TO SING OR NOT TO SING: WHAT A QUESTION!

by Gina Guglielmo

The Washington National Opera is premiering Abroise Thomas’ opera Hamlet from May 19th to June 4, and for those who are in thrall to the Enigmatic Dane and the whirling world of words that surround him, the music of this opera will enhance one’s understanding of the play through the emotional channels of voice and orchestra and discover a transformed Prince through the emendations of the words and plot by Thomas’ two librettists, Michele Carre and Jules Barbier.

What sacrilege one might think, sputtering; who is this Jules fellow and his bon ami, Michele, to tamper with the holy text of The Prince of Denmark? Well, hold on to your leotard. If Shakespeare was asked to do his play so it would appeal to the King of Thailand, and he could add some ducats to his “House in Stratford Fund,” he would have jumped at it. Aside from the bowdlerized version of the 18th C where the play ends sort of happily with a few less corpses lying about, present day directors and actors (especially cinematography actors/directors) do not scruple to move a scene here, omit a character or two there, dress Hamlet in Star Trek garb and make Gertrud look like Hamlet’s older sister
Yet, this ‘Amlet drops more than just the “h” in the protagonist’s name. For example, Act I does not take place on Elsinore’s battlements as the opening challenge “Who’s there?” proclaims the thematic mantra. Instead it opens with a wedding: THE wedding where the funeral leftovers were recycled for the bridal banquet. The happy Danish populace (despite the Iron Curtain ambiance) is dancing in the aisles. Hamlet is wearing Ray bans and a three-piece suit as he barely suppresses his fury in the reception line. Polonius may as well be a mime in this opera, a rather enormous change; he doesn’t wise talk his son, and in a major reversal, the old man was in on the murder as was the Queen which renders both characters as ruthless as opposed to the flawed but loving parent figures in the play. The uxorious Claudius several times tells Gert to shape up, act like a Queen, button the lip. Furthermore, she is still alive. and whimpering as the final curtain falls. This merits a double boo since she gains some points when she drinks the poison goblet (I think on purpose) to save her son.

Young Fortinbras, the character every director loves to cut, is so cut, his name is not even dropped. Yorrick’s skull----also gone. The big duel scene Act V takes place now in the cemetery where Hamlet simply plugs Laertes---bang, bang you’re dead-- since he threatens to kill Hamlet who is under orders from the Ghost to finish his task pronto. Dutiful son that he is, he offs Claudius and the play comes to a clashing end as a firing squad takes aim at him from above. No, no, Horatio does not cradle and bid his sweet Prince goodnight. To speak the truth, Horatio was hard to pick out having been cloned with Marcello and Francesco. Finally, that meddling knave Polonius, who Hamlet ran through as he was making a pain in the arras of himself in the Queen’s bedroom, is also part of the graveside massacre.

Having just played the Prosecuting Attorney to consign this faux Hamlet to the dust heap, let me now switch to the Defense and bring in my star witness: the music.

The overtures and interludes are such beautiful tone poems, they define and underline the tragedy as it unfolds. The evocative surtitles as the first notes of the orchestra sounded were excerpted from Act I’ “Cast thy nighted color off, ” and “ Your father lost a father. . .” Hamlet is a baritone in Thomas’ work, a voice better suited to his utterances than the visceral tenor sound, and as soon as the character began to sing, the intensity and depth of his struggle was clearly defined. Only a few of the soliloquies are set to music: “To be, or not to be” was an aria suffused with sadness and loss: one of the best moments of the opera.
Ophelia’s role is very enlarged in the opera: we know that no self-respecting Prima Donna is going to simper to her father and brother and go gentle into that good stream . If she didn’t die so early, the title could have borne her name. This rejected maiden sang up a storm; she still hasn’t a clue why her prince all of a sudden avoids her like a rotting herring, and Gertrude – trying to cover her trail, keeps insisting that they get married. She even has a priest waiting in the wings. Indeed, Hamlet’s rejection of her is totally inexplicable since she does not lie to him about Polonius, nor does he connect her with all perfidious women. In fact, when he tells her “Get thee to a nunnery” he says it kindly because there she can find peace away from the world. Paradoxically, all this upheaval makes for some harmonious duets and trios with Claudius and his Queen trying to sort out whether they’ve been caught pouring the poison in the late king’s ear.
Lest it seem that the defense of the music is slipping, let me bring forth Act IV as a witness. Ophelia gets a whole act to herself to run around the banks of the stream and scatter rosemary and pansies and especially rue. After she falls into the water, singing glorious trills and accomplishing dramatic vocal leaps, she reappears (after an annoying five-minutes scene change) ensconced in a cloud behind broken fragments of ice. It was startling but luminous as she sings of being with Hamlet again. Too bad opera houses are not equipped with video- game technology.

