Opera News August 2006
IN REVIEW
ST. PAUL — Joseph Merrick, the Elephant Man, Minnesota
Opera, 13/05/06
Bravo to Minnesota Opera for presenting the American
premiere of Laurent Petitgirard’s opera Joseph
Merrick, the Elephant Man. With its haunting, poignant
score and its provocative, skillfully woven libretto
by Eric Nonn, Elephant Man has the distinct feeling of
a modern classic. The story of the hideously deformed
Englishman Joseph Merrick (1862–90), who spent
the last years of his life in residence at London’s
Whitechapel Hospital, is familiar to many via Bernard
Pomerance’s Broadway play and David Lynch’s
1980 film. Petitgirard and Nonn’s richly composed
realization of Merrick’s life presents few obvious
heroes or villains. Tom Norman, the sideshow presenter — sung
impressively for Minnesota Opera by tenor Theodore Chletsos
in a showy yet dignified performance — exploits
Merrick’s deformity for financial gain but offers
him genuine kindness and respect (not to mention employment).
In Christopher Schaldenbrand’s compelling characterization,
Dr. Treves — the physician who insists that Merrick
be hospitalized for his own good — is initially
insensitive to Merrick’s human side, maintaining
a clinical focus on his condition. Later, a newly empathetic
Treves manages to convince Carr-Gomm, the stern, budget-minded
hospital director (sung with powerful resonance by bass-baritone
Seth Keeton) to run a newspaper ad appealing for charity
on Merrick’s behalf.
Merrick himself was sung rivetingly by countertenor
David Walker, whose every unearthly utterance transcended
his abject circumstances. (Petitgirard composed the role
for contralto voice but told this writer that Walker’s
versatility of timbre and communicative power won him
over.)
Merrick’s high-society patrons are depicted as
far more monstrous than he. This point was driven home
magnificently by La Colorature, who showed up in full
diva regalia and delivered a freakish, impossibly high
virtuoso aria, oscillating maniacally across the interval
of a minor seventh. Soprano Mary Wilson giddily knocked
off this terrifying number as if she were having the
time of her life. This was a perfect contrast to Alison
Bates’s vocally vibrant yet emotionally understated
portrayal of Mary, Merrick’s affectionate nurse.
For this production, Doug Varone, the director and choreographer,
enlisted his eight-member troupe, Doug Varone and Dancers,
to provide an ongoing silent, visual dialogue with Walker’s
Merrick. The dancers created a mood-establishing pantomime
in the opening moments of the opera, turned the entr’acte
into a lilting ballet and added texture to certain scenes
with nothing more than a graceful entrance.
Varone’s decision to abandon any disfiguring makeup
to portray Merrick’s deformity — a device
similar to that used in the original Broadway production
of the Pomerance play — seemed questionable at
first. By not having to confront extreme physical ugliness,
the audience was let off the hook, in one sense: we could
easily see Merrick’s inner beauty — why couldn’t
everyone else? As the opera progressed, however, and
the focus remained on Merrick’s interior life,
as embellished by his interactions with the dancers,
Walker’s physical embodiment, with his long mane
of brown hair and limping gait, emerged as the right
choice.
Petitgirard’s lush, enveloping melodies (at least
four of which I could walk out humming) are based mostly
on the octatonic scale, a series of alternating whole
and half-steps that forms an eight-note scale, as opposed
to the seven-note scales of the standard major and minor
modes. The result echoes Petitgirard’s great predecessors
Ravel and Poulenc, and the sumptuous chorale-prayer for
the patients at the hospital is a not-too-distant cousin
of Fauré’s “Pavane” (and just
as gorgeous). Varone’s choreography made its most
profound impact here, as the dancers, with consummate
balletic grace, find themselves alternately drawn to
and repelled by Walker’s Merrick. This is a breathtaking
scene — profound and universal — and at the
end, one could have heard a pin drop in St. Paul’s
Ordway Center. The May 13 performance, expertly conducted
by Antony Walker, had an impressive level of polish and
ensemble for the opening night of a challenging new work.
JOSHUA ROSENBLUM
