Reviews: The Fall of the House of Usher
Two by Philip Glass
Heidi Waleson - The Wall Street Journal
Nashville, Tennessee
November 24, 2009
Say "Philip Glass" and "opera," and most listeners will think of the composer's enormous, slowly unfolding early works like "Einstein on the Beach" (1976) and "Satyagraha" (1980). Yet many of Mr. Glass's operas (there are more than 20) are smaller-scale chamber pieces based on source materials ranging from the films of Jean Cocteau to Grimm's fairy tales.
"The Fall of the House of Usher" (1988), presented recently by the Nashville Opera, is such a chamber piece. It follows the arc of the Edgar Allan Poe ghost story, and the driving, repetitive arpeggios and simple harmonic changes that characterize Mr. Glass's style build suspense and fear just as effectively as they create large expanses of meditative space in his more abstract operas. Mr. Glass and Arthur Yorinks adapted the book and Mr. Yorinks wrote the lyrics, but musical atmosphere, rather than text, is what counts in this 90-minute piece. Indeed, one of the three principal characters, the dying Madeline, sings only wordless vocalises.
Poe's tale keeps the source of the terror vague. The first-person narrator (the opera calls him William) is summoned urgently by his ailing childhood friend, Roderick Usher, who is immured in his ominous ancestral home with his dying sister. Madeline dies (supposedly), they bury her, but she claws her way out of her grave and kills Roderick, and the house falls down around the siblings as William escapes.
The effective Nashville production, directed by John Hoomes and designed by Barry Steele, delved into the story's unanswered questions. Creepily evocative video projections showed the tale from the narrator William's point of view, with negative images of barren trees (that turned into skeletons) hurtling by, looming towers and the vaulted ceiling of a columned crypt, and Madeline's coffin seen from above as it is carried to her grave. William has no idea what is going on, but the production gave him nightmare visions, also on video, that hinted at incestuous, homoerotic and sadistic activities involving all three characters, suggesting a Freudian basis for the House of Usher's malaise, as well as the idea that the whole story may be William's guilt-ridden dream.
The excellent singers were baritone Lee Gregory as the clueless William, tenor Vale Rideout as the disturbed Roderick and, best of all, soprano Jennifer Zetlan, who was splendid in Madeline's anguished vocalises, communicating pain and fury without ever saying a word. The 12-member orchestra was great on the details, such as the knocking from inside the coffin, the storm, and the eerie cello solos, but conductor William Boggs was a bit too polite overall, missing Glass's signature rhythmic bite, and the amplification, which is part of the score, seemed louder and coarser than necessary.
REVIEW: “Fall of the House of Usher” at Nashville Opera
Jeffrey Ellis - BroadwayWorld.com
November 14, 2009
Disturbingly dark and awesomely foreboding, evil is certain to lurk behind the walls of the House of Usher. Springing from the fertile imagination of legendary American author Edgar Allan Poe, and re-created now as an opera by the wildly expressive Philip Glass, Nashville Opera's production of The Fall of the House of Usher represents a courageous leap of artistic faith for the company's creative brain trust.
And with its mesmerizing staging conceived by director John Hoomes and production designer Barry Steele, Nashville Opera soars - bringing a brilliant production to the stage of the James K. Polk Theatre at the Tennessee Performing Arts Center. Shocking and riveting, provocative and challenging, this opera leaves its audience stunned and spent, grateful to have witnessed an artistic triumph of such extraordinary proportions.
Glass' haunting score - using amplified instrumentation at the composer's behest - and Arthur Yorinks' libretto - exemplary in its storytelling - are faithful to Poe's original work, without being slavish. The dark story, told at its nightmarish best, focuses on the evil that resides within the walls of the Usher mansion (built, we are told, from tombstones) and the madness and depravity it visits upon the house's inhabitants. While Poe's story leaves some details to the imagination of the reader, Glass and Yorinks effectively bring to life the more disturbing aspects of the Usher family's secrets.
But it is the production concept and design created by the amazingly gifted Hoomes and Steele that really sets this production apart from others. The opera's action is presented on a raised platform on the Polk stage, with a scrim in front of the singers and a screen behind them, allowing a stunning visual design that propels the story, intimately involving the audience in the onstage travails. Bringing a 21st century sensibility to the 19th century story, Hoomes and Steele have created an auspicious video that projects images - often jarring, sometimes even soothing, always provocative - on the screens, enveloping the cast and further amplifying, if you will, the themes expressed in Poe's story.
