Rite of Maturation

By William Bender

Nothing testifies to the growing up of a regional American opera company quite like a world premiere. With a big floodlight pawing a cloudy Detroit sky, the Michigan Opera Theater enjoyed this rite of maturation last week. On most grounds, the company's choice of a composer could not be faulted. New York City's Thomas Pasatieri, 30, is as hot a property in regional opera as Neil Simon is on Broadway. Pasatieri has written 13 operas and had most of them performed, either in cities like Seattle, Houston and Baltimore or on television.

His latest, a two-act Washington Square based on the Henry James novel, lies somewhere between his best (The Seagull, 1974) and worst (the pretentious Ines de Castro (TIME, April 12). Subdivided into 16 fast-moving scenes by Librettist Kenward Elmslie, Washington Square is a reasonably adroit telling of the frustrating events in the life of Heiress Catherine Sloper, touchingly portrayed by New York City Soprano Catherine Malfitano. What it lacks is the drypoint voice of James himself. Some good music might have helped. Alas, the problem is not so much that Pasatieri dares to write old-fashioned melodies but that his melodies are awful.

Big Fat Lady. Washington Square did, however, show off the Michigan Opera Theater company splendidly. It is the creation of David DiChiera, 40, a Ph.D. (musicology) from U.C.L.A., who arrived in Michigan in 1962 to help develop a performing-arts program at Oakland University outside Detroit. DiChiera immediately took over a small group called Overture to Opera. Prior to the Metropolitan Opera's annual spring visits to Detroit, Overture to Opera visited schools and community cen ters in the area, explaining the works on the Met's agenda and doing cameo scenes in English. By 1971 DiChiera had developed enough support to launch a permanent resident opera company. DiChiera, the son of an immigrant Italian steelworker, chose the name Michigan Opera Theater to get away, as he put it, from the image of opera as that of "some big fat lady warbling her lungs off in a language nobody understands."

Every opera--Tosca, Boris Godunov, Cosi fan Tutte--is done in English, and the emphasis on believable stagecraft is high. Not surprisingly, total ticket sales jumped from 3,000 in 1971-72 to 35,000 last season. The company's home is the refurbished Music Hall, a 1,800-seat theater built in 1928 with Dodge-family automobile money. Michigan Opera Theater shares the premises with the three-year-old Music Hall Center for the Performing Arts, which attracts an ever growing number (200,000 last season) of customers a year with its dance and theater attractions. DiChiera is also the artistic director of the center. Says he: "I came to Detroit originally because the place was such virgin territory." Not any more.

William Bender

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