OPERA GRAPPLES WITH: IS LIFE A DREAM?
                    Via Fine-Spun Poetry, Jagged Music 
                                              By Paul Hertelendy 
        artssf.com, the independent observer of San Francisco Bay Area music and dance 
                                                                 Week of Aug. 4-11, 2010
                                                                  Vol. 12, No. 121
            SANTA FE--- Santa Fe comes to life in a unique way every summer. With the influx of tourists, the ubiquitous art shops and Indian ceramics are augmented by major performing organizations not to be overlooked. Among them is the mighty Santa Fe Opera, which this year has featured a new opera based on an old old play, "Life Is a Dream."
            Over four centuries, dreams have been a major theme in theater, stretching from Hamlet to the convoluted multi-levels of the new movie "Inception."
         In 1635 Pedro de Calderón de la Barca penned one such play in which the long-suffering hero obsesses over eternal questions: Is this a dream, or reality? Is life itself a dream or illusion?
         The matter touches on the existential and epistemological realms that might even impinge on modern quantum physics.
         This saga has now been spun into a slowly simmering world-premiere opera marking the 400th anniversary of Santa Fe. "Life Is a Dream" is graced by one of the most poetic of librettos, adapted by James Maraniss  after Calderón.
         The music is a curious anachronism, reverting to the jagged lines of 12-tone and serial composition in vogue internationally for three decades after World War Two.
         Boarding that fading bandwagon in 1975 was the Amherst College Professor Lewis Spratlan in creating his magnum opus that took 35 years to be staged. En route, concert excerpts of it had won the composer a belated Pulitzer Prize 10 years ago.
         Calderón's audiences could revel in stanza after stanza of glowing poetry, but opera demands action  and plot---at least, more plot than I encountered here July 28. King Basilio, fearful of a prediction that his son and heir Segismundo would kill him, confined the young man to years of solitary confinement. When Segismundo, that self-styled "monster in a maze," is finally brought to court, he is an untamed beast, with murder and rape foremost on his mind.
         He is reincarcerated, as if it had all been a bad dream, leaving him more bewildered than ever. His eventual return to court provides his sane (and hardly convincing) denouement as heir apparent, presumably meeting dictates of the Spanish court's 17th-century royal patrons and their censors.
         The opera is powered by the galvanic if erratic personality  of Segismundo, crying out over the injustice of his incarceration (thereby recalling Florestan in Beethoven's Spanish opera "Fidelio"). The vibrant hero figure rails at his confinement in chains like some savage dog.
         The impassioned interpreter in this tour de force was baritone Roger Honeywell, projecting the fury and frustration to the farthest corners of the Opera House while singing vocal lines as contorted as the tortured existence itself. He was surrounded by an able cast, most notably the veteran bass John Cheek as King Basilio, along with James Maddalena and the scene-stealing jester, tenor Keith Jameson. Surprising to this listener were the minimal women's roles, given their substantial role in the overall story.
            Making his SFO debut , conductor Leonard Slatkin led a spirited orchestra with panache through a very demanding score. The music is punctuated by vehement outbursts. At the other extreme came the most effective musical stroke of all: an ethereal, untuned prelude gets its unique effect from massed musicians blowing into varied bottles.
             David Korins' scenic designs suggested not a nebulous kingdom of the past, but rather some 23rd-century interplanetary setting marked by a dozen huge bascule beams heaving up and down like illuminated grade crossings when express trains near. Tilt! Fortunately, no casualties resulted.
            Kevin Newbury directed effectively. 
            AFTERTHOUGHTS---The thin oxygen of the 7,000-ft. altitude here is a hurdle that both singers and  instrumentalists had overcome during the extensive weeks of rehearsals, which result in beautifully executed, refined stage action---never just stand-and-sing. Segismundo was all but bouncing off the sets all night long. 
          Spratlan’s Pulitzer resulted from a performance of act two of the opera, a wild scene where Segismundo returns to the court and proves himself an unforgettable and unmanageable  loose cannon.
         "Life Is a Dream,” by Lewis Spratlan, world premiere opera July. 24 at Santa Fe (NM) Opera, in English, through Aug. 19. Two and a half hours, one intermission. For info: (800) 280-4654, 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