The Goose Hangs High

From the Opera Vault Dept.: The Berkshire Opera, in its earliest years, aspired to a Glyndebourne feel. And there were some eight summers of truly marvelous productions in a former chapel on the grounds of a posh resort before the company had to scramble to find venues. Productions remained good, but that Glyndebourne magic was gone. Here’s my review of a double-bill from the company’s second summer that included the first professional production of a Mozart one-act. And you can find the wonderful soprano Maureen O’Flynn mentioned over here as well.

                                                                                                

STOCKBRIDGE NATIVE MAUREEN O’FLYNN, now a soprano with the New York City Opera, returned home in glorious voice Tuesday night. It was the opening-night gala of the Berkshire Opera Company, a 2-year-old group whose quality work should herald many more seasons. The audience braved squalls and felled limbs to make it to the Pierce Theatre, where two one-act operas comprised the delightful bill.

Maureen O'Flynn

Mozart’s The Goose of Cairo" is an under-performed gem, complete with father-frustrated lovers and uppity servants and a mechanical contrivance, the titular goose, that threatens to steal the end of the show. This production easily could have been titled “Road to Cairo,” thanks to stage director Thomas Lee Rindge’s Hope-and-Crosby-ish irreverence.

Comic opera is a challenge for the director: how much can be added to the humor of the music and text? Rindge was not afraid to take risks and was probably 90 percent successful.

The plot gives us lecherous old Don Pippo, grumpy papa of Celidora (O’Flynn). As played by Adrij Dobriansky, he has the funny befuddlement of Hugh Herbert, the “woo-woo” man of the old Busby Berkeley films.

Even as he prepares for his wedding to the young Lavina (Judith Gray), Don Pippo flirts with his maid, Auretta (Karen Smith). Naturally, this enrages Auretta’s sweetheart, the servant Chichibio (Vaughan Fritts), whose puffed-out chest seems to achieve more buoyancy the more he gets upset.

Lavina wants to marry Calandrino (Howard Bender), even as Celidora longs for Biondello (BOC artistic director Gary Glaze), whom she is forbidden to see. This is where the scheming comes in, with a series of ensemble numbers worthy of any of Mozart’s full-length operas: it’s almost a 75-minute compression of the best of “Cosi fan Tutte” and “The Marriage of Figaro.”

The goose is wheeled in at the end, a fantastic construction by Kennon Rothchild, who did the commedia dell’arte-inspired sets. Seven feet high, with an Egyptian cowl, the goose’s eyes light and its beak waggles as he intimidates the formidable Don Pippo.

Members of the Hartford Symphony make up the orchestra, with an exemplary sound that conductor Stephen Sulich made the best use of. He kept the balance between singers and ensemble just right without dimming the energy of either.

And what a pleasure to understand the words! The Pierce Theatre is partly responsible. Built as a chapel on the grounds of the Cranwell Estate, it has a high, bowl-shaped concrete roof that keeps the hall live without being overly reverberant.

The translation was by Sheldon Harnick and proved that opera need not feature the stuffy English of the academicians. It was witty and conversational and didn’t get hung up on the singers’ tongues.

Such was not the case in the uncredited translation of Pergolesi’s “The Maid Who Would Be Wife” with its stilted rhymes and repetitious arias.

But the opera itself was a perfect opener for the Mozart. Musically it is simpler but dramatically it offers a complement in the story of serving-girl Serpina (O’Flynn again), who decides to achieve a new station by marrying her nobleman employer. J.B. Davis was Uberto, priding himself on his independence even as the wily Serpina tricks him into the alliance.

Each and every singer brought that impressive combination of excellent voice and good dramatic (or in this case, comic) ability that makes a success of musical theater. Executive director Rex Hearn (saluted with the above-set inscription “Teatro del Rex”) picks his talent with a shrewd hand and obviously knows where to go for his technical staff as well.

The non-singing roles in these productions were the only detraction. In taking a commedia dell’arte approach, Rindge employed a mime troupe that began each opera with acrobatics and clowning. But the company of six had an amateurish aspect when working together and individually were so busy that they dissipated the focus.

The Pergolesi opera has a silent role for a buffoon servant, Vespone, played in Harpo Marx-style by Doug MacDonald. It was an unfortunate characterization because of the social requirements of the plot: Serpina is a counter-jumper, an issue of great importance – and scandal – in its day. Vespone provides the polarization needed for us to appreciate the gap she is bridging between her proletarian background and the patrician class she seeks by marrying Uberto.

That is a kind of anarchy. The comedy of Harpo is another kind of anarchy, an id-response that complemented the ego- and superego-responses of his brothers to the upper-class circles they were pitted against in their comedies.

MacDonald would have been better advised to work up a character more cognizant of his station. Or, if another film analogy would be helpful, he could have tried the deadpan of Buster Keaton.
These stories are deceptive in that the class struggle is often disguised as a youth-versus-age confrontation; but it generally is the young who provide needed social enlightenment.

The Berkshire Opera Company also provides an intermission format of British tradition: there is an hour between the operas, during which you may picnic (the rains turned the theater itself into the picnic ground) or take advantage of a sumptuous buffet served in the Estate’s ballroom. I chose the latter with no regrets.

Performances continue at 7 p.m. tomorrow, Saturday, Aug. 6, 7 and 9.

– Schenectady Daily Gazette, 31 July 1986