At Wolf Trap: The Ghosts of Versailles

Beaumarchais (Will Liverman) and Marie Antoinette (Melinda Whittington) to the right and Susannah and Figaro (Morgan Pearse, Sarah Larsen) to the left

Dear Friends and readers,

I feel I should report here on the recent production of the second operatic adaptation of the third of Beaumarchais’s famous Figaro trilogy, La Mere Coupable, has been adapted twice. The first by Darius Milhaud, an apparently reasonably faithful production is very briefly described on Wikipedia. The second commissioned by the Metropolitan opera, music by John Corigliano and libretto by William M. Hoffman, first played using the full text in 1991 at the Met in New York City. It has since been much reduced in size, scope, number of player-actors needed and was performed this summer at Wolf Trap as the second of two linked operas (see At Wolf Trap: The Marriage of Figaro.

I regret to have to say from the evidence of this production, the opera is in fact embarrassingly poor; the best one can say of it is perhaps it’s meant as a sort of vulgar post-modern parody of opera. The value of reporting this truth will be in suggesting that someone should return to the first adaptation or produce a seriously work of operatic music and story. The Washington Post review admits (sort of) it’s pretty bad, spoken of what is so desirable to do (but not done), but I suggest Izzy’s concise review is accurate. As she says, she majored in music (and her masters thesis was on the 18th century baroque composer, Handel), so she was eager to see what the department chair suggested was interesting, and then was disappointed.

From the current Wolf Trap production — a typical messy moment

It is true that musically the best moments were those where the composers self-consciously imitated beautiful music from The Marriage of Figaro (in the same place — so the Countess and Susanna have a beautiful duet at the opening of the second of two acts). For me, though, what made the experience tedious was not so much that the new opera is unfaithful to the original text (turning its story into background material) nor even its reversal of the original politics (I thought to myself how Burke would have loved with worship of “Antonia”), but the pastiche quality of it. It was a self-conscious sequel, where we were asked sometimes to put some emotional investment in what we were seeing, which felt impossible because of the jarring awkward sudden relapses into jocular modern English. I was also astonished to see the kind of orientalism Said described brought right back in some central scenes said to occur in Turkey. You could argue well, they mean to burlesque these stereotypes; no they didn’t. The “mash-up” Enchanted Island the Met did some years ago worked, was splendid, with rousing and beautiful music, playful. This descended into vulgar leering.

That Izzy and my reaction was common was made obvious by the tepid applause. In most productions nowadays audiences feel it incumbent upon them to stand to applause, so that not standing becomes unusual — a decided sign of a lack of enthusiasm. That’s what happened here. And consider the title: what a missed opportunity.

Ellen