Dear Readers: I am privileged to count, among my acquaintances, many distinguished connoisseurs of great music. Regular readers of our comments section will recognize today's author by his
nom de plume JING, which I respect here. Let me say only that I have known our author since our university days together, lo these many years (half a century)!, and we share more than a few happy memories. Today our author reviews the opera
Oscar, starring his friend David Daniels, the internationally recognized alto whose work will be familiar to all my readers. -- Edmund St.Austell
BRIEF BIOGRAPHY OF "JING"
I an not a music reviewer. I am a retired protestant clergyman. I am someone who loves opera (as well as other forms of classical theater.) I am a person who has, over my 71 years, sung and acted in high school and college, and professionally and in summer stock and community theater. I have happily performed in many a church basement and nursing home. While watching old movies on
Turner Classic Movies, I regularly see famous singers and actors I have performed with, but who, unfortunately, few people remember (which means I am not always believed.) These are biases of mine you should be aware of: I love opera and live theater and believe that any critical comments of any production ought to be grounded in humility and gratitude for those who care enough about art to take the risks and make the sacrifices necessary to put something on stage. This applies especially to new compositions. I am impatient with anyone who thinks he or she knows enough to correctly predict the ultimate fate of long-term survival of any new work. My own ultimate critical criteria when I attend the opera are that I stay awake, that I don't lose interest, that I trust I know it in my gut when something is "good" when I continue to be haunted by it. I remain haunted by productions I have seen sixty years ago. My final bias is that David Daniels has been a good, kind and generous friend of my wife Lois and me for fifteen years. Star-struck? You bet. But that friendship has provided me with a window into the heart and soul of a person who is at once: pure artist, great performer, down to earth friend, gracious human being, and, importantly, an extraordinarily courageous advocate for gay rights, not only through what he says, but how he lives his life day to day.
OSCAR
Music: Theodore
Morrison
Text: John Cox
and Theodore Morrison
World Premiere at Santa Fe Opera
July 27, 2013
Countertenor
David Daniels is a down-to-earth and gracious man with a ready and often
raucous sense of humor. And at heart, he is a dedicated artist and gay man. For
David, who experienced his share of suffering growing up gay in the South, to
appear as the first openly gay opera singer to portray the gay title character
of a new opera, one written expressly for him, has been a powerful experience.
My wife, Lois, and I were fortunate to see his performance in “Oscar” and spend
some time with him one weekend in August.
In conversation, one can sense how intensely he feels about playing the
character of Oscar Wilde. He puts it simply, “It has changed me.” I said to
him, “This feels like you are a part of something that is more than this
opera.” He answered, “You know what? About 20% of it is this opera.”
Oscar
Wilde was the “superstar” of late Victorian London, and his fame was complex
and precarious. In part it was due to polite society’s uneasiness about his
sexual persona (he was married with two children). He was also the public face
of the Aesthetic Movement. “The aesthetes’” message was that art has no other
purpose than to uplift the human soul through beauty alone. Art for art’s sake.
That message offended many Victorians who believed that art must be, above all,
morally elevating. Nevertheless, such moralists found it impossible to take
their eyes off the messenger – a sensational young wit in elegant velvet
attire, foppish hair style, lace cuffs, knee-pants and buckled shoes, who was
also a stunning conversationalist, brilliant literary critic and poet, and
undoubtedly the greatest comic playwright England had seen in a hundred years.
Wilde sat atop a fragile perch. Something was bound to happen. And in 1895, while still basking in the
extraordinary success of “The Importance of Being Ernest,” his tumble began. John
Cox writes the following in the program notes for “Oscar.”
“The
common perception of Oscar Wilde is as a great writer and notorious homosexual.
We wish in our opera to accept this duality and modulate it into a perception
of him as a tragic hero. The greatness required to qualify for such an upgrade
is evident in his brilliant career. As playwright, novelist, poet, journalist,
wit, and public personality, he was at least the equal of any contemporary.
