“Okay, we GET IT,” my friend whispered to me during Friday’s performance of Semele by Pacific Music Works. She was referring to what felt like the 90,000th time we had heard the words “If I persist in gazing” from the aria “Myself I Shall Adore.” Quickly shushed by a cranky old man sitting next to us (and rightfully so), I couldn’t help thinking that her remark was a succinct commentary on the entire performance.
Now, I have to give Pacific MusicWorks some credit. As you might have picked up in my last review, opera is more or less my lifeblood; because of this, I have a vested interest in seeing local mid-size companies succeed. Pacific MusicWorks has worked incredibly hard under what at times have been difficult financial circumstances; congratulations are due to them for mounting what is a fully conceptualized and professional feeling production with the assistance of the UW School of Music. It will certainly appeal to their core crowd of subscribers and the early music crowd in Seattle if only because there aren’t many other games in town that have the resources to put on this kind of show. From the outside, it looks impressive – an exposed ensemble led by conductor Stephen Stubbs, professional vocal talent, and a set complete with rich visualizations.
However, the production is only irritatingly close to successful. I really want it to work out, because it has some good bones – musical and theatrical ideas are tantalizingly close to the surface of excellence. I sympathize with the Herculean task of putting something like this on – an opera has so many moving parts that it can be challenging to get everything to work. But on the other hand, I’m not sure this excuses obvious artistic choices.
I particularly dislike staging for its own sake and unfortunately, this show is full of the pitter patter of little chorus member feet as they hit their marks. While on the one hand, I can see what director James Darrah is trying to achieve – dramatic use of dance elements and what appears to be shredded paper to create the otherworldly feel of the realm of the Roman gods to contrast with a devout but gritty public – but it doesn’t work. The dancers haven’t had enough time to rehearse or don’t have the skills to make this polished enough for performance. Furthermore, the dance elements dramatically just don’t make sense. There are transitions and interesting ideas inherent, including a nice moment in the second half when Semele walks across a sea of goddesses, but there is a finite limit to the number of times I can see a slowly outstretched arm before it ceases to be dramatic. By the end of the performance, I had gesture fatigue. I’m not even interestingly alienated – just tired of seeing the same thing over and over.
At times, Adam Larsen’s visual choices are spectacular – including the introduction of a multi-video projection of the god of sleep restlessly tossing and turning. But then this little genius moment is immediately undermined by a sleeping chorus not only rolling onto stage, but then getting dragged off by their feet. We have no idea where they are going or why they are being dragged off and the image is so weirdly hilarious that what should have been a somber moment gets laughs from the audience. There’s also a great idea of using a flame projection during the first half of the show. This works for about twenty minutes – I’m entranced by the flame of Jove! – before it started to remind me of the Mac “Flurry” screensaver.
Overall from a directorial standpoint, there is also a tendency to portray the text: the aria mentions an arm, so he’ll make a chorus line with outstretched arms. Okay, we GET IT. This kind of slavish attention to the text is really insulting to an audience member because it assumes that we’re not able to understand what’s happening and instead have to be told what to see. It also does not illustrate an understanding of the deeper themes of the opera from the director because he’s not able to elevate the meaning away from the referent. By the end of the performance, I just wanted to FedEx him a copy of Roland Barthes’ The Pleasure of the Text.
Musically, there are also some challenges. And once again, I sympathize: baroque and early music aren’t always the most accessible art forms. Dramatically, it can be challenging to mount a production which is so entrenched in Affektenlehre, particularly in our twitter-addled era of short attention spans. Musically, it also isn’t easy for the average listener – the real joy of this music is listening for all the delightful crunchy key changes, deceptive cadences, and the like. While there’s something to be said for the splendor of baroque runs, without the proper staging to make this music meaningful, to a novice it can feel like listening to the squeaky buzzing of a Sonicare toothbrush. As the knowledge of how to listen to classical music becomes an increasingly rarefied talent, the ability to enjoy this kind of music texture is waning in the general public. And, unfortunately, appealing to the general public is exactly what the opera needs – Peter Gelb’s alarming statistics of an aging audience highlight this fact. So I wonder how successful any performance of a baroque opera can be if it alienates the audience which it desperately needs to attract.
But what if you do have the musical background to appreciate it? “Hence, Iris, hence away” is my jam. (Some people blast dubstep while driving, I have peppy Handel runs.) Granted, I’m not a Handel expert but I think I have enough to go on. I just can’t excuse the ensemble’s musical stumbles. Granted, it’s a mix of professional players and student players, but it is not a very clean performance – it lacks the crispiness of perfect tuning and exact entrances that make Handel pleasurable. It also has difficulty at times working with the performer – there’s what in the culinary world would be criticized as a lack of fat in some of the more exposed arias. I wanted the buttery exposed melodies to come through in “Turn Hopeless Lover,” and soprano Peabody Southwell brought it, but the orchestra couldn’t quite match her. Stubbs himself, it has to be said, is dynamic on the period instruments, but I wish he had worked with the ensemble more to solidify the music. My friend, who to her credit does have a solid musical background, commented that parts of this performance were out of tune. The choral singing also leaves something to be desired– although they are students, I can’t give them a pass for their lack of blending because individual voices stand out unpleasantly.
Overall the professional vocal talent is solid. If this were remounted as a sitzprobe instead of a performance, I think I would have more time to appreciate the solid work invested here. Countertenor Nathan Medley is excellent – crisp, clean, exacting in all the most satisfying early music ways. I was really enjoying Colin Ramsey’s “O Sleep” but then got a spotlight right in the eye while the chorus was milling about doing who knows what disturbing the curtains in the back. So it goes.
Haeran Hong deserves high praise for her vocal talent. Though diminutive in stature, she holds her own on the runs – actually doing a spectacularly clear job in “Myself I Shall Adore” despite the music’s repetitive nature. I was dutifully impressed by her intonation as well as the quality of her vowels – nothing here falters, she’s the solid rock holding this performance together. Once again though from a dramatic standpoint, her hubristic transformation from young innocent mortal to power-hungry near goddess is obscured by questionable staging choices.
To conclude, the best summary of the performance is written by Stubbs himself in a director’s note in the program – “I am more convinced than ever that this initiative holds amazing promise. In such a large and complex innovation, there may be room for improvement in the details of this collaboration, but I’m convinced that the vision is sound and promising.” All in all, this production rests on some very solid foundations – musically and dramatically it’s almost there. There is real thought put into this performance, but the execution and moreover, the editing that a dramaturg could have provided, is lacking. I’d like to encourage the UW and Pacific Musicworks to continue this collaboration they’ve started and I am very much looking forward to seeing what they have planned for the future.
