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Batting zero
BLO’s leaden Fledermaus; Boston Baroque’s chaste Theodora; Dominique Labelle’s thrilling Handel
BY LLOYD SCHWARTZ

Johann Strauss’s operetta Die Fledermaus ("The Bat") is a work of such inspired genius, you’d think any amateur group could do it. It’s got hummable, familiar tunes; waltzes, polkas, galops, and a csárdás that make you want to dance in the aisles; a hilarious clockspring of a farcical plot; and an unexpected wellspring of deep feeling. No wonder it’s a traditional New Year’s Eve entertainment. How could it not be wonderful? But the Boston Lyric Opera’s production, its last of this season (at the Shubert Theatre through May 13), is so leaden, witless, and arch (a real letdown following its superbly stylish recent production of Puccini’s almost-operetta, La rondine) that if you didn’t know better, you’d think Strauss himself was to blame.

Viennese operetta is, it’s true, hard to pull off anywhere outside Vienna. Its success depends on understanding a style that was never natural in this country: teasing, lighter-than-air innuendo and unforced humor, a style that never takes itself too seriously but is tenderly affectionate about the comedy of human foibles. The performers, on stage or in the pit, must love the music, must caress it, allow it to soar and float, then let it settle gently back to earth. The best live performance I’ve heard in this country was a 1994 concert conducted by Craig Smith with Emmanuel Music. Smith captured the style, and even the English translation ("Look me over once, look me over twice") didn’t get in the way.

The BLO’s problems start in the pit with Beatrice Jona Affron, music director of the Pennsylvania Ballet, whose specialty seems to be minimalist Philip Glass. She last worked for the Lyric three years ago, conducting Glass’s Akhnaten — a work that does not exactly demand buoyancy, sparkle, or insinuating wit. Her performance of the overture, which previews the best music in the opera, has no panache (and opening night last Wednesday it was played with the house lights on, which encouraged continuing conversation). Craig Smith had a natural instinct for rubato, the subtle musical suspensions that give that indispensable lift to waltz music. Affron demonstrates little feeling for this essential impulse (and she’s a dance conductor!). These waltzes sound pedestrian. Opening night, the strings weren’t consistently together — the orchestra was far from ready to shine.

Then from off stage, you hear the pleasant voice of John Osborn as Alfredo, the Italian tenor who’s still in love with the now-married Rosalinde, and who can’t stop showing off his voice. The acoustics in the Shubert Theatre are especially hard on singers. But it’s not Osborn’s voice that’s troubling, it’s his poor diction. I guess that’s why the Lyric has supertitles, even though the performance is in English. Only a few singers don’t need them: bass-baritone Dan Sullivan as the prison warden, BLO character tenor Frank Kelley as a stuttering lawyer, and mezzo-soprano Dorothy Byrne as a thickly accented Russian prince (though the "Champagne" song — "diplomats and rulers should keep it in their coolers," according to the uncredited translation — rushes by too fast even for her to articulate).

BLO rightly brags about getting singers with exceptional voices. La rondine had several. But Die Fledermaus doesn’t. NYC Opera soprano Barbara Shirvis has a large, attractive tone, but Rosalinde’s fiendishly difficult csárdás, which she sings disguised as a Hungarian countess, is beyond her (dicy high notes, inaudible low notes), and almost everywhere else she’s too loud. Baritone Gary Lehman is adequate to the vocal demands of Eisenstein, Rosalinde’s straying husband, a tenor part. Another baritone, Philip Torre, sings well as Falke, the character whose revenge against Eisenstein for abandoning him on a park bench, drunk and wearing a bat costume, sets the entire plot in motion; but he’s awfully stiff for a prankster, and more bored than Prince Orlovsky, who’s supposed to be bored.

Kewpie-doll soprano Sarah Tannehill is the Eisensteins’ chambermaid, Adele, who goes to Prince Orlovsky’s ball in her mistress’s gown (she’s so tiny, you wonder how she managed to fill that dress). Her voice is also tiny, thin and unsteady, but it gets louder the higher it goes. Her trill sounds more like gargling. Her high "Z" at the end of her third-act aria is wiry and unpleasant. Her speaking voice hardly projects at all.

But what really kills this Fledermaus is the relentless archness and coarseness of BLO artistic director Leon Major’s staging. The secret of good farce is that the characters must believe their lives depend on everything coming out all right. But Major’s characters are less human beings than sit-com caricatures, mugging wherever possible, underlining every joke with a "get-it" elbow in the ribs. A friend called it "Frasier Meets Saturday Night Live." You know the tired shtick of someone repeatedly trying to say a word then finally turning to an alternative ("He’s going to jai-jai-jai . . . prison")? Major has not just one but two characters (a stutterer and a drunk) belabor it. Rosalinde and Eisenstein don’t seem so much tempted by the idea of fooling around outside their marriage as positively desperate to get away from each other — and they’re so unpleasantly self-absorbed, who could blame them? When at Orlovsky’s party Eisenstein recognizes Adele as his maid, she responds with Strauss’s famous "laughing song," expressing her amusement that he could be so mistaken about anyone so elegant. Major has Eisenstein seated and Tannehill shoving her rear end into his face.