What we offer here is testimony, suitably inflected for the theater, of the
events that turned his comedy to tragedy, plunging him into a purgatory of
social humiliation and physical suffering through imprisonment with hard labor,
thence to discard him as a spent husk. His resurgence from victim to hero came
only posthumously.”
This
is the frame the opera’s creators chose in order to make dramatic sense out of
Wilde’s life, especially its final years. How did all this happen? Cox
continues:
“The
gods always prescribe a nemesis to the protagonist in order to engineer his
downfall. Oscar’s nemesis took the beautiful form of Lord Alfred Douglas. Bosie
Douglas was the youngest son of the Marquess of Queensbury, and they despised
one another. Oscar soon found himself in
the cross fire of their enmity when Queensberry raised public objection to Oscar’s
relationship with his son, imputing a sexual basis to it. Bosie forced Oscar to
sue Queensberry for libel, hoping thereby to disgrace him, but Queensberry won
the case, so that disgrace fell on Oscar. He was rapidly put on trial,
convicted and jailed for ‘gross indecency.’”
The
opening chords of the opera are filled with foreboding. The first to appear is
Walt Whitman, powerfully sung by the exceptional baritone, Dwayne Croft. He
serves as a traditional Greek chorus throughout the work. While some critics
have regarded this device as irrelevant and distracting, for me personally, it
worked very well. I love Walt Whitman’s poetry, and following his spoken
introduction of the story, I began to notice that what Whitman sang comes
directly from “Leaves of Grass.” Both
men were great artists whose lives had many parallels, including a veiled
sexual life that their respective publics suspected with great ambivalence. In
fact, Wilde had visited Whitman in Camden, New Jersey, during Oscar’s famous
lecture tour of the U.S. and Canada in 1882. Wilde, a much younger man,
esteemed Whitman highly. As a child his mother had read to him from “Leaves of
Grass.” Whitman offered Wilde some elderberry wine, and throughout the visit
Wilde addressed him with great respect. At one point Wilde declared that he
couldn’t bear “to listen to anyone unless he attracts me by a charming style,
or by beauty of theme.” “Why, Oscar,” said Whitman, “it always seems to me that
the fellow who makes a dead set at beauty is in a bad way. My idea is that
beauty is a result, not an abstraction.” Wilde, taken aback, replied, “Yes. I
think so too.” After his meeting with Whitman, Wilde said, “I have the kiss of
Walt Whitman still on my lips.” For me, the use of Whitman as a commentator on
Wilde, as fellow artist, but as critic of “abstraction” makes sense. The arc of
the drama of Wilde’s life in “Oscar” reveals his terrible journey from abstract
aestheticism to palpable suffering – first through his perilous relationship
with Bosie, and then from the pain he underwent in prison.
Following
the prologue, Act I takes place on the eve of his second trial. Out on bail,
Wilde attempts to find a hotel room for the night. But Queensbury has bribed
some detectives to harass Wilde, hounding him with brutal anti-gay slurs, and
tipping off the night clerks in each hotel that this is Oscar Wilde, the man
charged with “gross indecency.” Repeatedly turned away, as he wanders
helplessly, the image of Bosie appears to him. Bosie is portrayed by the
remarkable dancer Reed Lupau. He is graceful and slight as was the real Bosie.
He has no spoken or sung lines and appears frequently throughout the opera,
sometimes as himself, sometimes masked as other characters. At Oscar’s
insistence Bosie has already fled to France. Bosie never appears in the opera
except as a wraith in Oscar’s imagination, a kind of obsession, morphing into a
variety of forms, some comforting, some demonic. Though the use of a dancing
mute is borrowed from Britten’s “Death in Venice,” I still found it very
effective. Wilde maintained that Bosie was “the love of his life” - a love that
was tender, obsessive and very dangerous.
Wilde
at last finds refuge in the home of his old friend Ada Leverson, a writer and
mother. The only room she has for him is the nursery, overflowing with toys,
rocking horses, stuffed animals, and children’s books. Soprano Heidi Stober was
new to me. Her voice took flight with
genuine compassion for Oscar. Their conversation is punctuated by wit and sharp
observations, but we instantly know that Wilde is beset by dread and weariness.
