ST. LOUIS — Along with Santa Fe Opera, Opera Theatre of St. Louis is a prime summer destination for American opera lovers. In its 49th season, the Missouri festival retains an enterprising identity all its own, its annual four-opera lineup mixing repertory staples with new and newish operas, and older works less often staged.
For better and for worse, even standard works are often given novel productions. And everything is sung in English, with texts displayed on video screens. Musicians from the St. Louis Symphony supply the orchestra.
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ST. LOUIS — Along with Santa Fe Opera, Opera Theatre of St. Louis is a prime summer destination for American opera lovers. In its 49th season, the Missouri festival retains an enterprising identity all its own, its annual four-opera lineup mixing repertory staples with new and newish operas, and older works less often staged.
For better and for worse, even standard works are often given novel productions. And everything is sung in English, with texts displayed on video screens. Musicians from the St. Louis Symphony supply the orchestra.
With dinners available beforehand on landscaped lawns outside Webster University’s Loretto-Hilton Center, performances in the thrust-stage, 980-seat Browning Theater are up close and personal. The audience is always seeded with fans — and patrons — from all over the country.
Of this year’s offerings, running through June 30, I sampled only two very different operas portraying historic figures: Philip Glass’ Galileo Galilei and Handel’s Giulio Cesare (here rendered as Julius Caesar).
Presumably the standard rep Barber of Seville and La bohème have been filling the house, but, worryingly, Handel and Glass had more empty seats than I can remember here in the past.
Through a Glass backward
Premiered in 2002, Galileo Galilei presents the 17th-century Italian scientist in 10 scenes in reverse chronology. The libretto, by Mary Zimmerman, with Glass and Arnold Weinstein, draws on letters from Galileo and his family and official documents.
Ninety minutes long, with no intermission, the opera personalizes the tension between science and religion — a tension very much alive today. In an opening soliloquy, the blind, aged Galileo recalls his revolutionary conclusion that the Earth revolves around the sun, a concept deemed anti-biblical and thus heretical by the Catholic Church.
Galileo avoided torture only by recanting. As a man of faith himself, did he make the right decision?
We see Pope Urban VIII — who as a cardinal had been a friend of Galileo’s — pronouncing sentence, and the earlier inquiry before two other cardinals. In two other scenes, Galileo expounds his theories in numbing detail.
We also see Galileo with his beloved daughter Maria Celeste, and demonstrating his improved telescope for the Grand Duchess Christina. In the end, the young Galileo and Duchess are evoked watching a pioneering opera by Galileo’s father, the composer Vincenzo Galilei.
Stage director James Robinson made characters from the distant past seem very much present. The function of designer Allen Moyer’s secondary proscenium upstage eluded me, apart from that final invocation of Galileo father’s opera, but Marco Piemontese supplied subtly updated Galileo-period costumes. Impressive projections by Greg Emetaz made much of stars and Galileo’s designs, the latter at one point spinning in what almost seemed three dimensions.
The least interesting aspect of Galileo Galilei is its music: free-floating arioso for most of the singing, except mechanical delivery for the sinister church fathers; amorphous doodlings and jabs for the accompanying 13-piece ensemble, which was led by Kwamé Ryan.
A number of the singers performed two or even three roles. A slightly frayed edge on Paul Groves’ tenor suited the Older Galileo. Sean Michael Plumb portrayed the Younger Galileo with a potent, well-appointed baritone. Hunter Enoch gave the Pope and Cardinal Barberini a sturdy bass-baritone.
When Galileo’s Dialogue Concerning the Two World Systems was briefly dramatized, Enoch also portrayed the book’s character Simplicio, along with Plumb’s Salviati and soprano Jennifer Kreider’s Sagredo.
Three cardinals were represented by countertenor Elijah English, baritone Robert Mellon and bass-baritone Jared Werlein. Soprano Vanessa Becerra was fresh of voice and presence as Maria Celeste. Mezzo Lucy Evans was the aptly aristocratic Marie de Medici.
Glass’ opera is interesting as a history refresher, and as a reminder that conflicts between faith and science are nothing new. But it just isn’t very interesting musically.
Mediterranean turmoil
Its original Italian libretto loosely based on the historical record, Julius Caesar was performed in Brian Trowell’s English translation, with revisions by James Robinson. The complete score — thrice revised by Handel — comprises about three and a half hours of music in three acts. Opera Theatre of St. Louis sensibly compressed the opera to just under three hours with a single intermission.
Having defeated his rival Pompey, Caesar arrives in Alexandria, where Cleopatra and her younger brother Ptolemy are vying for supremacy over Egypt. Pompey’s wife and son, Cornelia and Sextus, and the Roman general Curio beg for peace. But Ptolemy, vying for Caesar’s endorsement, sends him Pompey’s severed head, to everyone’s horror.
Cleopatra has her own designs on Caesar’s favor, and, first disguised as the servant girl Lydia, she enchants the Roman emperor. As inevitably in baroque opera, the action gets more complicated from here.
In the end, Ptolemy, attempting to seduce Cornelia, is killed by Sextus. Triumphantly crowned queen of Egypt, Cleopatra declares her allegiance to Rome and her love for Caesar.
Allen Moyer transposed the action to a modern office building, with layered glass walls, Mies daybeds and Eames stool. Constance Hoffman supplied modern dress: men in black suits and military uniforms, Ptolemy in a smoking jacket, Cleopatra in some dazzling gowns and pants outfits. But what was with Sextus’ too-small blazer and trousers? To portray him as a growing boy?
For all the current brouhaha over gender ambiguity, it was all the rage in baroque opera. Heroic male roles were typically assigned to castrati, adult men who retained the high voices of boys thanks to early surgery. They had the power, though, of adult singers, and the best ones were known for vocal virtuosity.
When castrati weren’t available, the roles were sung by mezzo-sopranos in male drag. That’s what’s done today, except when countertenors take those roles.
The title role calls for considerable vocal virtuosity, and although Sarah Mesko supplied a good deal of it, and a well-formed mezzo, one longed for the brassy precision of a Marilyn Horne. And shouldn’t the most powerful man in the world have been visually differentiated by something more than a long brown coat?
Emily Pogorelc gave Cleopatra a blazing soprano, but, presumably egged on by stage director Elkhanah Pulitzer, an over-the-top camp-vamp persona. As a pushy Ptolemy, Key’mon W. Murrah supplied a countertenor of amazing power on top, but a bit soft-edged below.
Meridian Prall’s Cornelia was dignified of voice and presence. Megan Moore was the vocally and dramatically feisty Sextus. Lesser roles were capably performed by Cory McGee (Achillas), Madeleine Lyon (Nirena) and John Godhard Mburu (Curio).
In our age of visual overstimulation, the long da capo arias of baroque operas challenge stage directors to keep the audiences’ interest as individual characters sing on and on. Pulitzer didn’t seem to know what to do with these inherently static stretches, so she assigned dancers (choreographed by Seán Curran), even cast members, risible struts and shuffles, even disco moves.
Daniela Candillari, in her third season as the opera company’s principal conductor, could have given the overture’s opening more energy, but she got otherwise lively, stylish playing from the orchestra. I never heard the harpsichord continuo, though, and the organ (or was it a synthesizer?) and harp weren’t entirely persuasive alternatives.
CORRECTION, 5:43 p.m., June 26, 2024: An earlier version of this review misstated the number of seasons that Daniela Candillari has been principal conductor of Opera Theatre of St. Louis.