Los Angeles Opera’s new production of John Corigliano’s “The Ghosts of Versailles,” which serves as the work’s West Coast premiere, is as extravagant as the opera itself, or nearly so. Before a note was played Saturday night at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion the curtain went up and the set received a round of applause. “Production made possible by a generous gift from (big name),” the program informs us. It looks it.
Darko Tresnjak, who won the Tony last season for directing “A Gentleman’s Guide to Love & Murder” on Broadway, oversees the production here, bringing along his “Gentleman’s Guide” confreres in scenery design, costume design and projection design. The result is rich, colorful, busy, ornate – in short, eye-popping, and yet, for once, it doesn’t overwhelm the music. It’s in keeping with it.
Set in a private theater in Versailles in the present day, “Ghosts” includes the dead Marie Antoinette, King Louis XVI and their entourage as characters. They sit around bemoaning their fate, beheaded bodies as doubles. The playwright Beaumarchais (“The Marriage of Figaro,” “The Barber of Seville”) is there too. He’s in love with Marie Antoinette and bragging (in so many words) that his pen is mightier than the guillotine, declaring that he can change history.
He puts on an opera, which becomes an opera-within-our opera. All of our old favorites are there – Figaro, Susanna, Rosina, Count Almaviva, Cherubino and more – for this opera-within is nothing else but “The Guilty Mother,” the seldom-ventured finale of Beaumarchais’s trilogy.
To get to the nub: The two operas slowly begin to entangle until eventually, in Tom Stoppard fashion, they become one, fictional characters co-mingling with historical ghosts. The libretto, by William M. Hoffman, allows Corigliano to indulge his considerable chops in period pastiche (Mozart, Rossini and others) as well as in prickly and spooky modernism, an eclectic, teeming soup of styles. There’s even a Gilbert and Sullivan number for Figaro and a party piece bacchanal for a guest star at the end of Act One, performed here, and how!, by Patti Lupone.
It’s all interesting and entertaining if not invariably arresting. Written for the Metropolitan Opera, which gave the premiere in 1991, “Ghosts,” lasting nearly three hours on Saturday, seems rather loosely-knit and bloated. The jokes, pretty good though sometimes fairly broad, don’t always sit right with the ostensibly serious subject matter. When all is said and done, the whole is about as deep as an episode of “The Twilight Zone.”
But it is quite a show, a three-ring circus both visually and musically. Lupone’s arrival (this won’t ruin it) on a pink elephant and her ensuing kitschy pseudo-Egyptian song and dance are a coup de theatre.
The cast, a large one, is strong. Patricia Racette, one of our foremost sopranos, belts and wails indefatigably as Marie Antoniette, and has some silk left over at the end. Christopher Maltman exudes eloquence and noble intentions as Beaumarchais. Lucas Meachem provides an ebullient Figaro and Guanqun Yu a radiant Rosina. Robert Brubaker unleashes fortissimo vim as the villain Bégearss, his creepy Aria of the Worm one of the evening’s highlights. Joshua Guerrero, Lucy Schaufer, Kristinn Sigmundsson, Stacy Tappan and Brenton Ryan also turn in capable performances.
James Conlon manages the large orchestra, which includes synthesizer and amplified percussion, sensibly and carefully, deciphering gloom, caressing color and maintaining momentum.
If you enjoy your opera with a dash of spectacle, Broadway-style, it was a good night.
Contact the writer: 714-796-6811 or tmangan@ocregister.com
