Credit: Rozarii Lynch

Seattle Opera’s double bill of Schoenberg and Bartok is a
sensational, gorgeous horror show not to be missed: multiple adjectives
must be used. The tortured stories are of love, murder, architecture,
psychiatry. The operas—Bartok’s only, Bluebeard’s Castle (1911), and Schoenberg’s pre-12-tone Erwartung (German for
“expectation,” 1909)—were written by jittery composers who found
little solace in tradition and even less in the future they were
compelled to create. To match their sense of the double edge of
progress, the stage in this production is dangerously steep, extending
back and up from the proscenium of a giant golden picture frame to a
high vanishing point upstage, a cliff of perception the characters
might disappear down. Meanwhile, gravity moves in the other direction,
tumbling the upsetting tales out toward the audience—a
psychological projection interrupted only by the self-conscious frame.
This is expressionist-symbolist modernism in action.
Dee-licious.

Even without this staging, the stories and the music
alone—Bartok’s notes butting heads, Schoenberg’s behaving like
mortally wounded animals—are majestically strange.
Erwartung is a 30-minute solo mad scene for The Woman (written
by a woman, librettist Marie Pappenheim; here acted very well and sung
beautifully but with a little too much strength and not enough waver by
Susan Marie Pierson). Onstage with her are three
inhumanly
writhing dancers: The Psychiatrist, The Lover, and The Mistress. What
happens involves a bloody scythe, a naked man rolling slowly downstage,
the world turning briefly onto its side, and a straitjacket that turns
into a stylish wrap and back again.

In Bluebeard, a two-hander, the castle is a metaphor for the
man, and Judith is the archetypal lover asking questions: Who are you?
Who else have you loved? The castle has seven doors. As she thrusts
each open, its contents and the couple’s terrified/agonized reactions
are cast in light, shadow, and water—a real pool lines the
footlights. John Relyea is sultry and perfect as Bluebeard; Malgorzata
Walewska’s mezzo is chills-inducing but her soprano is slight.

When this production—originally created in 1993 by theater
wunderkind Robert Lepage for the Canadian Opera Company—traveled
to the adventurous Brooklyn Academy of Music, the New York Times dismissed it as overly influenced by the mannered clichés of
horror films: blood-drenched zombies, bodies emerging hands-first from
walls like the undead, malevolent white-coated doctors. It’s true: All
these do appear. But the twist is their sheer visual attractiveness,
which adds up to a genuine, not false, perversity. Lepage’s design is
far more influenced by the California light-and-space artists of the
1960s—especially James Turrell, who makes light seem
solid—than Sam Raimi. Erwartung is the stronger of the
two, but both are unforgettable.

Now, it is disappointing that Lepage’s production is both Seattle
Opera’s first foray into forward-looking early-20th-century material
(Strauss doesn’t really count) and also that it appears here as a
novelty fully 16 years after it was created. But the world of American
opera is stunningly conservative. There were empty seats on opening
night and regulars twittering that the proceedings were “creepy” and
“weird,” as if opera itself were not deeply weird. Opera is perfect
perversion, not a pasta feast. Go inhale the opiate. recommended

Jen Graves (The Stranger’s former arts critic) mostly writes about things you approach with your eyeballs. But she’s also a history nerd interested in anything that needs more talking about, from male...

11 replies on “A Perfect Perversion”

  3. “Multiple adjectives must be used”
    -yes Jen, that’s your job.

    “The tortured stories are of love, murder, architecture, psychiatry”
    -A story of ARCHITECTURE???

    “Bartok’s notes butting heads, Schoenberg’s behaving like mortally wounded animals.”

    -Can we burn Jen Graves at the stake? Please???

  4. indeed…i believe jen would be better off if she stuck to dry humping her beloved indian paintings at SAAM and stayed out of the opera hall

    she took 2 remarkably dark and psychological pieces of contemporary opera and reduced them to stories of zombies and a woman in a “stylish” wrap.

    next time try wikipedia when you’re struggling for ways to degrade an amazing night of opera.

  5. Let me just say that I drove down to the opera’s ticket office this afternoon and bought 3 seats in their “dress circle” for next Wednesday ENTIRELY DUE to Jen’s write-up.

