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<i>Opera Digest: Twice-Heard Tales at the Spoleto Festival USA</i> (review)

2012; Johns Hopkins University Press; Volume: 5; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1353/thr.2012.0017

1939-9774

Johanna Keller,

Diverse Musicological Studies

Reviewed by: Opera Digest: Twice-Heard Tales at the Spoleto Festival USA Johanna Keller (bio) Opera Digest: Twice-Heard Tales at the Spoleto Festival USA I have never been a fan of Gian Carlo Menotti’s opera, The Medium. But I am always curious to revisit a work that has not moved me in order to find out if I hear it differently. An opportunity to do that came during a lengthy residency at the Spoleto Festival USA, leading a cohort of graduate students, when I took the opportunity to see the festival’s new production of The Medium, as well as Mozart’s Magic Flute and Kaija Saariaho’s [End Page 126] Émilie. I saw each of the productions twice, which got me thinking about how enlightening a second hearing can be. Menotti founded the Spoleto Festival USA in Charleston, SC in 1977 as a counterpart to his Festival of Two Worlds in Spoleto, Italy. Ever since 1993, when Menotti quit the Charleston festival in a nasty dispute, none of his operas have been performed there. But as this is the hundredth year of Menotti’s birth (he was born in 1911 and died in 2007), it seemed a good time to let bygones be bygones. Long-time Spoleto favorite, director and designer John Pascoe, was given the task of creating a new production of The Medium. Pascoe had directed the opera twice before and had worked closely with Menotti. It must be said from the outset that two hearings, along with a brilliantly-conceived production, changed my mind about the value of this work. The Medium is a short opera—running about eighty minutes. After a premiere at Columbia University in 1946, it went to Broadway the following year where it had over 200 performances. It was adapted for television in 1948 and a film version appeared in 1951. Given its brevity and concise cast, it has become a staple for smaller opera companies and for student productions, which is how I first got to know it, thirty-five years ago. Menotti wrote the libretto for this opera, as he did for his other operas. Briefly, the story centers on a medium, Madame Flora, who lives with her adolescent daughter Monica and a mute foundling boy, Toby. The two adolescents are attracted to one another and are used by Madame Flora in her séances to dupe clients into believing that spirits from the other world are speaking to her. Madame Flora begins to hear voices, however, and this frightens her so profoundly she throws Toby out of the house as a scapegoat. When he comes back, she mistakes him for an intruder (or a ghost) and shoots him. In the 1970s as a young music student, I found Menotti’s music thin and bombastic, like a pale imitation of Verdi. The plot seemed glib. Much was written about the shooting of the mute boy Toby—was he Christ? Or Bartleby? He never really captured my sympathy. I never believed Madame Flora would adopt Toby and then reject him, or that she was afraid of ghosts. At that time, I was listening to John Cage, Terry Riley, Steve Reich and George Crumb. Menotti’s opera seemed too new to be that staid, but not venerable enough to be of interest to me (ah, youth!). Over the years, I avoided the work but still saw another dozen or so productions; none changed my opinion. The Spoleto performances did. And it was due to Pascoe’s obvious understanding of and affinity with Menotti’s aesthetic. Presented in the intimate and historic Dock Street Theater, Pascoe’s production was visually stunning, with each detail adding to the layers of possible complexities in this seemingly simple drama. Madame Flora’s lair, where she lives with her daughter and Toby, with its draped table for the séances, was a visual labyrinth of mirrors on mirrors. Furniture and other objects were stored on ropes high in the air—booty she had collected or payment from [End Page 127] her clients. She could have starred in a TV reality show on hoarding. But the startling aspect was the huge sliding doors upstage that led...