opera review: The Pilgrim's Progress
Jun. 17th, 2006 09:53 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
calimacAs someone who prefers music that aspires to be liquid architecture over music which tells a story, I tend to avoid opera, which seems to me too frequently to sit awkwardly somewhere between the realms of music and of drama, failing to be very good at either.
For this very reason a very rare (first ever on this coast) production of Ralph Vaughan Williams's The Pilgrim's Progress appealed to me. Vaughan Williams didn't even call it an opera but "A Morality," and the conventional wisdom is that it failed on first production in 1951 because, like the book it's based on, it's static rather than a drama.
But I'm here to listen to the music rather than to watch a drama, and this was the life-work - he spent some three decades on it - of one of my favorite composers. His Fifth Symphony, a masterpiece of contemplative beauty, is in large part a spin-off of work on Pilgrim's Progress. Two hours of RVW music new to me seemed a wonderful opportunity. The company has blanketed the local classical airwaves with ads - "Based on the second-best-selling book of all time!" - and the theatre is just a couple miles from my workplace. So though I'm keeping early hours these days, I'd have time to nap before the show last night and hope I could stay awake throughout, which didn't quite work.
I couldn't blame the show for that. It was episodic - Jason Detwiler as the Pilgrim kept trudging away to the back of the stage at the end of each scene only to reappear at front stage right for his next ordeal - but I thought it sufficiently dramatic. The scenes flowed together into a single entity, and none was individually overlong. Each scene held together musically: the restful ones like the House Beautiful and the Delectable Mountains were ravishingly beautiful, while the challenges were punchy in the mode of the Sixth Symphony. The overall mixed effect, as I'd expected, resembled that of RVW's "masque for dancers," Job. The singers sometimes seemed superfluous to the music emerging from the pit orchestra under John Kendall Bailey, but at other times RVW achieved the blended effect he'd caught so splendidly in his Sea Symphony.
The story is framed with Bunyan (Kirk Eichelberger) in prison writing his book. This so far makes the opera resemble Man of La Mancha, but that's not very far. This is an opera, not a musical, so the music doesn't go for catchy tunes. A much stronger reminiscence of something else came in the Valley of Humiliation. RVW was disappointed with the staging of the Pilgrim's battle with Apollyon in the first production. He thought something with lighting and shadows would work, and that was the line followed here. Apollyon, in horned helmet, stands behind a scrim, and all you can see is his enlarged shadow. John Minagro's already powerful voice is amplified, and the dramatic (if not musical) resemblance to Fafnir confronting Siegfried is marked. The liveliest scene was the Vanity Fair, with a crowd in stylized Vegas/Mardi Gras costumes pressuring the very plain Pilgrim to buy their wares. This scene abounds with little cameos. The composer resisted the suggestion to make it longer, figuring that the audience could either identify the cameos or else it doesn't matter. One man sings a line about selling his lord for thirty pieces of silver, so you know who he is. And when the Pilgrim sweeps them all aside, crying, "I buy the truth!", another man interjects, "What is truth?", so you know who he is.
Most of the cast were familiar names from Opera San Jose. B. is now reading the program, telling me which ones she knew from school or choral work. Jason Detwiler shaved his head for the part and looked a little like China Mieville. Some of the supporting singers had stronger, clearer voices than the lead, but Detwiler's greater emotional depth carried the show, as he had to. I'm sorry to report that the theatre was less than half full. There are two more performances, at the Lesher Center in Walnut Creek, through the weekend.
For this very reason a very rare (first ever on this coast) production of Ralph Vaughan Williams's The Pilgrim's Progress appealed to me. Vaughan Williams didn't even call it an opera but "A Morality," and the conventional wisdom is that it failed on first production in 1951 because, like the book it's based on, it's static rather than a drama.
But I'm here to listen to the music rather than to watch a drama, and this was the life-work - he spent some three decades on it - of one of my favorite composers. His Fifth Symphony, a masterpiece of contemplative beauty, is in large part a spin-off of work on Pilgrim's Progress. Two hours of RVW music new to me seemed a wonderful opportunity. The company has blanketed the local classical airwaves with ads - "Based on the second-best-selling book of all time!" - and the theatre is just a couple miles from my workplace. So though I'm keeping early hours these days, I'd have time to nap before the show last night and hope I could stay awake throughout, which didn't quite work.
