There are many good things to be said for Virginia Opera’s new production, “Der Freischutz (The Magic Marksman),” which opened Friday at the Harrison Opera House and will be performed today.
NORFOLK
- By M.D. Ridge
Correspondent - Jan 30, 2017
There are many good things to be said for Virginia Opera’s new production, “Der Freischutz (The Magic Marksman),” which opened Friday at the Harrison Opera House and will be performed today.
Kara Shay Thomson, making her VO debut as the marksman’s beloved Agathe, has a memorably rich soprano that invests her arias, duets and ensemble singing with glorious sound. Katherine Polit sings Aennchen, Agathe’s pert cousin and cheerful confidante. Polit’s voice is lighter than Thomson’s, but she holds her own in every scene – including the delightful watchdog one in which her stylish, near-Mozartean ornamentation seems effortless.
As with many operas, the plot is complicated: Max, a forester, has lost a shooting competition to the bragging peasant Killian. Max thinks he’s cursed – and if he doesn’t win the next day’s match, he’ll lose any chance to marry Agathe, the head forester’s daughter, and inherit the head forester’s job. The scheming Kaspar urges Max to shoot with magic bullets, to be acquired from the devil in the midnight forest. At first Max can’t miss – but the last magic bullet goes off on its own with lethal results.
Corey Bix gives the role of Max great power, but all his high notes are sharp – a huge distraction, somewhat less obvious in his lower range. Bass Joseph Barron is a menacing Kaspar, who has sold his soul to the devil Samiel and betrays Max to get it back. Killian, the peasant who won the first shootout, is ably portrayed by tenor Trevor Neal, swaggering around with his trophy and drinking in the villagers’ applause. Baritone Andrew Paulson’s Governor Ottokar goes from jaunty good cheer to stern judgment in seconds.
VO veteran Jake Gardner, “ruler of the Queen’s Navee” in VO’s “HMS Pinafore,” plays his 100th and 101st roles as the nonspeaking, talon-fingered devil Samiel and the holy Hermit who convinces Ottokar to spare Max’s life.
The chorus is simply splendid – they sing, they move effectively, and they sound just wonderful. Kudos to movement director Shawna Luce.
“Der Freischutz” is sung in English with helpful supertitles. The translation from the German, by Dan Dooner and director Stephen Lawless, may well be accurate, but the libretto is mostly clumsily half-rhymed couplets. The setting has been moved from the religious wars of 17th century Bohemia to an early 19th century Bible-toting German-American community. The update unhooks the opera from religious ethos at the core of the original – but without that, what’s left is a shooting match, magic bullets and no heart.
Lawless must take the heat for stodgy direction; while the crowd scenes are handled briskly and well, individual singers are given little movement. (Polit’s perkiness is a welcome exception.) One wonders whether it’s a rushed cue or a directorial blunder when Max barrels into Agathe’s house, curtailing the well-deserved applause for her aria. In the Wolf’s Glen scene, with its ghostly apparitions and jack-o’-lantern-headed ghouls, the process of getting the magic bullets from Samiel looks like violent digestive disorders – very Tim Burton, without the CGI.
Designer Brent Dugardyn’s large sets require long pauses between scenes: the fort’s high barn-like palings, complete with hex sign painted high; the oddly angled boxes that hold Kuno’s lodge and Agathe’s room; and the dense, creepy forest whose white birches seem to have migrated to the village the next morning.
The beautiful blue moiré “curtain” projected onto the scrim suggests tree shadows. It doesn’t have much to do with the opera but it’s gorgeous.
Sue Wilmington’s costume design is excellent. However, one can understand Agathe’s wedding gown being unlike the villager’s homespun, but Aennchen’s rich purple silk gown sticks out.
The orchestra of Virginia Symphony players, under Adam Turner’s expressive baton, brings out all the drama and beauty of Carl Maria von Weber’s melodic music, especially the warm, bright brass.
All the men carry rifles, so a shooting competition makes sense, and they sing robustly of having their guns to feed their families and protect the village. But they wind up abandoning their rifles in a pile, apparently to atone for Max’s sins. How are they going to feed their families now? Suspension of disbelief snaps like a twig.