E-mail Story  Print Friendly

Friday, July 30, 2010

Superb voices carry 12-tone of 'Dream'

By William E. Dunning
For the Journal
          The Santa Fe Opera celebrates the Ancient City's Cuarto Centennial by premiering a nearly modern opera setting of Pedro Calderón de la Barca's 1635 classic play, "Life Is a Dream" (La Vida es Sueño). American composer Lewis Spratlan wrote it 32 years ago for a commission never produced, and a second-act cameo won the 2000 Pulitzer Prize for Music. Saturday's first full production ached with significance and drama, a musical style that has fallen into eclipse and memorable presentation.

"Life Is a Dream"     WHEN: Aug. 6, 12 and 19     WHERE: Santa Fe Opera, five miles north of Santa Fe on U.S. 84/285     HOW MUCH: For tickets go to the SFO box office, or call 505-986-5900 or 800-280-4654 or visit www.santafeopera.org

    Roger Honeywell's fluent baritone soared as Segismundo, the prince imprisoned at birth by a jealous father. Debuting Ellie Dehn and sophomore apprentice artist Carin Gilfrey glowed as Rosaura and Estrella, the two female leads. John Cheek, in his debut, gave King Basilio grave depth beneath his fearful fretting, and reliable Keith Jameson's tragicomic Clarin was a high point in this production. Craig Verm and James Maddalena supported as Astolfo and Clotaldo. Maestro Leonard Slatkin, an orchestral specialist, made a commendable debut with the subtle score.
        Kevin Newbury's stage directions make the most of Broadway designer David Korin's sets.
        Calderón's play, the epitome of the Golden Age of Spanish Theater (and contemporary to Shakespeare's English brilliance), prefigures the psychology of our own time; the chief character is even named Prince Sigmund in translation. The story, as it deftly unfolds, centers on Segismundo's agony in his wilderness exile as a sort of Sleeping-Beauty-plus-Oedipus, his conflict with his father, the king, his "wild-beast" response to a world he has never seen, and finally his self-reformation as a successful heir to the throne.
        Calderón's MacGuffin is that Segismundo is drugged and wakes up to a new life in his father's palace, only to be drugged again, returned to his exile, and told he dreamed it all. But he sees through the deception, as perhaps we, too, must do. Is life a dream, or are our dreams the reality of our lives? A good work of art asks these important questions and inspires us to think about them, while pleasing the senses with its presentation.
        The composer, trained in the Viennese tradition of Webern, Berg and Schoenberg, relied on their now nearly forgotten 12-tone style, which sometimes detracts from an outstanding production and exquisite orchestral color.
        Toward the work's comforting climax, what online music critic Phil Muse calls Spratlan's "tortured Sprechstimme in American English" ("speech-song," a 12-tone vocal albatross afflicting much of contemporary opera, was created a century ago by that Viennese school) moderates somewhat, to the piece's advantage. Spratlan wryly shares gentle musical jokes with us as well: Clarin, the jester, is introduced by a high clarion trumpet in the orchestra; the Polish court (chosen by Calderón as the farthest extremity of his day's Catholic world) dances to a tonic 19th-century polonaise, and nature sounds punctuate the score at salient moments.
        This production is in English, with Spratlan's Amherst College colleague James Maraniss' libretto/translation.