Score Another For Americans

By Michael Walsh

TITLE: MCTEAGUE

COMPOSER: WILLIAM BOLCOM

LIBRETTISTS: ARNOLD WEINSTEIN AND ROBERT ALTMAN

WHERE: LYRIC OPERA OF CHICAGO

THE BOTTOM LINE: The latest successful home-grown opera is a brash tale of turn-of-the-century passions.

These are rich times for American opera. After years of prospecting in the wilderness of arid academic styles and played-out compositional veins, composers may finally have hit an operatic mother lode. Within the past year, the Metropolitan Opera has staged two successful world premieres by Americans, John Corigliano's The Ghosts of Versailles and Philip Glass's The Voyage. This month, through Nov. 24, Lyric Opera of Chicago is striking pay dirt with William Bolcom's McTeague. Eureka!

Until now, Frank Norris' 1899 novel was best known as the inspiration for Erich von Stroheim's 1924 silent epic Greed. Bolcom has given the material a brash, distinctive voice. His score evokes turn-of-the-century America in a slick, seamless potpourri of retro modernism, long, loose-limbed melodies and irresistible rhythmic invention.

In contrast to the cinematically luxurious Greed, the libretto of McTeague -- by Bolcom's longtime collaborator Arnold Weinstein and director Robert Altman -- relates the action in spare, simple prose. McTeague (tenor Ben Heppner), a powerful brute who has set up shop as an unlicensed dentist in San Francisco, falls in love with his best friend Marcus Schouler's girl, Trina (soprano Catherine Malfitano, in a marvelously sensual performance). After Trina wins $5,000 in a lottery -- and McTeague's practice is ruined when the jealous Marcus (baritone Timothy Nolen) reports him to the authorities -- the relationship sinks slowly into a morass of miserliness and sexual dysfunction. Driven nearly mad, McTeague kills his wife, steals her money and sets out for Death Valley, grimly pursued by Marcus: Wozzeck meets The Ballad of Baby Doe.

Altman, whose only previous operatic staging was a 1983 Rake's Progress at the University of Michigan-Ann Arbor, proves to be an ideal directorial choice. Especially noteworthy is Trina's erotic soliloquy as she lies in bed showered with her gold pieces, a latter-day Danae. And surely the opening scene of Act II, in which the maid Maria (mezzo Emily Golden) hymns the joy of wealth while experiencing the joy of sex up against a fence, is an operatic first.

History cautions against too quickly proclaiming a Golden Age for native opera. The 1930s witnessed a false dawn when Howard Hanson's Merry Mount and Deems Taylor's The King's Henchman, among other worthy pieces, took the stage at the Met only to disappear soon after. A few decades later, composers such as Douglas Moore (Baby Doe), Robert Ward (The Crucible) and Samuel Barber (Vanessa) made another attempt to establish American opera, but their works faded as well.

The new generation may have better luck. Euro-centrism is dying, and with it the reflexive Europhilia of audiences. The new operas are eclectic, tuneful and frankly crowd pleasing. Once again, new music is where the action, and the money, is. Let the Europeans munch on the indigestible tone rows of Aribert Reimann or the pretentious obscurity of Sir Michael Tippett. Americans want something with a beat they can virtually dance to. In McTeague, they have it.