|
Back
Yea, Lucius Toronto
Hummingbird Centre
04/13/1999 - and 15, 17, 21, 23, 25 April 1999
Randolph Peters and Robertson Davies The golden ass
Theodore Baerg (Festus), Michael Colvin (Scholar), Thomas Goerz
(Merchant), Doug MacNaughton (Philosopher), Decker LaDouceur (The boy),
Kevin Anderson (Lucius), Rebecca Caine (Fotis), Raymond Aceto (Milo/Leader of the
bandits), Judith Forst (Pamphilea/Antiope), Tamara Hummel
(Charis), Alain Colombe (Seedy bandit)
Canadian Opera Company chorus and orchestra
Richard Bradshaw (conductor), Colin Graham (director) The Canadian Opera Company commissioned the new opera based on the Latin
author Apuleius' Golden ass from Robertson Davies, the grand old
Canadian man of letters, and the young Canadian composer Randolph Peters. You
don't, fortunately, have to be Canadian to enjoy it, or an ancient Roman. It
is set, in a exuberantly colourful production, in a timeless, roughly
mediaeval, Carthage, and it evokes traditional ideas from Greek and eastern
cultures in a staged play within a play that gets out of hand and transcends
its fairground origins as the narrator showman gets drunk and passes out.
What it really does is to do for the north European moralizing fantasy
narrative what A midsummer night's dream does for English fairy stories by
transplanting it into an exotic, open culture where its ideas can flourish
in new forms while they retain their genetic links to ther European
stock. Not totally dissimilar to the way Davies saw Canadian culture, of
course.
Sadly, Davies died in 1995 soon after completing the libretto. He welcomed
Peters as the composer, and was happy with the idea that Colin Graham would
direct and work on it as necessary. But there are structural problems that
Davies, with his deep understanding of the theatre, would surely have
resolved if he had been able to work more with the composer and production
team.
The most obvious problem is that the action builds up engagingly to Lucius'
tranformation -- he is torn between the charms of the trainee witch Fotis
and his curiosity about her mistress Pamphilea's transforming magic, and in
his excitement turns himself by mistake into a donkey. This is exactly the
wrong point to stop for a break, but it's an hour in, so Festus the narrator
says he needs a drink, and sends the audience off to the bar or to answer
calls of nature.
After the break things don't hold together nearly so well. The bandits do a
Gilbert-and-Sullivan turn that jars with the integrated though eclectic
musical style of the rest of the opera, the ballet of Cupid and Psyche works
fine, but Lucius himself drizzles towards his redemption by submission to
the triple goddess, stopping to lament the hard life of an ass when he is
halfway rescued. The ending vision of the goddess is stirring and magical,
but not part of the narrative. For Davies, the Jungian vision is unifying,
but it doesn't have the same force for most audiences.
Randolph Peters' music, though, is generally terrific, getting the humourous
but sincerely emotional tone of Davies' text perfectly most of the time. The
very best parts are those based most closely in the German and English
romantic fanstasy traditions, notably a powerful hymn to "Gramarye", the
witch's left-handed art of reading and writing the universe, stirringly sung
by superb Judith Forst. Much of the text is in ballad-narrative form, which
Peters handles with melodic and orchestral inventiveness, and the
transformation scenes (impossibly difficult to stage and compose as
specficied in the libretto) are spine-tingling if not totally lucid. But
that's all right -- it's magic.
There are times when Peters is too respectful of Davies' text and sets his
post-Shakespearean conventional lyrics with Lloyd Webberish obviousness.
Well, perhaps not that badly, but not enough to turn rhetorical commonplaces
into the emotional high points they seem to be meant to be. The most glaring
case of this is the duet about time, measure and the endless Now of love
between Lucius and Fotis as they make love (in a bed on the stage). This is
reprised at the end, suggesting that Davies thought it was something more
profound than the Catullan carpe diem it is, but Peters' setting is anodyne
and repetitive, creating the sort of endless Now you eventually throw
something to put an end to.
But the music in general is thoroughly enjoyable, great fun and sometimes
very moving. And the production is totally engaging, with the Canadian Opera
Company chorus playing a full part as the enthusiastic audience for a tale
of love. The set is very simple, a luminous flat sea view lit to create
appropriate atmospheres, and three tiers of steps, which form the stage for
the performed narrative and also the theatre for the on-stage audience.
There are moments of confusion, generally based in confusion in the
libretto, but the colour and energy of the production carry you along. The
ballet, styled from further east, Thailand or Hindu India maybe, is
particularly striking visually, with the wrathful Venus angular
and Shiva-like.
Judith Forst dominated the singing, as both the universe devouring Pamphilea
and the sly old bandit-mother. The other performances were in character, and
energetic. Rebecca Caine was glamourous and slightly cryptic, alluring
rather than naughty, as Fotis. Kevin Anderson was amusingly vain and stupid
as Lucius, and Theodore Baerg and Raymond Aceto were both suitably comic in
a slightly Chu-Chin-Chow way, as was Michael Colvin as the censorious
scholar who didn't think people should see all this filth.
Richard Bradshaw, who lead some magical playing by the Canadian Opera
Company orchestra, has been trying to spin The golden ass into the
standard repertoire. For its musical invention and potential ideas, it
belongs there. But the libretto needs a substantial overhaul to give it some
dramatic shape and coherence. When pia memoria allows a sense of proportion,
this could be a wonderful work in every way.
H.E. Elsom
|
