Igor Stravinsky’s “A Soldier’s Tale” from 1918 created visceral responses from Wynton Marsalis and Kurt Vonnegut, which were on display Sunday when the Long Beach Opera presented “An American Soldier’s Tale” (with new libretto by Vonnegut) and “A Fiddler’s Tale” by Marsalis in a double-bill at the Center Theater in Long Beach.
Vonnegut’s version, using Stravinsky’s music with his own text, tells the story of Private Eddie Slovik, the only U.S. Army deserter in 80 years executed for his crime. Vonnegut’s first reaction to Stravinsky’s version was negative, he didn’t think the story made any sense and was challenged to write his own libretto.
Marsalis had a different take, he was inspired by Stravinsky’s music early in his life. Fusing a jazz idiom with classical ideas and using the same orchestral forces as Stravinsky, he created, with librettist Stanley Crouch, a morality tale that features a young violinist seduced by the devil and finally restored by her playing in a score that is filled with musical references to the original 1918 work.
If these were not operas, they were delightful, funny and musically delicious pieces that got plenty of visual humor from Director David Schweizer and Stage Designer Danila Korogodsky, and an elegant and nuanced performance from Conductor Kristof van Grysperre.
Though you have to wonder if Vonnegut saw the story of Slovik as quite the raucous comedy that it became on stage. He wanted the story to be a tragedy as well as comedy, but on a stage filled with Allied maps and several men with cross hairs on their chests, the three actors played it all for comedy.
Kevin Reich was Slovik, willing to die rather than return to action and never very concerned about his fate. Tony Abatemarco played the general (and a nurse in drag) and was never very serious about it at all. And Mark Bringelson was the military policeman and though occasionally somber, played the action mostly for laughs. The death of Slovik was mentioned more in the program notes than on stage, more in the knowledge of what actually happened than in the comic performance.
Intermission interrupted what was intended to be one seamless work. Van Grysperre and the seven musicians returned after the break and Abatemarco returned, too, to bring on the chair for Roger Gueneveur Smith, who was the narrator for the Marsalis work.
That violinist was Alyssa Park, who played while Reich mimed her on Slovik’s violin (one of the few elements Vonnegut kept from the original of Stravinsky) and doing much solo work as Bubba Z. Beals told her story.
Smith was delightful as the devil, and as the narrator, using Crouch’s words and his own repertoire of gestures as the music flowed around him. It was an amazing, captivating performance that earned him a special ovation at the work’s end. The three other actors, who came back on stage to dance to Marsalis’ music, joined Smith for bows at the evening’s end.
There were some sound problems in the Center Theater, with the music sometimes drowning out the actors, but for the most part in the small confines of the space, you could follow with little difficulty.
For some in the audience, the show seemed to be lacking something. It was more theater than opera, after all. No one sang. But Long Beach Opera has a long history of innovation and imaginative reimagining of musical theater that includes more than just singing. This may not have been to everyone’s taste, but it was an exciting, clever and fully realized mixing of two related works, performed with a cast full of energy and musicality, and it was worth the effort.
John Farrell is a Los Angeles-based freelance writer.
