{"id":65842,"date":"2013-08-12T03:01:21","date_gmt":"2013-08-12T01:01:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.gbopera.it\/?p=65842"},"modified":"2016-11-27T04:51:58","modified_gmt":"2016-11-27T03:51:58","slug":"santa-fe-opera-festival-2013oscar-3","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.studioroldo.it\/gbopera\/santa-fe-opera-festival-2013oscar-3\/","title":{"rendered":"Santa Fe Opera Festival 2013:”Oscar”"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u00a0Santa Fe, New Mexico, Santa Fe Opera Festival 2013\u00a0<\/em>
\n\u201cOSCAR\u201d\u00a0\u00a0<\/strong>
\nOpera in two acts by Theodore Morrison and John Cox
\nMusic by\u00a0Theodore Morrison
\n<\/strong>World Premiere
\nOscar Wilde<\/em>\u00a0DAVID DANIELS
\nAda Leverson<\/em>\u00a0HEIDI STOBER
\nFrank Harris\u00a0<\/em>WILLIAM BURDEN
\nLord Alfred \u201cBosie\u201d Douglas<\/em>\u00a0REED LUPLAU
\nWalt Whitman<\/em>\u00a0DWAYNE CROFT
\nMr. Justice Sir Alfred Wills\/Henry B. Isaacson<\/em>\u00a0KEVIN BURDETTE
\nDetectives\/Prison Warders<\/em>\u00a0AARON PEGRAM, BENJAMIN SIEVERDING
\nInfirmary Patients\u00a0<\/em>DAVID BLALOCK, CHRISTIAN SANDERS
\nHotel Managers\/Warder Thomas Martin<\/em>\u00a0RICARDO RIVERA
\nChaplain<\/em>\u00a0CHRISTIAN SANDERS
\nBailiff<\/em>\u00a0\u00a0YONI ROSE
\nJury Foreman\u00a0<\/em>REUBEN LILLIE
\nLegatt<\/em>\u00a0PATRICK GUETTI
\nOrchestra and Chorus of the Santa Fe Opera Festival
\nConductor\u00a0Evan Rogister\u00a0<\/strong>
\nDirector\u00a0Kevin Newbury\u00a0<\/strong>
\nScenic Designer\u00a0David Korins\u00a0<\/strong>
\nCostume Designer\u00a0David C. Woolard<\/strong>
\nChoreographer\u00a0Se\u00e1n Curran\u00a0\u00a0<\/strong>
\nSanta Fe 9th August 2013<\/em>
\n
\n<\/em>The final of five productions to open in this year\u2019s Santa Fe Opera Festival was Theodore Morrison\u2019s\u00a0Oscar<\/em>, the first work by this 75-year-old composer to see the stage. The Opera Company of Philadelphia, a co-producer of\u00a0Oscar<\/em>, is scheduled to present the piece in 2015. I do not predict that audiences will have many other opportunities to see it.
\nUnfortunately, Morrison\u2019s inexperience shows, particularly in his libretto, co-written with John Cox.<\/strong>\u00a0Determined to make of the Irish playwright Oscar Wilde not merely a martyr but also a tragic hero \u2014 and, indeed, nothing less than a saint \u2014 Morrison and Cox defy the historical record and the audience\u2019s patience, as well. By the time they reach their finale, in which Wilde is welcomed into Immortality by a chorus of white-gowned, golden-haired worthies, I had to hold my nose to keep from laughing \u2014 which cannot be the response the creators sought.
\nAt a time when everyone from Putin to the Pope to the President of the United States keeps the fight for gay rights in the headlines,\u00a0Oscar<\/em>\u00a0is surely relevant<\/strong>, and the opera\u2019s star, countertenor David Daniels, has added to that by announcing, shortly after the premiere, his engagement to his longtime partner, conductor Scott Walters. But this in effect makes Daniels a better role model than Wilde, a married father of two who denied his homosexuality and never pursued the \u201cmission\u201d that Morrison\u2019s protagonist proclaims toward the end of this opera. In any case, the all-too-human Wilde teeters uncomfortably on the pedestal where Morrison and Cox have hoisted him.
\nWilde is the only countertenor in Morrison\u2019s score, to signal his otherness.<\/strong>\u00a0In the title role, Daniels sings with strength and nuance, if not quite all the tonal brilliance that made this artist so distinctive earlier in his career. As an actor, he excels in the many sequences in which Wilde merely listens to others, as he does in an extended scene in Act II, when two other prisoners share their stories with him.
