# Glass "House of Usher" kicks off new era at Chicago Opera Theater



## Cavaradossi (Aug 2, 2012)

I had more than a pleasant surprise on Friday at "The Fall of the House of Usher", the first production under the auspices of COT's new director Andreas Mitisek. I simply sat there awestruck as the opera and the production wove its spell, one of the most memorable opera-going experiences I've had.

I admit to entering with a healthy dose of skepticism. Not because of the Glass, but the new general director's new approach. This was a shared production with Long Beach (Calif.) Opera (also under Mitisek's directorship) which just ran there last month with the same cast. I'll admit my big city ego thought: 1) Long Beach, how good could it be? and 2) We don't want no stinkin' hand-me-downs, certainly not from the likes of Long Beach. Boy was I wrong. 

Glass's opera contains a lot of musical 'space' between vocal entrances, i.e. lots of his trademark ostinatos, which leave lots of room for stage action. That could be trouble in the wrong hands, but from the opening moments it was clear that every beat, every action was thoughtfully choreographed and skillfully executed by the commited cast. 

The cast of five were all new to me, unsual these days. Highly accomplished vocalists and actors on the national level. The program also listed detailed bios of 8 or 10 supernumeries, which I found odd, but they played a 'pivotal' role, not just moving around bits of the modular set, but employing considerable acting skills setting the disturbing, creepy atmosphere of the Usher mansion.

It had me reconsidering COT's previous approach, which typically utilitized Young Artists from the Lyric Opera across the loop for lead roles and utilizing its own young artists, from the program at the well-regarded Roosevelt University, as the chorus. Don't get me wrong, performances were outstanding, but I often found myself cutting them slack for their youth. If was refreshing to see a production professional in every aspect rather than essentially a hybrid student/professional undertaking.

I should mention that the production featured a quite explicit gay attraction between the two protagonists. This was perfectly logical given the libretto - almost seemed inevitable - though I don't know if that was Glass' intent. The setting was contempory, to the extent that the message which beckons William is received via Ipad. There was a dreamlike seduction scene which I couldn't help comparing to the Met's recent Parsifal. I must say I found it more disturbing (intentionally, and in a good way) and more spellbinding than the Met's pool of blood. 

In April, COT brings us Maria de Buenos Aires which ran at Long Beach last year. I'd been looking forward to this anyway, but now I can't wait!


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## deggial (Jan 20, 2013)

sounds like it would lend itself very well to the contemporary setting.


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## Cavaradossi (Aug 2, 2012)

deggial said:


> sounds like it would lend itself very well to the contemporary setting.


It really did. I suppose it helped that the Philip Glass score sounds contemporary. The goth skinny jeans and mohawks probably would have fallen flat over harpsichord and basso continuo.

Here's that creepy seduction scene, William, Usher and his ethereal twin sister Madeline. Madeline's part has no sung dialogue, only eerie vocalise yet Ken Kazan's direction and Suzan Hanson's execution gave her a gripping stage presence. In my opinion, COT accomplished more with a few hundred square feet of undulating parachute cloth than the Met did with a few thousand gallons of red water.










The cast deserves mention as names to look for:
William - baritone Lee Gregory
Roderick Usher - tenor Ryan MacPherson
Madeline -soprano Suzan Hanson


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## deggial (Jan 20, 2013)

the picture is striking. A lot of times, I think, where eerieness is concerned just leaving it to lights and colour accomplishes a lot more than complicated special effects.

I listened to a clip on youtube (I hadn't heard any of Glass' operas before) and I *really* enjoyed the eerie vocals and the mesmerizing orchestration.


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## guythegreg (Jun 15, 2012)

Wow - sounds like you had a GREAT time. I'm really jealous! lol


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## Cavaradossi (Aug 2, 2012)

guythegreg said:


> I'm really jealous! lol


...says the guy with the Met subscription... 

But I do feel very fortunate to have such a quality "alternative" company to augment the warhorse fare at the Lyric.

Here's a preview of the production, no vocals unfortunately, but gives you an idea of the music and powerful, detailed staging:


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## Cavaradossi (Aug 2, 2012)

Figured I'd glom my María de Buenos Aires review onto this thread.