I couldn't blame the show for that. It was episodic - Jason Detwiler as the Pilgrim kept trudging away to the back of the stage at the end of each scene only to reappear at front stage right for his next ordeal - but I thought it sufficiently dramatic. The scenes flowed together into a single entity, and none was individually overlong. Each scene held together musically: the restful ones like the House Beautiful and the Delectable Mountains were ravishingly beautiful, while the challenges were punchy in the mode of the Sixth Symphony. The overall mixed effect, as I'd expected, resembled that of RVW's "masque for dancers," Job. The singers sometimes seemed superfluous to the music emerging from the pit orchestra under John Kendall Bailey, but at other times RVW achieved the blended effect he'd caught so splendidly in his Sea Symphony.
The story is framed with Bunyan (Kirk Eichelberger) in prison writing his book. This so far makes the opera resemble Man of La Mancha, but that's not very far. This is an opera, not a musical, so the music doesn't go for catchy tunes. A much stronger reminiscence of something else came in the Valley of Humiliation. RVW was disappointed with the staging of the Pilgrim's battle with Apollyon in the first production. He thought something with lighting and shadows would work, and that was the line followed here. Apollyon, in horned helmet, stands behind a scrim, and all you can see is his enlarged shadow. John Minagro's already powerful voice is amplified, and the dramatic (if not musical) resemblance to Fafnir confronting Siegfried is marked. The liveliest scene was the Vanity Fair, with a crowd in stylized Vegas/Mardi Gras costumes pressuring the very plain Pilgrim to buy their wares. This scene abounds with little cameos. The composer resisted the suggestion to make it longer, figuring that the audience could either identify the cameos or else it doesn't matter. One man sings a line about selling his lord for thirty pieces of silver, so you know who he is. And when the Pilgrim sweeps them all aside, crying, "I buy the truth!", another man interjects, "What is truth?", so you know who he is.
Most of the cast were familiar names from Opera San Jose. B. is now reading the program, telling me which ones she knew from school or choral work. Jason Detwiler shaved his head for the part and looked a little like China Mieville. Some of the supporting singers had stronger, clearer voices than the lead, but Detwiler's greater emotional depth carried the show, as he had to. I'm sorry to report that the theatre was less than half full. There are two more performances, at the Lesher Center in Walnut Creek, through the weekend.
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no subject
Date: 2006-06-17 09:11 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-06-19 04:34 am (UTC)Afterwards, I ran into someone I know who mentioned she had seen another RVW opera, Sir John in Love while in London, which she said was more of an opera.
no subject
Date: 2006-06-17 09:40 pm (UTC)I really enjoy both Jason and Kirk, so it would have been great to hear them from somewhere other than an orchestra pit! Ah well. Did they use a full orchestra?
Btw, I believe jason shaved his head well over a year ago. I don't know him well enough to ask, but I wondered if it's just easier this way, since he so often has to don wigs for operas.
Believe it or not, I never heard any ads for the opera ... guess I don't listen to our classical station enough, eh?
-patty
no subject
Date: 2006-06-17 10:16 pm (UTC)Actually, I think I've heard more ads on the Sacramento station. Being able to get it is the main advantage of having to drive that far to work.
no subject
Date: 2006-06-17 09:40 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-06-17 09:54 pm (UTC)Years ago a friend sent me a tape of a live performance of it, at Coventry Cathedral, conducted by the composer, and I thought this was the living end, until he sent me an aircheck of it by Serge Koussevitzky and the Boston Symphony Orchestra. Wow! I hope these will receive an "official" issue someday.
RVW
Date: 2006-06-17 10:52 pm (UTC)VW was not much of a chamber-music guy, so what you've heard is the least of him. Orchestral and choral are his specialties.
His nine symphonies are tremendously varied. The other one most like the Fifth is the Third; they're often paired. Though they're both pastoral (that's the Third's title, in fact), neither is as placid or eventless as their reputation.
The best-known symphonies are the First (really an oratorio on Whitman sea poems) and the Second (a quite charming symphonic portrait of London). But the greatest is the Sixth, recognizably the same composer but otherwise totally different: it's a hair-raising piece often associated (despite the composer's denials) with nuclear holocaust.
no subject
Date: 2006-06-17 09:47 pm (UTC)You may find RVW's earlier radio version more to your liking on account of its greater concision. There is an even earlier prototype composition of just one sequence of the "story," but I haven't yet heard it.
It's enjoyable to find out-of-the-way repertoire works in live, semi-pro performances. I happened to attend the U.S. premiere of Carl Nielsen's opera Saul and David, which took place in Minneapolis as late as the early 1980s.
Saul & David
Date: 2006-06-17 10:41 pm (UTC)Considering my love for early Nielsen, why I've never gotten around to listening to a recording of either of his operas mystifies even me. But I do prefer dramatic works staged, at least for first encounters.