
BY ELI JACOBSON
Ryan McKinny and Erika Sunnegårdh in Palm Beach Opera’s production of Strauss’ “Salome.”
Benjamin P. Wenzelberg played young Miles with a disturbingly ambiguous childlike openness, while Lauren Worsham hinted at the damage beneath Flora’s girlish eagerness. The company’s new music director, Jayce Ogren, brought a chilling astringency to Britten’s chamber ensemble writing.
With New York’s bleak and desolate winter dragging along , this opera