Infertility Rites

Few plays seem to provide such promising operatic material as the dark and intense verse dramas of Spain's Federico Garcia Lorca. Blood Wedding has been made into an opera at least four times, and in the early 1950s the noted Brazilian composer Heitor Villa-Lobos was commissioned to transform Yerma into an opera. He finished it in 1955, but died before it could be produced.

In 1958 Stage Director Basil Langton learned of the Villa-Lobos score, secured the rights and determined to produce it in the original Spanish. It took him 13 years, but last week Yerma had its world premiere--in Spanish--at the Santa Fe Opera, where as many listeners as could fit into the outdoor amphitheater came to hear it.

The music proved typical of Villa-Lobos' best work: brooding, feverish, full of exotic percussion effects. Conductor Christopher Keene admitted, "It's got a little Stravinsky, a little Debussy, a little Puccini, a little Richard Strauss --but a lot of Villa-Lobos." It sometimes sounded as attractive as the familiar pieces: Forest of the Amazon or the Bachianas Brasileiras No. 5.

Garcia Lorca's heroine, Yerma (derived from the Spanish word yermo, meaning barren), is a symbol of the life force frustrated by morality. Longing for children, unable to conceive them with her husband and unwilling to attempt infidelity, she laments with truly operatic passion. Finally, when her husband admits that he is sterile and has used her for sexual rather than procreative purposes, she strangles him.

Little Help. Villa-Lobos' demanding score, unfortunately, has too little dramatic variety and characterization. The opera focuses on Yerma with such single-mindedness that only an extraordinary singing actress--and such types are rare--could bring it off. Poulenc made the same demand in La Voix Humaine, Janacek in The Makropulos Case, Cherubini in Medea, Richard Strauss in Salome and Elektra. All in some degree have paid the price in lack of performances. Yerma needs a soprano who can act like Maria Callas and sing like Leontyne Price. In Santa Fe it had Mirna Lacambra, a young Spanish soprano with a red-velvet voice but an acting style that seemed to have been derived from old Theda Bara movies. As a result Yerma, who should have seemed tormented and tragic, often appeared merely a terrible nag.

The opera got little help from Director Langton, who sent the chorus sashaying about the stage with hands on hips, or swaying with hands linked like oldtime Follies girls. Such artists as Mezzos Elaine Bonazzi and Frederica von Stade, Baritone Theodor Uppman and Tenor John Wakefield seemed wasted in their brief roles. Choreographer Jose Limon certainly knows all there is to know about Spanish tradition and dancing. But even his fertility rite dance in Act III succeeded in looking barren. Musically, Yerma is compelling. But as a dramatic experience, in Santa Fe, Yerma remained yermo.

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