Dispatch from Spoleto

Pictured: Paul Groves and Melanie Henley Heyn. Photo by Leigh Webber.

Dispatch from Spoleto: A Night at the Theater

May 29, 2019WDAV BlogNews & Features, Uncategorized, WDAV Dispatch from SpoletoDispatch from Spoleto, Dispatch from Spoleto (2019), Lawrence ToppmanComments Off

Pictured (above): Paul Groves and Melanie Henley Heyn; photo by Leigh Webber.

By Lawrence Toppman

I attend Spoleto Festival USA every year because it’s the kind of place where a beach ball might determine what you’re about to see. That’s what happens on audience-choice nights for performances by Shakespeare’s Globe.

The London-based company has scheduled performances of “The Comedy of Errors,” “Pericles” and “Twelfth Night” throughout the festival, which ends June 9 in Charleston. But it has also set times when the audience decides what to watch.

Eight actors amble onto the stage, playing a loose-knit version of Duke Ellington’s “Caravan” on banjo, accordion, oddly tuned trombone and other instruments. One heaves a beach ball into the crowd, and the third person who touches it has to listen to audience applause and declare which title got the most support.

During Spoleto Festival USA’s 2019 season, Shakespeare’s Globe returns to the Dock Street Theatre with a rotation of Twelfth Night, The Comedy of Errors, and Pericles, as well as Audience Choice performances. Image Courtesy of Shakespeare’s Globe.

Spoleto specializes in the mind-challenging avant-garde, so it was no surprise that my audience (and one the day before) screamed loudest for Shakespeare’s most mindless gagfest, the play about twins separated shortly after birth with twin servants who were parted in infancy, too. Shakespeare beautifully crafted this absurdity, polishing a plot he stole from Plautus, and the Globe octet highlighted every bit of ribald wordplay and knockabout hijinks in “Errors.” (On this showing, the Three Stooges would have been right at home in Elizabethan days.)

The eight had to trim only a few bits of the play to make sense of it with so small a cast. They also brought out the mock-serious side: Characters deal with potential execution, presumed adultery, imprisonment, brief commitment to a madhouse and emotional upheavals of other kinds, and the Globe players lent these sections as much weight as Shakespeare would allow.

By contrast, the theater company 1927 gave audiences a show as light as a balloon and left us floating somewhere in the universe, like the massively obese feline in the first of its many fairy tales. “Roots” carried no message – except, perhaps, that life holds catastrophes for every human being and most animals – but delivered zen-like stories in a weirdly funny way.

*Company 1927 in the world premiere of “Roots” at the Emmett Robinson Theatre at College of Charleston during the 2019 season of Spoleto Festival USA.* *Photo by Leigh Webber*.

Two cast members played a dozen or so instruments – my favorites were a musical saw and a warped version of an Asian lute – while two others stood in front of a backdrop or poked their heads through it. (All wore whiteface.) A combination of cartoonish video projection, mime and dialogue gave the impression that characters and locales were moving, and the deadpan seriousness of the macabre stories made them hilarious. At the end, walking out, an audience member said, “It must mean SOMETHING.” Mmmmmm…not necessarily.

The operatic version of “Salome” tried desperately for deeper meaning and, for one hour, succeeded. Directors Patrice Caurier and Moshe Leiser, who set this same opera in Nazi Germany so effectively at Spoleto in 1978, have reimagined it as a story for our time. They have set it atop the roof of a modern penthouse, where the title character goes to escape Herod’s noisy party below.

Melanie Henley Heyn sang beautifully and expressively across her range, playing Salome as a lonely, sheltered girl whose first attraction to a man – unfortunately, woman-hating John the Baptist – goes terribly wrong. But the character doesn’t work if she’s just a victim, someone so brutalized by men that she asks for the Baptist’s head as vengeance against a gender that has abused her sexually and psychologically. (Paul Groves sang Herod, her molester stepdad, with the right fervor, though Erik van Heyningen made a lightweight prophet.)

