The partial shutdown of the U.S. government had a significant impact on the Los Angeles music scene Saturday when British tenor (and Bach specialist), Nicholas Mulroy, who was scheduled to sing the leading role in Long Beach Opera’s production, “The Black Cat,” was denied entry to the country.
According to Long Beach Opera’s artistic director, Andreas Mitisek, the date indicated on Mulroy’s work visa had been entered incorrectly. But when an attempt was made to contact immigration officials to make the necessary correction, they were informed the office was closed due to the shutdown.
This left the company with only a few precious rehearsal days left to solve the problem. But Saturday, the show did go on at the Beverly Neill Theater with assistant director, Jacques Schiltz, portraying Mulroy’s character (silently) on stage, while tenor Aaron Sheehan sang the role offstage accompanied by members of the period instrument ensemble, Musica Angelica.
A self-described “musical mash up,” “The Black Cat” freely combines the crime-and-punishment plot of Edgar Allan Poe’s gruesome 1893 short story with arias and incidental music by Johann Sebastian Bach and contemporary British pop songs by David Sylvian.
The onstage action, which is skillfully directed by Frank Hoffmann, is accentuated by dancers Silvia Camarda and Jean-Guillaume Weis. The action takes place in front of (and is integrated into) a cleverly animated set design by Virgil Widrich. The overall effect, however, tends to feel like several jigsaw puzzles that have awkwardly been forced to fit together.
The source of the project actually dates back to 2008 when Martin Hasselböck, the music director of Musica Angelica, collaborated with John Malkovich to produce a play with music about Jack Unterweger, the notorious “Vienna Woods Strangler.” As conceived by Malkovich, Haselböck and Austrian writer Michael Sturminger, “Seduction and Despair” (which was presented at the Santa Monica High School auditorium) combined a narrative delivered by Malkovich with musical selections by Gluck, Boccherini, Vivaldi, Haydn, Handel, Weber and Mozart.
Had all gone according to plan, Mulroy would have sung the succession of arias drawn from Bach’s cantatas that are meant to express the state of mind of a prisoner condemned to die for the murder of his wife. The recorded songs by Sylvian with their droll lyrics add a sense of contemporary angst to the equation.
As in the short story, the prisoner recounts the events that have brought him to this dismal end as a series flashbacks. We watch the disintegration of his marriage, due in no small part to his addiction to alcohol, the appearance of the sinister cat, the murder of the wife and the attempt to wall up the corpse.
Camarda, a lithe and sensuous dancer, alternates between the role of the love-starved wife and the big black cat — a slinky, kinky feline. But as the mind of the central character becomes more deranged, the role of the cat is taken over by Weis, which results in a bizarre twist of sexual identities and emotional motivations.
What may be a puzzle that doesn’t quite fit together, “The Black Cat’s” witch’s brew of baroque arias, pop songs, dancing and multi-media effects is as perversely captivating as it is perplexing.
Jim Farber is a Los Angeles-based freelance writer.
“The Black Cat”
Rating: 2.5 stars
When: Jan. 19-20
Where: Beverly O’Neill Theatre, 300 E. Ocean Blvd, Long Beach
Running time: 80 minutes, with no intermission
Next: “In the Penal Colony,” April 25-May 5
Information: 562-470-7464 or www.longbeachopera.org
