OPERA REVIEW : ‘McTeague’: Clever Coup for Chicago

Philip Glass had his trendy fling with minimalist mysticism at the Met a few weeks ago. Yawn.

Saturday night, the enterprising Lyric Opera of Chicago countered with a world premiere of its own. No yawn.

The Chicago entry, far more treat than trick, was William Bolcom’s “McTeague.” It boasted the obvious ingredients of an instant no-nonsense all-American hit.

The composer, a master of his complex craft, wrote an accessible score that cannily bridged period pop, mild-mannered modernism and old-fashioned operatic convention. The librettists, Arnold Weinstein and Robert Altman--yes, the wise old Hollywood maverick--provided Bolcom with a taut libretto based on Frank Norris’ 1899 novel of the same title and inspired, in part, by Erich von Stroheim’s silent-film version, “Greed.”

Altman staged the proceedings with a keen eye for portraiture, a keen instinct for atmospheric detail and, thank goodness, a keen ear for music. He succumbed to no dramatic gimmickry and allowed himself no ego trips, yet made telling use of some basic cinematic devices: the narrative flashback, the atmospheric fade and, aided by Duane Schuler’s flexible lighting scheme, a reasonable facsimile of the intimate close-ups.

Yuri Kuper designed picturesque, gently symbolic flats and scrims that moved the action effortlessly from the seedy streets of San Francisco at the turn of the century to the barren gold-flecked vistas of Death Valley. Jeannette Mariani, a.k.a. Jano,--the French fashion designer--created costumes eminently worthy both of the crusty characters and the quaint Old West milieu.

In the well-staffed pit, Dennis Russell Davies enforced a perfect combination of symphonic grandeur and expressive subtlety while accompanying his singers with abiding respect. The sensitive singers--most notably Ben Heppner as the naive giant and bogus dentist, McTeague; Catherine Malfitano as his unhappy, gold-obsessed bride; and Timothy Nolen as his fatally jealous buddy--turned out to be sensitive actors as well.

This was a stylish, beautifully integrated, deftly focused performance. It proved how effective opera still can be as musical theater. It was sung, not incidentally, in colorful English--in prose so carefully set by the composer and so crisply articulated by the cast that the supertitles atop the proscenium seemed not just distracting but redundant and silly.

Bolcom’s clever score supports the plot at every turn. The recurring Death Valley episodes resound in bleak dissonances that frame the proceedings. This composer knows how to write good mood music. He also knows how to write good comic-relief music, good chugging music when agitation looms and, where appropriate and seemingly unavoidable, good songs.

Intricate vocal and instrumental exchanges propel both dialogue and recitative between formal, reasonably expansive arias, duets and ensembles. The central characters are carefully delineated and, just as important, carefully differentiated. The crowd scenes echo catchy period diversions--a pseudo-pompous cakewalk for the wedding, a satiric snatch of ragtime for the dentist’s parlor. And so it goes, pleasantly.

Make no mistake--”McTeague” is effective. For all its surface simplicity, the opera is brilliantly structured. The authors know how to manipulate their material and, in the most positive sense, how to manipulate their audience.

No wonder the premiere was so enthusiastically cheered by the glittery crowd at the 3,564-seat Civic Opera House. Everyone who thought he or she was anyone in the arts had to be here. And was.

Under the circumstances, only the worst of churls would register a reservation. It would seem chronically if not terminally ungrateful, perhaps even un-American, to voice a but. But. . . .

“McTeague” is so good, one wants it to be better. One wants the music to probe the drama more, to decorate it less. One wants inspiration to inform the obvious competence at work here. One doesn’t want the music to be so pat, so easy.

In the malcontent process, one wants to get rid of the nagging feeling--not literally warranted, of course--that bits and pieces have been encountered before: in Copland at his gutsiest, in Menotti during his least mawkish moments, in flights of romantic indulgence by Douglas Moore and Carlisle Floyd, in the sentimental primitivism of Kurt Weill after his New World conversion, even in the thumping rhetorical clashes of Stephen Sondheim on Fleet Street.

One wishes Bolcom were better at exorcising his ghosts. One wishes he would speak louder and longer in his own, eminently persuasive voice.

The Frank Norris novel that forms the basis of the libretto is more than a bloody melodrama about greed and corruption among gold miners in the big, bad city. Like Wagner’s “Ring,” it is a study of moral decay under financial stress. It documents a heroic battle between innocence and evil, with both primordial forces embodied in the same helpless characters.

The subject is neither slick nor pretty. The music, often, is both.

On Saturday night, much of the pathos seemed to emanate from the performers rather than the work at hand.

Heppner focused the brutish innocence of the protagonist with welcome restraint and voiced his rising platitudes fervently. He really could be the Heldentenor for whom the world has been longing. May he not move too far too fast.

Malfitano conveyed the purity as well as the weakness and hysteria of Trina with constant, illuminating sympathy. She sounded as sensuous as she looked, and her bright, pliant soprano really shimmered at the top--just like the gold the foolish heroine attempts to hoard.

Nolen, whose credits range from Papageno and Beckmesser to the Phantom of the Opera, found just the right tone of dangerous bonhomie for the swaggering Marcus Schouler.

The large supporting cast was uniformly strong. Emily Golden exuded seductive energy as Maria Miranda Macapa, the earth-spirit who sells the winning lottery ticket that dooms all who touch it. (Carmen, anyone?) Wilbur Pauley’s basso descended to extraordinary profondo depths as the gloomy lottery agent who doubles as health inspector. Martha Jane Howe and William F. Walker offered amusing Germanic caricatures as Trina’s flighty parents.