“At the Statue of Venus” and “Trouble in Tahiti”

Jake Heggie (Music); Terrence McNally (Libretto)

&

Leonard Bernstein (Music & Libretto)

Steffi Cheong

The familiar opening notes of West Side Story rise in a percussion-piano duet, jazzier and with more edge than the Broadway version.  The evening’s prelude transitions into a probing, vibrating, and emotional “Maria” which saxophonist Michael Hernandez stunningly performs with pianist Keisuke Nakagoshi.  In the meantime, high above a statue of Venus who is taking a break from her podium to read a fashion magazine, museum-goers in 1950’s attire gaze at art.  As the music becomes more discordant with the sax dueling and clashing with clarinets and flute, this Venus (Steffi Cheong) comes to life with movements displaying an urgent searching and a reaching for something out there as if to discover who she really is.  But as the discords become ever more abrupt, her struggles succumb to resuming her position as an armless statute of female beauty, just in time for museum-goers to arrive to view her.

This intriguing, unusual opening is just the beginning of an evening where the search for relationship, love, and personal identity is a running and connected theme between two otherwise unrelated one-act operas: the 2005 At the Statue of Venus by Jake Heggie (music) and Terrence McNally (libretto) and the 1952 Trouble in Tahiti — the only work for which Leonard Bernstein wrote both music and lyrics.  Under the innovative, imaginative direction of Brian Staufenbiel, Opera Parallèle cleverly and seamlessly links these two works into a before and after story of a woman anxiously, apprehensively waiting At the Statue of Venus for a blind date to show up, followed by a one-day glimpse of a couple whose marriage has all the signs of being Trouble in Tahiti.

Into the earlier scene of museum patrons gazing on a rather bored looking Venus enters an evidently excited young man (Eugene Brancoveanu) singing in his attractive baritone, “I got a feeling there’s a miracle due, gonna come true, coming to me … Could it be?” As he disappears somewhere into the museum’s galleries, a woman named Rose approaches the statue bemoaning in her mezzo-soprano voice, “Meeting a blind date at the statue of Venus … wearing black slacks!”  Her concerns and doubts of this venture on this blind date mount beyond just her choice of wardrobe as Rose (Abigail Levis) scolds herself with great comic effect in voice and with wildly expressive cheeks and eyebrows that capture her nervous excitement.  At the same time, she also softly glides through ever-higher notes with much grace as she dreamily imagines who her true love might be.  Always looking on, Ms. Cheong’s Venus reacts in full fascination to this woman seeking and yet scared of a potential date who might give her that same feeling of safety and protection that Rose declares in reflective song once was felt in her father’s arms.

While at the end of Jake Heggie’s captivating one-act At the Statue of Venus

we do not know if Rose has found her man or not, the second half of the evening begins with both Abigail Levis (alternating the role with Renée Rapier) and Eugene Brancoveanu (alternating with Kyle Albertson) returning as a married couple at the breakfast table, now as Dinah and Sam.  Their life together is clearly not a paradise as they struggle to communicate without really ever hearing what the other is trying to say.  Bickering and shooting virtual arrows in a marital battle that one quickly realizes is probably a daily occurrence, Bernstein gives them each moments of longing for more kindness — for more of what they once supposedly had as a newly married couple.  Ms. Levis brings her gorgeously lyrical voice from the museum as Rose to dreamily now imagine as Dinah a garden where “love will teach us harmony and grace.”  Mr. Brancoveanu’s heavily knitted brow displays Sam’s desperate longing as he too sings in haunting, deeply moving voice, “Can’t we find our way back to the garden where we began?”

Both Rose and Sam also have moments in their day where they escape as best they can.  We see Sam on an exercise bike (while smoking a cigarette), admiring a little trophy he prizes for a win in handball while singing about his own manhood: “There are fish that go swimming and fish that end up in the pot.”  Rose heads to the movies to see “Trouble in Tahiti;” but in her version, she sees herself and Sam on the big screen in “Island Magic,” a wonderfully funny spin on 1950s beach films as delightfully created by projection designer, David Murakami.

Krista Wigle, Andres Ramirez & Bradley Kynard

As Rose and Sam proceed through their day and evening, a trio that one might have found in a Reno nightclub in the ‘50s sings in the role of a Greek chorus, painting a picture of the ideal life of “Sur-bur-i-a,” using the same note pattern this is reminiscent of Bernstein’s “New York, New York” from On the Town.   Soprano Krista Wigle, tenor Andres Ramirez, and baritone Bradley Kynard scat nonsensically, “Skid a lit day, skid a lit day … ratty boo.”  They also describe how “morning sun kisses” the little white houses, their driveways, and their flagstones on front lawns in the suburbs of places like Scarsdale, Shaker Heights, Highland Park, and Beverley Hills (along with other named, very white, and very upscale ‘burbs of the ‘50s).  Bernstein has given their musical interludes the sound and feel of TV/radio commercials, all accentuated again by the incredible tongue-in-cheek humor of Mr. Murakami’s projections.

Designer Dave Dunning has created a spinning turntable where period scenes of breakfast nook, living room, office, and gym rotate both to accommodate the ever-changing scenes of the couple’s day but also to highlight that this couple’s life is twirling away, going nowhere.  Matthew Antaky’s lighting design accentuates the stark realities of this couple’s life as well as the dreams they both have for something different.  Christine Crook’s costumes combined with Sophia Smith’s wigs and make-up truly are the icing on a cake that portrays an era that tried so hard to look perfect and happy like the paradise that it certainly was not for too many people who turned increasingly to booze and pills to find their own bit of sought-after heaven on earth.

Beautifully performed music by singers and orchestra alike (under the astute and enthusiastic direction of Nicole Paiement) shows off well the impressive, jazz-laced scores of Messieurs Heggie and Bernstein.  The two stories created fifty years apart mold successfully together an ageless storyline in this Opera Parallèle production of two people seeking that lifelong companion who lives so clearly in their dreams but in reality, is not so easy to find.

Rating: 4.5 E

At the Statue of Venusand Trouble in Tahiti continue in joint production by

Opera Parallèle through February 18, 2018 at SFJazz, 201 Franklin Street, San Francisco.  Tickets are available at https://www.sfjazz.org/.