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Atlanta Opera in Mozart ‘Abduction from the Seraglio’
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
OPERA REVIEW
The Atlanta Opera. Mozart’s “The Abduction from the Seraglio.” Thursday at the Boisfeuillet Jones Atlanta Civic Center. Program repeats 8 p.m. Saturday and 3 p.m. Sunday. 404-881-8885, www.atlantaopera.org.
The Atlanta Opera has made tremendous artistic advances in the past year, so an excursion into the joys and depths of Mozart seemed likely to continue the ascent.
Instead, its lethargic “Abduction from the Seraglio,” which opened Thursday at the Atlanta Civic Center, makes Mozart, on his 250th birthday, a composer of pretty tunes but little coherence or depth.
“Abduction,” a massive hit in its day, plays into Age of Enlightenment ideals — explored in literature and music and sharply articulated by novelist Jean-Jacques Rousseau — where European Christian society (bad) was considered a corruption of innocent human nature (good). Thus infidels and “savages” were, by stereotype, more pure of heart and more compassionate than the typical self-absorbed, war-mongering European.
That’s the background of Gottlieb Stephanie’s libretto, richly amplified and made comic-poignant by Mozart. It’s a singspiel, with spoken dialogue (here delivered in the original German, with supertitles) connecting the arias, duets and ensemble numbers.
The story involves two romantic couples: a pair of Spanish aristocrats and their feisty servants. The pig-headed men obsess over their lovers’ fidelity, even as they try to rescue the ladies from a Turkish harem, where they’ve been enslaved. Thankfully, the fearsome Pasha is more moral than the Spaniards can fathom, and it leads to a happy ending.
Although this “Abduction” production was planned by general director Dennis Hanthorn, the problems that made the performance feel laborious are the same ones that beset the previous regime: wrong-headed stage direction (by Dejan Miladinovic) and slack conducting (Julius Rudel).
Rudel, who turned 85 this week, has earned his place in American opera history, as a founding conductor of New York City Opera (in 1943) and on the podium of almost every major opera house in the world. He was a late replacement to conduct this “Abduction” — his Atlanta Opera debut.
He set the mood for the three-hour evening from the first bars of the overture. His pacing was slow and sometimes mushy. The opera’s many contemplative arias — the glories of young Mozart, discovering his own profundity as a composer — crawled along. Likewise, the zesty “Turkish” bits of Mozart’s score lacked definition. It was neither exotic nor playful.
Listening to Rudel conduct, you wanted more energy from the pit. At the same time, he wrapped the singers in a warm, glowing blanket of sound and, by keeping the orchestra quiet, never covered their voices.
More puzzling for the Atlanta Opera and its artistic ambitions was the return of Miladinovic. His local reputation comes from superficial, barely-competent productions of “Turandot,” “Otello,” “Aida” and — most memorably — an irritating, opera-within-an-opera “La Rondine” that was DOA.
Still, he’s rehired. Despite “Abduction” being set in a seraglio in the perfumed Near East, with sex on everyone’s mind, Miladinovic’s approach is frumpy and completely devoid of sexiness or passion. A few slapstick gags aside, his blocking is stilted. Using his eyes, not he ears, he positioned the singers too far upstage — on the cartoonish faux-Moorish sets created in the 1980s for Montreal. For the audience, this made everyone hard to hear. Like his other work in Atlanta, Miladinovic conceives of this opera an opera about nothing — a very postmodern conceit, perhaps, where the director masterminds the deconstruction of the art form. Yawn.
Thursday’s audience, savvy people, responded appropriately at the end: their encouraging, if polite, applause died down as Miladinovic took his bows.
Thus the singers provided the evening’s satisfaction, with the central quartet of lovers pale in voice but of matching voice types, bright, airy and operetta-ish.
Konstanze, the faithful heroine, is among the most treacherous roles in the Mozart canon, requiring a soprano who can toss off fast runs and pop high notes while also sustaining hefty low tones. Elizabeth Carter twittered her entrance aria without much excitement, but grew in stature through the evening. In an unflattering, two-sizes-too-small “I Dream of Jeannie” costume, she was stripped of the dignity her character works so hard to protect. (Joanna Schmink designed Carter’s clothes: What was she thinking on this one?)
Tenor John Osborn sang Belmonte, her betrothed. His voice is pleasant, small but properly noble. He fudged some notes in the subtly complex aria of love and anxiety, “O wie angstlich” (“Oh, how fearfully”), but showed disarming humanity while confessing his innermost thoughts.
Osmin, the sadistic palace bouncer, full of bluster, must sing down to a low D — the lowest note for a singer in any Mozart opera. Mikhail Svetlov, a Russian, was perhaps suffering from Georgia pollen allergies, yet delivered thick, rounded bass tones and got the most laughs.
Like Sarastro in “The Magic Flute,” Pasha Selim starts out as the forbidding bad guy and winds up the sage. A spoken part, the Pasha needs the powerful, James Earl Jones sound of omnipotence. German actor Christoph Quest here spoke with a small, high-pitched voice, and he lacked authority.
Lynette Tapia was almost ideal as the cutie-pie maid Blondchen, nailing her soubrette high notes and acting like the flirty girl who gets men to do her bidding. As her boyfriend Pedrillo, Belmonte’s servant and co-conspirator, Joel Sorensen had a likeable manner and slightly bitter tenor. As with the other singers, one had to wonder how he’d sound in a normal sized opera house, half the size of the 4,500-seat civic center.
The Atlanta Opera’s planned relocation to the new Cobb Energy Center for the Performing Arts — departing Midtown for the suburbs in fall 2007 — is expected to be announced in the coming weeks. The sound and ambiance will likely be better in the new theater, but the opera won’t improve until they hire stronger, more capable artists.
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By Shelton Jones
March 10, 2006 8:20 AM | Link to this
Thanks for putting words to go with my vague feeling that something was missing from last night’s performance-in particular, your observation regarding the placement of the soloists. The chorus, although only briefly on stage, delivered a strong performance.
By erin
March 10, 2006 10:44 AM | Link to this
I am a season ticket holder, and the opera is one of the things I love about Atlanta. But Im not sure I will travel to Cobb County once they move there….