Having opened the season with a safe and dull production of “La Traviata,” Los Angeles Opera is continuing its year with a daring double bill of Purcell’s “Dido and Aeneas” and Bartók’s “Bluebeard’s Castle” that, among other innovations, probably brings the two works together for the first time. The production (seen Thursday night at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion) comes to the company by way of Frankfurt Opera.
Red flag! Frankfurt is in Germany, right? They like their opera “meta” over there. They have something called regietheater, wherein the director knows best and gets to make hay with the opera at hand, music and stage directions and original intentions and sometimes all sense be damned. They get a kick out of this kind of stuff in Deutschland because their television programs are so bad (David Hasselhoff is huge) that they all go to the opera at night for a few laughs, beers and sausages. Though they also boo, I’ve heard.
What exactly do these two operas have in common, you may ask. One, in English, a delicate and touching Baroque masterpiece, had its premiere in 1688, or thereabouts, the other, in Hungarian, a modernistic juggernaught, in 1918. The director, Barrie Kosky (part of the team who gave us an eyeful of a “Magic Flute” last season), helps out with a note in the program.
“Two works about arrival and departure,” he writes succinctly. “Two operas about departure and arrival,” he continues, mind blown. “Two operas about a woman and a man,” he adds, whittling it down. “Two operas about a man and a woman.” You see what he’s done there? I know, right?
Here’s my own deep insight: Both works are their composer’s only operas and both last about an hour.
Anyway, “Dido and Aeneas,” a tragedy in less talented hands, plays here as a comedy, or at least people were laughing. The Carthaginian queen’s (Dido’s) ladies in waiting are a pair of giggling girls, all aflutter about the approaching Roman hunk, Aeneas. The three witches who maneuver the plot are big dudes with beards in drag who, being countertenors, sing like ladies and mug relentlessly for a camera I never saw.
The chorus cavorts about in whacky mode, as if they were on something and into each other. The whole thing plays out on and near a long bench that takes up the entire width of the stage, sometimes spilling out into the audience and into the orchestra pit as if we were in Rio (complete with semi-nudity, gulp). I’m not sure what Dido dies of – a bad case of hiccups, maybe – but at any rate she spasms her way through the entire last chorus as the singers and the orchestra slowly exit. I believe no one actually played the last note, they’d all left.
At least the last note wasn’t out of tune. Steven Sloane led a reduced orchestra that was a mix of modern and period instruments and which couldn’t seem to get its act together, pitch-wise.
What’s more, the singers couldn’t always either, Paula Murrihy (Dido) approximating the pitch whenever she removed her vibrato (it’s a period thing) and Kateryna Kasper (Belinda) having a hard time hitting it when gyrating in antic excess. Baritone Liam Bonner (recently a memorable Billy Budd with the company) was allowed to provide a burnished and respectable Aeneas. The chorus resounded heartily most of the time.
“Bluebeard’s Castle” fared better, though it was still odd. It unwound on a large, uneven and revolving disc placed an otherwise bare stage. Bluebeard wore a black suit and tie, Judith, his new lover, a little black dress. There’s a “Let’s Make a Deal” aspect to this sinister and symbolic opera, as Judith opens a series of seven doors, each revealing another of Bluebeard’s secrets, including, it would seem, the murders of his previous wives.
But there were no doors here. Instead, a man in the same black suit as Bluebeard’s would show up and stroll about when a new door was opened, representing what was behind it, gold glitter falling from his sleeves (the treasurey), or streams of water (a lake of tears), or branches (a garden), or smoke shooting up from the floor. The requisite blood appears in various places. Bluebeard and Judith (the only singers) behave like a battling couple throughout.
While all of this moves along as slowly as molasses, and eschews the spectacular visual opportunities this opera provides, it was not necessarily in discordance with the spirit of the music and play.
Sloane got the behemoth orchestra well in order and laid out Bartók’s magnificent score with wonderful clarity and patience. Bass-baritone Robert Hayward (Bluebeard) boomed and keened effectively and mezzo-soprano Claudia Mahnke (Judith), though missing the ideal amplitude for the part, proved indefatigable and studiously musical.
L.A. Opera so far this season has given us dull and daring. Like Goldilocks, I’ll show up at “Florencia en al Amazonias” later this month hoping it’s just right. I’ll be the one in the blond curls and sun dress.
Contact the writer: 714-796-6811 or tmangan@ocregister.com