*Pictured (l-r): Edna Prochnik, Paul Groves, and Melanie Henley Heyn in an all-new production of Richard Strauss’s Salome at the Charleston Gaillard Center. Photo by Leigh Webber.*

To achieve their aims, the directing team began to ignore stage directions from librettist Hedwig Lachmann (who adapted Oscar Wilde’s play), demanded action that went against the grain of Richard Strauss’ music and actually changed the outcome of the opera. I heard the word “daring” tossed around afterward. It would also be daring to stage a “Hamlet” where the prince jumped up in Act 5 — “The poison didn’t kill me!” — and danced his way onto the throne of Denmark. Would you want to see it?

To learn more about the performances at this year’s festival, visit Spoleto Festival USA.

Elliot Madore in Tree of Codes. Photo by William Struhs.

Dispatch from Spoleto: A Night at the Opera

June 7, 2018WDAV BlogArts Feature, festivals, News & Features, Spoleto, Uncategorized, WDAV Dispatch from SpoletoDispatch from Spoleto, Dispatch from Spoleto (2018)Comments Off

Pictured: Elliot Madore in the US premiere of Tree of Codes, with music and libretto by Liza Lim. Photo by William Struhs.

By Lawrence Toppman

Every opera at Spoleto Festival USA that gets a U.S. premiere – in this case, both fully-staged offerings for 2018 – begins as a mystery. Have long-lost pieces by masters been unreasonably neglected? Have current composers remained obscure for a reason?

On the evidence of Gaetano Donizetti’s “Pia de’ Tolomei” and Liza Lim’s “Tree of Codes,” which run in repertory through June 8, I’d answer “Yes” to both questions.

Donizetti and librettist Salvatore Cammarano, who collaborated on eight operas, premiered “Lucia di Lammermoor” in 1835. “Pia” came along two years later and seems like a little sister: Beautiful, worth knowing, but living in the shadow of an immortal.

Amanda Woodbury and Valdis Jansons in the U.S. premiere of Donizetti’s Pia de’ Tolomei. Photo by William Struhs.

The authors took “Pia” from a quatrain in “Purgatorio,” where Dante writes of people who were penitent at the times of sudden violent deaths. Nello, Pia’s jealous husband, imprisoned her after an accusation of infidelity by Ghino, who wanted her but couldn’t tempt her. The man she keeps in the shadows is her brother, Rodrigo, who has escaped jail as a political refugee.

The libretto’s no clumsier than most from the mid-19th century, and director Andrea Cigni makes it more plausible and relevant by updating it to Fascist Italy in the pre-war 1930s. Rodrigo has been jailed not for belonging to a different family but for leading the Resistance; Ghino’s unconvincing fatal wound in battle in the original narrative has become an accidental killing at the hands of sentries.

Cassandra Zoe Velasco (center) in Donizetti’s Pia de’ Tolomei. Photo by William Struhs.

Pia now tries to save great art from destruction by right-wingers, including a portrait of her by Eliseo Sala (painted after the opera premiered). This irrelevant but unobtrusive subplot doesn’t hold the production back. Nothing could on opening night, including a power outage at Sottile Theatre that left only one floodlight operating at last. (Well, the final scene is set in a dungeon.)

Matthew Anchel (center) in the U.S. premiere of Donizetti’s Pia de’ Tolomei. Photo by Leigh Webber.

The melodies show Donizetti near the peak of his skill, from one of the soprano-mezzo duets he loved — this time in friendship, not enmity — to a somber “Lucia”-like ensemble for four soloists and chorus. Amanda Woodbury’s creamy soprano served the title role well, and Cassandra Zoe Velasco’s hefty voice made Rodrigo a presence with whom to be reckoned. Isaac Frishman’s small, flexible tenor put Ghino’s arias across in the smallish hall, and baritone Valdis Jansons brought unexpected complexity to the mostly snarly Nello.