"Confused" seem to be the consensus impression among our group of six attendees in our post show lobby discussion. Most confusing was that the opera premiered in 1968 but the events portrayed in this version reflect the "Dirty War" period of ~1975 to 1983. The director's concept was perhaps not completely out of bounds, but it seemed to overwhelm the allegorical and ethereal story line of the original work:



> From wiki: The ill-omened María, born "one day when God was drunk" in a poor suburb of Buenos Aires, heads to the center of Buenos Aires, where she is seduced by the music of the tango and becomes a streetwalker. Thieves and brothel keepers, gathered at a black mass resolve her death. After her death, she is condemned to a hell which is the city itself: her Shadow, now walks the city. She has returned to virginity, is impregnated by the word of the goblin poet, and-witnessed by three Construction Worker Magi and The Women Who Knead Pasta-gives birth to a Child María, who may be herself.


It's probably hard to stage in any form - but in this version, Maria and her lover were agitators caught in the military's brutal underground detainment regime. Particularly the second half strayed so far from the above synopsis that so I don't know if I really saw _María de Buenos Aires_ or not.

Likes:

The sonorous, fluid baritone of Gregorio Gonzalez.

The tango orchestra in the pit.

Quibbles:

Period slides of Buenos Aires projected on a scrim at various points did an effective job of scene setting. But then at other points slides of the performers themselves were projected to establish backstory and even move the action along, when that could have and should have been done on stage. At one dramatic point the scrim went completely dark for an extended musical interlude. Perhaps that was making some sort of dramatic statement, but given their dependence on the slides up that point, it just seemed like the projector malfunctioned. Weirdly and incongruently, this blank musical interlude was extended even longer by interposing Piazzolla's famous tango Adios Nonino. A lovely piece, but I suspect not in the original score.

The mezzo in the title role made a valiant effort (including baring her chest thru several scenes), but (apologies for the stereotype) with a gringa name like Peabody Southwell both her Spanish and her tango footwork fell a little short. The two Spanish speaking members of our group said they had to refer to the English supertitles to follow her lines.

This tango opera had precious little tango. The cast included a dozen dancers from a local company, but they spent more time writhing in pain than dancing.

Bottom line: My high hopes after Usher have been reduced some, but by no means dashed. We'll see what this falls' Giovanna D'Arco brings.


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## katdad (Jan 1, 2009)

Thanks for the excellent review. I've always liked Philip Glass' opera work and hopefully this production will be available on DVD or perhaps shown on PBS.


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## Cavaradossi (Aug 2, 2012)

OMG, I forgot my biggest quibble, nay annoyance, nay outrage regarding _Maria._ The singers were mic'ed! 
I guess I must have blanked out this bit of operatic sacrilege. At 1,500 seats the Harris Theatre is big but not huge, with decent acoustics, and the orchestra couldn't have been more than a dozen. So I don't know what the reason was. Color me concerned.

I do suspect with its surreal plot, _Maria_ in its orginal form would play better in the most intimate of settings: a tiny theatre, or even a cafe or storefront.

It also occurred to me _Tosca_ could be really well suited for the Argentine "Dirty War" setting and depicting the brutal tactics of the military police. I wonder if it's been done.


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## Cavaradossi (Aug 2, 2012)

COT recently announced their 2014 Season. An interesting and intriguing mix of 20th century works, all new to me and frankly much more interesting than the 13/14 season of Chicago Lyric Opera consisting of seven warhorses + Rusalka. Looks like a good reason to renew my COT subscription. 


QUEENIE PIE
Duke Ellington
Feb 15, 19, 21, 23, 2014
Bursting with Duke Ellington’s signature big-band sound, this Chicago premiere blends clever lyrics with opera, jazz, and musical theater. The story takes place in a Harlem that is partly real and partly mythical, and on a tropical island that is wholly imaginary. Its heroine is a Harlem beauty queen whose search for lasting beauty becomes a kind of spiritual quest. Make sure you are there for this collaboration with the Chicago Jazz Orchestra!

THE EMPEROR OF ATLANTIS/THE CLEVER ONE
Viktor Ullmann/Carl Orff
May 31, June 4, 6, 8, 2014

This double-bill features two powerful satires about oppression and dicatatorship. Both works were written in vastly different circumstances in 1943 Germany. Ullmann's EMPEROR OF ATLANTIS is a satirical send-up of fascism, set in Atlantis where Emperor Overall advocates total war against everyone and Death retires from his duties. This remarkably funny piece was written in the Theresienstadt camp. THE CLEVER ONE premiered in Frankfurt and is a cautionary fairytale that tells about a foolish, tyrannical king being bested by a clever woman. Provocative, insightful, this tongue-in-cheek double-bill is a must see!