That story is told through the eyes of William, a childhood friend of Roderick Usher, who receives a letter from his old chum, imploring him to come to the House of Usher. William fairly flies to Roderick's side, hoping to aid his old friend. Roderick, however, seems perplexed by William's arrival: "Why did you come?" he asks. "We were never that close as children." William seems as confused by the query as is the audience, unable to give an answer.
William's answer comes during his quiet, tender scenes with Roderick, as he attempts to comfort his old friend (rendered helpless and in pain by the sound of a music box brought by William as a gift for his host), the homoerotic undertones of the story becoming more overtly felt. When William's sleep is upended by nightmares in which he witnesses hints of an incestuous relationship between Roderick and his sister Madeline (whose existence is heretofore unknown to William), he tries to divine the truths of the Usher family.
The very modernity of Poe's writing is underscored by Glass' percussive score (performed brilliantly by the Nashville Opera Orchestra under conductor William Boggs), with its flashes of beauty and horror, and the characters' relationships are brought startlingly to life by a superb cast of singers. Baritone Lee Gregory's exquisite voice and stellar acting make William an empathetic protagonist with whom the audience can readily identify, while Vale Rideout's achingly clear tenor perfectly captures Roderick's growing madness and the intensity of his grief. Soprano Jennifer Zetlan, as Madeline Usher, has an exceptionally expressive voice and her performance is unsettling and searing in its power. To say the three are perfectly cast sounds hollow and pandering, but clearly they are.
Tenor Paul Dawson, as the Usher family physician (interestingly, in these times of concierge doctors to the rich and famous, we find it's really a time-honored practice, apparently), is in fine voice and gives a strong performance, as does bass J. Paul Roark as the House of Usher's major domo.
With its three-performance run at TPAC far too fleeting, Nashville audiences will find themselves settling into two camps: those who witnessed The Fall of the House of Usher (and were so movingly startled by the expert recreation of Poe's story and the evocative updating of it for a contemporary audience) and those who, for whatever the reason, missed the stunningly compelling production. We can only hope for a revival in coming seasons.
REVIEW: Nashville Opera’s “Usher” does Poe proud
The Tennessean - Evans Donnell
November 14, 2009
Edgar Allan Poe was born 200 years ago and died 160 years ago, but he’s still the master of horror.
Want proof? Check out Nashville Opera’s The Fall of the House of Usher. It’s a nightmare of sight and sound that does the legendary storyteller proud.
It’s appropriate to mention that Poe, and Nashville Opera, are aided in this rendition by the music of Philip Glass and the libretto of Arthur Yorinks. Glass’s music captures the repetitive rhythms Poe used to build suspense in his stories; Yorinks’ text does a good job of condensing parts of Poe’s tale without losing any of its gothic flavors.
This English-language opera premiered in 1988 in a production helmed by avant-garde director Richard Foreman. Foreman camped it up with glaring lights and spinning fun-house mirrors.
For this production director John Hoomes has turned the Tennessee Performing Arts Center’s Polk Theater stage into a split-level affair with a see-through scrim in front of the performers and a screen behind them. Videos, drawings and stills of an often-macabre nature are displayed on the scrim and screen to convey the chaos of thoughts in a feverish mind.
That feverish mind belongs to William (baritone Lee Gregory), who has been summoned by letter to the house of his childhood friend Roderick Usher (tenor Vale Rideout). The visit begins ominously when William’s gift of an antique music box causes Roderick to collapse in great agony. It's revealed Roderick has a sister named Madeline (soprano Jennifer Zetlan) who is very ill and dying. As those who’ve read Poe’s short story know, that revelation is just the beginning of the living nightmare at the Usher estate.
Gregory, Rideout and Zetlan have beautiful voices. It is also nice to hear American opera singers — including tenor Paul Dawson as the Usher family physician and bass J. Paul Roark as their servant — who can be clearly understood when they sing in English. That’s not always the case with U.S. performers who often sing in German or Italian instead of their own language.
But it’s not enough to say they’re good singers, because their acting is good as well. There are long stretches in Glass’s composition where no words are sung, so it’s necessary to fill the space with believable actions. Hoomes has blocked crisp and coherent movements and positions, and his cast has fleshed out the characters that move within those parameters.
The 12-member Nashville Opera Orchestra, complete with opera accompanist Amy Tate Williams on synthesizer, plays well under the fluid baton of conductor William Boggs, the Opera Columbus artistic director. The instruments and voices are amplified per Glass's instructions and Mac Whitley's sound design was crystal clear from the back of the house Friday. Wig and make-up designer Sondra Nottingham and costume designer Pam Lisenby once again deserve kudos for their top-notch contributions.
