Opera Parallèle's In the Penal Colony
October 06, 2018
* Notes *
This weekend Opera Parallèle is in Carmel for In the Penal Colony as part of the Days and Nights Festival. Philip Glass' potent chamber opera from 2000 is a perfect match for this company and the production gets to the nightmarish core of the short story from Kafka.
Maestra Nicole Paiement conducted the string quintet with her usual vim. Though the musicians were regulated over to the right front corner of the stage, they were balanced with the singers and were easy to hear without being overwhelming.
Brian Staufenbiel's direction is anything but static, there's so much going on even though we only have two singers and two actors. The set has two concentric turntables that can move at different rates and three jagged screens -- one in the middle and one for each side. It is just able the right amount of realism -- the torture machine is menacingly spiked -- mixed with off-kilter weirdness such as a portrait of the previous commandant which shows him with waving pink tentacles rather than a head.
The opera is in English and much of Rudolph Wurlitzer's text hews closely with Kafka but obviously is much shorter to accommodate the singing. There were no titles, and I really liked this as it forces the audience to play close attention to the singers. Tenor Javier Abreu has a sweet, sympathetic voice as The Visitor, making for a good proxy for the audience. Robert Orth has a great authority as The Officer, his bright, high baritone is convincing.
* Tattling *
There was some scattered talking during the opera. I heard a familiar tiny, muffled sound behind me near the end of the opera, which turned out to be a newborn who was nursing as I left the hall.