NOBLE OPERATIC MUCKRAKING IN LOS ANGELES
                    Via a Long-Lost Schreker Opera 
                                              By Paul Hertelendy 
        artssf.com, the independent observer of San Francisco Bay Area music and dance 
                                                                 Week of April 11-18, 2010
                                                                  Vol. 12, No. 89
            LOS ANGELES---An engrossing Viennese opera-tragedy has taken almost a century to get across the Atlantic, producing shimmering orchestral effects and lustrous vocal lines as it vacillated between social criticism and verismo opera. “The Stigmatized” (1918) by Franz Schreker is a worthy addition to the canon as the latest choice of the Los Angeles Opera’s admirable “Recovered Voices” series spotlighting suppressed or neglected composers. Despite all this production's zigzags, excesses and nonsequiturs.
            The work enjoyed a huge popularity in its day, with 22 different productions abroad. At least until the Nazis made life impossible for Schreker (who was Jewish); they even took away his pension and thereby contributed to his stroke and early demise.
            Schreker (1878-1934) had a dual gift: He could produce the endless and alluring vocal lines for soprano much in the sensitive manner of Richard Strauss. Meanwhile in the orchestra, he created scintillating worlds of sounds unique to his palette while retaining stylistic vestiges of Mahler, Korngold and Ravel.
            His great acumen at orchestration should impel examining and hearing his symphonic scores, equally neglected. The opera’s detachable, ethereal  prelude would be a worthy starting point.
            The effect of the exotic sounds---one of them, a high-pitched sonic omelet with celeste-and-piccolo---might remind you of the Na’vi people’s domain in the movie “Avatar.” It’s a whole other world.
            Once again LA Opera Music Director James Conlon pulled the rabbit out of the hat with this lost jewel, destroyed by the vindicative 1930s book-burners apart from a single score dredged up not long ago in a German library. The opera itself was mltiply stigmatized,  as it was  stylistically tied to the past while the music world was branching out in many new directions.
            This opera with the romantic overtones is candid, Freudian, and highly critical of the corrupt society in Schreker’s time. Its modern characters are fallible, none of them cut out for halo duty. Carlotta the voluptuous central protagonist struggles with sacred and profane love---the first, through her betrothal to the big-hearted cripple Alviano, the second through her surrender to the town’s top lecher Tamare. Via lengthy arias and soliloquies, her complex personality and her boundless love emerge in beautiful detail. 
            The hero Alviano is a benevolent hunchback, like Rigoletto. The unlikely love evolving between the pair is delicately drawn. A subplot worthy of a Verdi shows Alviano’s generous gift to the city of his garden-island running afoul of the high-society males’ yen for orgy hideaways. It leads to Alviano’s facing trial in the wake of the most slanderous accusations and trumped-up charges against him. As so often happens, a biased society makes a scapegoat out of either the greatest misfit or weakest individual.            
            A modern LAO production opening April 10 made a convincing case for this work despite some flaws, readily rectifiable. Alviano hobbling about uncertainly on his canes is too handicapped to be a viable force on stage (Why not merely show his hunchback, which makes the point?).
            Also the violent and graphic orgy-finale drags on interminably---yes, even orgies CAN last and lust too long.   
            The heartfelt Carlotta of Anja Kampe capped the show, given her true spinto soprano and her credible life-force desires. She stands at the center of the Freud-era psychological probing, whether looking into the subconscious, manifesting guilt, or, as the painter which she is, wanting to “portray people’s souls.”
            Robert Brubaker gave us a dramatic tenor Alviano whose roughness of voice took half the night to clear up and focus. As the baritone/seducer Tamare, Martin Gantner was a dominant figure and the epitome of evil with a resonant, authoritative voice. Stage Director Ian Judge, a fill-in after the original director's withdrawal, oversaw one of the raciest dramas ever, turning totally gratuitous when a very young woman is completely disrobed by pursuers and seemingly violated right on stage. But, in the no-holds-barred entertainment world just down the road in Hollywood, all that might still qualify as PG-13.
            In the end the production was buoyed by the ingenious multi-thematic projections done by Wendall Harrington, assisted by a giant rotating raked-stage disc apparently left over from the recent LAO “Ring” opera mountings. 
            The producing team never resolved the setting, whether it was Schreker’s 17th-century Genoa or an updated 20th-century Vienna (that Schreker was clearly critiquing). So, at its silliest, projections show Venetian gondolas oaring their way through Vienna---or maybe it's really Genoa. Tilt!!
            Conlon, who beforehand had shown himself arguably the most articulate opera lecturer around, led a capable orchestra evoking myriad colors, effective even in this vast 3,053-seat Dorothy Chandler Pavilion in the Music Center with its notorious acoustics and dead spots. (I heard very well. But in some seats, patrons reported, the voices are virtually inaudible.)
            Even with the deletion of the ballet segment, the opera still ran a generous 3:20 with one intermission. 
            The German enunciation as rendered by the international cast rang true. Supertitle translations were projected, and thank heaven for that, as Schreker’s libretto offers gorgeous Symbolist imagery, to be savored like a choice soufflé.
            “The Stigmatized” (1918), an opera  by Franz Schreker, in German, by the L.A. Opera. Chandler Pavilion, Music Center, Los Angeles, through April 24. For info: (213) 972-8001, or go online. 

        ©Paul Hertelendy 2010
                                       #
           Paul Hertelendy has been covering the dance and modern-music scene in the San Francisco Bay Area with relish -- and a certain amount of salsa -- for years.
    These critiques appearing weekly (or sometimes semi-weekly, but never weakly) will focus on dance and new musical creativity in performance, with forays into books (by authors of the region), theater and recordings by local artists as well.
                      #
            Return to main menu