A Duo of Duchesses

By Annalyn Swan

For centuries, opera librettists snubbed The Duchess of Malfi. The cut was unkind, since her tragic tale is the very stuff of grand opera. John Webster's play, published in 1623, is admirably lurid and complicated. There is the Duchess's secret and forbidden marriage to her steward Antonio. There are her two evil brothers: Ferdinand, who is driven mad by incestuous passion for her; and the Cardinal, who schemes to be Pope. After her marriage is discovered, the Duchess is imprisoned and tormented by madmen. At the end, everyone dies violently.

Now, opera has embraced Webster's gory drama in a big way, with not just one Duchess of Malfi but two. The Santa Fe Opera company, which has presented 20 American and world premieres in its 22 seasons, has just produced the American premiere of The Duchess of Malfi by British Composer and Librettist Stephen Oliver, 28. A second Duchess has simultaneously been staged at Wolf Trap Farm Park for the Performing Arts, outside of Washington, D.C., this one a world premiere by American Composer Stephen Douglas Burton, 35, and Librettist-Conductor Christopher Keene, 31. Strikingly different--one discordant, the other warm-bloodedly romantic--the two Duchesses show a growing divergence in modern music: between contemporary dissonances and a return to the romantic melodies of the Puccini era.

Santa Fe's production, performed in the company's handsome redwood and adobe outdoor theater, is squarely in the 20th century tradition. Oliver's opera is a chilling psychodrama, a story of madness and perversion. Instead of a palace, the set is a surreal structure, an external symbol of the brothers' twisted passions. Against this fantastical backdrop, shapes and shadows mingle grotesquely. Soldiers resemble insects in their shiny black armor and luminous round helmets. Members of the court, dressed in garishly striped costumes, are a hideous masquerade, a parody of splendor.

Illuminating this lurid world is equally unsettling music. Oliver, who studied electronic music at Oxford, composed his Duchess for an undergraduate production in 1971 and revised it last year. The opera opens with a blaring cacophony of brasses and winds. Voice and orchestra lines seem to begin and end with little regard for each other. Only once, in the final act, does Oliver use a straightforward melodic passage. A chorus of madmen, a ghoulish group in feathers and rags, sings an elegant baroque masque to the imprisoned Duchess (Soprano Pamela Myers). The contrast between stately chords and hideous faces is terrifying.

Oliver's racing dissonances are as fitting to the bloody drama as Debussy's dreamy impressionism is to Pelleas et Melisande. But as opera, the music is flawed: the vocal lines are so dense and undramatic that the voices of the mostly young cast get lost. The production is often riveting. In one of the most bizarre scenes, Ferdinand, superbly sung and acted by British Tenor David Hillman, passionately kisses his strangled sister, then rips the red satin lining from her coffin and rushes from the stage.

Burton's Duchess, by comparison, is unabashedly romantic, old-fashioned fare. From the rousing processional entry of the Duchess and her ladies to the final brassy chords, the Wolf Trap opera is a masterly reworking of the conventions. Hummable tunes abound, as do passionate arias. There is swordplay between Antonio (Tenor Neil Rosenshein) and Bosola (Baritone William Dansby), the brothers' hired assassin--and even a violent thunderstorm, as Ferdinand (Baritone Stephen Dickson) bursts into his sister's bedchamber to denounce her for her marriage.

The music is equally grand. Burton, who teaches composition at Virginia's George Mason University, has a knowing ear for orchestral effects. His opera glories in the crashing crescendos and outbursts of tympani and brass that recall Richard Strauss, and in arias that build predictably, but movingly, to piercing high notes. But Burton, who studied in Europe with noted German Composer Hans Werner Henze, has updated his score with a sprinkling of 20th century dissonances. The result is a powerful mix of sweeping melodic lines and clashing discords.

With all of that thunder in the pit and blood on the stage, the Wolf Trap production is a winner. Soprano Roberta Palmer as the Duchess is an appealing figure with a bright, clear voice up top. But it is the Cardinal, sung resonantly by Bass William Wildermann, who commands the stage vocally and visually. His red-gloved hand, raised high above the Duch ess's head as he comes to arrest her, seems a menacing torch from hell.

Too bad that Burton was not born in the 19th century. His Duchess might even have rivaled Tosca in acclaim. As it is, he is a hundred years too late: the romantic opera lover can spot every device ten mea sures before it arrives. Still, Burton may have timed his revival well. Contempo rary opera has not proved popular in the past few decades. Burton's style, at least, is a real audience thriller. His Duchess will be around again.

--Annalyn Swan

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