SEEN AND HEARD INTERNATIONAL

Other Links

Editorial Board

Google Site Search

Monteverdi,  Il ritorno d’Ulisse in patria :  Pacific Operaworks, director William Kentridge, revival directed by Luc de Wit, musical director Stephen Stubbs. The Moore Theatre, Seattle, 21.3.2009 (BJ)


Originally mounted in 1998 at La Monnaie in Brussels, and revived now, for the first time with a new musical director and a cast of American singers, this is a production with a difference. The Johannesburg-born artist William Kentridge had the idea of joining forces with his compatriots of the Handspring Puppet Company to create a production of Monteverdi’s last opera that would combine living singers on stage with puppets.

Having read that the weight of the puppets made them hard to hold for extended periods, so that the length of the opera had had to be cut down by something like half to about 90 minutes, I was prepared in advance to be underwhelmed, since this sounded like the tail wagging the dog. (What would we say about a company that said, “Well, our singers are too obese to perform for long, so we’ll only do half the opera”?) But, in the event, what happened on the Moore Theatre stage was so enchanting that the pluses totally outweighed any minuses–and it should also be borne in mind that the notion of a “complete” version of this opera is in any case chimerical, given the sketchiness, and possible partial inauthenticity, of the sources.

A debut presentation by the new Seattle-based Pacific Operaworks, this Ritorno mostly matched the musical quality of  a Venetian ensemble’s production of L’Orfeo on the same stage a few weeks earlier, while its dramatic and visual magic put the vulgar shenanigans of that effort to shame. On the musical side, Stephen Stubbs, playing a chitarrone, presided skillfully  over an ensemble of seven musicians wielding an array string instruments that included baroque harp (Maxine Eilander), viola da gamba (Margriet Tindemans), archlute Elizabeth Brown), cello and  lirone (David Morris), and two violins (Ingrid Matthews and Tekla Cunningham). Given the sparseness of the opera’s instrumentation, in contrast with the sonic richness of L’Orfeo (which was composed for completely different circumstances), these forces were entirely appropriate to the work in hand.

The singing was stylish and in several cases very beautiful. Tenor Ross Hauck sang a strong Ulisse, mezzo-soprano Laura Pudwell a deeply sympathetic Penelope, and in the roles of Amore and Minerva Cyndia Sieden’s coloratura soprano was dazzlingly clean in articulation and line. Douglas Williams, as Tempo, Nettuno, and Antinoo, unfurled a bass voice of splendid solidity, and the other soloists, Sarah Mattox as Fortuna and Melanto, Jason McStoots as Giove and Eumete, James Brown as Pisandro, and Zachary Wilder as Telemaco and Anfinomo, all did well, while–literally–holding up their ends of the relevant puppets in collaboration with puppeteers Adrian Kohler, Busi Zokufa, Basil Jones, Jason Potgieter, and Enrico Wey.

Those puppets possessed extraordinarily vivid character, and they combined with a backdrop of monochrome images assembled by Kentridge in a rich repertoire of effects, including some amazingly lifelike simulated walking movements. It is with some shame that I confess to never having heard of William Kentridge before; he is clearly an artist of stature–of genius, even–and the note he contributed to the program book combined luminous intelligence with a welcome clarity and lack of pretentiousness.

The question of the cuts remains. The omission of such subplot elements as the love scene between Melanto and Eurimaco, and of the latter character altogether, is of no great consequence. But there were a couple of junctures in the main story that made no sense without the omitted material. They included the abrupt transition in the suitors’ activities from wooing Penelope to plotting against Ulisse, when the news that he was about to return had been left out, and Telemaco’s vouching for his father’s genuineness, when their reunion was similarly excised. I know there are opera-lovers who don’t expect opera to make sense, and even performers who feel that way. (I once asked Geraint Evans, in an interview, why, directing a production of Il barbiere di Siviglia, he made the “traditional” cut of the scene where Rosina is given occasion to suspect Almaviva of infidelity, so that, from being all lovey-dovey at one moment, she turns violently against him with no apparent reason; the celebrated baritone’s dumbfounding reply was, “Well, I have never actually thought about it.”) In my judgement, when opera does make sense, sense should be preserved. In this case, why not hire a double team of puppeteers so that they can spell each other, in order to restore the missing plot elements–and their associated music–that are really important?

But I don’t want to end on a negative note. This was a truly revelatory production of a too rarely performed opera, and I stepped out of the theater intensely moved and inspired by it. I look forward to future Pacific Operaworks productions with much eagerness.

Bernard Jacobson


^{Back to Top                                                    Cumulative Index Page}