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The Pearl Fishers, Bizet's first opera, written when he was
only 24, is loved for a few of its lustrous melodies which have been widely disseminated
in recordings. But the opera is rarely staged, for reasons that become all too clear when
heard at the opera house rather than from stereo speakers.
The work is more than centered on a love triangle--the love triangle is
the whole kit and caboodle, with nary a subplot in sight. That's not necessarily a bad
thing, if the love triangle is credible with richly developed characterizations. But the
latter are notably absent and the storyline develops in curious ways.
The opera was originally set in Mexico, but the locale was switched to
Ceylon late in the game. The location was to meant to lend glamour and a frisson of the
exotic, but the entire work is sufficiently generic to fit in most any location. Whether
the center of the triangle is the Hindu priestess Bizet delivers or an Aztec medicine
woman or, for that matter, an Inuit princess would hardly matter, although there would be
fewer excuses in the latter case for scantily clothed dancers.
Zurga, the baritone, just named chief of his village, welcomes back his
childhood friend, Nadir, the tenor. Before Nadir went on the road, they had both fallen
for Leila, the Hindu priestess. They agreed that they would both forget her in order to
preserve their friendship. In any event, Leila is presumably committed to virginity, so
what's the big deal here? The big deal is this duet between the two men, one of the most
captivating settings for two male voices in all the operatic literature. It's a paean to
male bonding (with a hint of a homoerotic subtext).
But no sooner does Nadir get to sing alone than he reveals that he
broke his pledge to forget Leila and had searched her out. They are lovers. The
sweet-singing hero, then, is a lying double-crosser and the splendid duet, in retrospect,
is an exercise in hypocrisy. Not, one suspects, what Bizet intended, but that's how it
works on stage. Leila, who has come to bless the pearl divers, pledges to remain chaste
and veiled, but as quick as you can whistle Parvati, she's bedded down with Nadir.
They are caught in the act, of course, and they're sentenced to death
at dawn. Leila makes a heartfelt plea to Zurga to spare Nadir and let her die to pay for
their transgression. But Zurga, who has no compelling reason to be any more consistent
than any of the other characters, sets fire to his village to distract the villagers so
that the couple can flee safely. So much for elected leadership.
The long and the short of it is that it is hard to take any of this
seriously as grand opera, in which great passions grow from characters possessed of at
least a hint of verisimilitude and depth beyond the comic book level. The already static
narrative is not helped by arias and ensemble pieces which more often talk of events in
the past than move the plot forward in the present.
Now, a great deal of this could be forgiven if all the music were as
enthralling as the first act duet. Alas, what follows in the score are large doses of
prettiness uniformly lacking in sublimity. In the San Francisco production, neither lyric
tenor Charles Castronovo nor baritone William Dazeley were sufficiently warmed up for
their all-important first act duet, much of which was drowned out in the overenthusiastic
volume of the orchestra under the baton of Sebastian Lang-Lessing. Castronovo and Dazeley,
along with soprano Norah Amsellem, acquitted themselves well through the balance of the
evening, the threesome of singers making a youthful and attractive menage.
The production, shared with San Diego Opera and Michigan Opera Theatre,
was designed by fashionista Zandra Rhodes, who threw caution to the winds, as it were,
offering the look of blown-up drawings by a Saul Steinberg on hallucinogenics. Wavy lines
and hot colors abound. When a storm begins, the backdrop falls away to reveal another--all
squiggly lines topped by thunder clouds. But that backdrop remains in view long after the
storm has abated; lots of style here, but not quite enough attention to the text.
At every opportunity those half-naked dancers leapt onto the stage to
choreography by John Malashock that did nothing to disabuse serious dance-lovers of their
disdain for ballet on the opera stage. The dancing went beyond the ludicrous, however, and
in a number of instances was unpleasantly intrusive on the music. Stage director Andrew
Sinclair offered no relief.
In all fairness, it can be reported that the San Francisco audience
seemed to be having a grand time on opening night.
San Francisco, June 16, 2005 - Arthur Lazere
