Pared-down ‘Vanessa,' in a strip mall, demands a trip to the Berkshires
Heartbeat Opera's streamlined vision of Barber's resurgent 1958 nail-biter — a bizarre love quadrangle with sharp psychological corners — arrives as the first opera ever presented as part of Williamstown Theatre Festival. And even among the unpredictable mixed bouquet of this 71st season — helmed by a collective led by playwright Jeremy O. Harris ('Slave Play') and featuring plays, dance, experimental musical theater, readings and an ice show at a local hockey rink — the bright white bloom of this 'Vanessa' still stands out.
R.B. Schlather, whose recent productions of 'Giulio Cesare' and 'Rodelinda' have inspired a recurring migration of opera lovers upstream to Hudson, New York — directs this adaptation by Heartbeat artistic director Jacob Ashworth. It's an elegant paring of the opera's four acts (more often presented in three) down to an uninterrupted 100-minute sequence — an urgent plunge into darkness that would have delighted Strauss.
Schlather made clever use of 'the Annex,' a flexible performance venue swiftly constructed for the festival in a defunct retail space. (Alas, my suggestion of 'the Rent-A-Center for the Performing Arts' came too late.)
Set against a long white screen that, these days, all but assures overuse of eye-popping projections, Schlather's vision cannily opts for stark shadow play, looming silhouettes and a hard-edged monochromaticism, compellingly undone by creeping carpets of mist and washes of uneasy daylight. It's a 'Vanessa' that feels like a memory of a dream of the opera, highly concentrated but twice removed, its nuances rendered in high, haunting contrast that lingers when you close your eyes.
A treatment this resolutely minimal could easily have veered into absurdist territory — remember those Calvin Klein fragrance ads from the '90s? Instead, Schlather's alchemy of intense focus and dreamlike freedom honors the cyclic spell of Barber's opera with reverence and verve.
At the core of this production's compressed force is a lean new arrangement of Barber's score by Dan Schlosberg — doing double-duty in Williamstown as composer and music director for a revival of Tennessee Williams's 'Camino Real.' Barber's score, which won the 1958 Pulitzer Prize (along with the libretto by partner and collaborator Gian Carlo Menotti), is here meticulously distilled for a seven-piece ensemble of clarinet, trombone, trumpet, piano, harp, cello and violin.
Listeners who experienced Gianandrea Noseda lead the National Symphony Orchestra in a concert performance of 'Vanessa' this past January will marvel at Schlosberg's maintenance of Barber's intensity and depth. Meanwhile, the ensemble's nimbleness felt perfectly equipped for the busy weather of the music. Like the production itself, the graceful restraint of the arrangement served only to sharpen its details. Every note felt like a precipice.
It also left room for some powerful singing by the ensemble, which Ashworth's adaptation keeps to five singers.
Soprano Inna Dukach was an instantly arresting Vanessa — heels in hand, pining erratically for the arrival of her long-delayed lover, Anatol. Tenor Roy Hage, as the son of the same name who shows up instead, imbued his Anatol with humanity enough to make you forget what an opportunistic jerk he is.
My favorite singer of the evening was mezzo-soprano Ori Marcu, who effortlessly embodied Vanessa's woebegone niece Erika, the fleeting hopeful flight of her signature aria ('Must the Winter Come So Soon?') a highlight of the evening. Baritone Joshua Jeremiah's compassionate approach to the Doctor opened some show-stealing moments, especially his aria in the second half. And mezzo-soprano Mary Phillips made a memorable Baroness, her silences as weighty as the burnished tones of her voice were light.
The balance of Barber's largesse and Ashworth's economy was most beautifully realized in the climactic quintet ('To leave, to break, to find, to keep …') deftly woven by the five singers and entrancingly tangled in thick lines of cello and clarinet.
There are worries all around about the future of opera, its viability in a cultural landscape defined by its sudden, seismic shifts. But this 'Vanessa' was, among other things, a master class in resourceful thinking: how to make a lot from a little. How to make something new from something old. And how to give opera a more accessible place in our lives — even if that means a strip mall.
'Vanessa' runs as part of Williamstown Theatre Festival through Aug. 3. wtfestival.org/main-events/vanessa
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