Review: Festival Opera sparkles with two rare gems

In the pursuit of adventurous operatic repertoire, the Bay Area’s smaller companies often take top honors.

The double bill of one-act operas introduced by Festival Opera over the weekend at Oakland’s Asian Cultural Center was a beguiling case in point.

Pairing Gustav Holst’s “Savitri” with Jack Perla’s “River of Light,” the company under general director Sara Nealy gave audiences a winning combination of a 20th-century rarity and a recent contemporary work by a Bay Area composer.

Holst’s opera, composed in 1908, and Perla’s, which premiered in Houston in 2014, share a thematic link. Each is drawn from Indian culture, although the similarities end there: Holst based “Savitri” on Hindu mythology, while Perla set his score to a contemporary libretto by Indian-American novelist Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni.

The two-hour program, efficiently directed by Tanya Kane-Parry and conducted with verve and precision by John Kendall Bailey, brought together an unusual mix of forces. One doesn’t often hear sitar and tabla in opera, but there they were, playing a short introduction to “Savitri,” and joining a trio of violin, cello, and keyboard in “River of Light.”

Saturday’s afternoon performance, the first of three through Sunday, began with “Savitri.” Holst’s opera, taken from an episode in the Mahabharata, tells the story of a young woman who confronts Death. He hasn’t come for her: it’s her husband, Satyavan, who’s been chosen to take “the road that each must travel.” But Savitri decides she can’t live without Satyavan, and she uses her powers of persuasion — mostly, her beautiful voice — to trick Death into letting her beloved husband live.

Holst, best-known for “The Planets,” doesn’t show any particular interest in Indian music in the score, which registers as solidly British-Romantic. But Bailey drew shimmering sound from his chamber ensemble, and a 12-voice women’s chorus, after entering in a processional to deck the stage with flowers and candles, floated their wordless lines with considerable allure. Soprano Maya Kherani sang the title role with vibrant tone, and bass-baritone Philip Skinner inhabited the role of Death with power and authority. Tenor Jorge Garza was an expressive Satyavan.

After intermission, the company turned to Perla’s “River of Light,” which deals with a young Indian woman’s attempt to adjust to American culture. It follows a year in the life of Meera, who has married a well-meaning Anglo man and settled in Oakland (Divakaruni’s breezy libretto included local references to Lake Merritt and Chapel of the Chimes, among other landmarks.)

Feeling estranged from her home culture, Meera works hard at assimilation, excelling in her office job and getting to know her relentlessly cheerful neighbors. Then she becomes a mother, and undergoes a crisis: How can she share her Indian roots with her baby daughter? As she makes her way through a year of holidays — beginning with Christmas and ending with Diwali — the answers become apparent.

Perla’s 40-minute score employs a fairly limited vocal palette. But the San Francisco composer gives Meera gets a lovely aria (“Distant Land”) and he weds the sitar and tabla to his traditional instrumentation in appealing ways.

As Meera, Kherani returned sounding bright and infusing the role with comic flair. Baritone Daniel Cilli made burnished contributions as her husband, Burton. Molly Mahoney and Michael Boley made energetic appearances as the Neighbors. Dancers Richa Shukla and Gopi, performing Indian classical choreography, simply dazzled.