MACBETH
Ernest Bloch
September 13, 17, 19, 21, 2014

Macbeth, incited by witches' prophecies and the promptings of his manipulating wife, sells his soul to be king. Once a great man, he trades honor for power. Doomed by his own deeds, he is killed by a man "not born of a woman". Swiss-American composer Ernest Bloch's lavish and highly dramatic 1906 score creates the perfect tone for this bone-chilling thriller. Come and experience the Chicago premiere of the "other" Macbeth.


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## guythegreg (Jun 15, 2012)

Wow - those do sound great. I may have to see if I can get to Chicago next summer!


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## Cavaradossi (Aug 2, 2012)

May as well finish off this thread with the final installment of COT's season: Verdi's _Giovanna D'Arco_.

For those of you who saw the Met's Parsifal in HD this spring, it began a _lot_ like that (perhaps a little _too_ much like it): a modern day cult - men in black suits, women in frumpy Amish dresses and head scarves - enacting an increasingly ecstatic ritual in an arrangement of folding chairs. In their case it was a viewing of an old movie version of the Joan of Arc story, which actually worked quite well during the overture.

But alas, the film breaks and the cult take it upon themselves to put on a bare bones sort of Passion Play to tell the full story. Hence, an opera (in this director's conceit) is born. Not really so far off base, since while the libretto is unabashedly inaccurate to the true history in that lovable 19th century Italian way, the central themes are still faith, chastity, damnation, and salvation. Something things worked, many didn't - particularly those meant to parody the faithful, like a cartoonish version of demonic position. There was a surprise ending that evoked a strongly mixed reaction in me. Perhaps more later on that since I know one of our members will be seeing it next week.

Formidable baritone Michael Chioldi proved himself the best Verdian of the three principals as Giacomo, Joan's father. I was excited for the opportunity to see and hear Suzan Hanson, whom I liked so much in Usher, as Joan and she did justice to the grueling part. We heard unofficially during intermission chatter that the tenor singing Carlo was under the weather. If so, the house did him an injustice by not announcing it pre-show. The poor guy was often noticeably drowned out, musically and dramatically, by his colleagues on stage and in the pit. (The director's choice of a naked stage, no backdrop or wings at all, probably didn't help matters either: during intermission a stage worker traversed the stage Zamboni-like with a vaporizer for the singers' benefit.) Though he redeemed himself with a lovely, touching grief aria in the final act mercifully accompanied by only a solo cello and bass.

So all in all, a bit of a mixed bag. I suppose general director Mitisek gets some benefit of the doubt of this one. The selection of _Giovanna D'Arco _was done via a fundraising vote promotion several years ago by his predecessor as a nod to the Verdi bicentennial, so he was rather saddled with putting it on stage.


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## Cavaradossi (Aug 2, 2012)

Here's an entertaining excerpt from a more ...errrr... opinionated review from a well-regarded local online Classical Music website. John von Rhein of the Chicago Tribune was only slightly more restrained.



> Chicago Opera Theater's revisionist production of the composer's Giovanna d'Arco, which opened Saturday night, could charitably be called disastrous. Crass, offensive, and embarrassing, COT's Joan of Arc is the biggest nuclear bomb to drop on a Chicago opera stage in several seasons.
> 
> The momentum that new COT general director Andreas Mitisek had built up after positively received productions of Glass's Fall of the House of Usher and Piazzolla's Maria de Buenos Aires comes to a screeching halt with this debacle. One wished that Riccardo Muti was in attendance Saturday so he could grab director David Schweizer by the scruff of the neck and bitch-slap him with an open palm...
> 
> ....This brand of hoary Eurotrash may pass for edgy and audacious in Long Beach but in Chicago we're used to opera with a bit more musical integrity. It's alarming that Schweizer is a regular director for Mitisek's West Coast company. If shows like this are what we can expect from the new COT regime, we've got a problem, Houston.


http://chicagoclassicalreview.com/2013/09/cots-disastrous-regie-production-burns-both-verdi-and-joan-of-arc/comment-page-1/#comment-16289


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