\nWilde is onstage almost constantly<\/strong>, and in an admirably committed performance, Daniels even dances, in ballet sequences with the spirit of his young lover, Lord Alfred \u201cBosie\u201d Douglas. Since the historical Bosie fled Britain to safety during Wilde\u2019s trial and imprisonment, dancer\u00a0Reed Luplau<\/strong>, as choreographed by\u00a0Se\u00e1n Curran<\/strong>, portrays him in various guises; much of the time, the character functions rather uncomfortably like that of Tadzio in Britten\u2019s\u00a0Death in Venice<\/em>.
\nIf Daniels does not deliver Wilde\u2019s most celebrated quality, his wit, it\u2019s because the libretto affords him none. Somehow,\u00a0Morrison and Cox have written an opera about Oscar Wilde that contains only one epigram<\/strong>\u00a0\u2014 despite liberal quotation from their sources. Indeed, the entire opera seems to misunderstand what Wilde meant in the title of his most famous play,\u00a0The Importance of Being Earnest<\/em>: here, everything is much, much\u00a0too\u00a0<\/em>earnest. Act II shows Wilde in Reading Gaol, learning compassion (and saintliness). In the process, Wilde becomes less and less a character, more and more an icon.
\nFar stronger is Act I, set mostly in the children\u2019s nursery of the home of the writer Ada Leverson (soprano\u00a0Heidi Stober<\/strong>).\u00a0A realistic, almost mundane scene in which she and the writer Frank Harris (tenor\u00a0William Burden<\/strong>) counsel Wilde is contrasted with the following scene, in which the nursery toys enact Wilde\u2019s trial on charges of \u201cgross indecency.\u201d The judge (bass-baritone\u00a0Kevin Burdette<\/strong>) becomes a jack-in-the-box, and the children\u2019s crib becomes the witness stand. This scene is the highlight of the opera as a whole: the satire here is sharp, the staging by\u00a0Kevin Newbury<\/strong>\u00a0flavorful, and the debt to Brecht is clear. But all those excellent qualities fall away as soon as Act II begins.
\nIn\u00a0Oscar<\/em>, the ghost of Walt Whitman acts as narrator, more kindly but otherwise much like Che Guevara in Lloyd-Webber\u2019s\u00a0Evita<\/em>.<\/strong>\u00a0At least in this case our narrator is known to have met our protagonist, but this Whitman\u00a0delivers the kinds of factual background information better left to program notes, and even the capable\u00a0Dwayne Croft<\/strong>\u00a0can do nothing to enliven him. Why Whitman is here at all, and why he, who was just as \u201cother\u201d as Wilde, is portrayed by a baritone and not by another countertenor, one can only guess.
\nEvan Rogister<\/strong>\u00a0conducted with grace and evident respect for Morrison\u2019s musical ambitions, delivering a coherent reading of a score that too often introduces themes without developing them. In the always tonal, always emotionally appropriate music, one hears the influence of composers as diverse as Bach and Stravinsky, and Morrison\u2019s orchestrations do much to sustain a listener\u2019s interest even in the dramatically lifeless Act II. What one does not hear is an indication why anybody \u2014 much less one of the most prestigious venues in the United States \u2014 bothered to produce this well-intended but misguided opera at all. Without human weaknesses and without wit, this Oscar is something the real Wilde never, ever was: dull.\u00a0Ph. Ken Howard<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u00a0Santa Fe, New Mexico, Santa Fe Opera Festival 2013\u00a0 \u201cOSCAR\u201d\u00a0\u00a0 Opera in two acts by Theodore Morrison and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":108,"featured_media":58093,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[1994,1619,8455,9354,8452,145,8457,8453,8449,8451,3228],"class_list":["post-65842","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-senza-categoria","tag-david-daniels","tag-dwayne-croft","tag-evan-rogister","tag-foreign-readers","tag-heidi-stober","tag-opera-lirica","tag-oscar","tag-reed-luplau","tag-santa-fe-opera-festival-2013","tag-theodore-morrison","tag-william-burden"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.studioroldo.it\/gbopera\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65842","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.studioroldo.it\/gbopera\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.studioroldo.it\/gbopera\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.studioroldo.it\/gbopera\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/108"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.studioroldo.it\/gbopera\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=65842"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.studioroldo.it\/gbopera\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65842\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.studioroldo.it\/gbopera\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/58093"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.studioroldo.it\/gbopera\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=65842"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.studioroldo.it\/gbopera\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=65842"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.studioroldo.it\/gbopera\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=65842"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}