Thursday, February 16, 2006
Theodore Dreiser’s An American Tragedy makes a successful opera
LOOKING AHEAD by Wally Dobelis
The long-awaited An American Tragedy has had its debut at the Metropolitan Opera, and it works. Theodore Dreiser’s 1925 masterpiece of a poor hotel bell boy who gets introduced into wealthy society, has a rich woman fall in love with him, and decides to murder his poor pregnant betrothed, a factory girl, has had a fairly sympathetic treatment in the hands of librettist Gene Sheer and composer Tobias Picker. They have been working for half a decade or more, reducing the 900-page novel of events that happened a hundred years ago to a two-act 2 ½ hour opera that rolls along like a tawdry story in yesterday’s New York Post.
This novel of social criticism was a sensation in its day, and resulted in a Broadway play by Patrick Kearney, and two movies, An American Tragedy in 1931 and the Academy Award- winning A Place in the Sun in 1951. [Woody Allen’s Match Point, released in December, treats the same theme with a nihilistic twist.] Dreiser hated the 1931 version, originally adapted by Sergey Eisenstein and Ivor Montagu and reworked by Joseph von Sternberg, apparently because the latter’s version turned the charismatic Clyde Griffiths into a calculating sex and money driven villain rather than a drifting lover, forced by circumstances into deep waters. Theodore Dreiser (1877-1945), a Lothario himself, had for a while a studio in the then Guardian now Hotel W building, and was well known to the book dealers of the Book Row on 4th Avenue.
The production, collaboration of Picker, Sheer, the conductor James Conlon, producer Francesca Zambelli and the design team, is structured on a two-tier stage (a third one serves to identify the environment – rooftops, church steeples, trees and night) in 16 scenes, with the action flowing seamlessly from tier to tier, using the three openable thirds of each stage singly or together
Thus, the prologue of young Clyde collecting donations as his missionary mother sings starts in the leftmost third and expands to the entire stage, as passersby appear. Some scenes are two-level split-action. In the second act, while poor pregnant Roberta in her parents’ house, bottom right third, is waiting and singing of her desires for Clyde to come to her, the villain, in an antique tricot swimsuit, is courting Sondra at a lakeside, upper left (the role, excellently sung by athletic Nathan Gunn, also requires a bare-chested seduction scene). Sondra’s song of desiring Clyde intertwines with Roberta’s, turning this operatic device into a most dramatic duet.
Thomas Picker’s music is melodic but not tuneful, not unlike most present day operas. The recitatives, duets, trios and quartets are businesslike and convey the sense of the modern action. Expressions of emotion are subdued; Roberta’s outcries threatening Clyde with telling his employer are the loudest. There are few noble sentiments that make classic opera an upbeat experience. The “old warhorses’” techniques that offer setting, development and resolution with redemption in equal measures do not apply, it is dark and downhill all the way. The crises pile one problem upon another, revelations of deceit and lies follow in quick succession.
If you think that an English-language opera is easy to follow, not so. You still have to read the subtitles, and split your attention. A new work really requires two viewings, one to understand the action and another to interpret the nuances. The long first act was particularly demanding, with unexpected stage actions and clues, easy to overlook while one is peering at the words. Hardly anybody ever stands still. With all that, it was also somewhat drowse provoking, all those parties of rich people Clyde attended. Never mind, it was probably me. Anyway, Roberta’s admission of her pregnancy closing Act One woke me up, completely.
The second act was a breathholder, from the get go. The listener was stirred by the Roberta/ Sondra duet, then an Eucharist service in Sondra’s family’s church, with Roberta appearing and indirectly threatening exposure, Clyde’s musing over the murder and whether it is really him and not another man who is planning the deed, but moving ahead with the planned excursion in a canoe, during which Roberta accidentally, or maybe not so, falls overboard, while Clyde runs away. When arrested, Clyde claims innocence and pretends the boat trip was Roberta’s idea, and that darkness inhibited his search for the drowning girl. But his story comes apart, item-by-item, despite more lies and Clyde’s saintly mother insisting on her son’s truthfulness. The District Attorney explodes his last alibi, and the Greek chorus of spectators cries for justice. The jury condemns him, and a death sentence is announced
Clyde’s last moments produce a sort of redemption, his prayer for peace and courage to face death, before the curtain falls over the scene of the murderer strapped in an electric chair.
Compliments to Nathan Gunn, and to Patricia Racette as Roberta and Susan Graham as Sondra, although the best applause was reserved for Dolora Zajick as Clyde’s mother, a sympathetic minor role.
