JFK’s dazzle isn’t enough to save it
Say this about JFK: snappy title. Good subject. Someday a worthy opera might be written about the 35th American president.
Before outlining the ways in which David T. Little (music) and Royce Vavrek (libretto) have managed not to do so, I should mention why a journey to Place des Arts for one of the remaining Opéra de Montréal performances is something to consider.
This production by Thaddeus Strassberger for the Fort Worth Opera is visually a full-blast affair, with a giant illuminated TEXAS sign, a turntable set adorned with 1960s paraphernalia, rhinestone cowboys, colourful cheerleaders, starry skies, period footage of the Kennedy clan and a full chorus spread across the stage for the final tableau wearing old-fashioned 3-D glasses.
None of which on Saturday night could effectively disguise the flabbiness of the drama, the lassitude of the music, the thinness of the title character and the muddle of the overall concept.
After a portentous choral introduction with ritual references to past presidential assassinations, the action begins in Fort Worth on the evening before the assassination in question. Jackie gives Jack a booster of morphine, which dulls his back pain and sends him into a delirium. Where, conveniently for the creative team, anything goes.
The first hallucination involves JFK’s sister Rosemary, dressed to party. Why so much is made of her sad outcome is never clear.
Anyway, soon the siblings find themselves on the moon. Nikita Khrushchev (the visually believable tenor Colin Judson) awaits with a hearty Red Chorus asserting that “vodka is the common denominator.” Get it? Then I congratulate you.
A courtship scene has a good deal of poetic content, at least in the words, for the strings trade mainly in this-cannot-last foreboding. Even Jack’s laugh line in the Hotel Texas ballroom — “I am the man who accompanies Jackie around Texas” — is strangely solemn.
We understand, of course, that an appalling tragedy is only hours away, but despite the appearances of “fates” in this opera, Nov. 22, 1963, is not so much a vortex of destiny as an excuse not to bother stoking up any drama.
Kennedy himself is oddly small and passive. Not that the generally steady baritone Matthew Worth is to blame. When he finally gets a decent solo near the end, the content is mundane.
Little and Vavrek have given Jackie (the radiant Daniela Mack) at least the appearance of three dimensions. Certainly she has more to sing, mostly in highBroadway mode, and once with her elder self (another mezzosoprano, Katharine Goeldner). But why this emphasis on her miscarriage and stillborn daughter?
The most notorious scene finds a grotesque parody of Lyndon B. Johnson (the robust bass-baritone Daniel Okulitch) whooping it up with some Democratic cronies and tormenting the president in his bathtub. Even the potential for offence is wasted because this episode is so flagrantly devoid of meaning.
Soprano Talise Trevigne and tenor Sean Panikkar got deserved ovations for their vocally handsome portrayals of two historical figures present at Abraham Lincoln’s assassination. (Don’t ask.) Many in the cast of 14 sang well, and the lucid sound of the OSM in the pit of Salle Wilfrid Pelletier bore testimony to the talent of conductor Steven Osgood.
Yes, the ability is there to put on a show. What we need is a show worth the effort.
JFK repeats on Jan. 30, Feb. 1 and Feb. 3 at Place des Arts. Go to www.operademontreal.com.