Festival Opera has been hanging by a thread the last few seasons, but it roared back to life in a big way Saturday night. With an inspired double bill of Viktor Ullmann’s “The Emperor of Atlantis” and Jake Heggie’s “Another Sunrise,” the Walnut Creek company under executive director Sara Nealy demonstrated that vibrant operatic productions are still very much within its reach.
However, that might not be the case much longer. The company has said it must raise $100,000 by the end of May or risk closing.
Themes of war and death, survival and memory came together with considerable impact in Saturday’s chamber performances at Walnut Creek’s Mt. Diablo Unitarian Universalist Church. Directed by Beth Greenberg and conducted by Matilda Hofman, with both operas performed in English, the program also was performed April 28 in honor of Holocaust Remembrance Day.
“The Emperor of Atlantis,” subtitled “Or Death Abdicates,” was the evening’s featured work. Composed between 1943 and 1944 while Ullmann was imprisoned in the Terezin concentration camp, the hourlong opera — a “legend in four scenes” — is a relentlessly dark satire on military might. When the power-mad Emperor Overall declares universal war, Death goes on strike, only to return when the general populace realizes that eternal life is just as bad as endless war.
Ullmann’s score is rich in lyrical passages, expansive arias, German cabaret-style orchestrations and a Bach-inspired chorale. The composer never saw it performed; the Nazis banned it and shipped Ullmann and his librettist, Peter Kien, to their deaths at Auschwitz.
Festival revived the score with a strong cast and a stripped-down staging set in the office of an unspecified bureaucracy. Eugene Brancoveanu’s large, edgy baritone and brash physicality yielded an authoritative Emperor; bass-baritone Philip Skinner combined gravitas, sonorous vocalism, and a touching air of tenderness in the role of Death. Christopher Bengochea’s Harlequin, Roberto Perlas Gomez’s Loudspeaker, Rebecca Garcia’s Maiden, and Valentina Osinski’s Drummer Girl made characterful contributions.
“The Emperor of Atlantis” isn’t often performed, in part because it’s a hard work to pair on a double bill. But “Another Sunrise” made an ideal companion piece. Heggie and librettist Gene Scheer composed the work on commission for Seattle’s Music of Remembrance, which gave its premiere in 2012; Saturday’s opening marked its first Bay Area performance.
Running 20 minutes in length, “Another Sunrise” is a brief but potent episode depicting Holocaust survivor Krystyna Zywulska. A Polish Jew sent to Auschwitz as a political prisoner, Zywulska was ordered to confiscate and inventory the possessions of women arriving at the camp, only to witness them marched into the gas chambers.
The opera opens years after the war. Alone in her room, haunted by memories of Auschwitz, she struggles to come to terms with the horrors she witnessed — experiences for which “there are no words.” It’s a harrowing inward journey that examines what it means to be a survivor in a world that can scarcely imagine the enormity of war.
Heggie’s elegant score, rich in melodic invention and rhythmic interest, provides a gorgeous framework for Scheer’s libretto, and soprano Marie Plette made a forceful case for it. Plette’s voice is large and lustrous throughout her range, and her ability to articulate the text with clarity and pinpoint dynamics was impressive. Throughout the performance, she expressed the character’s anguish and uncertainty with devastating precision.
Director Greenberg staged both operas inventively, and Hofman drew unified performances from the 13-piece Festival Opera Chamber Orchestra. Taken together, these works serve as a poignant reminder that humanity can endure in the face of unspeakable tragedy. They’re also a tribute to companies like Festival Opera, which continue to soldier on through tough economic times. These operas are hardly standard repertoire, but Saturday’s performance was packed; the bold artistic spirit that produced the program just might prove the key to this company’s future.
