Beauty and the Beastly

Denyce Graves mines the depths of her mezzo register for the role of the Dragon in the splashy new "Grendel," now featured in the Lincoln Center Festival. (Max Morse -- Reuters)

Musically, the results are less satisfying. "Grendel" is filled with gimmicks that never quite have the impact they're meant to. A trio of "dragonettes" who fill out one of the better scenes, in which Grendel meets and rejects the wisdom of a world-weary dragon, has no sizzle. Beowulf is sung not by a heroic tenor (the obvious solution) but by a chorus standing on the sides of the stage, but the choral lines are uninteresting. The composer throws a lot in, but not a lot comes out. And while the libretto gets the basic humor of the work, the music doesn't follow its lead.

But, oh, it could have been so much worse. Music lovers may remember Goldenthal's 1996 "Fire Water Paper: A Vietnam Oratorio." Critics have never really forgiven Goldenthal for that disaster, another all-and-everything score that was also pompous and unwieldy. The composer's good fortune professionally, to have it recorded by Sony Classical, was his bad fortune artistically, because the work is now remembered as a very low point in Sony Classical's scorched-earth war on good taste, waged with a barbarity that even Grendel could admire.

The new score is much, much better, yet still filled with bad habits. Vocal lines are incessantly doubled in the orchestra, a trick that, if used occasionally, adds intensity and luxury, but when used indiscriminately leaves the singers mired in the morass of instrumental sound. Grendel's lines are the worst, low-lying and doubled by low instruments, and not very interesting. Harmonically, the music is often inert, with the orchestra laying down little swaths of piquant background while the singers pick their way through vocal lines cut from the same basic material. The effect is a bit like photographing people dressed in clothes that are the exact same color as the wallpaper behind them. And the whole thing is essentially monophonic, meaning there's very little contrapuntal interest, no clash of musical lines against one another and very little that goes its own way independent of the orchestral business.

But it is colorful and often dramatic -- forceful percussion passages give scenic climaxes athletic energy. And while thoroughly derivative, Goldenthal borrows well. Vocal lines for the Shaper, a bard sung beautifully by Richard Croft, have Benjamin Britten's delicate fingerprints on them. When Goldenthal strives for something majestic, he begins to channel Philip Glass in one of his hypnotic, wide-horizons moods. And his Hollywood style pokes in from time to time with little melodic tags that always feel like they're from something (which is the essence of the Hollywood style: Even when new it feels familiar but unplaceable).

There were other strong performances. Owens has the stamina of an ox. Denyce Graves, singing in the subbasement of her mezzo-soprano voice as the Dragon, was sexy and funny and gave the evening much-needed levity. The orchestra, conducted by Steven Sloane, was alert to the pacing and often complex rhythmic demands made by the composer's vocal lines. Among the large cast, standouts included Laura Claycomb's crystal-clear Queen Wealtheow and the sinewy and volatile dancer Desmond Richardson as the embodiment of Beowulf. Angelin Preljocaj's choreography was dynamic and meaningful (a rarity in the opera house), and the small army of designers (puppets, sets, costumes, lighting) created a unified visual feast.

This is spectacle, with adequate music. The creative energy, the initiative, the scope for invention and originality, has shifted away from the composer and into the hands of the director and designers. Which isn't an entirely bad thing. Opera is usually staged by lazy idiots, but with the music of Verdi or Mozart or Strauss coming at you, who cares? The new genus, spectacle-opera, will perhaps force old opera into better theatrical habits. But the musical component is withering, like a vestigial appendage.

If the opera world trends in the Taymor direction, there's good cause for hope. But if it heads in the direction of Goldenthal, the future could be monstrous.

Grendel runs through July 16 at Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts in New York.