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Tempesta di Mare with puppets
Tom Purdom
A half-successful experiment:
Love and death with puppets
TOM PURDOM
Opera is a mixture of music, drama and spectacle. Musical purists may insist we should confine our attention to the music, but the great moments in opera always involve all three elements. Even concert opera works best when it’s controlled by a director who knows how to use a bare stage effectively.
So how can a small but ambitious Baroque organization add visual appeal to its operatic offerings without going bankrupt? Tempesta di Mare confronted this quandary by joining forces with Bethlehem’s Mock Turtle Marionette Theater and experimenting with puppets.
Mock Turtle’s director, Doug Roysdon, modeled his approach on Japanese bunraku puppetry. The four puppeteers, dressed in black, were fully visible on the stage as they held the puppets erect and manipulated their limbs.
Tempesta’s directors programmed two Baroque vocal pieces so they could experiment with different approaches. In the first half, Monteverdi’s Il Combattimento di Tancredi e di Clorinda enacted the legendary battle between the knight Tancred and the woman warrior Clorinda. In the second half, Handel’s Tra la Flamme depicted the story of Icarus.
Stravinsky did it this way, too
The orchestra occupied the left third of the Plays and Players' cozy stage, so it was included in the staging along with the puppets, the puppeteers, and the singers. Stravinsky positioned the orchestra in the same way in the original staging of his 1918 production, L’Histoire du Soldat. Stravinsky felt the musicians should be part of the show, and the idea worked for Tempesta di Mare, too.
The lighting and the center of attention shifted among the four elements as the story progressed. During the fight scene, the brightly dressed puppets and their puppeteers occupied the focal point and the singers stayed on the sidelines. When it came time for Clorinda’s death song, soprano Margaret Krull moved to center stage, behind the puppet, and held herself erect in the spotlight, while the puppet died in the darker area in front of her.
In the program notes, Doug Roysdon referred to the puppeteers as “puppeteers/dancers.” They moved with deliberate planned grace and their motions usually mirrored the puppets’ movements. When a puppeteer pulled a sword back for a stab, for example, her own arm had to move with the puppet, so she looked like a shadow of her charge.
A puppet’s limitations
The staging worked as it was supposed to during the Monteverdi. The Handel was less successful. For Tra La Flamme, the puppetry consisted of one puppet, representing Icarus, plus a pair of wings. The puppeteers carried most of the action by themselves and they lacked the moves that real dancers would have brought to the job. They engaged in a kind of simplified miming, without the little tricks that render good mime interesting and amusing.
Il Combattimento was a much better choice for the experiment. Puppetry and a touch of stylized Japanese formality fitted a story that featured clashing swords and tragic warriors. Don Quixote never watched bunraku puppets, but he probably saw the tale of Tancred and Clorinda presented by street entertainers who used European versions of the puppeteer’s art.
The right emotional overtones
Musically, the production measured up to Tempesta di Mare’s usual high standards. David Newman handled most of the vocal work during Il Combattimento and doubled as narrator for the poetic English translations interleaved with the musical sections. Newman’s smooth baritone and his grasp of epic narrative style added all the right emotional overtones to the action. Kroll created a beautiful moment when she sang Clorinda’s death song, and she and tenor Aaron Sheehan racked up personal victories in the Icarus segment.
While the experiment was only half successful, puppetry and period instruments seem like a natural combination. Don Quixote and his creator preceded Monteverdi by 30 years, but they could very well have listened to lutes, viols and recorders as they watched some traveling puppeteers illustrate the stories that fired the Don’s brain.
Love and death with puppets
TOM PURDOM
Opera is a mixture of music, drama and spectacle. Musical purists may insist we should confine our attention to the music, but the great moments in opera always involve all three elements. Even concert opera works best when it’s controlled by a director who knows how to use a bare stage effectively.
So how can a small but ambitious Baroque organization add visual appeal to its operatic offerings without going bankrupt? Tempesta di Mare confronted this quandary by joining forces with Bethlehem’s Mock Turtle Marionette Theater and experimenting with puppets.
Mock Turtle’s director, Doug Roysdon, modeled his approach on Japanese bunraku puppetry. The four puppeteers, dressed in black, were fully visible on the stage as they held the puppets erect and manipulated their limbs.
Tempesta’s directors programmed two Baroque vocal pieces so they could experiment with different approaches. In the first half, Monteverdi’s Il Combattimento di Tancredi e di Clorinda enacted the legendary battle between the knight Tancred and the woman warrior Clorinda. In the second half, Handel’s Tra la Flamme depicted the story of Icarus.
Stravinsky did it this way, too
The orchestra occupied the left third of the Plays and Players' cozy stage, so it was included in the staging along with the puppets, the puppeteers, and the singers. Stravinsky positioned the orchestra in the same way in the original staging of his 1918 production, L’Histoire du Soldat. Stravinsky felt the musicians should be part of the show, and the idea worked for Tempesta di Mare, too.
The lighting and the center of attention shifted among the four elements as the story progressed. During the fight scene, the brightly dressed puppets and their puppeteers occupied the focal point and the singers stayed on the sidelines. When it came time for Clorinda’s death song, soprano Margaret Krull moved to center stage, behind the puppet, and held herself erect in the spotlight, while the puppet died in the darker area in front of her.
In the program notes, Doug Roysdon referred to the puppeteers as “puppeteers/dancers.” They moved with deliberate planned grace and their motions usually mirrored the puppets’ movements. When a puppeteer pulled a sword back for a stab, for example, her own arm had to move with the puppet, so she looked like a shadow of her charge.
A puppet’s limitations
The staging worked as it was supposed to during the Monteverdi. The Handel was less successful. For Tra La Flamme, the puppetry consisted of one puppet, representing Icarus, plus a pair of wings. The puppeteers carried most of the action by themselves and they lacked the moves that real dancers would have brought to the job. They engaged in a kind of simplified miming, without the little tricks that render good mime interesting and amusing.
Il Combattimento was a much better choice for the experiment. Puppetry and a touch of stylized Japanese formality fitted a story that featured clashing swords and tragic warriors. Don Quixote never watched bunraku puppets, but he probably saw the tale of Tancred and Clorinda presented by street entertainers who used European versions of the puppeteer’s art.
The right emotional overtones
Musically, the production measured up to Tempesta di Mare’s usual high standards. David Newman handled most of the vocal work during Il Combattimento and doubled as narrator for the poetic English translations interleaved with the musical sections. Newman’s smooth baritone and his grasp of epic narrative style added all the right emotional overtones to the action. Kroll created a beautiful moment when she sang Clorinda’s death song, and she and tenor Aaron Sheehan racked up personal victories in the Icarus segment.
While the experiment was only half successful, puppetry and period instruments seem like a natural combination. Don Quixote and his creator preceded Monteverdi by 30 years, but they could very well have listened to lutes, viols and recorders as they watched some traveling puppeteers illustrate the stories that fired the Don’s brain.
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