Mozart premiered his Idomeneo in the over-the-top rococco jewel-box
CuvilliËs Theater, which is named after its designer, the French dwarf /
Bavarian court jester / architect. Leonard Bernstein’s 1952 pocket-sized
opera Trouble in Tahiti about a loveless American couple in nameless Suburbia
would seem far removed from the world which gave rise to this extravagant
pocket-sized opera house. And yet — it somehow made tremendous sense to
present there. The “bought and paid-for magic” of transparently
ridiculous Hollywood daydreams Bernstein wrote about seems oddly at home with
Bavarian rococo. If only that the production concept had been less confused!
Bernstein dedicated his seven-scene Trouble in Tahiti to his friend
Marc Blitzstein, whose succËs de scandale, Cradle Will Rock,
Bernstein had set out to “out-cradle” in his first attempt at
composing “the great American opera.” The composer wrote the
libretto himself. Bernstein may have downplayed emulating Blitzstein’s
Marxist principles, but certainly followed him in attempting to forge a music
in vernacular popular musical styles of the day rather than more classical
operatic style.
In an interview in his office the morning of the third and last performance
of the Bernstein on July 10th, Bavarian State Opera Music Director Kent Nagano
joked the new Tahiti production, coming a mere two days after the new
Wagner opera production he’d conducted at the National Theater, was
actually Lohengrin, part 2.
Both operas feature a neglected and non-singing child, although
Tahiti’s semi-unnamed “Junior” is simply ignored as both
parents miss his debut in the school play. (This is the autobiographical kernel
of Bernstein’s work, his never-forgotten bitterness at his own parents
for not showing up for his debut as soloist in Grieg’s Piano Concerto
with his Boston Latin School Orchestra. The two characters even originally were
given the same names as his parents, but at least changed the wife’s name
from Jennie to Dinah. Sam remained Sam.) The neglected child in the Wagner, is
of course a bit more ponderous, in that the silent Gottfried (not murdered by
his sister at all, but hidden in plain sight as a swan!) is hailed as the
F¸hrer of the future.
I couldn’t help wondering, however, if it might not have been better
to switch the concepts of these two very different productions: The new
production of Lohengrin posited the main character as a
“visionary” architect. If Trouble in Tahiti really had to
have added stage action, an architect creating multiple soulless tract houses
in suburbia would have made a great deal of sense! And imagine if
Lohengrin had been set in the abandoned amusement park which showed up
(to little purpose) in Tahiti the swan would have made perfect sense!
Or the silent, walking (or deflated) blow-up doll versions of several of the
characters (too even less purpose) which appeared in the Bernstein, had been
employed in the Wagner. It would have been so much fun to have blow-up versions
of Ortrud and Telaramond deflate.. And might perhaps the giant lizard in
Tahiti make more sense as a wannabe swan?
A scene from Trouble in Tahiti
For Tahiti, which is about the spiritual emptiness that acquisition
of things imposes, it seems wrong-headed in the extreme to have a production
which uses just about every effect and resource conceivable, however
distracting, for minimal, momentary effect. On the tiny stage, the singers
seemed to be dealing with a traffic jam, aside from the characters and
superfluous extras there were blow-up dolls of the characters, even an
turntable roundelay set. A giant lizard. A giant polka-dot toadstool. The
director left no trick untried. At one point, even the chandeliers over the
audience’s heads were made to dance up and down and flash on and off in
time to the music for reasons which escaped me. So much business, the music
often got lost. In attempting to depict the spiritual hollowness that comes a
life lived from possessions alone, this production becomes the problem it
wishes to describe.
Bernstein’s original stage requirements actually insist on something
quite different: “Simplicity of execution should be the keynote
throughout. Much depends upon precise and imaginative lighting… The composer
has conceived as cartoon-like sketches — bold, suggestive, and charming.
They should be black and white, almost like a child’s version of each
scene… The merest suggestion of skyscrapers, a traffic light, etc., will
suffice…. The TRIO should wear evening clothes….[Only black and white
should be used.] The only note of color in the visual production is furnished
by the clothes of the couple…”
This production violated virtually every one of these express wishes of the
composer, to little effect. Moreover, Bernstein did not need or expect the son
to appear onstage.
Sometimes less is more. As an attack on consumerism, Bernstein tried
something quite remarkable and paradoxical in this work: despite the
deliberately pop-ish music, it adheres to the classical unities — the
action takes place on a single day, explicitly identifying the spiritual ideas
with the morning, afternoon, evening, there are only two singing characters,
plus a three-voice trio (“a Greek Chorus born of radio commercials”
in the description of the composer). The plan harks back to the Camerata which
gave birth to opera in the first place, as does Bernstein’s choice of
American vernacular as the musical style of choice.
Endearing oddnesses fill this score: The awkward duet where the husband and
wife encounter each other by accident on the street and lie to each other about
what they’re doing is marked in the score “Tempo di
‘GymnopÈdie’“ — an interesting tip of the hat to Eric
Satie. In fact, there are many references to other composers in this work. The
ending, for example, is a blatant overreach towards the final scene of
Wozzeck although the tragedy of this opera and the hurt to the child
in question hardly rise to the level of the Berg opera. Tahiti does
not lack for critics. Its final scene here strives for a grandiosity of which
he was not yet capable, at least not until the La BohËme-like finale
of West Side Story. But for me, it’s largely only in the grand
opera part of the quotient that he failed here. Outside of that, what he did
achieve is vivid and substantial indeed. “Trouble in Tahiti” is a
masterpiece of its kind, and it remains fascinating to hear the bursting
potential of this 1952 time-capsule from the start of the composer’s
career.
