Review: Bard SummerScape Tackles Mascagni's Little-Known IRIS

It probably would have been worth the trip to Bard SummerScape's production of Pietro Mascagni's IRIS--last heard at the Met in 1931--simply to make the acquaintance of soprano Talise Trevigne. Through much suffering and indignity, Trevigne sang the title role in a luxurious, plush-voiced, physical performance that made the most of the score by the composer who will always be known for CAVALLERIA RUSTIANA, that signpost of verismo opera. She's a find, and I hope to hear her again.

As for the opera itself, not so much. Too bad Mascagni relied on a libretto by Luigi Illica--one of the writers behind LA BOHEME, TOSCA and, later, MADAMA BUTTERFLY, no less--that was, on the one side, lurid and distasteful and, on the other, vague and confusing. (There's a sense of Gabriel Garcia Marquez' "magic realism," but without cause.) And it seems to be tied to Japan sheerly to bow to the era's fad for Japonaiserie, while never actually bothering to figure out what to do with it besides naming characters for Osaka and Kyoto. It made sense that director James Darrah chose to jettison any flavor of Japan from his production at Bard.

In other words, there's probably nothing wrong with the opera that a new libretto couldn't fix, because the score has "good bones," even providing Puccini--a sometime roommate of Mascagni--with more than a couple of things to steal, including some of the Humming Chorus from MADAMA BUTTERFLY, which premiered five years after IRIS. As it stands, it has several things in its favor, including a popular tenor aria, "Apri la tua finestra" and other elements of its sometimes beautiful score, performed well here by the American Symphony Orchestra. It might be more effective, however, in a concert staging, where we aren't always aware of how the story doesn't hang together. But Bard's Leon Botstein, conductor, music director of the American Symphony and president of Bard College, seems to feel differently.

Act I is set in a garden, where we meet Iris, a simple girl, who lives with her blind father. "The sun, stream and flowers are her closest friends," says the program; enter, the Hymn to the Sun, "Inno al sole" (which also brings the opera full circle in Act III), sung by the chorus, looming above the couple, in monk-like robes. Iris is spotted by some evil men from the big city, pimp and customer, who lure the girl by performing a play-within-an-opera (complete with blunt modern dance movement choreographed by Gustavo Ramirez Sansano) and kidnap her. The men throw some money down to her father (which he attributes to her moral downfall)--a misstep from director James Darrah, using bills that a blind man couldn't hear--and speed off to the brothel of Act II, which seems like it's from totally different opera, with its rubber-and-whips effects.

Sometimes when directors take us for a wild ride with the concept for an opera, we get a feeling that they didn't have faith in the material. I think Darrah generally got it right with his approach to IRIS, however, given that this is the kind of work that calls for an 'anything goes' staging. I wish, though, that he and his production team--scenic design by Emily Anne MacDonald and Cameron Jaye Mock, lighting by Neil Peter Jampolis, costume design and dramaturgy by Peabody South, projection designer Adam Larsen--had made more of an effort to make the three acts (Act III seems to take place in a sewer, where Iris leaps to escape her captors and expires, but is probably in her mind) feel related in some way. I understood the movement of the story, from the openness of the garden to the sordidness of the brothel to the hell of the underworld, but it still didn't feel like pieces of a whole.

Soprano Trevigne wasn't the only standout in the cast, nor was she the only one caught in the opera's dramatic morass. Bass Matthew Boehler, as her father (called Il Ciego, the blind man) was outstanding, with a clean, smooth sound and great presence. But it's an impossible role, dramatically speaking, unsympathetic and heartless and, in this production, he's not only youthful and very un-father-like but given a Christ-like appearance, even though there is none of the forgiveness that might make that look seem a logical choice. As master of the brothel, bass-baritone Douglas Williams looked like he was out of "Game of Thrones" or "Lord of the Rings," with flowing blonde hair, but his suave (though a bit light) singing and sturdy stage presence made me forget how ugly his role was.

Tenor Gerard Schneider was not quite warmed up when he sang "Apri la tua finestra" in Act I, but nonetheless did an admirable job of putting it across and, dramatically, became the most sympathetic character toward Iris. Mezzo Cecilia Hall did well as the Geisha, using her rich voice beautifully, while tenor Samuel Levine was notable in his roles as the Ragpicker and Merchant.

Botstein has a stellar record of uncovering unjustly neglected works and bringing them back to life, most recently Dame Ethel Smyth's THE WRECKERS, which had a splendid production last summer. Despite his championing the work in a pre-performance talk and in his program notes, I'm not convinced at all that Botstein uncovered a "keeper" in IRIS, chosen in conjunction with SummerScape's festival of all-things-Puccini for its contemporaneity with MADAMA BUTTERFLY. The opera remains an interesting oddity--worth taking the time to stop and smell the flower.

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