New year, New York, new opera

Silvester fireworks in Mainz

I have an operatically eventful January ahead of me here in Germany: Enescu in Frankfurt, Verdi in München, hopefully a Wozzeck double-bill in Darmstadt, and if I can manage it, Elektra in Dresden. I am, believe it or not, planning to get some work done as well. But while all this excitement is keeping me busy over here, my beloved New York will also be having a very exciting month of opera. A recent bounty of press releases contained news too good not to share with you all, including new and new-to-NYC opera galore.

La Gazza Ladra: Che giorno beato dobbiamo passar

A tragic history repeats itself as an irony-laced tragicomedy on the operatic stage: Rossini's 1817 La Gazza Ladra, although bookended with joyous choruses, contains fictions of potentially explosive power, set to music of often surprising complexity. A serving girl, Ninetta is unjustly accused of theft, libidinously desired by the local mayor, innocently charged with protecting her father from the consequences of deserting the army, and yearningly in love with the son of the family in whose household she works. With the aid of more than one deus ex machina, all of these intrigues have a satisfactory denouement, in striking contrast to the accusation and execution which inspired the opera. But there is more than a little Rossinian mockery at work, of social as well as operatic conventions. The drama hovers experimentally between genres. Melodramatic confessions and confrontations are misunderstood or interrupted, and conventions are gently satirized even as they are enacted. Although the soprano is decorously transferred from the embraces of a father to those of a husband, she is practically pushed into the latter's arms after she has asked to be reunited with the mezzo en travesti. The heroine's imprisonment is a mockery, the army is made to look absurd, and the local lord is spectacularly discomfited. After seeing Saturday's performance by the Bronx Opera, which emphasizes the piece's undeniable charm, I was left with two sources of surprise: that La Gazza Ladra isn't performed more often, and that Foucault never wrote an essay on it.

Poisoned Kiss: Vaughan Williams at the Bronx Opera

Act I: Coffey and Davis (c) Andrew Liebowitz/WrightGroupNY

Once upon a time, in a faraway land, there lived in an enchanted forest a maiden whose name was Tormentilla. She was placed there by her father Dipsacus, a powerful enchanter who raised her on a diet of poisons. She learns to her horror that her first kiss will be fatal; a scheme designed by Dipsacus to punish the Empress (whom he loved in his youth) by killing her only son. Tormentilla, however, had already given her heart to that very youth, Amaryllus, while believing him to be a goatherd. Her maid, Angelica, was meanwhile courted by Gallanthus, the prince's valet. A sojourn in Golden Town allowed Tormentilla and Angelica to experience the pleasures of high society, but failed to distract Tormentilla from thoughts of her sad plight. Aided by the spells of hobgoblins, Amaryllus found his way to her; overcome with emotion, the lovers kissed. The Empress spirited away her unconscious son. Since she, intuiting her former lover's plan, raised Amaryllus on antidotes, she was shocked to find that he languished near death for mere lack of his beloved. Softened by recollections of her own youthful passion, she allowed their union. She and Dipsacus were reconciled, Angelica married Gallanthus, and the hobgoblins were affianced with the Empress' mediums. And, Gentle Readers, they all lived happily ever after.

Such is the plot of Ralph Vaughan Williams' rarely staged opera (or, as he called it, romantic extravaganza,) The Poisoned Kiss. Saturday night saw the opening performance in a run by the Bronx Opera which marks the work's professional premiere in New York. From its 1936 premiere onwards, the work has been compared to the oeuvre of Gilbert & Sullivan; the Bronx Opera treated the music with the seriousness it deserved, while acknowledging the drama's farcical elements. There is a widely-held critical opinion that Vaughan Williams' music and Evelyn Sharp's libretto for The Poisoned Kiss do not always complement each other stylistically, with blame usually being attached to the libretto. Ursula Vaughan Williams reports that Sharp "took the story more portentously" than the composer had intended, with "too much of the triumph of love." Correspondence indicates that Vaughan Williams intention was to write a light comic entertainment; staged, I think it succeeds admirably. (I had wondered whether the topical humor of '36 would still work; it appeared to be enjoyed by all.) Satire and farce reside mostly in the libretto, and its commentary on the drama which expresses itself in lyrical phrasing and lush harmonies.