Seattle Opera Gets It Right – Again!
Without a doubt, Bizet’s The Pearl Fishers is a gem. It testifies to his enormous talent that he was able to produce a piece like this at the age of 24. That only underscores the great loss the music world suffered when he died at the ridiculously young age of 36, mere months after the premiere of the most popular opera in world history, Carmen. These days, Bizet is primarily remembered for that work alone, which, as a kid, I found completely perplexing. The whole thing is set in Spain with bullfighters and hot gypsies and the like, yet everybody’s singing in French. This made no sense to me. Good thing I hadn’t ever heard of The Pearl Fishers; that would have made my brain melt. The action for that piece takes place on Ceylon. And yes, everybody also sings in perfect French. But I’m totally fine with that, because they sing some very gorgeous music.
The one major knock that The Pearl Fishers gets is that it has a lousy libretto. Oh boy, is that ever true! Its authors, the two relative hacks, Carré and Cormon, cobbled together a story borrowed from other operas and foisted it on Bizet. For some reason, he thought it was good enough and got to work. What the libretto amounts to is: the characters telling each other things they already know again and again, a series of mind-boggling coincidences, a few furtive prayers to Brahma, and about the most hilarious climax in all of opera. That’s right, Zurga, duly elected chief of the pearl fishers, sets fire to his own village so his best friend and his beloved can escape. OK, so the story is ridiculous, but how about the actual words that the characters sing to each other? Also pretty terrible, but they’re no worse than, say, the second act of Mozart’s Cosi fan tutte. All that aside, how important are the story and the words anyway? This is opera! The music reigns supreme.
As I mentioned, the music of The Pearl Fishers is excellent. And I’m very happy to say that Seattle Opera did a great job with the production. Conductor Gerard Schwarz brought out Bizet’s wonderful orchestration which complemented the piece’s lovely melodies. And there were a lot of those. The singers were all up to the task, but out of the three main parts, tenor William Burden’s Nadir gets the nod for best performance of the evening. His voice was strong, dramatic and flawless. Baritone Christopher Feigum as Zurga seemed at times a little under-powered, as his voice was a difficult to hear over the orchestra. Mary Dunleavy sang the semi-coloratura part of Leila quite nicely, though there were a few hard edges to her performance. But both Burden and Feigum get bonus points for appearing shirtless for well near half their time on stage.
The production itself was also extremely good. Drawing on the ballet tradition of French grand opera, director Kay Walker Castaldo intersperses the chorus with dancers who really liven up the action. She also used dancers to fill in the frequent dead spaces enabled by the dire libretto and its resulting inaction. And speaking of the chorus, what a wonderful job that Beth Kirchhoff has done with them! Honestly, I can’t remember when they’ve sounded better. My favorite part of the evening was the chorus’ “Prayer to Brahma” at the end of the second act. It was very stirring stuff!
Once again, Seattle Opera has put on an admirable production. They’re two-for-two this season! (I’m enjoying it while I can, since next season is going to be very Verdi-heavy.) If anything, The Pearl Fishers proves sometimes a bad libretto can yield much good music. The converse is also true. I would give examples, but listening to bad opera with nice words is not my scene, nor should it be anyone’s except the most perverse among us.
The Pearl Fishers plays at McCaw Hall now through January 24th.
4e9079c3-ac72-4005-9a44-e550f959db7f|3|3.3