Spoleto’s pick-up orchestra, augmented in “Pia” by Westminster Choir, remains a marvel, and Lidiya Yankovskaya conducted with the brio and tenderness this opera demands. Those same musicians played with equally scrupulous dedication for conductor John Kennedy in “Tree of Codes,” though nobody in the audience would’ve known if they’d hit clinker after clinker.

Elliot Madore in Tree of Codes, with music and libretto by Liza Lim. Photo by William Struhs.

Virtually everything about Lim’s opera seemed random, from the wisps of orchestration to the rambling dialogue. (She wrote her own libretto.) Extensive program notes promised a philosophic piece I’d like to have seen onstage but never did, except for hints of one theme: Received wisdom from the past lies heavily and perhaps foolishly on us in the present.

The disconnection between idea and execution began with Scott Zielinski’s set. According to the notes, an “onstage monolith evokes the loss of Jewish lives in the last century, which is the loss for all mankind.” This edifice resembled a maquette for a six-story parking deck that had sunk into the ground at a 30-degree angle, and nothing in the text referred to it. (I did enjoy the lights that slashed across it, from bilious green to celestial white.)

Elliot Madore and Marisol Montalvo in the US premiere of Tree of Codes. Photo by William Struhs.

Soprano Marisol Montalvo and baritone Elliot Madore had excellent pitch and diction as Adela, a mystic, and Son, a boy mourning (or perhaps simply missing) his father. Yet singers can’t seem anything but ridiculous while sitting at center stage, clutching megaphones and repeatedly uttering “I wish. I want. I wish. I want.” (Or, to be precise, “I wiiiiiiiish. I waaaaant.” Melismas were the order of the day.)

Elliot Madore and Marisol Montalvo in Tree of Codes. Photo by William Struhs.

A mute character dubbed The Dreamer (costume designer Walter Dundervill) placed props, occasionally dressed or undressed the singers and pulled them around on wheeled platforms meant to lend mysterious grace to their movements. Dundervill retained a stone-faced dignity even as Son ranted in Russian (or was it Esperanto?), which suggested he wisely wasn’t paying attention.

To learn more about the performances at this year’s festival, visit Spoleto Festival USA.

Geoff Nuttall (far left), the Director of the Bank of America Chamber Music series, with members of the St. Lawrence String Quartet and pianist Pedja Muzijevic at the Dock Street Theatre Photo by William Struhs

Dispatch from Spoleto: Seven Memorable Moments from the Chamber Music Series

June 5, 2018WDAV BlogArts Feature, festivals, News & Features, UncategorizedDispatch from Spoleto, Dispatch from Spoleto (2018)Comments Off

Pictured: Geoff Nuttall (far left), the Director of the Bank of America Chamber Music series, with members of the St. Lawrence String Quartet and pianist Pedja Muzijevic at the Dock Street Theatre. Photo by William Struhs.

By Lawrence Toppman

Geoff Nuttall, host of every chamber music concert at Spoleto Festival USA, was about to begin the downstroke of a Mozart piano concerto adapted for sextet. Suddenly, upon a sign from another member of the St. Lawrence String Quartet, the first violinist turned to the audience.

“There’s a secret signal we use – I’m not going to tell you what it is – to let me know…my fly is open,” Nuttall informed the Dock Street Theatre crowd. Hiding his indiscretion behind his instrument, he fiddled with his trousers. Somewhere, the ghost of Mozart giggled. Then pianist Pedja Muzijevic, double-bassist Doug Balliett and the quartet galloped happily into the reduction of Piano Concerto No. 12.

That’s the reason seeing music live makes a delightful difference. Recordings and broadcasts can’t capture the excitement, humor and full educational value of a live concert. (Who but violists knew that violas carry so much emotional weight in the string orchestra version of Barber’s “Adagio”?)

Here are six more reasons, all made palpable in the second and third of 11 concerts in the Bank of America Chamber Music Series, which runs through the last day of Spoleto on June 10.

