The Seria Side of Opera

By William Bender

In Chicago, a short season means a long run

Noble flop or neglected masterpiece? The question has followed Mozart's opera Idomeneo almost since its birth in 1781. Last week in Chicago the Lyric Opera voted for masterpiece, shoring up its case with the kind of virtuoso singing and playing that has made the company synonymous with excellence.

The curse upon Idomeneo was not easy to lift. Its setting is ancient Crete, where King Idomeneo and his gang are squirming under the rule of a choleric god. Stormbound at sea while returning from the Trojan War, Idomeneo has begged Neptune for deliverance. In return, he will sacrifice the first person he encounters on shore. Straining the long arm of coincidence, Idomeneo steps on land--and meets his son Idamante. Such subject matter is a problem for 20th century audiences, but not the only one. Idomeneo is written in the style of opera seria, the stilted, ritualistic 18th century Italian counterpart to opera buffa. Even by the time Mozart came of age opera seria was under attack by the reformers and on the way out.

Nonetheless, the 24-year-old composer produced the best opera seria ever written. Indeed Idomeneo contains some of Mozart's greatest music, much of it achieved with effects that were novel then --and are striking today. In the awesome Act II storm scene, Mozart played with orchestral color like a would-be Romanticist. Never before had Munich heard the morose strains of muted brass. He also gave the chorus a vital role that would have been daring even by the standards of French opera. The arias of opera seria had traditionally been set pieces; Mozart often led the music directly into the next bit of action, joining the seams, as it were, of a work that features at least two arias as memorable as those in The Marriage of Figaro.

English Conductor John Pritchard, a confirmed Mozartean, unfurled these bolts of melody with a judicious blend of brio and ease. It was astonishing to note the degrees of softness he achieved with the chorus, rather than the customary piling up of decibels. The soloists were a uniformly excellent band of singers--though how they fared dramatically depended on the whim of Director Jean-Pierre Ponnelle, former Wunderkind of European opera. Ponnelle attired his Electra in a red fright wig and managed the considerable feat of making Soprano Carol Neblett look less than gorgeous. Electra may be a mixed-up lady; she does not have to be a visual horror. As Idamante, Mezzo Maria Ewing sang with enough splendor to suggest that the gods had blessed her early and often. Unhappily, she had been garbed too boyishly for the youth capable of slaying a sea monster and making women swoon.

The Ponnelle production, originally conceived for the Cologne Opera and brought to the U.S. this season jointly by the Lyric and San Francisco operas, displays a unit set of striking originality. The rear wall consists entirely of a huge head of Neptune. On a series of short steps leading down from his face the play unfolds. Occasionally Ponnelle overstyles that drama: Idomeneo (skillfully interpreted by Swiss-born Tenor Eric Tappy) and the court freeze their poses, while Ilia laments the apparent loss of Idamante. But such effects are redeemed by the cast--and by the brilliantly inventive lighting. In Gilbert Hemsley, Ponnelle has the best lighting designer in American opera. Hemsley paints on Ponnelle's single set as though it were a blank canvas, creating reality out of apparition and believability out of legend. That is, of course, what opera is all about.

Early in its 23-year history, the Lyric Opera earned the nickname La Scala West because of its incessant staging of Italian operas with Italian casts. The so briquet stuck, and today Founder Carol Fox, 51, has no regrets. "I just hope we're as good as La Scala," she says. As a child, Carol spent summers in Italy, soaking up the native language and music. In the role of general manager, she still returns there to audition singers. The indomitable Fox will be back next year even though her most recent reception was worse than a bad opening night. In January she was mugged and badly hurt during a Floren tine visit. Last week in Chicago she was still walking around with a neck brace.

That resilience is apparent in every Fox endeavor. In 1956 she outmaneuvered her two fellow partners, both men, for control of the Lyric. "In the end I was the most powerful," she recalls with characteristic bluntness. In a field short on long runs, Fox has not only exceeded Rudolf Bing's 22-year reign at the Metropolitan Opera but made the Lyric by far the longest-lasting company in Chicago's rich operatic history.

The Lyric remains a world-class op era house, and its average cast will rival the Met norm. Its secret: a short twelve-week season that welds its cast for brief, intense, festival-like engagements. This season began with Luciano Pavarotti in Donizetti's L'Elisir d'Amore. Coming up are Jon Vickers in Britten's Peter Grimes and Frederica von Stade in The Barber of Seville. This November the Lyric will mount its first Die Meister singer. For opening night next year, Fox has even hired Broadway Director Harold Prince (A Little Night Music) to concoct a new sauce for that classic spaghetti western, Puccini's The Girl of the Golden West. To Carol Fox, the formula for aesthetic and commercial success is as simple as a C-major scale. Says she "All I want is the best." -- William Bender

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.