Little Lulu and her Twelve Tones

[muckefuck]

The story of Lyric's production of Alban Berg's Lulu is a story of a happy family. Music, book, acting, set design--everything merges to produce a dynamite viewing experience. I thought I was in trouble because I messed up my sleep schedule over the weekend and was drowsy at work, but once I got through some of the slower expository scenes in the first act, it was smooth sailing. There wasn't even a thought of going home a bit early.

I give huge props to the cast, particularly Marlis Petersen. From following off_coloratura's travails, I have some clue how incredibly difficult it is to learn Berg's score. Now that I've seen how much time Lulu spends on stage--three hours! Even Isolde gets more of a break than that! So the fact that she was able to sing it all perfectly was impressive; the fact that she made is sound beautiful in the process is a minor miracle. Add to the fact that she acted up a storm the entire time and words really fail me. (Nuphy even expressed a little envy of our seat partners who came late and had to watch Act 1 on a screen, because at least they had a better view of the proceedings than was imaginable from the upper balcony.)

But what I really wasn't prepared for was how much I loved the music. It's been nearly twenty years since I saw Wozzeck in Basel, but I remember liking it well enough. Oh--but I was warned--Lulu isn't nearly as pleasant to listen to as that! So I was braced for a real slog--and was enraptured from the first atonal bars. It amazed me how tuneful it managed to sound despite the absence of conventional themes and harmonies. (Hats off to the orchestra, by the way, for making it sound effortless.)

The set design was fantastic. You might have expected a dreary sameness from a succession of predominately white interiors, but each room had its own distinct character. Even more surprising, each felt like a real room instead of just a stage set. The only exception was the final set, which failed to suggest an interior at all. (This was also the locale of the only bad lighting effect in the entire show, a "moonlight" that was abrupt and harsh.)

Matching the naturalness of the space was that off the performers' movement. For once, we had a party scene that really felt like a party; in place of the usual awkward sequence of entrances and exits driven solely by the exigences of traditional arrangements (e.g. everyone on for the chorale, chorus off for the duet, etc.) there was actual flow. And the scenes of Lulu's seductions struck a wonderful balance between salaciousness and suggestiveness.

If this family had one problem child, however, it was Rodell Rosel. He has a beautiful voice and I've quite enjoyed his recital pieces in the annual Rising Young Stars concerts, but in productions he tends to play comic parts distractingly broad. Adding to that in this opera was a seeming inability to modulate his voice so that his characters sounded like they were yelling continuously. Fortunately, his biggest scene was as a white slaver attempting to blackmail Lulu, which called for a lot of stridency. An earlier appearance as an eccentric servant was painful but mercifully brief.

But there you have basically all the flaws--some badly-lit trashbags and a ham in two minor roles--offset by a production where everything else worked. As I told my brother afterwards, I was expecting this would be an opera I was more happy to have seen than to actually see; I certainly didn't expect to be anxious for another performance! The only problem is, of course, it almost certainly won't be of the same calibre. But I'll cope.

Comments

[off_coloratura]

If you want to go again, I can get you MUCH better seats.

And Rodell was also the Indian Prince in the theater scene.

[muckefuck.livejournal.com]

Yeah--another overly-broad performance, but not as excruciating as the manservant. I figured the less said of it, the better.

[richardthinks.livejournal.com]

Moonlight's peculiar: as a conventional sign it's all softness and romance, but the bright full-moon nights here in NYS are like being lit up by a goddamn searchlight, or worse, like raytraced 3D: all hard highlights and blue-black shadows, while in Cornwall it was never really bright enough to support dramatic action.

I blame overwrought performances of Beethoven's "Moonlight Sonata."

[muckefuck.livejournal.com]

Hard moonlight is fine, it was just that the appearance was so sudden and ill-timed, I thought it was supposed to represent the lighting of a lantern. It was like they were thinking, "Oh, he mentions 'Mondschein' in the next line--quick, throw a spot on them!"