Boldly Back in Business

By William Bender

Backstage at the New York City Opera last week, Head Costumer J. Edgar Joseph had a problem. Would the off-white silk nightgown take to the rose dye? If not, Diva Beverly Sills would have to portray the heroine of Donizetti's Anna Bolena 30 hours later in a hand-me-down from Massenet's Manon. The dilemma was only one of several dozen facing Joseph at the time. Suddenly he rose from his chair, walked to a big dressing mirror and began screaming at himself. "What's the use of yelling at someone else?" he said. "It's nobody's fault. This way I get it out of my system."

Memorable Lesson. "It" was the most frantic week in the City Opera's 30-year history. Closed down for four weeks by a surprise strike of the orchestra's musicians (TIME, Oct. 8), the company was boldly getting back in business by presenting three new opera productions in four nights. As directors, casts, musicians and technicians scurried to get ready, the backstage scene often looked like something out of the Marx Brothers' A Night at the Opera. Even la Sills, usually the best prepared of singers, became momentarily confused. At the full-dress rehearsal of Bolena, she lost her way in Anna's prayer scene and began to repeat herself. Ever the pro, Sills tossed off the mistake with a quip: "It is such a pretty aria, once is good but twice is better."

When the New York State Theater's great gold curtain finally rose for the first act of Bolena, Sills' nightie (successfully rosied) hung in her dressing room, and all, incredibly, was in place on time, ready to be admired. Not given a major New York stage production since 1850, Anna Bolena is a bel canto curio revived to enable Sills to complete her long-planned and justly famed Donizetti trilogy. As with the other queens of the Tudor era, Elizabeth I in Roberto Devereux and the Queen of Scots in Maria Stuarda, Sills proves again that she is a singing actress without peer. Stage Director Tito Capobianco gives her full rein: she even takes final leave of her lord and mate Henry VIII by giving him a stinging slap in the face that is a triumph of histrionics over history.

The way Sills moves from misery to compassion (for her successor Jane Seymour), and then on to resolute acceptance of her fate, is a memorable lesson in the essential operatic art of building toward the big moment. Though not actually shown, the execution by ax is marvelously anticipated by Sills' clutching at her neck at the final curtain. As Henry, Baritone Robert Hale, 40, is a believably gruff, gout-ridden and girl-crazy monarch, dominating the stage in a way that disguises the fact that he does not have one solo aria.

Contrast of Worlds. Is the ax crueler than what happened to poor Ariadne? Grown weary of her charms, the mighty Theseus simply dropped her off one day on a deserted island. There opera audiences find her in a cave, unable to sleep--largely, or so it sometimes seems, because Naiad, Dryad and Echo are outside singing their soprano heads off. All this, of course, is the stuff of the City Opera's second new production, Richard Strauss' mellifluous, intimate Ariadne auf Naxos. In essence, it tells of a composer's horror at learning, in the first part of the opera, that his opera seria is going to be performed simultaneously with a commedia dell'arte show, which indeed it is in the second part.

Bringing off a musical conceit like this requires a quick, fluster-free directorial hand. This it gets from the queen of American regional opera, Boston's Sarah Caldwell. Daringly, she mixes languages. "Ariadne," the opera within the opera, is performed in the original German; everything else is in English. The trick works because it emphasizes the contrast of worlds that lies at the heart of the work. Caldwell also brings wit and restrained taste to a work too often given the buffoon treatment. Finally, she defers where appropriate to Conductor Julius Rudel and his singers--notably starlet-pretty Patricia Wise as Zerbinetta and buxom Carol Neblett as Ariadne.

Rural Translation. At week's end came the third new production, Frederick Delius' rural translation of Shakespeare, A Village Romeo and Juliet. This turn-of-the-century work (in style as well as date) was presented for the first time in the U.S. in April 1972 by the Opera Society of Washington. The New York production is the same, with the identical director (Frank Corsaro) and leads (Tenor John Stewart and Soprano Patricia Wells). It also has the same strengths and weaknesses. Corsaro's "sets" consist of film and slide projections that suggest the right dreamy mood, but unfortunately have a way of blurring the drama's intimacy. Still, A Village Romeo and Juliet contains some of Delius' most luxuriant orchestral writing.

If the New York City Opera's first post-strike week accomplished anything, it was to emphasize the company's commendable willingness to take considerable risks with uncertain box office works. Even Anna Bolena, for all its royal blood and thunder, is a chancy proposition, musically weak and one of those "neglected masterpieces" that largely deserves its neglect. No matter. Soprano Sills earned her right to sing it by her performance. And with such adventurous programming, the company more than earned a warm welcome back.

--William Bender

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