A neglected gem made to shine brilliantly
Surely the greatest composer America has produced, Samuel Barber was a patrician figure who eschewed the gritty Americana of his peers, Leonard Bernstein and Aaron Copland.
But Barber’s three operas remain neglected, even the most powerful of them,
Vanessa, which premiered at the Metropolitan Opera in 1958. Is it just not American enough, defying the neat categories that opera houses like?
Wexford Festival Opera’s brilliant new production manages to connect Vanessa to the American milieu of Barber’s youth without contradicting the setting, which is somewhere wintry in northern Europe. The tone is Chekhovian in the scenario by librettist Gian Carlo Menotti, Barber’s partner and a composer in his own right. Three women of different generations in a wealthy household play out old romances and betrayals when a stranger arrives. Vanessa herself has been waiting for 20 years to see her lover Anatol, but the Anatol who finally appears is the son of the dead man. A triumph for Wexford’s artistic director, David Agler, who knew both Barber and Menotti, this is one of the best productions in the history of this Irish festival devoted to lost operatic causes. Rodula Gaitanou’s staging poignantly gets under the skin of the work, Cordelia Chisholm’s designs are elegantly monochromatic and Christopher Akerlund’s lighting conjures up a sense of time suspended.
Claire Rutter’s Vanessa soars powerfully, her niece Erika is sung in a darkly glinting mezzo by Carolyn Sproule and, as Anatol, Michael Brandenburg’s tenor is strong. Barber’s rich score is superbly conducted by Timothy Myers.
Vanessa is an opera unlike any other, and a British opera house should take this production. It deserves wider exposure.