View: Next message | Previous message Next in topic | Previous in topic Next by same author | Previous by same author Previous page (July 1999, week 2) | Back to main OPERA-L page Join or leave OPERA-L Reply | Post a new message Search Options: Chronologically | Most recent first Proportional font | Non-proportional font ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Date: Fri, 9 Jul 1999 00:48:56 +0000 Reply-To: "H.E.Elsom" Sender: Discussion of opera and related issues From: "H.E.Elsom" Subject: Floyd Collins, Bridewell, 8Jul99 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" First preview. First night/press night is Tuesday 13Jul99. Floyd Collins Nigel Richards Ed Bishop Philip Wrigley Bee Doyle Colin Hill Jewell Estes Scott Fleming Nellie Collins Anna Francolini Miss Jane Jill Martin Homer Collins Craig Purnell Skeets Miller Jeremy David H.T. Carmichael Derek Bell Cliff Roney Christopher Key Dr Hazlett Sam Mancuso Frederick Jordan Keith Merrill Director Clive Paget Music supervisor Mark Warman Performance music director Nicholas Mojsiejenko Book and additional lyrics by Tina Landau Music and lyrics by Adam Guettel Floyd Collins was trapped underground in February 1925 while exploring the caves of Kentucky to exploit for tourism. The doomed rescue became the focus of national press attention and a three ring circus. Billy Wilder, in Ace in the hole, makes a reporter from hell the main focus. There is one excruciating song which sums up the spirit of the film: "We're coming, we're coming, Leo/Leo don't despair/In the devil's prison/Just you keep your spirits fizzing...". (Leo is the name of the Floyd Collins character.) Adam Guettel and Tina Landau offer instead a heart-rending drama of obsession and the comfort of despair. Guettel's music is extremely beautiful, with evocative blues-like modes in hypnotic dance-like repetitions that echo the emotional lure of the enclosed darkness. The drama focusses on Floyd Collins' family, intensely bonded by a shared sense of loss, and all on the verge of madness in different ways. Floyd initially goes into the cave to show his father he can do something and to experience an intensely sensual enclosure like returning to his dead mother's womb. (The damp and squirmy things in the cave are mentioned frequently.) His opening number has the form of a heroic scena with traditional Kentucky melodic elements and a brilliant use of an echo effect to build up a complete sensory overload from Floyd's own voice. Floyd's hansome but dim brother Homer and his pixillated sister Nellie imagine (probably) that they are with him underground in perfect, insulated versions of their real relationships -- lazy days fishing and swimming for Homer (in an exhilarating duet based on riddles) and complete identity for fragmented, coloratura Nellie. Skeets Miller, the cub reporter sent to cover the story, is small enough to get to Floyd for real and finds in him a focus for his aimlessness. (Until two months ago, he had planned to be an operatic baritone.) Miller's sympathetic and engaged reporting makes the story a national sensation, yet he is (probably) the only person who doesn't to some extent abandon Floyd as a person as his obsession with rescuing him grows. H.T. Carmichael, a mine engineer, repeats the pattern started by the family by claiming total control of the situation, but ending up digging hopelessly by hand and completely wrecked. Jewell Estes, a local teenager, never gets near Floyd, though he pretends to to try to please Nellie, but he sings a ballad of Floyd Collins in which he himself plays a central role. The production filled the back of the stage with scaffolding with odd shaped spaces for the performers to tunnel, extendin the permanent clutter of the ceiling. The mouth of the cave was at the top of the scaffolding, reached by steps, and entrances and exits were very effectively managed. Floyd was trapped, like Prometheus bound, in a fork above a hole in the stage. (One memory from his summer days in the quarry was of diving like Christ on the cross, a striking statement of the paradox that you can be liberated by complete constraint.) Other characters reached him by clambering around the scaffolding. He leapt off twice, for his memories with Homer and for his dying dream of tourist success with the cave, but mainly lay there unlit, so that the audience could forget about him as well. Nigel Richards as Floyd gave a stunning performance. He has a pretty good, very strong voice that was often electrifying in his excitement, especially in the opening and closing numbers. He moved from ambition through bravado to dazed despair effectively. Anna Francolini was very strange as Nellie. Her thin high voice was surprisingly effective in passages where she had to provide a descant for the ensemble. Craig Purnell sang his share of the duets vigorously, and was a clearcut presence in a slightly colourless role -- Homer seems to be a completely normal man whose main fault is that he is a not-good-enough son in his father's eyes. Most of the rest of the cast weren't singers and were perhaps still getting on top of the fairly difficult music. Ian Burford was a hopeless, coughing father and Jill Martin a down-to-earth, loving stepmother. Their singing of the duet where they try to confirm their family security ("families try to sing each other lullabys") was close to tuneless, but very moving. There was a good selection of characterizations in the smaller roles, especially a trio of reporters in a nearly conventional but witty Broadway number. Mark Warman directed the small ensemble in a gorgeous and sympathetic performance of the music, which filled the echoing space impressively. Presumably Nicholas Mojsiejenko will take over when the run proper starts. Regards, Helen - H.E. Elsom he@helsom.demon.co.uk http://www.helsom.demon.co.uk/ ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Back to: Top of message | Previous page | Main OPERA-L page ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Back to the LISTSERV home page at LISTSERV.CUNY.EDU.