Maybe the most extraordinary moment in Die Fledermaus is "Du und Du" ("Night and Day") when everyone at the party seems overcome by nostalgia and a deep fellow feeling. Strauss’s waltz is more like a hymn, a moment of honest sentiment in the midst of the farce. Major stages this as another opportunity for the men at the party to make out with the hired dancing girls. Strauss’s music is all seductive charm; Major’s staging is just burlesque. There are many similarities — including the self-conscious reminders that this is only an opera — to Otto Schenk’s heavy-handed production on the DVD so ebulliently conducted by Carlos Kleiber.

Set designer Michael Anania, clearly working on the cheap, and costume "co-ordinator" Andrew Poleszak update the period to pre–World War I, after the invention of telephones and electric lights. Anania’s outdoor balcony for the second-act party scene is so bare (a few tables and chairs and a large chandelier), the party looks dreary. When scenery is minimal, evocative area lighting can be a resource. But Mark McCoullough’s lighting remains unhelpfully flat and ill-defined.

The best comic turn is by one of the area’s best actors, Jonathan Epstein, from Shakespeare and Company, making his opera debut in the spoken role of the drunken jailer, Frosch. It was delightful to find him swinging from an overhead light when the third-act curtain opened. His lines had such spontaneity, he seemed to be improvising, except that unlike most of the cast, his timing was impeccable, even when others were dropping their cues.

These last two BLO productions prove what a vast difference getting the right people can make. La rondine, in which almost all the people were the right ones, was a lonely exception in the history of this company.

BOSTON BAROQUE’S presentation of Handel’s penultimate oratorio, Theodora, at Jordan Hall last Friday and Saturday was on a higher level of artistic seriousness than the BLO’s. Handel’s only oratorio with a post-Biblical story is about a Christian martyr in Antioch during the late Roman empire, and as Handel scholar Ellen Harris said in her lively and informative pre-concert talk, it had a profound personal and spiritual significance for the composer. One of the most contemplative and lyrical of all his vocal works, it glows with a steady intensity. It was his own favorite oratorio, though it wasn’t a popular success.

But despite their dedication, Martin Pearlman and his cast failed to bring this sublime work fully to life. It seemed almost totally lacking in emotional urgency. The soloists made little distinction between fortitude and ecstasy. And using scores, they made hardly any eye contact with one another. Bless mezzo-soprano Mary Phillips, as Theodora’s devoted friend Irene, for actually acknowledging a messenger’s announcement. During the past few seasons, Pearlman surprised me with the passion and subtlety of his Monteverdi, a century earlier than Handel, which he conducted from his own orchestrations. But his Handel was monotonously paced, with few departures from the basic middle tempo, and no real effort to dramatize the deepest conflicts.

Both the small chorus and orchestra sounded good — give a special nod to Catherine Liddell’s lute, which provided soprano Sharon Baker’s Theodora with a delicate halo of sound. Baker was the best singer — vocally steady, tonally focused and accurate, with admirable dignity. But her characterization was unusually one-note. Near the end, when Irene learns that Theodora will be condemned to death rather than prostitution ("a fate worse than death"), she notices her friend’s "sudden Change/from Grief’s pale looks to Looks of red’ning Joy"; but Baker looked just as adamantly austere as she had before. Phillips was really the only soloist to sing with both adequate voice and varied expression.

The men had more to worry about. Pearlman announced that counter-tenor David Walker (Didimus, the Roman officer who turns Christian for love of Theodora) was suffering from a sinus infection. His voice was occasionally rough, though he could execute good trills. Unfortunately, he made no attempt to compensate for his vocal problems by singing with more conviction. Tenor Glenn Siebert (Septimius, Didimus’s sympathetic friend) had only the thread of a voice and no health excuse. Bass-baritone Michael Dean (Valens, president of Antioch, who insists that Christians worship Roman gods) sang solidly except for thin high notes but wasn’t very threatening for a villain.

Harris’s talk addressed the controversies in England over religious tolerance as Handel was working on Theodora, his failing health, and the poignant theme of acceptance in his late works. These are all in the music. But they weren’t in the performance.

THE FOLLOWING NIGHT (Saturday), the estimable ensemble Sarasa presented the most glorious Handel singing in recent memory. Soprano Dominique Labelle was guest artist in Italian Baroque cantatas by Handel, Alessandro Scarlatti, and Agostino Steffani. She rode the emotions of these lyrical and heroic works, earlier and far more artificial than Theodora, the way an eagle rides the wind. She was in thrilling voice, making the artifice as exciting as possible while revealing the humanity within it. And she made this all seem easy.

Issue Date: May 9 - 15, 2003
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