Medea & the Paddy Wagon

"I go now to the Styx, the sacred river!" sang the soprano, and flinging aside her dagger, collapsed on the stage. As the curtain fell, buxom Eileen Farrell hoisted herself to her feet, trudged back to her dressing room and sighed: "When I'm through this role, I'll be ready for the paddy wagon."

For Soprano Farrell and the San Francisco Opera, last week's opening-night performance of Luigi Cherubini's Medea was both trial and triumph. The title role is one of the most exhausting in all opera: Medea is on stage for 80 of the opera's 105 minutes, and during most of that time she is singing strenuously. But Medea also has its great moments, and it provides an ideal vocal showcase for a dramatic soprano. In the last five years, Maria Callas has virtually made the role over in her own fiery image (she will sing it again in November with the Dallas Civic Opera). But San Francisco Opera Director Kurt Adler heard Soprano Farrell sing Medea in concert form, decided to give the opera its first U.S. production as the curtain raiser for San Francisco's six-week season. The production is tailored to make the most of Farrell's opulent voice and to minimize the defects of acting and appearance that have limited her career almost entirely to the concert hall. Stage business was reduced to a minimum. But if Soprano Farrell failed visually to convey the briny sense of evil that Callas brings to the role, she demonstrated again that hers is perhaps the finest dramatic-soprano voice in the land. Perfectly responsive to the opera's somber emotional inflections, her voice could sink effortlessly to a haunted, house-filling pianissimo or soar in gorgeously shifting gradations to cleave through the orchestra with ringing power. The least impressed person in the house was Singer Farrell herself. "The poor audience," she said after her grueling performance. "Medea just keeps on singing."

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