Heggie: Dead Man Walking
San Francisco Opera,
War Memorial Auditorium,
San Francisco, October 17, 2000
Received with great acclaim, San Francisco Opera’s commissioned work by Jake Heggie, Dead Man Walking, provides a watershed work in the growing portfolio of American opera. It tells the story of a death row convict who has raped a young girl and killed both her and her boyfriend. He is befriended by a Catholic nun who is eager to treat all humans as children of God. This opera wrestles with questions which were common to Mozart’s and Verdi’s own societies, just as they are today: What is justice? What is love? What’s worth dying for? But when Frederica von Stade sings her climactic aria in polyester pants and Keds, and the heroine’s first scene is set in her car, it’s clear that Dead Man Walking is speaking to our own time.
Dead Man Walking offers shocking portraits of crime, evil, redemption and eroticism. But opera is no stranger to any of these. Take shocking eroticism, for example. Der Rosenkavalier opens with an older woman and a young boy in bed together, and long before Strauss, many other composers wrote scandalous love scenes for their characters. Dead Man Walking also opens with a love scene: two highschool seniors fool around by a moonlit lake. But instead of ruffling their powdered wigs or courtly robes, they are completely naked. Then the girl is raped and stabbed, and the boy is shot. And this rawness isn’t the only break from the operatic past. The prisoners on death row don’t exactly resemble Fidelio’s chained mass that triumphantly ascends to the light. These guys swear and shout horrible curses at the visiting nun. If this opera were a movie, it’d be rated R.
But wait. It was a movie. Tim Robbins and Susan Sarandon’s 1995 film of the same name was based on the memoirs of Sister Helen Prejean, a Catholic nun in Louisiana who served as the spiritual advisor to a convict on death row in the ‘80s. The San Francisco Opera never explained why it chose to recreate a work that had already stirred the nation through its Hollywood rendition. Aren’t there compelling tales of justice and love that have not already been explored by movie tycoons? Hollywood’s obvious intrusion into this otherwise fresh, provocative piece is the weak link that effects every aspect of the opera. We wonder how much more of a cultural and musical impact the opera would have — around the world — if we didn’t already have an image of Sean Penn as the convicted murder, or if we weren’t reciting key lines along with the singers.
Building an opera on a nationally acclaimed story and a libretto by four time Tony winner Terrence McNally, Heggie may have felt that his music should only support these other elements rather than drive them. His music seems to be simply a vehicle to carry an overpowering story, and the music contributes surprisingly little to enhance an intense story and intense text. Many operas in the canon offer us the reverse equation: the story may be a bit trite or corny, but the music serves to enrich it and give it emotional drive.
Since many of the lines and scenes in the opera are identical to those in the movie, watching the opera only reminds us of the movie — simply put to music — rather than trumpeting an art form that offers so much more than words and motions. Music is the heart of an opera; one should not be able to survive without the music. In Dead Man Walking, the music provides an admittedly well crafted and compelling element, but this work would survive were its heart cut out. Even Heggie seems to acknowledge self-effacement since he has the opera’s three climactic moments—the crime, Helen’s decision to support Joe, and Joe’s death—all play out in silence.
Even though the music could more forcefully place itself in front of the story and the text, San Francisco Opera’s production provides a sometimes witty, often beautiful and always gripping drama. There are several arias and one duet between Helen and Joe that truly stand apart in their beauty. Exceptional performances by every one of the leads and supporting voices have helped to present this new work in the finest light.
The crown jewels, of course, were the three leads: Kristine Jepson (replacing Susan Graham on the evening of October 17th), John Packard, and Frederica von Stade. Packard’s debut at San Francisco Opera proves his ability to play a leading role. Even though the role of Joseph De Rocher, the convicted murderer, is perfectly suited to Packard, he will need to be carefully cast in future roles. Packard’s voice had a rough casualness that gave the part of Joseph a convincing swagger. But Packard wasn’t able to shed this careless sound even when he wanted to say something without attitude. Even his most lyrical and soul-baring moments were accompanied by a guttural, oratorical tone.
