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Music Review | King Arthur
Knights in Shining T-Shirts
Remember the days, before the coming of titling systems, when opera buffs felt free to ignore all the convoluted plots and librettos and just bask in the music? Mark Morris’s unabashedly fanciful production of Purcell’s “King Arthur,” which opened the spring season at the New York City Opera on Wednesday night, offers audiences a throwback to those times.
Admittedly “King Arthur,” first presented in London in 1691, is only marginally an opera. Its subtitle is “A Dramatick Opera,” or semi-opera to use the historical term. The poet John Dryden conceived the work as a play in blank verse, with elaborate lyrics for songs, ensembles and choruses. In this free retelling of King Arthur’s struggles against the Saxon Oswald to regain his beloved Emmeline and reunite the British kingdom, the main characters do not sing a note. Initially all Dryden had sought was a collaborator to adorn his text with “scenes, machines, songs and dances.”
Mr. Morris, a passionate admirer of Baroque music, has a history of bending opera from that period to his own purposes. “King Arthur” must have looked like a sitting duck.
Tossing out the story entirely, including every word of the spoken text, he hijacks Purcell’s extraordinary score, turning this semi-opera into a de facto ballet with daffy contemporary imagery, whimsical costumes by Isaac Mizrahi, and simple sets of red curtains and movable platforms designed by Adrianne Lobel.
Seven solo singers portray a panoply of wacky contemporary characters. The chorus joins the orchestra, enhanced with a contingent of period instruments, in the pit. Jane Glover conducts with lithe pacing, glowing sound and wistful beauty. The show, which drew wide-ranging reactions from dance critics in previous presentations, is a typical Morris mix of elegance and insouciance. As always it is affecting to see the singers so integrated with the limber dancers, and not just the singers who have trim physiques but also those who look like most of us.
Poor King Arthur is represented only by a golden crown that sits atop props and platforms. The work begins with what seems to be a meeting of the Knights of the Round Table, sitting on folding chairs. One wears a plumed helmet and a T-shirt emblazoned with a White Castle logo. Others are poised for battle in combinations of scruffy jeans, army fatigues and festooned uniforms.
The best thing about Mr. Morris’s production is the chance it gives audiences to hear Purcell’s stunning music. From the opening of the overture, a quizzical passage in which abrupt foursquare phrases are grimly asserted and then hauntingly echoed, the music is continuously captivating. A pastoral episode deftly shifts from bursts of rustic rhythmic vigor to calming passages of spacious harmonies. In a duet for sopranos, accompanied only by a continuo group and beautifully sung by Sarah Jane McMahon and Heidi Stober, the sheer intricacy of the entwining vocal lines is transfixing.
There is a deservedly acclaimed scene in which the magician Osmond shows off his powers in a vision, a “Prospect of Winter in Frozen Countries.” Here we see the sturdy and excellent baritone Daniel Mobbs, trapped inside a clunky old refrigerator, as snowflakes rain down on a group of dancers bundled up in flannel blankets. Surely the music was inspired by the charming “Shivering Chorus” in Lully’s opera “Isis.” But Purcell outdoes Lully in this music, full of jagged rhythms, quivering vocal lines, sputtering string chords and boldly wandering harmonies.
The star is the bright-voiced, sassy soprano Mhairi Lawson, who mostly portrays the spirit Philidel; but don’t hold me to this, since she appears in one comical costume after another. Alexander Tall, a baritone, Steven Sanders, a tenor, and Iestyn Davies, a countertenor, also do impressive work.
Mr. Morris invites us to enjoy “King Arthur” as a kind of elegant vaudeville show. But after a while the whimsy becomes a little too cute. The original piece is admittedly cumbersome. But I could imagine a staging that took a stab at evoking the work as conceived. There is dramatic potential in the story, which gives each king his own magician (Merlin for Arthur, Osmond for Oswald). And Arthur’s adoration of the sweet-natured and blind Emmeline is another story line with poignant possibilities.
I always enjoy the way Mr. Morris creates movements that at once pay homage to Baroque dance (the flowing gestures and stately prancing) and poke fun at it (all the hip-swiveling, backside-slapping, fidgety limbs and overt eroticism). Dance fans in New York will probably be of two minds.
But do not miss the chance to experience Purcell’s score, so beautifully rendered here.
“King Arthur” will be performed through March 15 at the New York State Theater, Lincoln Center; (212) 721-6500, nycopera.com.
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