Alice Busch Opera Theater, Cooperstown, NY. (Balcony, Seat E4, $119.50).
At curtain call, from left: Sellum, Trulove, ?, Anne Trulove, ?, Conductor, ?, ?, Tom Rakewell, Nick Shadow, Baba the Turk, Mother Goose. The ?s are the production team.
Story. Tom Rakewell turns down a job arranged by his fiance Anne Trulove's father. While he wants to be rich, he doesn't want to work for it. Nick Shadow shows up and informs Tom that he has been left an inheritance, and the two go off to London to settle the affair. When Tom asks Nick how he could be repaid, Nick says the wages will be fair, and determined in a year and a day. Nick brings Tom to a brothel, while Tom initially shows some hesitation, he eventually spends the night with Mother Goose, the madam of the house. Tom then wishes for happiness, and Nick arranges for him to marry Baba the Turk, a bearded lady on display at the fair. Anne comes to London and meets Tom, who says he is now unworthy and asks Anne to leave. Tom and Baba get into an argument, Tom falls asleep, and dreams of an invention that turns stone into bread. When he finds out the invention is real, he wants to do good with it, but is convinced by Nick to use it to fool potential investors. Tom eventually ends up broke, and his possessions, including Baba, are up for auction. Nick leads Tom to a graveyard and tells him time (one year and a day) is up, and he is to kill himself before midnight. Nick, who turns out to be the devil, then offers Tom an alternative: they will gamble for Tom's soul. Tom wins as he bets on Queen of Hearts. Nick Shadow then condemns Tom to insanity. Tom now imagines himself as Adonis, the lover of Venus. Anne visits Tom in the asylum. After Tom falls asleep as she sings, she leaves. For the epilog, every principal describes a moral of the story. The opera concludes with them singing "for idle hands hearts and minds, the Devil finds a work to do."
Conductor - Joseph Colaneri; Tom Rakewell - Adrian Kramer, Anne Trulove - Lydia Grindatto, Nick Shadow - Aleksey Bogdanov, Baba the Turk - Deborah Nansteel, Trulove - Marc Webster, Mother Goose -Tzytle Steinman, Sellem - Kellan Dunlap.
Over the years "Glimmerglass" would come to my attention every now and then. Other than its being an opera festival, I knew very little about it. Something as fundamental as if it is where well-known musicians come together for the summer, or a training program for young artists. We decided to find out this year.
Stravinsky wrote several operas. A search of the web would indicate The Rake's Progress and Oedipus Rex are his most popular ones: their titles translate to rather intense subject matters. The Rake's Progress tells the same story depicted in a series of eight paintings by William Hogarth, completed in 1735. The is the first time the opera is staged at Glimmerglass.
We attended the pre-concert talk given by the Principal Coach and Orchestra Keyboard Christopher Devlin - we would see him at the harpsichord at the performance. I jotted down a few things he said. The opera is among the top 5 performed English opera, and is a challenging work. Devlin also described how the beginning referred to Monteverdi's Orfeo, and that Stravinsky used a fanfare to start the program. The opera starts and ends on A major (most people can't tell after 2 1/2 hours). There are four tenor arias, the last three are for dramatic introductions/effects that the audience doesn't not applaud. Well, it is difficult to decide which of the solo passages sung by the tenor were these arias, and the audience didn't get the memo about the applause as they did it anyway. While I was expecting an overview of the work (this is the premiere after all), I found his remarks quite useful.
The auditorium has a capacity of 918, so the singers could be heard clearly most of the time. And the projected titles helped. The set design is on the simple side, but quite effective, but there were times that I wasn't sure what was being depicted (e.g., the sedan Baba the Turk was in). The singers all did well, and made this fictional story quite believable. I would note for future reference that the harpsichord was the only instrument used during the card game between Nick and Tom (not sure how that's significant).
The Alice Busch Opera Theater is built like a barn to blend in with the surroundings.
The side walls of the auditorium are closed before the performance. They do have fans to provide some relief if the theater gets too warm.
The opera was written during Stravinsky's neo-classical period, and is quite accessible even for a first-time listener. The arias are not always easily hummable, but are as classical as what one can expect from that period. While the story is simple, I still managed to get lost every now and then. What is most interesting for me is there is such a strong moral element to it. Of course it could well be a parody - we are talking about someone who wrote the Rite of Spring, after all. (A good 40 or so years earlier.)
The Opera Theater does not have air conditioning. In the balcony there are a couple of giant fans - they were not on this afternoon, but they were on Sunday during Tosca. The sides were open before the performance started, but the walls were "drawn" at the start of the opera. Today wasn't excessively hot, so it felt okay in our short-sleeves.
The opera started at 1 pm (well, a couple of people said something), and ended just before 4 pm.
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