To calm him, she asks Oscar to read aloud from one of his children’s books.
Theodore
Morrison’s score is tonal and romantic, avoiding harsh dissonance, but is still
replete with surprising turns. For me, the music worked well. This is not a
score that is ground-breaking, but it serves the drama very effectively, as
words and music nicely embrace. Lois said it felt in places like a “sung play.”
The only two arias in the opera belong to Daniels, and the first is in this
scene. Oscar sings a brief song in praise of absinthe. Wilde downs several
glasses of it (at least the substance looked green to me). Ada leaves briefly, and Bosie re-appears to
Oscar. They join in a gentle dance and embrace. This leads to the beautiful
aria “My sweet rose,” overflowing with yearning. The tri-tonal nature of the
refrain (using the so-called “devil’s interval”) is uncanny, yet genuinely
moving. Daniels sings with a legato of sheer beauty with none of the
vibrato-less “eeriness” that was once so widely expected of countertenors. No
recorded music from “Oscar” is readily available. Here, however, is Daniels
singing with similar feeling, but in a very different style. This is ”Ch’io
parta?” (“Must I leave?”) from Partenope by Handel. It captures heart break not unlike what Oscar
feels. This aria is a personal favorite from the first opera I saw Daniels in.
Into
the scene then enters another of Oscar’s friends, the writer Frank Harris.
Tenor William Burden, another rising star with Santa Fe experience, sings
beautifully and dramatically. Unlike
Ada, he is a friend whose dominant personality has often clashed th Wilde’s
ego. Word of Harris’ arrival sends Wilde into retreat from the nursery to
gather himself for the encounter, with some very funny lines about what it is
like to be around Frank. But when he
returns Frank and Ada try desperately to
convince Oscar to flee England at once. Harris says he has readied a yacht to
take him away. They argue that he owes it to himself and to his wife and
children to find safety. Their soaring duet expresses the special love they
share for Oscar and the ardent desire to protect him from the cruelty that is
bound to engulf him. When he seems at first to agree, Ada and Frank depart and
we witness Oscar’s genuine struggle to decide. I have seen David Daniels on
stage many times over the
years, but this is his finest acting. Bosie returns
and we begin to see the depth of Oscar’s anguish. Now he makes the “moral”
decision to be true to who he really is. He will stay and defend himself, and
he will accept the consequences. Gone now are his off-hand dismissals of what
prison might be like. He has begun to realize the truth of what is happening to
him.
The
next selection is “Welcome Wanderer” from A Midsummer Night’s Dream by Benjamin
Britten. Britten is said to be a big musical influence on Theodore Morrison.
Here Daniels plays Oberon. Puck is silent, though he speaks elsewhere in the
opera. This music is much closer in style to “Oscar” than my other selections.
And though Oberon and Puck are not Oscar and Bosie, this shows an interaction
between a singer and a mute actor suggestive of the one in “Oscar.”
Act I ends with a wild and bizarre depiction
of the trial itself. Instead of the familiar tense “courtroom drama,” the
nursery is transformed into a crazed menagerie of prancing hobby horses,
dancing Raggedy Ann dolls, stuffed animals, and wooden soldiers - all toys gone
bad - evoking a travesty, presided over by a judge who is a bouncing
jack-in-the box. (played by the remarkable young bass Kevin Burdette). This
scene has been criticized as over the top. And it is, but I found it amazing
theatre. The phrase “mockery of justice” rolls off the tongue today so easily
that it has lost the sense of outrage it actually implies. But here it is
recovered. As the guilty verdict is rendered, the music swells, and Oscar
Wilde, the accused in the dock (which has been a baby’s crib) finds himself
condemned as the slats of the crib are transformed into slowly rising bars. And
the music swells to the strains of “Hail Britannia!”
Act
II takes place in Reading Gaol. For many today, Wilde’s two-year imprisonment
is a footnote to his life. But the opera reminds us that Victorian prisons were
no minimum security spas for the rich and famous. They were brutal, degrading,
and fully dedicated to the destruction of body and spirit. This mission is
proudly announced by Colonel Isaacson, the governor (warden), upon Wilde’s arrival.
