Music and Dance Reviews : A Rorem Premiere as Cocteau Fest Moves to USC

Launched at Irvine in February, a yearlong Southern California observance of Jean Cocteau’s centenary continues this week at USC. The modest beginning of this portion of the celebration took place in Bing Theater on Thursday night.

Gadfly composer Ned Rorem--who, of course, knew the French designer, writer and film maker in Paris in the 1950s--talked about Cocteau for the better part of an hour. Then, with soprano Jennifer Trost, the composer presented six of his early songs, and observed, with a small but elite audience, the world premiere performance of his “Anna La Bonne,” written this year to a text by Cocteau.

A pleasant tribute, this little gathering offered nothing novel or startling. The new work, which Rorem described in his program note as owing “much to Poulenc,” is actually a brief scena , a monologue in which a maid, the Anna of the title, describes her feelings toward her dead mistress.

Trost, authoritatively supported by pianist Douglas Fisher, sang the new piece with aggressive skill, and enacted Frans Boerlage’s integral staging smoothly. It is a work of easy charm and menacing nonchalance; other resourceful singers may choose to display its effects without resort to staging or costume, for its substance lies in words and notes.

When assisted elegantly by the composer at the piano, the young soprano brought a resplendent voice and considerable textual probing to the fascinating group of songs Rorem had chosen--and written between 1947 and 1963 (the year of Cocteau’s death). If she shortchanged the full dramatic thrust of both “Jack L’Enventreur” and “Visit to St. Elizabeths,”, Trost found many charms, and most of the wistfulness, in “The Lordly Hudson,” “For Poulenc,” “I am Rose” and “Early in the Morning.”

To start, Rorem read some of his own reminiscences of Cocteau--more than a few of them recognizable as excerpts from his “Nantucket Diary” (1987). As his readers know, Rorem is a highly literate and amusing, if increasingly non-self-revealing, diarist. This spoken recital followed that pattern, and offered few personal glimpses of Cocteau as Rorem may have known him.