A NAIL IN OPERA’S COFFIN
As the opera’s West Coast premiere, A Coffin in Egypt is frankly disappointing. As the first opera production at the new Wallis Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts (co-produced with Houston Grand Opera and Opera Philadelphia), A Coffin in Egypt is doubly disappointing. Based on Pulitzer Prize-winner Horton Foote’s similarly titled Southern Gothic play In a Coffin in Egypt, the new chamber opera has some points in its favor. In addition to generous financial backing, a stunning new venue and an evocative set design, it stars renowned mezzo soprano Frederica von Stade. Why she came out of retirement for this role, however, remains a mystery.
Von Stade plays nostalgic nonagenarian Myrtle Bledsoe (b. 1880) in what is essentially an 80-minute monologue set in Egypt, Texas. A vain and bitter old woman, Myrtle wanders back and forth across the decades reflecting on her unhappy life, especially on her miserable marriage to Hunter (David Matranga). Although his many crimes include carrying on a long-term affair with a mulatto woman and killing the father of a teenaged girl he had fallen in love with, it is hard to feel any sympathy for Myrtle. Her tale is ostensibly told to her patient caretaker Jessie Lydell (Cecilia Duarte), but more often lapses into solipsism (and poor Ms. Duarte has to sit there being nonverbally empathetic throughout).
Apart from a gospel quartet that functions like an ancient Greek chorus, von Stade is the only one who sings. Composer Ricky Ian Gordon fails to give von Stade much in the way of melody, but does keep the music in a range that flatters her age (69 in June). His atonal orchestrations and vocal lines come across as bland, contributing little in the way of energy and excitement, let alone beauty. The gospel chorus (soprano Cheryl D. Clansy, alto Laura Elizabeth Patterson, tenor James M. Winslow and bass Jawan C.M. Jenkins) punctuates and comments on Myrtle’s ruminations with more satisfying spirituals, but even these ring false. Written in unusually colorless four-part harmony, they are utterly lacking in emotion and authenticity.
Director Leonard Foglia’s banal libretto is partially to blame for Gordon’s uninspired music. At one point, Foglia has Myrtle singing the lyrics, “I love trees / They talk to me,” which might be an acceptable portrayal of dementia were they not meant in all seriousness. Near the opera’s anti-climactic ending, Myrtle muses, “Maybe the reason I live on is to forgive, to finally forgive.” Unfortunately for Foglia, audiences are not so forgiving. Some walked out before the performance ended.
Put simply, A Coffin in Egypt is not a good start for opera at the Wallis, nor does it bode well for the future of opera. It is a coffin that should be buried and forgotten.
photos by Lynn Lane
A Coffin in Egypt
Bram Goldsmith Theater
Wallis Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts
9390 N. Santa Monica Blvd in Beverly Hills
scheduled to end on April 27, 2014
for tickets, call 310-746-4000 or visit www.thewallis.org