    My two friends have NEVER been to the opera before and, for me, it will be the first time in a long time.

    If you’re of the opinion that Jen “degrades” this night at the opera by her review, allow me to commend her for attracting the likes of me to fork over $300+ for tickets. Much less costly seats are available, it should be noted.

    I might add that if Jen had adhered to “traditional” opera-speak in writing about Bartok and Schoenberg, I most likely would have skipped reading her review altogether and certainly would not be taking two neophytes with me to the opera next week.

    Thank you, Jen.

  6. Tell me, Cineaste, was it your desire to see “expressionist-symbolist modernism in action”? Because hell, if that’s a term for the neophtye, well then I have a lot to learn from Jen Graves, anti-intellectual extraordinaire.

    It’s not ‘traditional’ opera-speak we as readers seek; it’s accuracy. If anything, this article is an abomination, for it is neither clear to an informed arts reader, nor is it giving anyone new to opera a clear sense of what these pieces are about.

    Maybe it was the bare naked ass that cajoled you to pay the big bucks. I think it’s Rozarii Lynch you should be thanking.

  7. You have a long-standing grudge against Ms. Graves, it would appear. Why you want to plumb my motivation in taking my godson and his girlfriend to Bartok/Schoenberg, I cannot fathom. Your suggestion that I bought tickets because of a photograph is “degrading”, to use your word.

    I took these friends of mine to the PNB Tharp program last year. They both found it “stunning”. I’ve taken many younger people to the theatre over the years. They can’t afford it; I can. These forays to the performing arts that I provide awaken in them an appreciation and a deepening curiosity.

    It’s not just myself-as-mentor that enriches these relationships. They take me, in return, to Neumo’s and many other music venues in Seattle. Through them, I’ve become a supporting fan of many local bands and am currently underwriting one band’s debut CD.

    R.M. Campbell’s review of this production called it “visceral…awesome…provocative…dreams and nightmares…electrifying…haunting.” Bernard Jacobson at the Times declared at the top of his review that “…to write worthily of (Bluebeard/Erwartung) is a huge challenge.”

    Your personal vendetta against Jen Graves obviously has deep roots. Your pivotal ire seems to be aroused by Ms. Graves’ “anti-intellectualism”. Why not share with us your own elucidative treatise instead of widening your lasso around me?

    Don’t tell me who I “should be thanking”, thank you very much.

  8. “Talk dummy to me” is a troll. Don’t waste your time, Cineaste.

    It’s true, writing about opera is probably on the outskirts of Jen’s comfort zone (no one will ever be Nick Scholl) but as an opera subscriber with a passing familiarity with this material, I think she pulls it off just fine here. This is the Stranger for chrissakes.

    The good thing about Jen is that she’s a careful, sensitive observer with a broad frame of reference and compelling communication skills. Her take is not that of an opera expert but an enthusiastic and thoughtful audience nonetheless, which is exactly what the Seattle Opera should be hoping to attract. (There simply isn’t the population base or “sophistication” here to sustain anything more.) I think calling Jen Graves anti-intellectual is an insult to intellectuals, implying that they are all as rigid and joyless as you seem to be.

    I’m personally quite excited to see this foray into early 20th century material as well, which is so much more interesting than the “greatest hits” on so many levels (let next year’s Verdi and Wagner pay the bills). And the Seattle Opera deserves bonus points for not letting Dale Chihuly anywhere NEAR Bluebeard’s Castle, which made the story so much more horrifying when the Symphony performed it:

    OMG don’t open that door, Judith! You’ll poke your eye out on a gaudy glass octopus!

    Now if you’ll excuse me I’m going to go dry-hump Jen’s review of the Indian painting show.

  10. My date summed up the two operas perfectly during the curtain call on Wednesday: “Buyer’s Remorse: The Musical, and Girl Gone Wild.” And even if you get sleepy during Bluebeard, stick around for Erwartung. You won’t regret it.

  11. I find Jen Grave’s article so awful it’s laugh-out-loud funny. I forwarded it along to some of my writer friends in Portland and Denver; they laughed as well. We were trying to use “expressionist-symbolist modernism” in a sentence.
    Since when was being informed and being accessible mutually exclusive of one another?

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