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| SUMMER AND SMOKE
Raymond Ericson, The New York Times Harriet Johnson, The New York Post Douglas Watt, The New York News Paul Hume, The Washington Post Miles Kastendieck, New York Herald Tribune Peter G. Davis, New York Magazine (1981) Musica America |
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| A MONTH IN THE COUNTRY
Louis Biancolli, NY World-Telegram and Sun Paul Hume, The Washington Post Harold Schonberg, The New York Times Irving Lowens, Washington Evening Star |
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| I HAVE A DREAM
Mark Adamo, The Washington Post |
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| THE TEMPEST
Opera News The Wall Street Yournal L'OPERA (Italy) FORT WORTH STAR TELEGRAM OPERA NEWS Thor Eckert, Jr., CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR DES MOINES REGISTER OPERA (Cananda) OPERA (LONDON) John Rockwell, NEW YORK TIMES Ken LaFave, KANSAS CITY STAR John McCauley, NOTES, Journal of the Music Library Association, Sept. '96 |
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| CENTRAL CITY Alban Berg's "Wozzeck,"
premiered in 1925, is considered by many the outstanding operatic achievement
of the 20th century. In 1971, not quite half a century later, in "Summer
and Smoke" Lee Hoiby composed an American companion piece to it.
Lanford Wilson fashioned Hoiby's libretto from Tennessee Williams' 1948 drama, and, as seen on stage at the Central City Opera on Saturday, there is much in the finished product that recalls Vienna in those sorrowful and sometimes sordid years surrounding the demise of the Austrian empire. At the core of "Summer and Smoke" lies that same seething hothouse sexuality that informs the figures painted by Gustav Klimt and Egon Schiele. And need one mention that theirs was also the Vienna of Sigmund Freud? Alma Weinmiller, central figure of "Summer and Smoke," is the repressed daughter of a Southern minister, whose narrow-mindedness has driven his wife to madness. Alma, as Williams describes her, "suffocated in smoke from something on fire inside her." Hoiby leaves no doubt about what that fire is. She is in love with John Buchanan, a young doctor, who defines the human being as equal thirds of brain, belly and sex, each of which demand nourishment. In the drama, Alma compares their relationship to "two people exchanging a call on each other at the same time, and each one finding the other one gone out, the door locked against him, and no one to answer the bell." There's a bit of hubris involved in composing Williams, which perhaps explains why so few have tried. Indeed, one might ask whether his plays ' intensely musical in themselves ' profit from conversion into opera. In 1998, for example, Andre Previn tried his hand at Williams' "Streetcar Named Desire." The result was incidental movie music. Hoiby has taken a different approach. He does not merely set the words of "Summer and Smoke" to music; he composes Williams himself and the dark world, in which he lived. He puts a telling finger on the underground forces that make the writer's figures tick. The CCO has come up with a cast fully "in sync" with Hoiby's intentions. Jennifer Casey Cabot and John Hancock are ideal singers for Alma and John, on stage almost without interruption throughout the opera. Both make their CCO debuts in the production. It is hard to imagine a finer Alma than Cabot. Alma is in every way the equal of Blanche, the tragic central figure of "Streetcar," and both, of course, are deeply troubled incarnations of Williams himself. Cabot identifies totally with Alma and brings emotional force to her every word and gesture. Cabot's Alma is perfectly balanced by John Hancock's Buchanan. He is both Southern gentleman and degenerate delinquent, and it is clear that his marriage to airhead Nellie Ewell, wonderfully sung by Andrea Edith Moore, will hardly be fulfilling. As in the case of every significant drama made into opera, here too a great deal of Williams' text remains on the cutting room floor. Supporting roles are correspondingly reduced in size. Whether the demented Mother Winemiller was intended to be as nutty as Katherine Ciesinski plays her is open to question. Nonetheless Ciesinski makes the caricature a comic delight. Tony Dillon is an appropriately bigoted Reverend Winemiller. Christina Nassif is a seductive Rosa Gonzales, and Raymond Diaz plays her unappetizing Papa. John Moriarty is wonderfully at home in the score and extracts top playing from the pit band in the many moments in the work that rival Puccini in lyric warmth and richness. As director, Ken Cazan, who twice played Tom in "Streetcar," exercises a knowing and experienced hand. Set and costumes by respectively Kevin Knight and Alice Marie Kugler Bristow contribute much to the atmosphere of the staging. Top honors, however, go to Hoiby, whose tightly woven score unrelentingly underscores the demonic sexual currents in which this work is rooted. "Summer and Smoke" makes an audience squirm, for it tells a story that takes place to some degree in everyone. One can't put the opera at a comfortable arm's length as one does with "Carmen" or "Tosca." It's heavy stuff, and the Central City Opera has performed a great service in returning the work to the stage. Although it has experienced only a handful of stagings in its 33 years, it is a major American masterpiece. Perhaps the superb success of the CCO production will help "Summer and Smoke" gain its proper place in the repertory of American opera houses. Contact Wes Blomster at (303) 473-1611 or blomsterw@thedailycamera.com. Copyright 2002, The Daily Camera and the E.W. Scripps Company. All rights reserved. Any copying, redistribution, or retransmission of any of the contents of this service without the express written consent of The Daily Camera is expressly prohibited. Users of this site are subject to our User Agreement. You may also read our Privacy Policy. Comments? Questions? Suggestions? E-mail us at webmaster@thedailycamera.com. Click here to contact Daily Camera staff. |
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| SUMMER AND SMOKE
An opera in Two Acts. Libretto by Lanford Wilson after Tennessee Williams. (1971)"It is a lovely work, poetic and lyrical, often haunting and very moving. . . . The composer sets the English language to music as well as anyone today." Raymond Ericson, The New York Times |
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| "Hoiby has written a beautiful work,
exquisitely set for the voice, with an instrumental fabric which is vividly
evocative of the drama. As a wedding of words, mood and music SUMMER AND
SMOKE is our most successful American opera to date."