1) Countertenor Anthony Roth Costanzo, perhaps the most-anticipated of the fine guest artists on opening weekend, broke your heart one day with a Handel aria from “Amadigi di Gaula.” The next day, aiming for hipster credibility with the Peggy Lee song “Fever,” he tried in vain to flick a lighter open and set a “cigarette” aflame in the break between verses. Even he laughed. (He eventually succeeded.)

2) Charles Wadsworth, now 89 and creator of the chamber music program at Spoleto USA, missed only his second festival in 42 years. Nuttall, who took over for him nine years ago, asked the crowd to holler “We miss you, Charles!” We did, and wife Susan Wadsworth recorded us on her cell phone. After that tender moment, Nuttall and Costanzo segued into a conversation about the 17^th-century process for creating castrati and the unresonant noise Costanzo would make if he had vocal chords but no head: “It would sound like a kazoo.”

3) The St. Lawrence played a relatively early Haydn quartet, the sixth and last of the Op. 20 set, with such passionate affection that the room rocked and strings came loose from their bows. Nuttall, who all but idolizes Haydn, preceded it with a mini-lecture on the revolutionary use of folk music and democratization in the string quartet, where each instrument got a chance to shine. You could see this music pointing the way for Mozart, Beethoven and their descendants.

4) The St. Lawrence Quartet and the JACK Quartet (named for the first initials of its original members) lined up at opposite sides of the stage for a 16^th-century rarity by Giovanni Valentini. With Balliett accompanying both quartets as “referee,” this “Enharmonic” Sonata turned into a battle of the bands, and variations bounced back and forth. The visual element added suspense. Who can guess the last time any American – perhaps anyone at all – heard this music?

5) Balliett, this year’s composer in residence, debuted “Gawain’s Journey.” The music was lush, angry, sweet and melancholic, always in conjunction with supertitles telling a chunk of the British legend in which Gawain battles the Green Knight. Someone hearing a broadcast at home would wonder why the crowd laughed. The answer? A title reading, “He had no one to talk to but God…and his horse.” The work dealt with Gawain’s bloody, violent, footslogging attempt to reach the castle of the Green Knight, without knowing if he ever would – Arthurian chivalry meets “Waiting for Godot.”

6) In Pauline Oliveros’ mystical “Horse Sings From Cloud,” the JACK quartet spread out around the hall. They and selected members of the audience activated xylophone-like cell-phone apps that played tones of various pitches, volumes and durations. That created a contemplative atmosphere and made the wood and cloth of the theater part of the piece. Was this really “music?” A discussion for another time, perhaps – but it was worth hearing, either way. And you had to be there in person to appreciate it.

To learn more about the performances at this year’s festival, visit Spoleto Festival USA.

Marc Antolin and Daisy Maywood in Kneehigh's "The Flying Lovers of Vitebsk"

WDAV Dispatch from Spoleto: Spoleto Theater and Dance

June 1, 2018WDAV BlogArts Feature, festivals, News & Features, Spoleto, WDAV Dispatch from SpoletoDispatch from Spoleto, Dispatch from Spoleto (2018)Comments Off

By Lawrence Toppman

Soaring was the main activity of the opening weekend of Spoleto Festival USA in Charleston. Literally so in exuberant performances by Miami City Ballet and metaphorically so in “The Flying Lovers of Vitebsk,” a captivating play about the loving, tempestuous marriage of painter Marc Chagall and writer Bella Rosenfeld.

Kneehigh Theatre has come from its Cornwall, England, home to Charleston four times in 12 years. If you’ve seen “The Red Shoes” or “Tristan & Yseult,” you know what to expect from “Vitebsk:” a total-theater piece with song, dance, drama, circus skills, even mime. Versatile Marc Antolin and Daisy Maywood, who looked eerily like the Chagalls, played not only the couple but all the smaller parts.

Marc Antolin as Marc Chagall and Audrey Brisson as Bella Chagall in Kneehigh's "The Flying Lovers of Vitebsk"

Marc Antolin as Marc Chagall in Kneehigh’s “The Flying Lovers of Vitebsk,” presented at the Dock Street Theatre. Photo by Steve Tanner.