Von Stade brilliantly crafted her usually luminous voice into a Louisiana drawl. As Joe’s barely literate mother, she lodged a permanent sob in her dramatic mezzo voice which made her pleas for her son’s life some of the most wrenching musical moments of the entire work. Jepson, too, carried her role without a flaw, offering a healthy tone that successfully conveyed her character’s inner determination and integrity.
Theresa Hamm-Smith, sang the role of Sister Rose, Sister Helen’s friend. Playing a voice of reason in the midst of her fellow sister’s turmoil, Hamm-Smith’s vibrant and crisp sound added a convincing tone to her firm words of wisdom. Her inherent lyricism, on the other hand, cushioned Rose as a wholly loving friend and confidante.
Also rewarding were Robert Orth, Nicolle Foland, Catherine Cook and Gary Rideout, who played the murdered children’s grieving parents. Rideout’s tenor and Orth’s baritone voices successfully expressed their all-consuming anger with round severity. Adler Fellow John Ames sang the prison warden, and his is a stalwart, dependable bass voice with an attractive openness that will serve him well as his career grows.
— Neylan McBaine
Debussy: Pelléas et Mélisande
Metropolitan Opera, New York City
October 10, 2000
At the Met at least, a performance of Debussy’s only completed opera is something of a cult ritual. Pelléas et Mélisande is rather a tough sell to many traditional opera fans and the house is frequently shockingly undersold on P & M nights. Those gloomy first two acts — which can seem forbiddingly spare and unpromising to audiences who come for “Nessun dormas” and “Toreador songs” — can be counted upon to send hundreds streaming like lemmings for the exits at intermission. Those who remain and settle in for the final act are there because they want to be, and they feel cosmically bonded to like-minded souls who are willing and eager to submit to a unique masterwork. Those “cultists” who stayed to the bitter end of this final Pelléas of the season saw and heard a performance that could not be bettered on any stage in the world today. It was as close to perfection as I ever expect to to come in the opera house.
Susanne Mentzer, a mezzo Mélisande, was ideal. While a soprano can seem chirpy in this role, Mentzer literally infused her warm and beautiful voice into Debussy’s liquid scoring. In her voice, the rise and fall of the lines was unfailingly lovely, the language always intelligible. Occasional touches of irony in her line readings added to Mélisande’s mystery, making the character at once more specific and more open to a variety of interpretations. The beauty of Dwayne Croft’s baritone, his supple physique and sensitive musicality made his Pelléas a perfect foil for Mentzer’s Mélisande. When the speech level of Debussy’s vocal writing occasionally lifted into exalted melody, as in the Act IV love scene, they soared with breathtaking rapture. And, again, his lower vocal center spared his lines any tenor squillo inappropriate for the texure of this completely integrated musical play.
The rest of the cast was the very definition of “luxury.” For a beautiful, compact, resonant and telling voice allied with a second-nature understanding of the character and a total embodiment of the style, you’d search the world over for an improvement over José Van Dam’s masterful Golaud. It was a privelege to be in the hall. Nadine Denize, likewise, brought her vocal beauty and similar experience and command to Geneviève’s scenes. Both singers — all singers, in fact — projected the French text with elegance and clarity. Robert Lloyd’s rich, rolling basso steadiness again proved indespensible as Arkel. Treble James Danner was a touching, accurate Yniold. His unforced vulnerability made the scene in which Golaud forces the child to spy on the lovers particularly horrific. As the “lambs to slaughter” scene is staged as a dream with the child alone and in bed, the shepherd’s single line at the end comes as a jolt, out of nowhere.
I like a lot more linear sweep and over-all propulsion in my Pelléas conducting than James Levine provided, but he did a magnificent job of picking out and accenting the resplendent orchestral features of this score. I heard effects like the gravel scraping along the seabed as the tide goes out in the cave scene as never before, so he was doing something right. He was also providing an ideal balance between the singers and the pit.
The 1995 decaying mansion sets of John Conklin, while not specifically a representation of the locales in the libretto, deftly solved all problems, making it easy both to sustain the story’s mood and to flow smoothly from scene to scene along with the musical interludes. Paula Williams provided motivated and effective stage direction.
—Freeman Günter