The element outside the cast performances that made this production so compelling, though, is the remarkable work production designer Barry Steele did in fashioning the images that flash before the audience’s eyes on the aforementioned scrim and screen. It’s an incredible kaleidoscope of the characters in various poses mixed with skeletons, symbols and the crumbling edifice of the ancient Usher home.
Steele, Hoomes and their collaborators have made The Fall of the House of Usher a horror story that stays with you long after the house lights come up. Poe would be pleased.
Candace Corrigan, blogger
November 20, 2009
I once took eight years of voice training from a professor who taught voice to opera students. Although I did not sing opera, he worked with me, improving my range, and control. I remember asking him about opera, as it
seemed a distant art form to me at the time. Surprised at my statement, he told me, that in his opinion, opera was anything but distant. Opera is being surrounded by sound, image, words, and emotion. If you are lucky enough to go to the opera in Europe, he said, where the halls are small with many balconies, you will experience opera as being in the middle of that sound. The soaring notes of a soprano are sung to your heart, and the tenor sings from your soul, and the baritone rocks the core of your being. It is a stunning display of art, and talent. It will take hold of you, bring you in, and never leave your memory. This week, I was lucky enough to have that
experience, not in a quaint Italian hall, but at the Tennessee Performing Arts Center in Nashville, Tennessee. My husband and I attended Nashville Opera’s production of The Fall of the House of Usher based on the famous Edgar Allan Poe short story, adapted by Philip Glass with libretto by Arthur Yorinks.
If I had read Edgar Allen Poe’s short story The Fall of the House of Usher, it had long been misplaced from my memory. And yet, in searching YouTube, I looked through dozens of different videos of productions of The Fall of the House of Usher, some going back as far as a silent film made in Paris in 1929. I found it fascinating that
this short story has such a timeless hold on the imagination of the theatrical world.
The idea of the maverick genius Philip Glass writing an opera was intriguing enough, and having seen some of his work, it seemed to make perfect sense to me. So, we dressed for the occasion and arrived in time for the pre-opera talk given by the artistic director, John Hoomes, who was clearly excited about this production. Mr. Hoomes explained that the production designer had taken video images of the rehearsal and was projecting them, both from a rear projection screen and from a front projection screen, with the cast in the middle. I am a playwright myself, and I have used both rear projection and front projection, but never both at the same time. Apparently the stage directions that accompanied the libretto were very minimal, except for one: all sound was to be amplified, at the request of the writer, Philip Glass. Interesting.
The opera’s orchestra was small and extremely talented. In fact the cast is small, by opera standards.
The opera begins with the reading of a strange letter, a letter beseeching a young man, William, to come to the aid of a boyhood friend from school, Roderick Usher. The letter tells of sadness and unbearable melancholy, of
some inexplicable malady that has come over Roderick, and which begs William to visit. So sure is he that William will come, Roderick admonishes him not to bother to replying, as he knows William will leave immediately, which William does. To me, this letter was intimate, almost one that a lover would write. We learn soon enough that William never even really knew Rodrick that well.
And so begins a tale of mystery and madness, all set to the relentless beauty of recurring music, in the most inventive setting I have ever seen. The production designer, Barry Steel, was a most important player here,
enveloping the cast with ghostly gothic images, ethereal and dread-inspiring, working seamlessly with the score. This led me at points to whisper to myself and my companion the word, “brilliant “. I had the feeling that if any of the first creators of classic opera productions had had these tools at their disposal, they would have used them in an instant.
That said, madness is not an easy place to visit.
The house itself is gloomy, foreboding. There are questions upon questions. Did the brother really assault his twin sister, driving her mad? Is the malady that both Usher descendants suffer from brought on by a sinister
aspect in the house itself? Who is the resident doctor and what is his diagnosis of the the malady afflicting brother and sister? Is this unhappiness a judgment on the brother and sister who have no “earthly thing
to do”? Was the sister really buried alive? Is there any way to figure out what really happened?
In my reading afterward, I found a short story of Edgar Allen Poe’s where he describes the horror of being buried alive. Apparently it was a common fear in the early 19th century that was finally dispelled after the American Civil War with the advent of embalming.
The House of Usher is out of balance. It is falling. Yet, I was struck by the balance of the fine performances.
The costumes were perfect. The direction was great, though I thought the use of a doll to imply that the twin sister is a little girl, when the possible crime of incest happened, was a bit heavy handed. A minor point.
It was a brave and stunning production. It all fit together. In the end, as one of the opera enthusiasts next to me said, “It is really like all tragic operas. Everybody dies, or goes mad.”
The soaring notes of the soprano, the tenor, and the baritone, along with the brilliant display of visual art and dramatic talent, took hold of me, brought me in, and will never leave my memory.
Bravo, cast and crew. Well done. Thank you.
