Review: An INTIMATE Look at the New Gordon-Nottage Opera at Lincoln Center Theater

Sometimes when reading about one of the interesting new, smaller scale operas being done somewhere else in the country, I've wished they would turn the Met into a multi-plex, with one large stage and several others of different sizes, rather than a one-size-fits-all.

Sure, there have been two new operas--EURYDICE and FIRE SHUT UP IN MY BONES--already this season on the big Met stage, but either could have been done smaller in scope if there were somewhere to do it. Since they aren't going to reconfigure the Met any time soon, the company has come up with what seems the next best thing: teaming up with Lincoln Center Theater next door and co-commissioning a new chamber work.

The first of the genre, the world premiere of something, well, intimate: INTIMATE APPAREL, appeared this week at LCT's Mitzi Newhouse Theater through March 6. It was directed adroitly by Bartlett Sher, with his frequent, able collaborators--stage designer Michael Yeargan, costume designer Catherine Zuber, lighting by Jennifer Tipton, and choreographer Dianne McIntyre.

INTIMATE has a thoughtful libretto by Lynn Nottage based on her award-winning off-Broadway play--about a brilliant but plain seamstress and her disappointments in life--and a ragtime-inflected score by composer Ricky Ian Gordon (his second opera this week, after THE GARDEN OF THE FINZI-CONTINIS), with no orchestra but simply a pair of "dueling" pianos.

It gave us a glimpse of what the Met might offer in an opera not "blown up" to poster size, thanks to a partnership with an organization that "thinks small" on a regular basis. While the work--from Sher's direction to the cast headed by soprano Kearstin Piper Brown--was flawless, the piece itself could have used a extra dose of adrenalin here and there (mostly in Act I) to make it into a greater success.

Still, Gordon's score was one of his best, varied in style and fitting so well with Nottage's story, whether the duet after Esther's ill-fated marriage with George (the mellow baritone of Justin Austin almost making this unsympathetic man more bearable) or, in general, filling in the edges of Esther and other characters. Soprano Brown, of course, is the star of the show as Esther, drawn so affectionately by Nottage and Gordon and sung so melodically and richly that we ache for all the disappointments in her life.

But Krysty Swann's earthy mezzo, as the prostitute, Mayme, just about steals the stage every time she appears. Her performance in Opium Rag is full of life, yet her responsiveness when she realizes that she's unwittingly stolen George from Esther gives her character and extra dimension.

Clearly, Nottage has deep affection for the characters she created first in her play and now here.

This mean that someone like mezzo Naomi Louisa O'Connell, as Esther's employer, Mrs. Van Buren or soprano Adrienne Danrich, as Mrs. Dickson, who runs the boarding house where Esther lives, and the tender tenor Arnold Livingston Geis as Mr. Marks, the Jewish merchant who sells Esther much of her fancy fabrics, come vividly to life, even when their roles in outline might make them seem simply stock characters.

Steven Osgood provided outstanding music direction for the piece--no small task in the music-heavy score--and the two pianists for Sunday afternoon's performance, Brent Funderburk and Nathaniel LaNasa, provided miraculously more sound and vigor than we had any right to expect in their accompaniment.

INTIMATE APPAREL will be performed at Lincoln Center's Newhouse Theater through March 6. See the website for more information and tickets.

To post a comment, you must register and login.