by Bohuslav Martinu

November 2002
The Abrons Arts Center

Read press reviews of this production.

credits

Conductor Neal Goren
Production Ned Canty
Choreography Seán Curran
Scenic Design Andrew Lieberman
Costume Design Kaye Voyce
Lighting Design Robert Wierzel
Make-up Design Hagen Linss
Hair Design Lorraine Massey

CAST OF HLAS LESA
Reciter Kathleen Chalfant
Bride Jacqueline Venable
Young Forester Eric Fennell
Old Barmaid Tiffany Regal
First Bandit Daniel Mobbs
Second Bandit Brian Register
Third Bandit Joshua Parrillo

CHORUS OF BANDITS
Scott Hogsed | Joshua Parrillo | Brian Register | Erich Simo | Maxime Alvarez de Toldeo | John Zuckerman

CAST OF LES LARMES DU COUTEAU
Éléonore Kristine Winkler
La Mère Tiffany Regal
Satan Daniel Mobbs
L'accordéoniste William Schimmel

conductor's notes
Henry Street Chamber Opera has in its brief existence carved out a niche in New York's cultural life by presenting rarely heard, intimate operatic masterpieces. "Rarely heard" is of course a relative term. With our debut production - Mozart's Il Sogno di Scipione - we offered the U.S. stage premiere of a work known only to dedicated opera aficionados, and only from a single recording. Last season we presented Purcell's Dido and Aeneas, an often heard but rarely seen work, on a double bill with Milhaud's Les Malheurs d'Orphée - an unfamiliar work by a familiar composer. With our third production we are breaking new ground by presenting the first performances outside the Czech Republic of two short operas by Bohuslav Martinu (1890-1959). They are both little heard AND little known.

While Martinu's name might be new to some, in the 1940s and 1950s he was one of the most widely performed of living composers. His symphonies were commissioned and played by our greatest orchestras, and his chamber music programed by leading artists. As academicism and atonality became the approved musical language in the period following Martinu's death, his work was all but forgotten. Now, with tastes changing again, the time is ripe for a reevaluation.

Hlas Lesa
First performed as a radio play but conceived theatrically, Hlas Lesa (Voice of the Forest) is a standard opera in miniature, if standard means that honorable protagonists find themselves exposed to danger and try to escape it. Written in Prague in 1935, to a text by Czech poet Vitevzslav Nezval, the music is wildly, extravagantly tonal, expressing the characters' emotions without irony. Perhaps less standard are the happy ending and unabashed optimism. What danger there is, proves ephemeral: Even the bandits are less threatening than merry, and the forest, advertised by the narration that bookends the piece as a scene of psychosexual terror, actually proves a happy haven for everyone associated with it. As fairy-tale landscapes go, it's fairly innocuous - Bruno Bettelheim would be lost. This is deliberate; after all, Hlas Lesa was composed at a time when optimism, being in short supply, was undoubtedly welcome.

Les Larmes du couteau
On the other hand, Les Larmes du couteau (Tears of the Knife), written seven years earlier in giddy pre-depression Paris, can be seen as a deconstruction of a standard opera. In it, all expectations are confounded. Eleonora falls in love with a hanged man. Her mother thinks it charming but would have preferred for a son-in-law their dapper neighbor, Satan. Eleonora kills herself and later recovers spontaneously and completely, but only after a joyful fox-trot is danced by her mother and Satan, who may or may not be the mother's lover by now. It is a world of non sequiturs where nothing makes sense, as befits a libretto by the Dada poet Georges Ribemont-Dessaignes. Nor does the musical language offer any reflection on the character's emotions, let alone a judgment on their behavior. It maintains a bemused, urbane tone throughout. Written at a time of relative peace and prosperity, Les Larmes du couteau suited a society in which artists and audiences alike had the luxury of challenging their beliefs and preconceptions.

Is our world like Paris in 1928 or Prague in 1935? A little of both, perhaps. In any case, I hope that in discovering these two exquisite operas - one exquisitely simple and the other exquisitely perverse - you feel the same ear-opening joy as has our entire cast and creative team. Sometimes "rarely heard" means well heard. - Neal Goren

director's notes
Despite Martinu's hope that it might one day be staged, Voice of the Forest is most definitely a radio opera. It assumes the absence of a visual element, and attempts to provide that element in the form of pure music. Freed of the impossible task of reproducing a suitably realistic forest onstage, the opera can directly massage the imagination, making us feel as if we are the ones lost and wandering while the shadows of dusk twist the familiar. This is an opera obsessed with the moment of transition, when one thing turns into another: day into night; love into loss; fear into hope. It stretches these moments, luxuriating in its own lack of balance, teetering on the edge of everything. Our physical production embraces this dream-logic, and attempts to evoke the same sense of dread and sinister innocence as the music.

From an opera that delights in deliberate transitions, we move to one that leaps and dances from extreme to extreme like a frenzied marionette. Rejected by the Baden-Baden Festival in 1928, Tears of the Knife did not premiere until 1969, a decade after the composer's death. The libretto is based on the play of the same name, by Ribemont-Dessaignes - Joey Bishop to the Dada rat pack of Picabia, Ernst and Tzara. Taking great relish in flipping operatic clichés on its head, the piece vibrates with all the excitement and exhilaration of artistic life in Paris at the end of the 1920s.

But how much of this youthful experimentation should find its way into the staging? Is a stage direction like "The bicyclist's head splits in two, and the head of Satan emerges," meant to be taken literally, or is it there merely to shock or to catalyze? And while we're asking questions, isn't opera an essentially un-Dada art form? If it were really a Dada opera, shouldn't the orchestra just be banging on random instruments, or rolling on the floor? Shouldn't this director's note consist of the directions for operating my VCR? Or are all of these questions irrelevant to the enjoyment of this deliberately obtuse bon-bon?

At first glance the classically creepy fairy tale might seem to have little in common with the exuberant Dada romp; after a bit of exploration, however, several common themes emerge. Each opera features a flawed young woman wrestling with the nature of love and the choice of a husband. In both cases there is a contrast between a dashing but dangerous man and a simple but faithful one. A sexually voracious older woman competes for their affection. Stylistically, each opera is set in a dreamlike or fantastic world peopled with archetypes and ideas rather than realistic or unique characters. The themes are similar, but the methods of expression wildly diverse, and therein lies the joy of the exploration. Each day my respect for Martinu increases - for his musicality, for his dramatic sensibility, for his bravery and experimental spirit. So different yet so alike, children of the same father, these two operas propel us to the heights of dread then spin us through a giddy world of spectacular nonsense before gliding to a halt and releasing us from their grip. Please remember to keep your arms and hands inside your seat at all times. And enjoy yourselves. It's one hell of a ride. - Ned Canty