Harriet Johnson, The New York Post |
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| "Hoiby is that rarity among American
composers: a technician of the highest order, unashamed before his more
acerbic peers, to weave melody into his musical fabric. . . . This is,
in sum, a passionate, reflective score."
Douglas Watt, The New York News |
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| "Hoiby's opera proved to be a vehicle
of immense emotional power, flooded with music of great beauty."
Paul Hume, The Washington Post |
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| "The world premiere of Lee Hoiby's
opera SUMMER AND SMOKE has registered a significant contribution to American
opera. A sold-out house for the final night left an enthusiastic audience
quite moved and obviously impressed."
Miles Kastendieck, New York Herald Tribune |
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| "SUMMER AND SMOKE sounded good to
me in 1972--a haunting score that seems even better on reacquaintance in
this version. . . . Hoiby's music, conservatively neo-romantic though it
may be, never settles for obvious solutions as the voices float over a
seamlessly woven orchestral fabric of bittersweet lyricism that probes
and illuminates every unexpected twist in the plot. The singers are given
many gorgeous arias, duets, and individual phrases, expressively shaped
and often stamped with an ecstatic intensity. Perhaps ten years ago, music
of this sort, unabashedly drenched in ardent melody, was considered something
of an embarrassment. Today, such an attitude seems childish and irrelevant,
especially when confronted with a refined, confident score, that makes
its expressive points so honestly and sensitively."
Peter G. Davis, New York Magazine (1981) |
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| "Lee Hoiby has scored a triumph with
this opera."
Musica America |
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| A MONTH IN THE COUNTRY
(original title: NATALIA PETRONVA) Opera in two acts. Libretto by William Ball after Turgenev. 1964 "The wholly unexpected happened at City Center last night--the world premiere of a truly fine American opera." Louis Biancolli, NY World-Telegram and Sun |
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| " . . . a wonderful new opera, a
loveliness steeped in sadness and, at once, lightness. Hoiby's music adds
a rich dimension to Turgenev, both compatible and enlarging. His melodies
are strong and long-lined, his ensemble work tightly-harmonized and conversational.
His new score is one of the finest for an American opera in many years,
technically complete and dramatically correct. Thematic music runs from
character to character with deep understanding. Underlying orchestral support
is not simply structural but comments, underlines and explains. He has
kept his music very airy, tinged here with irony, there with despair .
. . it creates that rarity, an intimate opera."
Martin Gottfried, Woman's Wear Daily "The closing scene is an octet of overwhelming beauty, written above a small chorus. Its mood of resigned farewell is akin to that of the Rosenkavalier trio, or, differently, to the Meistersinger quintet. This is a supreme moment in opera, and Hoiby's genius has done nothing finer." Paul Hume, The Washington Post |
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| "The best moment in the opera came
in the five minute octet just before the final curtain. This probably was
patterned after the closing quintet in Barber's 'Vanessa', except that
it is better--more natural, ringing truer."
Harold Schonberg, The New York Times |
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| "Almost with surprise you grow aware
of the beautiful eloquence of the vocal lines, their clean simplicity,
and you forget that Hoiby is Menotti's pupil. He is a compose standing
on his own. There is no question about this lyric gift; his melodies are
more compelling by far than those of his teacher."