Kevin Burdette returns to play him as malevolence incarnate. Wilde appears
shackled and still attired in his red velvet smoking jacket. Gone now is any
trace of wit or irony. He stands in dazed silence as what awaits him is read
aloud: No speaking to another prisoner
at any time, hard labor, no pen and paper of any kind, no reading material.
With piteous humility, Oscar asks “May I not have some book to bring solace to
my soul?” This is briskly denied by Governor Isaacson, who informs Oscar that he
has no soul, and reminds him that the purpose of his stay in Reading Gaol is to
be reduced to nothing. Then, piece by piece, his clothing is discarded and he
dons his gray prison suit. Escorted to his cell, a cage, he is introduced to
the machine upon which his hard labor is to be performed. It is a fiendish
metal device with a crank attached. Each time the prisoner turns this crank,
one revolution is registered and retained for an endless record.
Wilde
is required to attend a church service. Standing in line with the other
prisoners, he collapses, is made to stand again, and again falls to the ground.
His head now injured, the governor finally orders him to the infirmary. There
takes place what, for me, is the most moving scene of the opera. He shares this
brief respite from the horrors of the prison with two other inmates, all three
barely able to move from their beds. One of them has heard of Oscar.
Respectfully he asks Wilde what he thinks of Dickens. Oscar is tempted to
summon his mocking wit, but at once realizes how humble the man is. Though all
have been living in hell, Oscar is now able to newly connect with another
broken human being. He is learning from their suffering and from his own. A
moment that still brings tears to my eyes is when Wilde has difficulty getting
comfortable enough to sleep and his new friend leaves his own bunk, goes to
Wilde’s bedside, unfolds his blanket, and gently tucks him in. Oscar would
later write, “There is no prison in any world into which love cannot force an
entrance.”
Before
leaving the infirmary, Oscar learns that a prisoner is to be hanged, a man who
murdered his wife by cutting her throat. As the time approaches, tension among
the inmates rises to a frenzy. Bosie, masked as Death itself, swirls through
the prison like a whirlwind, his dancing spectacular in its choreography. The
prisoners sing a poignant and haunting chorus, with lyrics taken directly from
“The Ballad of Reading Gaol.” Here Morrison’s mastery of choral composition is
truly impressive. The hanging is enacted in a brutally explicit and ghastly
way. It is riveting. The masked executioner is revealed to be Bosie.
Eventually
the sadistic Isaacson is replaced. Wilde, now nearing the end of his two-years,
is allowed pen and paper and books. His last visit is from Ada. In a letter to
her, he had expressed his desire, on release, to be received into a Christian
monastery. She sadly informs him that the request has been denied. Wilde is
resigned and she is sorrowful as they part. (For three years after his release,
Wilde wandered in exile in France seeking spiritual redemption; broken in
health, penniless, never to see his wife and children again. Oscar Wilde died
in a shabby Paris hotel room. His oft quoted famous last words are likely
apocryphal, a variation on an earlier observation to friends: “My wallpaper and
I are fighting a duel to the death. One of us has got to go.”)
The
opera, itself, ends in a startling way. Walt Whitman, long dead, appears again.
From his vantage point in heaven, he welcomes Oscar Wilde into a firmament that
is home to the souls of the great, good and wise ones of human history. The
music soars and is wonderfully triumphant. It is, well, quite operatic! And the
opera’s final words belong to Oscar. Amazed and surrounded by those who have
just welcomed him into glory, he turns to face us and sings: “For myself the
only immortality I desire is to invent a new sauce.” This, it seems to me, is a
perfect ending. It is as if to say, “La tragedia รจ finita.”
This
final selection is “Barbaro Traidor” from a recording session for the opera
Bajazet, by Antonio Vivaldi. Here is Daniels with Fabio Biondi conducting
Europa Galante. Imagine it as Oscar Wilde having fun in heaven with some
wonderful friends. Please skip the ad, since no such thing can exist in
heaven.
