New York City Opera Channels Stephen Schwartz
Seance on a Wet Afternoon now an opera
By: Susan Hall - 04/21/2011
Adriana the kidnapped girl likes her captor Billy well enough, but she doesn't think he's a doctor because he doesn't smell like peppermint.
Adriana's parents disagree about the power of a medium to find their daughter.
Adriana does not like Myra as her nurse.
Séance on a Wet Afternoon
Music and libretto by Stephen Schwartz
New York City Opera
April 19, 2011
Conductor George Manahan
Production Director Scott Schwartz
Set Designer Heidi Ettinger
Costume Designer Alejo Vietti
Lighting Designer David Lander
Cast in order of appearance
Myra Foster Lauren Flanigan
Mrs. Wintry Jane Shaulis
Miss Rose Pamela Jones
Mr. Bennnett Doug Purcell
Mr. Cole Boyd Schlaefer
Bill Foster Kim Josephson
Irish tenor Michael Marcotte
Arthur Michael Kepler Meo
Adriana Clayton Bailey Grey
Charles Clayton Todd Wilander
Inspector Watts Philip Boykin
Rita Clayton Melody Moore
Policeman Juan Jose Ibarra
Photographs by Carol Rosegg courtesy New York City Opera
Séance on a Wet Afternoon, a new opera by Broadway musical great Stephen Schwartz, opened at the New York City Opera. Lauren Flanigan sings the role of Myra Foster, created memorably on film by Kim Stanley. Flanigan is a dramatic soprano who is up to the anguish and manipulative powers the role requires. Immediately we see that she is possessed, even as she sits impassively at her table, arms extended forward to a candle, her hands stretched flat and tense. Other-worldly voices hurtle through her head as she administers her weekly contacts with a world beyond.
Flanigan channels communication by means of her vocal chords, a nice trick here. Séance participants eerily convey their need to believe that contact with dead friends, relatives, and yes, dogs, is being made.
In the film, the soundtrack was scored by John Barry, familiar as the composer of music for all the James Bond films. He used Mendelssohn's "Hear my Prayer" as the echoing theme song. It sounded weird and frightening and immeasurably helped to intensify and set the tone of the action.
In the opera we have an Irish ditty, 'Tis my far away laddie,' which recalls Arthur, the dead son of Myra and Billy, who appears from the world beyond and is sung beautifully by boy soprano Michael Kepler Meo. A problem arises from the slim story which television or film production can enhance with camera and editing techniques not easily translated to the stage. Not enough is made here of Myra’s psyche stripped bare by a cruel and harsh life.
While there is no violence in the kidnapping or in the captors' home, tension smolders in the orchestration throughout. George Manahan artfully led the City Opera Orchestra.
One clever device is Schwartz’s creation of a chorus of devouring reporters, hanging outside the home of the girl Myra and Billy have 'borrowed.' and finally the home of Myra and Billy. The choreography and patter for the chorus is urgent and irritating, just the way reporters always are.
The air vibrates. Metal beaded curtains that suggest rain rustle as they descend to the floor. Myra's wimpy husband Billy is sung by baritone Kim Josephson, who attributes his confusion to 'over-love' in a moving aria. What is not so clear is the fear that binds him to a crazy woman. When Myra makes increasingly dangerous demands on Billy, he is caught between shame, guilt and defeat. When he is with Adriana, the kidnapped girl performed with winsome charm by Bailey Grey, he shows what a nice man he might have been in better circumstances.
The Fosters' house in Heidi Ettinger’s winning creation comes to look like the Tin Man, with a pointy turret tower also reminiscent of Psycho. A turntable revolves to reveal a bedroom, where Myra and Billy stash away young Adriana as they wait for the ransom money. Their conversations are driven by a steely logic which does not end in polite repression, but rather incipient violence.
At first the child is to be returned home, but complications arise. In some ways the kidnapping is incidental to the central thrust of the drama, a locked bond between a mad medium and her incompetent husband. He follows orders, until...
Schwartz has diverged from the movie version of the Mark McShane story in several important ways, not to be revealed, so you will go and find out. His music as always is delightful and moving, particularly the arias written for Mrs. Clayton, mother of the kidnap victim. Melody Moore, a luscious soprano, is particularly moving in this role. Her husband is sung by Todd Wilander in a chesty full tenor.
At the end a strange metamorphoses takes over Myra. Flanigan's sound pitch goes higher and higher, as her head slowly rotates she finally slumps, seemingly unconscious. She confesses her crime as sobs rattle her whole body in an other-worldly séance, but she is led off into an all too real world by a police. The opera's conclusion is a riveting picture of an oddly hopeful incarceration.
In a discussion earlier in April, Schwartz along with several other artists who have tackled the problem of musical theater, discussed what makes an opera. Interestingly Adam Guettel had considered developing Séance too, perhaps because the characters are so over the top. They don’t quite make it in Schwartz’s take.
Rufus Wainwright talked about creating an over the top prima donna in his first opera, due up at City next season. David Henry Hwang and the veteran John Kander also chimed in as George Steel led the lively and provocative discussion. No one however raised what becomes the crucial issue resolved in the letters of Verdi and Puccini. Great opera comes from the mind of one person, the composer, who, whether or not he is the librettist, controls both the music and the dramatic arc. Highly successful collaboration like that of John Adams, Alice Goodman, and Peter Sellars is rare.
Mounting a new opera with so many talented young performers is what City Opera does best, and their unique contribution to the opera world is to be treasured. Go and be transported to this other world they are staging right now.