New Bolcom opera in Chicago

   By SCOTT CANTRELL - The Kansas City Star Date: 10/16/99

   CHICAGO -- It's too soon to know whether we've gotten any masterpieces
   out of the bunch.  But the ongoing flowering of new American operas
   suggests that a medium long derided for pompous irrelevancy is, in
   fact, very much a living organism.

   Even smaller opera companies in the Midwest have been doing their
   part to refresh the repertory.  In the last 10 years alone, Opera
   Theatre of St. Louis has mounted four main-stage premieres of American
   operas, by David Carlson, Anthony Davis, Stephen Paulus and Paul
   Schoenfield.  1998 saw world premieres from Lyric Opera of Kansas
   City (Henry Mollicone's "Coyote Tales"), Tulsa Opera (an extensive
   revision of David Carlson's "Dreamkeepers") and Opera Omaha (Libby
   Larsen's "Eric Hermansson's Soul").

   Particularly interesting now is a cluster of new operas based on
   classics of 20th-century American literature and mounted by the
   country's three top opera companies.  Last season it was Tennessee
   Williams' "A Streetcar Named Desire," turned into an opera by Andre
   Previn and introduced by San Francisco Opera.  Come December, the
   Metropolitan Opera will give the world premiere of John Harbison's
   operatic version of F. Scott Fitzgerald's "The Great Gatsby."

   And just last weekend, Lyric Opera of Chicago gave the first performance
   of William Bolcom's "A View From the Bridge," based on the original
   one-act version of Arthur Miller's play.  Adding to the allure of a
   Chicago weekend was a new production of "Falstaff," with superstar
   bass-baritone Bryn Terfel as the Lothario manque.

   Options also included a Chicago Symphony Orchestra concert, with
   music director Daniel Barenboim conducting the Bartok First Piano
   Concerto (with Yefim Bronfman as soloist) and Mahler's First Symphony.
   (See accompanying story.)

   Streetwise `View'

   Miller himself joined Bolcom, librettist Arnold Weinstein and other
   members of the creative team for a full-house public forum Oct.  9
   at the Merle Reskin Theater.  And he pronounced the 1955 "View" --
   with the lawyer Alfieri as narrator/commentator in the manner of a
   Greek chorus -- as a natural for operatic treatment.  (Indeed, the
   play first was turned into an opera back in 1961, by Italian composer
   Renzo Rosselini, brother of the film director Roberto Rosselini, but
   that version has vanished with scarcely a trace.)

   Musically speaking, the new "View" will disturb no one's digestion.
   Presumably befitting its setting in the shipyards of 1950s Brooklyn,
   it often suggests an updated Leonard Bernstein, in streetwise "West
   Side Story" vein.

   Bolcom's tonality is tarted up with more added-note dissonance, but
   he shares his late precursor's orchestral virtuosity and jazzy urgency
   -- and his readiness to indulge in sheer opulence.  The vocal writing
   is mostly grateful, taking on more angularity and higher pitch when
   dramatic tensions get screwed tighter.

   Two-and-a-half hours long with one intermission, the opera is set in
   an Italian-American neighborhood in the port community of Red Hook.
   Eddie Carbone, a dockworker, is married to the sensible, long-suffering
   Beatrice.  But their marriage is threatened by Eddie's obsession with
   his orphaned 17-year-old niece, Catherine, who shares their small
   apartment.

   This obsession comes to a head when Eddie and Bea take in two of her
   cousins, illegal aliens -- "submarines," they're called -- fresh off
   the boat from Italy.  Soon a romance sparks between Catherine and
   Rodolpho, whose blond hair and singing set him apart from the
   community's macho males.

   Trying to drive a wedge between the young lovers, Eddie even insinuates
   that Rodolpho is gay and interested in marrying Catherine only to
   gain citizenship.  When this ploy fails, Eddie betrays Rodolpho and
   Marco to the immigration authorities, which makes him anathema in
   the community.

   When Marco returns to the apartment, Eddie pulls a knife and the two
   struggle.  Marco finally grabs Eddie's arm and with it plunges the
   knife into his betrayer's chest.  The lawyer Alfieri and the chorus,
   who have shared scene-setting and commentary, close the opera with
   musings on Eddie's fate and its place in a history going back to
   ancient Sicily and Syracuse.

   The play has been skillfully nipped and tucked by Weinstein, who
   previously collaborated with Bolcom and Robert Altman on "McTeague,"
   introduced by Lyric Opera of Chicago in 1992.  Miller himself has
   contributed a new soliloquy for Marco, lamenting that he has escaped
   from poverty in Italy only to be betrayed by someone he thought was
   a friend.

   But does "View" work, dramatically, as an opera? What I find less
   than convincing is the full and immediate disclosure of Eddie's
   passion for Catherine.  An epiphany more gradually achieved would
   have lent more natural tension to the early scenes.  And repeated
   "Yehs" from a purely incidental character called Mike were unnecessary
   and annoying.

   That said, the Chicago staging, by director Frank Galati (of "Ragtime"
   fame), was a fine piece of work.  The evocative set, with its
   crisscrossings of girders, railed ramp and balconies, was designed
   by Santo Loquasto, who also did the costumes.

   The effect was much enhanced by Wendall K.  Harrington's background
   projections of harbor scenes.  (Why don't opera companies do more
   with projections?) Lighting designer Duane Schuler went for unremitting
   gloom, but there was a reason for it.

   Emotionally and vocally, Kim Josephson was a powerhouse Eddie, and
   he had his match in Catherine Malfitano's ardent, full-voiced Beatrice.
   Alas, Juliana Rambaldi's edgy soprano made Catherine a less alluring
   Lolita.  Gregory Turay was a handsome, winsome Rodolpho, and in the
   first act, when he didn't overextend his essentially lyric tenor, he
   pleased the ear.  But in the second act highflying vocal lines put
   both the young lovers over the aural edge.

   Mark McCrory sensitively balanced Marco's rough edges with his
   intrinsic sense of honor.  It's too bad Bolcom stuck his sturdy
   bass-baritone in so ungratefully low a range at the beginning and
   end of the new "Ship Called Hunger" aria.  Timothy Nolen was a
   dignified, richly textured Alfieri.

   Conductor Dennis Russell Davies occasionally let the orchestra
   play too loudly, but it certainly played well -- expressively and
   responsively.  Both musically and dramatically, Donald Palumbo's
   chorus was a strong participant.

Scott Morrison