PERFORMING ARTS

'Love's Comedy' at GMU

Twenty-eight years before he offended polite society with the loveless marriage in "Hedda Gabler," playwright Henrik Ibsen outraged it by implying the impossibility of a loving union in "Love's Comedy." Dating to 1862, the play argues that passionate love cannot survive everyday reality. So Falk, a poet, loses his lover but keeps his idealism while Svanhild, his love, accepts a conventional marriage to another.

It sounds like the plot of an opera or operetta -- and now it is one. Rick Davis, artistic director of George Mason University's Center for the Arts, crafted the English libretto from Leon Katz's adaptation of Ibsen, and Kim D. Sherman wrote the music for the work, which premiered Saturday night at George Mason.

The production was a mixed success. Without scenery and with singers in street clothes, and music provided by two pianists (Victoria Gau and Julie Neish), the presentation seemed more rehearsal than opening night. It was often ragged, as if some parts were not quite finished at curtain time. And the best voices were in subsidiary roles: soprano Danielle Talamantes as Anna, Svanhild's sister; mezzo-soprano Linda Maguire as Mrs. Halm, the girls' mother; and tenor Matthew Loyal Smith as Lind, Falk's friend.

The principals never quite made their cardboard characters come alive. As Falk, baritone David Schmidt declaimed as often as he sang, his condemnations of conventionality sounding more cynical than principled. Soprano Abigail Shue projected Svanhild's core strength better than her vulnerability. Sherman's music was defiantly tonal, inoffensive and unexceptional, with choruses that sounded like wan Gilbert and Sullivan. Conductor Stan Engebretson kept things moving well enough -- but like any potential gem, "Love's Comedy" needs cutting and polishing before it will shine.

-- Mark J. Estren

Keita

On his two most recent albums, 2002's "Moffou" and 2006's "M'Bemba," Salif Keita banished most of the Western styles and electrified instruments he used to employ. The magisterial Malian tenor didn't take quite so austere an approach Friday night at Lisner Auditorium: Two members of his nine-person band played electric guitar, as did Keita himself occasionally, and Ousmane Kouyate was given two opportunities to meld jazzy picking and scat singing. Yet the concert emphasized the style of the performer's most recent recordings.

The show followed the pattern of Keita's other post-"Moffou" performances, as up-tempo tunes flanked a middle section of quieter material. This time, though, the gentle interlude lasted most of the two-hour-plus show. After the opening number, the singer switched from French to English to implore the crowd to "stand up and dance," but such gentler songs as "Ladji" soon led most of the audience to sit back down.

That's not to say that the music was undanceable. Keita's group included three percussionists, whose rippling polyrhythms chattered with the chiming guitars and kora (a traditional West African lute). Even when the tempos were moderate, the beats were as dynamic as Keita's powerful voice, whose intensity can still startle. The singer's ability to shift register or emphasis without turning shrill or raucous remains a marvel.

Although he performed few of his older hits, Keita did reward calls for "Mandjou," a rousing anthem from his late-'70s stint with the Ambassadeurs. That song began the show's up-tempo final section, which brought people back to their feet. The evening ended as so many previous Keita concerts have, with the singer and his band nearly overwhelmed by the dozens of gyrating fans who joined them onstage.