Owen Wingrave
Chicago Opera Theater, Chicago, Illinois
Under Brian Dickie’s leadership, Chicago Opera Theater has afforded Chicago audiences the rare opportunity to experience a wealth of Benjamin Britten’s works over the past seven years. Starting in 2002 with The Rape of Lucretia, and in subsequent years with The Turn of the Screw (2003), Death in Venice (2004), and A Midsummer Night's Dream (2005). In that time, Chicago Opera Theater (COT) has mounted more productions penned by Britten than any other composer save Mozart.
Dickie’s programming choices have made sense, given his previous experience at the Canadian Opera Company and Glyndebourne, and the company’s early history under the late Alan Stone; after all Chicago Opera Theater had established its reputation by carving out a niche producing “opera sung in English” while other companies insisted on presenting performances in their original language but had yet to adopt supertitles. With the widespread adoption of supertitles since by opera companies worldwide, Chicago Opera Theater under Dickie abandoned its “English-only” fiat, and sought instead to plow fertile new middle-ground with a flourishing of productions of seldom-staged works by Handel and Britten, and a clever re-contextualization of its original mission: who can accuse the company of abandoning its mission of presenting “opera sung in English” when over half the operas mounted by COT in the past decade were written in English?
Dickie’s strategy since assuming the helm at COT of programming seldom-performed works of modest scale plucked from Baroque and 20th Century repertoire has allowed the company to garner praise and create a new identity at the margins of what has traditionally defined the operatic repertoire in America. It has also permitted COT to successfully transition its legacy subscriber base, all the while engaging and growing a new audience for opera drawn more by a sense of adventure and curiosity than some elusive and ephemeral star-power exerted by the latest diva du jour.
In choosing to focus on Britten, Dickie has wisely eschewed the larger, well-known works like Billy Budd and Peter Grimes of a scale beyond the means of a small company like COT, and instead has focused on mounting Britten’s more modest, and in many ways, more accessible “chamber operas.” After staging five new productions of Britten’s chamber operas, I cannot imagine that plans aren’t already afoot to mount additional new productions in future years of Britten’s remaining works including Albert Herring, Curlew River, and the other church parables.
Benjamin Britten’s Owen Wingrave shares the somewhat odd distinction with Gian Carlo Menotti’s Amahl and the Night Visitors of being one of the few operas commissioned specifically for the medium of television. Menotti recast the Biblical story of the birth of the Christ child for NBC at the dawn of television in 1951; Britten, a lifelong committed pacifist, received his commission from the BBC in 1968, at the height of the Vietnam war, and saw in the Henry James story, set at the close of 19th Century at the height of British imperialism, a tale that resonated well with both his beliefs and the time. In short Britten wanted to make a political as well as artistic statement and television proved the perfect medium for that message.
Originally scored for full orchestra, the Royal Opera House at Covent Garden working with Britten’s estate commissioned a reduced orchestration of Owen Wingrave completed by David Matthews in 2007. The reduced number of forces—only fourteen players—called for in this new orchestration allowed Chicago Opera Theater to mount this new production; then Dickie pulled off something of a coup in securing Steuart Bedford, the conductor at the opera’s premiere production at Aldeburgh in 1970, to pilot this new production.
The opening motif of Owen Wingrave portends the haunting tale about to unfold. Britten’s musical language in his later years combines the intense lyricism and gift for setting the English language with the probing angularity and unresolved nature of his expanded interest in twelve-tone methods. Reminiscent of Ives’ haunting trumpet motive from The Unanswered Question, Britten’s opening brass motif at once hints at the unsettling nature of the story, and the unresolved questions that defined the times.
Britten’s operas, large or small, exhibit that rare quality that allows a singer to soar or retreat based upon the demands of their character, not due to any need to engage with the orchestra in a struggle to be heard. The almost total absence of any consistent homophonic texture, the free interplay between support and counterpoint giving passage to voice, all make Britten’s music eminently singable and continually inventive in its orchestration. Britten introduces musical motifs in one context then skillfully reintroduces them at a later point in varied instrumentation for heightened effect or repeated emphasis—all skillfully articulated by Bedford and the excellent fourteen-member chamber ensemble.
Director Ken Cazan and scenic designer Peter Harrison have wisely chosen to steer clear of too literal an interpretation; James’ short story is marked by its own time, pregnant with allusions to ghostly hauntings—the unspeakable past casting a pallor over Paramore, the Wingrave family estate. Elements of set pieces and furniture roll into place, the stage largely a sea of darkness upon a black floor, the extreme social constraints and Owen’s isolation and alienation from his fragmented family accentuated by the stark lighting and physical stage separation. I don’t agree with all of Cazan’s choices—the rather glib direction of the “downstairs” house staff and the misguided attempt at humor and mimicry of the cavalry by the British soldiers entering and exiting the stage are just two obvious examples—but overall, it’s solid if not quite inspirational direction. Likewise, Harrison’s use of the grand staircase as a unifying scenic design element comes across more as labored theatrical conceit than inspired concept.
Musically, Dickie has assembled a wonderfully gifted cast of primarily young, relatively unknown singers who all turn in remarkable performances. The uniformly strong cast begins with baritone Matthew Worth as Owen Wingrave, tenor Brian Anderson as Lechmere and bass-baritone Matt Boehler as Mr. Coyle. Equally strong are Rebecca Caine as Mrs. Coyle, Jennifer Johnson as Kate Julian and the wonderful tenor Robin Leggate as Sir Philip Wingrave. What a joy to experience an opera that combines those rarest of elements: a composer like Britten with a mastery of setting text to music, and a cast able to deliver on what the composer intended as well as project in such a way to altogether obviate the need for supertitles. If only more opera could be as direct and as successful.
***
Photos by Liz Lauren courtesy of Chicago Opera Theater. Top: Sir Philip Wingrave (Robin Leggate), Kate Julian (Jennifer Johnson), Miss Wingrave (Mary Jane Johnson), Mrs. Julian (Brenda Harris), Lechmere (Brian Anderson), Mrs. Coyle (Rebecca Caine), Spencer Coyle (Matt Boehler) and Owen Wingrave (Matthew Worth). Bottom: Boy (Mason Baker), father (Blake Montgomery), and Owen Wingrave (Matthew Worth).