Beth Clayton (Dinah)
Tahiti was the eleventh new production to be conducted by Kent
Nagano since his appointment as Music Director. These performances marked the
world premiere of the new reduced-orchestration (for 14 musicians, instead of
Bernstein’s original 21) by Garth Edwin Sunderland. Nagano is utterly at
home conducting this music, fluid and convincing, (as he was also with the
Lohengrin two days later). Rather than the Bavarian State Opera
Orchestra, however, for this production the players of the Mahler Chamber
Orchestra were in the pit, and they responded spectacularly well and with a
quite stunningly precise purity of intonation. Sunderland’s new
arrangement did not seem to have made much compromise of the music, with
perhaps only the introduction to Sam’s aria excepted.
The chorus (Angela Brower, Jeffrey Behrens, Todd Boyce) — clown
make-up aside — sang wonderfully, beautifully blending their voices to a
clear cohesive unit and precise diction, moreover perfectly conveying the
musicality of the morning, midday, afternoon and twilight progression of their
numbers. The soloists however, were less impressive, although one wonders what
they might have done if they’d been allowed to concentrate on singing and
not have to cope with all the unnecessary distractions on the stage. Beth
Clayton was a good but not tremendously dynamic Dinah. Interestingly, she did
not use the “in South Pacific accent” Bernstein stipulated in his
score to describe how she is to imitate the “natives’“
singing in her eponymous show-stopper about the imaginary Hollywood South Seas
escapist film she’s just seen. (Yes it is racist, and Bernstein, an
expert on racism in the arts — that was the topic of his senior Harvard
thesis — deliberately intended the shock and humor of that effect, not
watered down as it was here.) Rodney Gilfrey had fine diction but trouble being
heard as well as a distressingly wide vibrato in held notes in the role of Sam.
His physical tightness — was it the small stage? or the odd changes of
meter of his music? bad back? — made Sam seem less than the
“winner” he is supposed to embody.
The biggest flaw of this Tahiti, however, was the stillborn
curtain-raiser director Schorsch Kamerun inserted to introduce the Bernstein.
Called “Bevor der ƒrger richtig losgeht…” (Before the Trouble
Gets Going…), This consisted of four German punk songs with music by David R.
Coleman to texts by four different German punk bands: “Diese Menscehn
sind ehrlich” (These people are honest) by Die Goldenen Zitronen (The
Golden Lemons, the band Mr. Kamerun had sung with in the 1970’s),
F.S.K.’s “Das is der morderne Welt” (This is the modern
world), as well as “Angst macht keinen L‰rm” (Fear makes no noise)
by Angeschissen (Shit-upon), and “Es regnet Kaviar” (It’s
raining caviar) by Tolerantes Brandenburg (Tolerant Brandenburg). While
Bernstein’s 40-minute opera does require something else to make a full
evening, this cringe-inducing material was not it. These four punk songs were
accompanied by silent video by Jo Schramm of a clown opening a book which
displayed a film of imagined disputes between the opera characters (as
themselves or as blow-up dolls) in the 1960’s style suburban living room
set of the first scene. The clown, not able to do much other look malevolent,
eventually just sank his teeth into the book. The set itself was only revealed
after the curtain was raised. Over the fireplace was a big painting of a smiley
face, and the first action of Dinah was to rotate its mouth from frown to
smile.
At the end of his career, Bernstein folded this earlier work into a
full-scale opera named after one of Dinah’s songs here, “A Quiet
Place.” In the late work, thirty years have gone by, Dinah has died
(off-stage) in a car crash, and the family gathers for her funeral. Junior is
gay and possibly psychotic and has a sister, Dede, who has married his former
lover FranÁois. Sam is alienated from everyone. All seek reconciliation. The
work has yet to succeed in performance. “I worked with Bernstein when he
did A Quiet Place’ in Vienna, Nagano confided with a sigh.
“It’s a score that remains on my piano. It’s a visionary
work, and like all visionary works, it may someday be better
understood.”
A word of praise on a separate note: For those of us who feel that opera is
a significant artistic endeavor, one of the great joys of all productions of
the Bavarian State Opera is each production is accompanied by an astonishingly
hefty, well-produced book filled with not just the libretto text, but also
thought-provoking background essays on the work and the production also with
additional diverse historical texts which are quite substantial and
enlightening (that is, if one reads German). The book for Trouble in
Tahiti, for example, is at pains to place this work in its proper context
musical, social, political and historic context. This is particularly important
to understand for this work, as polymath and polyglot Bernstein intended this
work to be an explicitly American opera, eschewing European conventions while
favoring — to the extent possible — nativist vernacular. He aimed
to elide the full range of compositional alternatives to create an unbroken
continuum from popular music to grand opera. To my surprise, the German
translation of Bernstein’s quite vernacular 1952 libretto, included in
this book, seems to work very well.
Raphael Mostel © 2009
image=http://www.operatoday.com/Tahiti_Munich_01.gif
image_description=Rodney Gilfry (Sam), Beth Clayton (Dinah) and Moritz Becker (Sohn) [Photo by Wilfried Hˆsl courtesy of Bavarian State Opera]
product=yes
product_title=Leonard Bernstein: Trouble in Tahiti
product_by=Dinah: Beth Clayton; Sam: Rodney Gilfry; Jazztrio: Angela Brower, Jeffrey Behrens and Todd Boyce. Mahler Chamber Orchestra. Conductor: Kent Nagano. Production Schorsch Kamerun. Set: Constanze K¸mmel. Costumes: Tabea Braun. Lighting Michael Bauer. Video: Jo Schramm. Choreography: Volker Michl. Dramaturgy Andrea Schˆnhofer.
product_id=Above: Rodney Gilfry (Sam), Beth Clayton (Dinah) and Moritz Becker (Sohn)
All photos by Wilfried Hˆsl courtesy of Bavarian State Opera