Bold, bloody ‘Cree’ a dazzling spectacle
Thrilling opera set in Victorian London mixes humor, horror
The preoccupations of Victorian London, if popular culture is anything to go by, were sex, poverty, theater and murder — the gorier and more sensational the better for that last one. Those elements bounce off each other like pingpong balls in “Elizabeth Cree,” the thrillingly fine opera by composer Kevin Puts and librettist Mark Campbell that opened a threeperformance run at West Edge Opera on Sunday, July 25.
Running a sleek 90 minutes without intermission, the show bursts onto the stage, dazzles you with its dramatic and musical legerdemain, and then bows out almost before you have your bearings. But there’s plenty to chew on afterward, as you emerge from the Bruns Amphitheater trying to mentally reassemble the glittering pieces of what you’ve just witnessed.
Based on a vivid, multistrand 1994 novel by Peter Ackroyd, “Elizabeth Cree” plunges us into its bygone setting through the title character, who escapes her destitute background first through the world of the music hall and then through a respectable marriage. Meanwhile, a murderer stalks the London streets, bludgeoning and disemboweling random hapless victims.
This is not unfamiliar territory. Opera lovers may think of Berg’s “Lulu,” which includes Jack the Ripper among its cast of characters, or of Sondheim’s “Sweeney Todd.” One of the delicious foundational jokes of the Showtime series “Penny Dreadful” was the notion that sensationalist horror did as much as gaslight and fog to shape the life of London.
But “Cree” boasts its own witty, intricately twined take on the material, one that combines hallofmirrors selfreference with a deceptive whiff of realism. The music hall reflects the gory splendors of the tabloid press, while the serial killer scans the papers for “reviews” of his latest handiwork.
There are also truths — or at least halftruths — among the lies. Elizabeth’s entry into the world of the performing arts as a halfstarved wharf rat known as Lambeth Marsh Lizzie takes place under the tutelage of the reallife theatrical celebrity Dan Leno. Some of the key action takes place in the Reading Room of the British Museum, where Karl Marx and the novelist George Gissing try in their different ways to understand the roots of urban poverty.
All of this might easily have been a tangle, but Puts and Campbell (who won a Pulitzer Prize for their 2012 collaboration “Silent Night”) weave it all together with brilliant, lightfooted panache. The score shifts and feints from vivacious theatrical ballads to heartfelt arias without missing a beat. The piece is by turns funny, poignant and haunting, all with an undertone of historical seriousness.
The West Edge production does the piece full justice. On Dedalus Wainwright’s unit set, director Sam Helfrich has performers darting in and out of sliding panels as if in some kind of cabinet of curiosities. The general air of Brechtian artifice finds room for tenderness and genuine emotion.
And at the opening, a stellar cast executed it all superbly under the pointed musical leadership of conductor Robert Mollicone.
In the title role, mezzosoprano Katherine Pracht combined lustrous singing with a quicksilvery theatrical temperament as she cycled through Elizabeth’s rapid shifts in character.
Baritone Keith Phares (Pracht’s reallife spouse) gave a vocally robust and dramatically powerful performance as Elizabeth’s husband, John Cree, and there were vivid turns by Samuel Faustine as Dan Leno, Simon Barrad as Inspector Kildare and Leslie Katter as Aveline Mortimer, the actressturnedhousemaidturnedactress who helps bring the piece to a chilling denouement.
West Edge Opera has always made contemporary work a central part of its mission, and “Elizabeth Cree” — which had its premiere at the Philadelphia Opera in 2017 — is a magnificent achievement to set beside its previous productions of “Breaking the Waves” and “Powder Her Face.” Even the jaded theatrical critics of the Victorian press would have to concur.