Recovered voices:

The Broken Jug and The Dwarf

 

James Conlon is a man of many passions, The Ring, romantic lush music, Mozart, and forgotten operas suppressed by the Nazis. This year’s additions to his series of forgotten masterworks are The Broken Jug by Viktor Ullmann and The Dwarf by Alexander Zemlinsky.

The Broken Jug is only thirty minutes short and involves the story of a Judge Adam who pursues a young beauteous Eve and breaks a precious jug belonging to her mother in the course of chasing here around her quarters. He tries to blame it on her fiancé and is willing to punish him for his own crimes. Luckily the District Judge from Utrecht is in town, notices Judge Adam’s slovenly appearance and bruised head and finds that Judge Adam has left his wig in Eve’s bedroom. The villagers get angry and the opera ends with everyone singing “None shall play the judge’s part if he is not pure of heart”.

The costumes and Dutch setting are beautifully rendered by Ralph Funicello. The whole thing is a splash of color and comedy but it doesn’t really hide Ullmann’s disdain for the Nazi justice system. Apparently the authorities thought so too for he was imprisoned Theresienstadt prison camp where remarkably he kept composing, completing an opera, a string quartet, a symphonic poem, several song cycles. His music was rescued by the prison librarian and surfaced in the ‘70s in England. Ullmann was eventually sent to Auschwitz where he was killed on the day he arrived. The current production, with its beautiful music, is well sung by the principles James Johnson as Judge Adam, Melody Moore as Eve, Richard Cox as the hapless fiancé, and Elizabeth Bishop as the owner of the jug.

The Broken Jug served as a slight appetizer for the main course, the astonishingly beautiful The Dwarf by Alexander Zemlinsky.  The story is based on a short story by Oscar Wilde whose inspiration was the famous Velazquez painting “Las Meninas”. This is not the Oscar Wilde of glittering comedy by the Wilde of The Picture of Dorian Gray where he confronts the tyranny of beauty, the shallowness of society, the evil whims of the aristocracy. The themes no doubt echo his own feelings about his relationship with Lord Alfred Douglas and Wilde’s subsequent betrayal and humiliation at his hands.

The opera itself deals with a vain and selfish Infanta who receives a singing dwarf on her birthday. The dwarf doesn’t know what he looks like so the Infanta seduces him only to show him his image in a mirror that kills him while she returns to a dance saying, “My little toy is broken”. Composer Zemlinsky was drawn to this story because of his own reputed ugliness and his rejection by a young woman he loved. He escaped the Nazis after being harassed and pursued. He died a broken man in New York in 1942.

Luckily his glorious opera The Dwarf survives. The opera is given a splendid West Coast Premiere with a new production,. Again, the sets are by Ralph Funicello and he outdoes himself. He gives us a palace drawing room complete with gold trim and mirrored - doors. The costumes by Linda Chou were radiant and very expensive looking. The singing topped the setting and costumes. The Infanta of Mary Dunleavy was exquisite. The maid Ghita who sympathizes with the dwarf is moving portrayed be Susan B. Anthony. The Dwarf is sung magnificently by tenor Roderick Dixon. He is required to sing in his highest register and is fully successful.  Both these operas were well directed by Darko Tresnjak who is the newly appointed Co-Artistic Director of The Old Globe in San Diego. The audience gave the evening a rousing standing ovation that must have lasted ten minutes. James Conlon has given Los Angeles a gift. The production was recorded on DVD.