Their story is a microcosm of Eastern European history from the early 1900s to World War II: pogroms against Jews by the tsar, Marc’s travels to study in Paris and Berlin, his return to Russia for World War I, persecution by the Bolsheviks, artistic freedom and productivity in France, the destruction of Vitebsk and most of Belarus by the Nazis, eventually an escape to America. The story ends with her death from a viral infection in 1944, though she reappears as a sweetly comical angel.

The play at Dock Street Theatre has undergone a 25-year transmigration, from the time author Daniel Jamieson wrote it as “Birthday” and starred in it with Emma Rice. (She directed the current production, done in partnership with Bristol Old Vic.)

It retains a zany wildness while exploring serious issues: Marc and Bella might stomp about with a papier-mache fish and cockerel on their heads, singing a tune in Yiddish, then fall into a discussion about the artist’s responsibilities to his family and the world. He blithely clings to ideals about the transformative power of art while government thugs smash the windows of her family’s jewelry store, and he doesn’t take notice of his daughter until she’s four days old. (“Have you named her yet?” he asks with wistful embarrassment.)

Kneehigh’s “The Flying Lovers of Vitebsk” presented at the Dock Street Theatre. Photo by Steve Tanner.

Rice keeps the show surging forward through 90 intermission-free minutes, as multi-instrumentalists James Gow and Ian Ross sing and play anything from a cello to an accordion. By the end, our sympathies are evenly divided between pragmatic Bella and dreamy Marc, who outlived his first love by four decades and produced masterpieces in every one.

The play runs through June 10, the last day of the festival. The ballet, alas, stayed only through the opening weekend. (There’s still lots of good dance, up to “One of Sixty-Five Thousand Gestures/NEW BODIES” on the last day; it offers three New York City Ballet dancers, including Columbia native Sara Mearns, in works by Trisha Brown and Jodi Melnick.)

Nineteen years have passed since I saw Miami City Ballet on its second visit to Spoleto. Edward Villella, who founded the company in 1985 and ran it until 2012, brought in a talented troupe that specialized then in the work of George Balanchine and aspired to greatness.

Miami City Ballet’s Shimon Ito in Justin Peck’s Heatscape with set design by Shepard Fairey. Photo by Gene Schiavone.

The company that danced this year under artistic director Lourdes Lopez has achieved it. I recently saw back-to-back performances at American Ballet Theatre and New York City Ballet, Balanchine’s former company. Miami can stand alongside those two great troupes, based on the evidence at Gaillard Auditorium.

The corps in Balanchine’s “Walpurgisnacht,” an elegant piece set to the mostly insipid ballet music from Charles Gounod’s “Faust,” moved as if one body and filled every gesture with meaning. Jennifer Lauren and Chase Swatosh told a complete story in seven minutes in Kenneth MacMillan’s “Carousel Pas de Deux,” she as a tomboyish Julie discovering yearnings she didn’t know she had and he as a brash Billy discovering tenderness he didn’t know he had.

Members of Miami City Ballet in Justin Peck’s Heatscape. Photo by Gene Schiavone.

MacMillan won a Tony for choreographing that 1994 Rodgers and Hammerstein revival, and many people think Justin Peck will get one this year for the new production. Spoleto audiences saw Peck’s “Heatscape,” bursts of perfectly executed energy that didn’t amount to a great deal. The concert’s highlight came from Alexei Ratmansky: “Concerto DSCH,” set to Dmitri Shostakovich’s Second Piano Concerto. It spoofed Soviet ballets about the glorious future of the USSR while incorporating poignant and romantic episodes.

Dignified, expressive Simone Messmer stood out in the slow movement. Messmer danced for more than 12 seasons at American Ballet Theatre and San Francisco Ballet before moving to Miami in 2015. Two decades ago, that would have been a step down from the summit. It isn’t any more.

To learn more about the performances at this year’s festival, visit Spoleto Festival USA.