The long-awaited An American Tragedy has had its debut at the Metropolitan Opera, and it works. Theodore Dreiser’s 1925 masterpiece of a poor hotel bell boy who gets introduced into wealthy society, has a rich woman fall in love with him, and decides to murder his poor pregnant betrothed, a factory girl, has had a fairly sympathetic treatment in the hands of librettist Gene Sheer and composer Tobias Picker. They have been working for half a decade or more, reducing the 900-page novel of events that happened a hundred years ago to a two-act 2 ½ hour opera that rolls along like a tawdry story in yesterday’s New York Post.
This novel of social criticism was a sensation in its day, and resulted in a Broadway play by Patrick Kearney, and two movies, An American Tragedy in 1931 and the Academy Award- winning A Place in the Sun in 1951. [Woody Allen’s Match Point, released in December, treats the same theme with a nihilistic twist.] Dreiser hated the 1931 version, originally adapted by Sergey Eisenstein and Ivor Montagu and reworked by Joseph von Sternberg, apparently because the latter’s version turned the charismatic Clyde Griffiths into a calculating sex and money driven villain rather than a drifting lover, forced by circumstances into deep waters. Theodore Dreiser (1877-1945), a Lothario himself, had for a while a studio in the then Guardian now Hotel W building, and was well known to the book dealers of the Book Row on 4th Avenue.
The production, collaboration of Picker, Sheer, the conductor James Conlon, producer Francesca Zambelli and the design team, is structured on a two-tier stage (a third one serves to identify the environment – rooftops, church steeples, trees and night) in 16 scenes, with the action flowing seamlessly from tier to tier, using the three openable thirds of each stage singly or together
Thus, the prologue of young Clyde collecting donations as his missionary mother sings starts in the leftmost third and expands to the entire stage, as passersby appear. Some scenes are two-level split-action. In the second act, while poor pregnant Roberta in her parents’ house, bottom right third, is waiting and singing of her desires for Clyde to come to her, the villain, in an antique tricot swimsuit, is courting Sondra at a lakeside, upper left (the role, excellently sung by athletic Nathan Gunn, also requires a bare-chested seduction scene). Sondra’s song of desiring Clyde intertwines with Roberta’s, turning this operatic device into a most dramatic duet.
Thomas Picker’s music is melodic but not tuneful, not unlike most present day operas. The recitatives, duets, trios and quartets are businesslike and convey the sense of the modern action. Expressions of emotion are subdued; Roberta’s outcries threatening Clyde with telling his employer are the loudest. There are few noble sentiments that make classic opera an upbeat experience. The “old warhorses’” techniques that offer setting, development and resolution with redemption in equal measures do not apply, it is dark and downhill all the way. The crises pile one problem upon another, revelations of deceit and lies follow in quick succession.
If you think that an English-language opera is easy to follow, not so. You still have to read the subtitles, and split your attention. A new work really requires two viewings, one to understand the action and another to interpret the nuances. The long first act was particularly demanding, with unexpected stage actions and clues, easy to overlook while one is peering at the words. Hardly anybody ever stands still. With all that, it was also somewhat drowse provoking, all those parties of rich people Clyde attended. Never mind, it was probably me. Anyway, Roberta’s admission of her pregnancy closing Act One woke me up, completely.
The second act was a breathholder, from the get go. The listener was stirred by the Roberta/ Sondra duet, then an Eucharist service in Sondra’s family’s church, with Roberta appearing and indirectly threatening exposure, Clyde’s musing over the murder and whether it is really him and not another man who is planning the deed, but moving ahead with the planned excursion in a canoe, during which Roberta accidentally, or maybe not so, falls overboard, while Clyde runs away. When arrested, Clyde claims innocence and pretends the boat trip was Roberta’s idea, and that darkness inhibited his search for the drowning girl. But his story comes apart, item-by-item, despite more lies and Clyde’s saintly mother insisting on her son’s truthfulness. The District Attorney explodes his last alibi, and the Greek chorus of spectators cries for justice. The jury condemns him, and a death sentence is announced
Clyde’s last moments produce a sort of redemption, his prayer for peace and courage to face death, before the curtain falls over the scene of the murderer strapped in an electric chair.
Compliments to Nathan Gunn, and to Patricia Racette as Roberta and Susan Graham as Sondra, although the best applause was reserved for Dolora Zajick as Clyde’s mother, a sympathetic minor role.
# posted by Wally Dobelis @ 6:18 PM 
