MUSIC REVIEW : Peter Sellars’ ‘Soldier’: New Tale in Ojai

OJAI — The blissful birds in those ancient, dignified trees that shade the stage in Libbey Park still sing their inventive obbligatos. Equal-opportunity avians, they are friendly to Stravinsky and Beethoven, Boulez and Debussy, Copland and Messiaen.

Avocados and oranges still flourish innocently nearby. Clouds may obscure the ocean 14 miles to the west, but a stubbornly independent sun seems to pride itself on daily appearances at this rustic mecca. Chaotic Los Angeles, looming a reasonably safe 85 miles in the distance, exerts only a muted influence.

It is still festival business as usual in this sleepily sophisticated town edged by Coastal Range mountains. Well, business more or less as usual.

Some things do change, even in Ojai. The annual festival--actually, it is just a long, delirious weekend crammed with musical adventure--is 46 years old. Some signs of paunchy, middle-age comfort are beginning to show.

A cheerful air of enlightened professionalism has supplanted what used to be a disarming air of improvisation. The crowds are big these days. Collective enthusiasm runs high.

The operation has become ridiculously orderly. A casual visitor from another planet might think he has stumbled into a compact mini-Tanglewood in the golden West. It is beguiling, and it is bizarre.

The Ojai Festival has represented many things to, by and for many people in the past. It has been exhilarating, irritating, stimulating, esoteric, idealistic, clever, probing, frustrating, inspiring, vexing, boring, pretentious, fascinating, uplifting and depressing. Sometimes it has managed to be all of the above on the same occasion.

Until Friday, however, this Shangri La (the first “Lost Horizon” actually was filmed here) has not tried very hard to be trendy. Enter Peter Sellars.

The eternal enfant terrible has embarked on a holy alliance with the staid Los Angeles Philharmonic. The unlikely relationship is to be consummated this summer with a massive Messiaenic collaboration in Salzburg.

For Ojai, the iconoclastic director turned his sights on Stravinsky’s “Histoire du Soldat,” a.k.a. “A Soldier’s Tale.” The story may never be the same again.

A Times reporter had asked Sellars a couple of weeks before the opening how his ideas jibed with those of Pierre Boulez, the formidable conductor/composer who would protect Stravinsky on the podium. The reply was revealing and, as matters turned out, all too credible:

“He doesn’t exactly know what I am going to do,” said Sellars, “because I don’t either.”

Sellars went for relevance. Capitalize the R.

The gentle satirical fable of yore became something quite different here. The 1918 theater piece, according to Sellars’ program note, “addresses an out-of-control society dominated by late capitalism and high militarism. . . . This is smart music for a society that might value smart children over smart bombs.”

To illustrate his potentially compelling, politically correct message, Sellars played slow and loose with the original. He used the back of a pickup truck for a stage within the stage. He introduced a gaggle of pop devices and pretended he was doing street theater. So far, so OK.

Then he went a little wild. He embellished the stilted Ramuz text with riotous references to civil unrest, Ross Perot, urban strife, und so weiter. He reduced the narrative to a rap duet for a pair of dancing dudettes from South Central L.A., and even dared spice the language with the dreaded F-word. At the end, he conjured up some ominous smoke behind the stage and circled the audience with flashing red-and-blue lights, presumably invoking the ambiguous specter of police intervention.

One did not object to the unpoetic licenses he took, only with the way he took them. He wanted, no doubt, to be bright, tough and shocking. Unfortunately, he ended up making Stravinsky’s timeless tale look silly, dull and amateurish.

Much of the fault lay in the execution. The narration dragged. The action--if one can call it that--suggested helpless vamping till unready. The eager but modest cast seemed lost.

Perhaps Sellars--who has created the most thoughtful and most disturbing Mozart opera productions of our time--wanted to remind us that he once directed a rock video for Herbie Hancock. He is, or wants to be, a director for all seasons, all reasons, all treasons.

Two jumpy young women who call themselves Urban Prop (collectively) and T-Love and Suggah B (individually) served as clumsy narrators. Seth Gilliam and Harold Perrineau Jr. proved virtually interchangeable as the halting Soldier and the halting Devil. April Wanstall posed dutifully as the stock-sexy street princess.

The would-be choreography was the work of Donald Byrd. Diane Gamboa designed the illustrative placards that passed for scenery.

While the Sellars gang banged their high-schoolish thing at stage left, the dauntless Boulez and a spiffy ensemble from the Philharmonic brought crisp refinement as well as understated elegance to the score at stage right. The contrast was startling.

Boulez began the concert without benefit of theatrical trappings, leading Phyllis Bryn-Julson and five members of the New Music Group through the decadent-cabaret convolutions of “Pierrot Lunaire.” The soprano traced the jagged contours implied by Schoenberg’s Sprechgesang with uncanny clarity and point, not to mention a surprising hint of operatic indulgence. The tiny orchestra provided exquisitely detailed counterpoint in response to Boulez’s calm, absolutely precise urgings.

The next event, a full-scale Philharmonic program late Saturday afternoon, surveyed more conventional repertory. In Ojai, convention is, of course, a relative concept.

Boulez opened the concert with the colorful intricacies of Stravinsky’s Four Etudes (1928), followed--quite logically in this context--by Copland’s remarkably spare, formidably complex, “Short Symphony” (1933).

The incredibly versatile Bryn-Julson returned to sing Ravel’s “Sheherazade.” She provided the wonted opulence and fervor while the conductor attended to the necessary insinuation and sensuality.

After intermission came the jaunty, bittersweet charms of Stravinsky’s “Pulcinella,” with John Aler and Kevin McMillan joining Bryn-Julson as nimble, stylish soloists. Here, as elsewhere, Boulez transformed the Philharmonic into an ensemble of disciplined virtuosos.

The amplification once again seemed gratefully discreet. And on this occasion the wondrous woodpecker stationed on a branch 40 feet overhead was in exceptionally good voice.