The heck w/ Tim Page's negative review!  My wife and I had a lot of fun
last night at the Washington Opera's presentation of *The Abduction from
the Seraglio* at the Kennedy Center.

The opera has alternating casts and we got the one that Page panned, or at
best, damned w/ faint praise:

Constanze: Mary Dunleavy
Blonde: Jane Gierling-De Haan
Belmonte: John Osborn
Pedrillo: John Daniecki
Osmin: Guenter Missenhardt
The Pasha Selim: Thomas Stewart
Conductor:  Julia Jones (substituting for Heinz Fricke, who's preparing for
the Tristan which opens at the end of next month)

Interestingly, Ms.  Jones, whom Page takes care not to criticize too
severely (saying only that, under her baton, the orchestra and chorus
did not perform w/ the same precision that one would have expected from
Fricke), was my main disappointment.  Our seats were in Row K center of the
orchestra, and the overture sounded like something coming over an AM radio.
The orchestra's weakness was less of a problem when the action started,
as this is an opera for its singers.  Mozart wrote this at age 26 when the
DaPonte operas and Magic Flute were still far in the future (in relation
to Mozart's life span), but his gift for sparkling arias and spectacular
ensembles, where everybody is singing something else and the music yet all
seems to fit together, was already very much in evidence.  A most elegant
example, I thought, was the end of the second act, where Belmonte and
Pedrillo are confronting their respective sweethearts w/ their suspicions
that the young ladies may have succumbed to the desires of their captors
and the respective ladies' reactions to those insinuations.  The dialogues
between the principals (Belmonte and Constanze) and between their servants
(Pedrillo and Blonde), running in both cases from question, to outrage, to
pleas for forgiveness, to hard-hearted refusal, to further pleas, to
forgiveness (ending the act) were a tour de force of different moods
rendered in song all fitting together so naturally and so pleasingly,
in a way I've rarely heard in operas by other composers except perhaps
Verdi (and some would add the finale to Der Rosenkavalier).

Like Page, I liked the singing of Jane Giering-de Haan (Blonde), which he
preferred to that of Mary Dunleavy's Constanze, which he (like me) found
"piercingly loud" on occasion.  Among the singers, Missenhardt, as Osmin,
as much as stole the show, and the audience, in registering its applause,
seemed to agree.  I wasn't particularly carried away by the tenor roles
of Belmonte and Pedrillo, which I realized were necessary to the story.
As I think about it now, and, I suspect, someone can correct me on this,
I find most of Mozart's tenors, be they the ones I heard last night, or
Don Octavio, or Pamino, or the young gallants in Cosi (is there a tenor
in Figaro?), wimpy.  I blush to admit that, until I read a write up in the
opera magazine sent to subscribers, I didn't know much (actually I didn't
know anything) about the now 70-year old Thomas Stewart whose role as the
Pasha Selim is a speaking one only.  His life has been interesting.  He's
married to Evelyn Lear.

As seems to be the custom at Kennedy Center New Years Eve productions, the
cast, after the last curtain call, called upon the audience to join them in
"Auld Lang Syne", the words of which were flashed on the surtitle board.
Missenbach, here from Germany, appeared to be confused at what was going
on, seeking left and right for elucidation, but my wife thinks he was just
hamming it up.

Unlike Page, we liked the sets, although it seemed odd that the gate
to Pasha Selim's house opened to a beach.  Maybe he just had a large
waterfront estate.  One scene, on the actual beach, had a small sailing
ship floating on the horizon that, while having nothing to do w/ the
action, slowly made its way from one side of the stage to the other.

The opera was over at 10:45 and we lingered in the Center's Grand Foyer
for the waltzes and "dancing" that were to usher in the new year.  I write
"dancing" in quotes because, when the dance music starts, the foyer is so
crowded (maybe 5,000 people) that there isn't much room to do more than
just move from side to side in time to the music.  That just suits me fine,
as I can't dance, and can camouflage my inability w/out making too much of
a fool of myself.  They gave out hats and noisemakers; I drained a tulip
glass of the cheaper champagne, and by twenty minutes after midnight we
were down at the center's parking level, where we could wish our daugher
and son in law a happy new year over the telephone.

Walter Meyer