Irving Lowens, Washington Evening Star |
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| I HAVE A DREAM
In his setting of Martin Luther King Jr.'s "I Have a Dream" speech yesterday afternoon . . . the peculiar transparency of Lee Hoiby's genius came to the fore. With baritone Michael Dash, composer-pianist Hoiby gave the Washington premiere of the piece, which animates the stately and severe rhythms of King's oratory with a flexible, rangy, Italianate vocal line and positions it in a harmonic landscape full of tolling piano figures and churning rhythms. In Hoiby's vocal settings--the King speech and five Whitman poems that preceded it--prosody and vocal color and harmonic diction and instrumental gesture are all so closely aligned that the formal devices of the music seem to vanish and only its emotional content remains. Mark Adamo, The Washington Post |
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| THE TEMPEST by LEE HOIBY
libretto after Shakespeare by Mark Shulgasser published by G. Schirmer, Inc. Dallas Opera, November 1996
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| Dallas Opera came up with a winner
in Lee Hoiby's mysteriously neglected 1986 The Tempest. This beautifully
written modern masterpiece stacked up as D.O.'s most enjoyable contemporary
effort in memory. The Tempest is a real opera, melodious and sensitively
orchestrated. Hoiby's music is rock-solid and absorbing, and especially
in Act III it enhances the text instead of competing with it.. . . Caliban's
Act II "Be not afeard" may be the most beautiful aria written into an opera
for nearly fifty years.
OPERA NEWS |
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| The Tempest is an elegant, masterful
expression of American musical conservatism. This was especially true during
the conventional set pieces: the quartet in Act I; detachable arias such
as tenor Caliban's show-stopping "Be not afeard, the isle is full of noises,"
which stands dramatically at the center of the second act; Ariel's songs
that have entered into the consciousness of all literary people ("Come
unto these yellow sands," "Full fathom five thy father lies"); and the
flowing finale. The wonderful wedding masque in Act III, in which Iris,
Ceres and Juno bless the young lovers, has always proved a stumbling block
for staging of the play, since it feels dramatically superfluous . . .
but Mr. Hoiby writes as beautifully for three female voices as Richard
Strauss (a major influence throughout) does in "Der Rosenkavalier," and
gave us as well as the lovers a sumptuous gift. One could detect echoes
of Beethoven and Elgar, musical colorations of which Debussy and Ravel
would have been proud, off-stage choruses like something from a Speilberg
film, and Mozartean overtones everywhere. . .Mr. Hoiby captured the magic
and wonder implicit in the Bard's last romance.
THE WALL STREET JOURNAL |
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| The Tempest is surely the most enticing
of the Shakespeare plays that remain uncaptured by a great operatic setting.
Over thirty composers have written versions of it and this latest, an intriguing
setting written in 1986 by the American composer Lee Hoiby and librettist,
Mark Shulgasser, may well be the culminating one. The opera retains all
the characters, major features and magnificent speeches of the play, though
the sequence of the action has been reworked to better suit a musical form.
Hoiby has fitted the work with advanced tonal harmonies, fascinating timbres,
effective recitative and silken lyricism. His expressive range is complete,
and from the tempestuous orchestral prelude to the transcending lyricism
of Caliban's aria, "Be not afeard", his music continually heightens and
colors the story.. . . Soprano Constance Hauman made Ariel an engaging
and sprightly spirit. She danced, flew, ran and conjured spells with great
verve and energy. She also sang the challenging coloratura role with fresh,
bright tone and flashing style. At times the composer added to her supernatural
persona by having an off-stage chorus of sopranos add fascinating mirror
and shadow to her line. Tenor Jacque Trussel was superb as Caliban. . .
his expressive delivery of his marvelous Act II aria made it the high point
of the score. . . . Shakespeare's Wedding Allegory scene was well-sung
by a trio of women's voices and Hoiby's writing again turned richly lyric,
hauntingly Straussian.
L'OPERA (Italy) |
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| The real star of the show is Hoiby's
music, always beautifully and colorfully orchestrated around a constant
flow of melody. Although the story is much different, musically Hoiby's
Tempest is the same sort of animal as Barber's Vanessa, with a fluid lyricism
pulling into some magnificent set numbers -- including a sweeping ensemble
built around the song "Full fathom five" in Act One, and a striking showpiece
aria for Caliban in Act Two. . . . The opera builds to a chilling ceremonial
grandeur in the final apotheosis.
