Fringe Festival: Life in Death
This year's Capital Fringe Festival includes three productions of new chamber operas by local composers. After Michael Oberhauser's Magnum Opus, reviewed last week, there is Life in Death, a new opera by Gregg Martin, a former graduate student at Catholic University. It is a one-act adaptation of Edgar Allan Poe's 1850 short story The Oval Portrait, in which a story is uncovered about a disturbing portrait, painted obsessively by an artist infatuated with the image of his new wife, unaware that by locking her up for endless sittings he is killing her.
At its Saturday afternoon performance, the work disappointed, although the musicians did not. The piece's subtitle, identifying it as an "opera electronica," refers to Martin's orchestration, which consists mostly of a synthesized score played through loudspeakers. A man in Manchester recently won a lawsuit against a theater that used a recorded pit orchestra track for what it advertised as a live performance of The Wizard of Oz. At the trial, the great British composer Harrison Birtwhistle testified that, without an orchestra or musical director, the performance was "best described as karaoke." That is essentially what happened here, as the synthesized replay became the conductor, producing a rote performance that obviated the individual variation from show to show created by live musicians. The meager live elements of the score, performed by a violinist and a percussionist who were both amplified and often sat silent for long intervals, were little more than tasteless sprinkles on top.
The harmonic vocabulary and tame, rock-influenced rhythmic sensibility of some sections seemed to fit with the canned sound of electronic piano, fake strings, and pop percussion. Martin also wrote his own libretto, which is a mistake made by many composers, resulting in banalities like "You are young / You are innocent / You are beautiful / You are fair" and lots of dull lines about the young woman's hair, capturing none of the breathless, restless energy of Poe's story. Opera Alterna's Jay D. Brock gave some edge in his simple stage direction, tying together the Narrator/Father character (James Rogers) and the Painter (baritone Tad Czyzewski, the best of the cast vocally) as black-clothed doppelgangers, just as the young Emily (dancer Mary Werntz, looking a little uncertain about her blocking) and sung Emily (sung with admirable intensity by Bridgidt Eversole) were both in white.
Life in Death has one remaining performance, on July 24, at the Redrum at Fort Fringe. Check here for tickets and details.