Souvenir Opera

By William Bender

Gian-Carlo Menotti's latest opera, The Hero, opens in a modern bedroom that has been decorated as a tourist attraction. To the right sits a fourposter. It is roped off and its curtains are drawn. In the rear is a stand displaying souvenir dishes and postcards. Also on sale are toy replicas of a man in bed. Two tourists, a husband and wife, enter the room. The proprietress announces that the admission is $2 each. Replies the man: "Two dollars! Shit!" Leave it to the man who brought opera to both Broadway (The Consul) and film (The Medium) to bless the operatic lexicon with one of the commoner four-letter words.

That is about all that can be said for this work, which was commissioned and introduced by the Opera Company of Philadelphia last week, with the composer staging the work and taking a walk-on role. The hero in question, David Murphy (Baritone Dominic Cossa), has been asleep in the four-poster for ten years. His self-centered wife Mildred (Mezzo Diane Curry) has long since removed the mis from her misfortune by putting David on public display. She has even installed a tape recorder to immortalize his every snore. The drama comes to life, so to speak, when David awakes at the end of Act I.

He learns that he has become the town's central industry. A monument to him is to be unveiled in the square and the Governor is coming. Cries the mayor in panic: "We have invested a fortune in your sleep. The whole town will be bankrupt." David's dilemma is clear. He can remain a hero only if he goes back to snoring. Or he can tell the truth and let the souvenirs fall where they may. He opts for the latter course, declaring portentously: "Too many temples have been built to trumped-up idols . . . Our voice must rise with blinding candor against the naked emperors."

The Hero is apparently in tended both as humorous metaphor and, in Menotti's words, as "a gentle, good-natured plea for Americans to wake up to reality, to abandon self-congratulatory illusions, to return to their former rugged individualism." The opera invites easy comparisons. There is a tape-erasing scene (David's awakening has been recorded); though the Nixon tapes are not mentioned, the point is obvious. Operatic comparisons are also in order. The Hero is a reverse twist on Puccini's Gianni Schicchi, that maudlin, heavy-handed tale about the impersonation of a dead man in bed. Most of Menotti's music is passable Puccini: melodic, easy to take -- and totally beside the point in 1976.

The trouble with The Hero is that it has so little going for it, not even a ma ture satirical point of view. It is the kind of morality fable that a Thurber might have conceived. Menotti has dealt with it as though he were writing for Nor man Lear.

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