FORT WORTH STAR TELEGRAM |
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| Hoiby's unabashedly extravagant spectacle
attests to the composer's passion for the genre and courage to preserve
its cherished traditions. Across a 3 1/2 hour span, Hoiby's score is crammed
with musical events. Rarely did the evocative orchestrations compete with
the voices, which says a good deal for the composer's fine-tuned proportions
OPERA NEWS |
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| Hoiby offers a traditional three-act
opera complete with preludes, interludes, arias, duets, trios, large ensembles
and rousing finales. The music is emphatically romantic and imagistic,
now turbulent, now radiantly calm. Most of the principle roles have arias
that are full of character and even haunting. . . extended moments of uncommon
poignancy . . . and so many other moments are superbly singable and downright
beautiful. Top vocal honors went to Constance Hauman--a limpid-sounding
coloratura who is accurate, expressive, and gifted with a radiant stage
presence. A gracious, effective opera that aims to let singers really sing
. . . a sincerely crafted, heartfelt work.
Thor Eckert, Jr., CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR |
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| Where others have failed, Hoiby has
succeeded. With a series of brilliant solo set pieces, with hymn-like choral
writing of Verdian sonority, with layered orchestral texturing that echoes
the lush beauties of Richard Strauss, Hoiby has met the challenge of making
musical magic of Shakespeare's complex last comedy. Constance Hauman's
astonishing Ariel is a vivacious, beautifully sung characterization. The
memorable finale - its main theme echoing in the mind long after the opera's
end - must surely have been written under Prospero's "auspicious star".
It's the most beautiful moment of a beautiful opera.
DES MOINES REGISTER |
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| Hoiby provided a rich orchestration
- typically light in brass and percussion - that was brightened with delightfully
imaginative and humorous touches. An eminently workable libretto was complemented
eloquently by the score. There was a wealth of melody, and set arias, duets,
ensembles, and music for each of the characters that gave them individual
identification and importance. A 3 1/2 hour evening at the theatre which
was both memorable and all-too-short.
OPERA (Cananda) |
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| Jacque Trussel (Caliban) sang masterfully,
with diction worthy of a Shakespearean actor, and dramatically as well
as vocally made his big aria the lyric highpoint of the evening. Constance
Hauman negotiated Ariel's music, including a fiendishly difficult vocalize
with brilliant, clear, and breathtakingly secure vocalism, while flitting
about the stage like a dancer, much of the time on point. The music began
with orchestral sounds redolent of Das Rheingold and contained many moments
when the influence of Richard Strauss was apparent. Even so the music was
melodically, harmonically and musically pure Hoiby.
OPERA (LONDON) |
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| In Constance Hauman Mr. Hoiby has
a superb singer-actress-dancer, and he's written some lush, beautiful,
and stratospherically difficult music for this coloratura to sing. There
are arresting instrumental and vocal passages throughout. The obvious complaint
against Hoiby's music is his seemingly blissful refusal to acknowledge
the very existence of musical Modernism.
John Rockwell, NEW YORK TIMES |
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| Kansas City Lyric Opera, May 1988
Russell Patterson, cond & dir; Andrew Wentzel, Prospero; Diana Walker, Ariel; Matthew Foerschler, CalibanLee Hoiby's opera "The Tempest" is a lushly melodious, dramatically cogent setting of Shakespeare's lyric fantasy, a work of style and substance that ought, if there is any sense at all to the Byzantine world of opera companies, to enter the repertoire and remain there. . . . There is much to credit the three-hour score: the pathetic man-monster Caliban's implosive, bass drum-generated revenge music at the end of Act 1; the love duet of Miranda and Ferdinand that commences Act 3; all of the spirit Ariel's wonderfully floating, dancing, gently mocking music; Prospero's Sarastro-like utterances; and, most of all, the deeply moving chorus that ends the piece. . . Mark Shulgasser's libretto is a canny job that leaves a lot of the original intact, including most of Ariel's lyrics, but that compresses things to fit the operatic form. He and Hoiby know how to frame the most familiar lines in touching fashion. The setting of Prospero's "We are such stuff as dreams are made on/And our little lives are rounded with a sleep" gave away the sage magician's whole character and illuminated the entire evening. . . Ken LaFave, KANSAS CITY STAR |
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| The characters have much to say to
each other and to themselves, and Hoiby's music fits these dialogues perfectly.
Hoiby's orchestration is masterful. There is much gratifying solo and ensemble
music for each instrumental group, and though the orchestral writing is
rich and full, it is transparent enough to permit the voices to be heard.
With instruments of the orchestra calling out, sighing and raging along
with the voices of the off-stage chorus, the prelude to the opera is ...
worthy of joining the renowned musical storms of Verdi and Rossini. . .
. .The masque for Miranda's wedding, sung by the three goddesses Iris,
Ceres, and Juno, is of such glowing warmth and power that it is often performed
separately from the opera.
John McCauley, NOTES, Journal of the Music Library Association, Sept. '96 |
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| Further information about Lee
Hoiby and The Tempest can be found at:
http://www.schirmer.com/composers/hoiby_tempest.html
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