The play’s the thing, and that thang is dramatic poetry. Opera is musical drama; the words are often secondary to the melody. Only in the great last operas of Verdi, Otello and Falstaff, did the music of the maestro match the genius of the playwright.
It seems I just rested my case.

Orestes. a Tragic Slam-dunk

or “Euripedes, Eumenides!”
by Gina Guglielmo

Orestes, a Tragic Romp, a World Premier now playing at the Folger Theatre until March 7, is un-predictably the surprise smash of the year. Directed by the Super Theatre Mensch, Aaron Posner, using the transadaptation of Anne Washburn, the performance delights and inspires from start to finish.
Greek drama is daunting to teach or present to realistic, savvy and cynical audiences of today. A few….er, odd traditions present stumbling blocks. Start with the Chorus, a group of citizens and a leader who hang around the stage lamenting, berating, narrating background and always imploring the gods to clean up the hero’s mess. These prayers effectively bring down one or another of the Olympians in a device called “Deus ex Machina” lamely rendered as “The God on a Pulley” since in earlier times the divinity was lowered thus onto the stage and with a wave of his/her wand, solved the thorniest problems.
Woody Allen finessed the chorus problem in “Mighty Aphrodite” by inserting scenes in which mummy-like figures berated the main character Lenny for his total ineptness:”Lenny, don’t be a schmuck!” This example of gods/man interaction occurs later in the film:

Greek Chorus: Oh my God! It's more serious than we thought! Greek Chorus Leader: It's very serious! Her marriage to Lenny is in crisis! Greek Chorus: With the passage of time, even the strongest bonds become fragile! Greek Chorus Leader: Great, fellas, it sounds like a fortune cookie! Greek Chorus: Oh, Zeus! Most potent of gods! We implore thee! We need your help! Zeus! Great Zeus! Hear us! Hear us! We call out to thee! Zeus: Um, this is Zeus. I'm not home right now, but you can leave a message and I'll get back to you. Please start speaking at the tone. [beep] Greek Chorus: Call us when you get in. We need help!

The “Deus ex Machina”, Zeus, here does a booming voice-over as crashing as
the Almighty’s in Monty Python’s “Holy Grail.”

Posner’s solution to these archaic practices is to use a group of young women as the chorus of Argives who chant, sing, and dance with the vivacity or anguish the situation demands. Their clarion voices intoning the odes make James Suggs’ original music an integral part of the dialogue. Likewise, the god Apollo comes to the rescue in a clear, soprano voice from the wings to the great relief of Electra, Orestes and Pylades who were at the point of executing themselves as Argos had decreed.

Another practice of the original Greek drama was the use of only three actors to play all the roles, which required very precise scene ordering so the actor could change his appearance. In Orestes Holly Twyford doubles as Electra and Tyndareus, her own grandfather; Jay Sullivan plays a frenzied Orestes and the messenger who brings his death sentence; and Chris Genebach morphs into four different characters: Helen of Troy, Menelaus, Pylades and a Trojan Slave. All of these transformations were believable except for Genebach’s cameo as Helen: this woman never launched any ships, but his was a game effort .
Euripides’ play was the most popular work of the classical world, but it fell out of favor until modern times. Washburn admits that most people found it “peculiar, ignoble, largely immoral and the ending inexplicable.” She also asserts that it is funny, ironic and harrowing, a daring experimentation with the genre truly combining tragedy and romp. The comedy is strangely contemporary, but lest I give too much away, I can only cite one example. When Euripedes tells us a certain politician speaks not so much because he has something to say, but rather “to be known to have spoken” certain figures in the political world immediately come to mind.

Posner speaks of building bridges between our world and the ancient Greek cosmos.. How did that world look? sound? feel? What kind of music makes sense? Clothes? Energy? The director grappled with all these questions and came up with near-perfect answers. The play moves along uninterrupted by any intermission, reckless at times but always tremendously unified and controlled. Without explicitly stating the connection the story makes with our times, we feel a bond with these characters’ lives, their religion, and their culture. In the playwright’s words, Orestes is “relentlessly modern”