Opera's Tightrope Walker

IN a moment of wrath, Hamburg State Opera Impresario Rolf Liebermann once exclaimed: "It's the directors who ruin everything. It's never the composer, conductor or singers. The directors are just so many dilettanti who don't know their job. Their only concern is their own vanity."

True of some, but not of Nathaniel Merrill, the resident stage director of the Metropolitan Opera, whose eleven productions are among the best that the company has ever mounted. The youngest (40) and first American-born director ever to hold that post, Merrill is almost devoid of flamboyance or gimmickry. Unlike such glamorous directors as Franco Zeffirelli and Luchino Visconti, whose personal styles sometimes interfere with musical values, Merrill subordinates himself to the score. Like a musical detective, he searches it and the libretto for clues that will evoke a fresh visualization onstage.

Psychological Drama. Last week the Met gave its first performance of Merrill's new production of // Trovatore. Although critics have traditionally complained about the absurdity of the libretto, Merrill contends that Trovatore is "a psychological drama that must be seen from the viewpoint of Azucena, a demented woman whose entire life is focused on avenging her mother's death." Merrill therefore has placed his singers against scenery--designed by Attilio Colonnello--that he describes as "consciously bizarre and unreal, to set off the singers as real people."

Moorish-Byzantine architecture is overlaid with stalactite-jagged pieces of stone that evoke a heavy grottolike or grim moonscape atmosphere and achieve a feeling of gloom and doom. Although there were some boos for the scenery on opening night, it did suggest a kind of nightmarish psychological symbolism, and to some critics it made the torment of the characters seem much more lifelike.

Musically, the production, which was conducted by Zubin Mehta, was a stunning triumph. Grace Bumbry as Azucena brought to the part a strong mellow voice and some of the best acting ever seen at the Met. Leontyne Price as Leonora, Sherrill Milnes as the count, and Placido Domingo as the count's brother all shone musically as they were fatally drawn into the vengeful scheming of Azucena and the doom-filled mood of Merrill's production.

Aromatic Inhalation. There is no such thing as a distinctive Merrill style. His recent production of Der Rosenkavalier was presented realistically, with sets, costumes and actions designed so that the audience could "feel a good aromatic inhalation of Vienna" at the time of Empress Maria Theresa. Merrill's Turandot was stylized in the sparse formal motions of the ice-cold princess and her hapless suitors. Against these semi-tableaux, there was a flurry of action provided by the counterpoint clowning of Ping, Pang and Pong. One of Merrill's finest productions, Strauss' Die Frau ohne Schatten, was mounted as a fantasy; it captured the magic of the evil nurse, the semi-spirit world of the empress and the human world of the dyer.

Merrill adapts his style not only to the individual opera but also to the performers he must work with. In designing a work, he takes into account the fact that opera singers are basically not actors, and that they all have different strengths, preferences and even eccentricities. Merrill says that Tenor James McCracken, for example, can "sing leaning back practically upside down, but Jess Thomas does not feel he can hit a high B-flat unless his legs are under him." Merrill believes that "the musical element should rule the visual aspect of any production."

Under Fat Sopranos. Despite his flair for stagecraft, Merrill admits that his first love is the music itself. He studied piano, clarinet and cello, and majored in composition at Dartmouth College. After earning a master's degree in musicology from Boston College, he signed up as a stagehand with the touring Metropolitan Opera from 1949 to 1952. Later, as a directorial student at the Hamburg State Opera, and then at the Hessische Staatstheater in Wiesbaden, Merrill learned "how to put blankets and pillows under fat sopranos without insulting them." He learned so well, in fact, that Met General Manager Rudolf Bing asked him to mount a new L'EHsir d'A more in 1960 after seeing his Don Giovanni at the Washington -Opera Society. Now nearly a third of the Met's active repertory are Merrill productions, in which he claims to be "walking a tightrope over conductors, singers, designers, technical crew and management."

Animals Onstage. Like many of the opera stars he directs, Merrill has his share of quirks. He sometimes wears a maroon turtleneck to rehearsals for good luck, and never cuts his hair during a production in order to fend off disaster. He is a compulsive list keeper, and keeps elaborate track of props. Recalling one such list, he remarks, "One round silver tray with practical pastry, one practical live horse, one live dog on leash --I love animals onstage; they're more predictable than humans."

Merrill spends endless hours in his Manhattan apartment playing with toy soldiers on a table in an effort to solve production problems. Currently, he is using the soldiers to plan the revolution scene for next year's staging of Boris Godunov. Although he has not yet worked out the details, the production is likely to be both realistic and larger than life, in keeping with the mood of an opera that is both a spectacle of barbaric splendor and an epic of a nation's struggle against oppression.

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