A Rare Glimmer Of Wagner Is Worth the Trip

COOPERSTOWN, N.Y. -- Wagner finished three operas before he composed the first of the 10 works for which he is famous. "Das Liebesverbot," which is receiving an exceedingly rare production here at the Glimmerglass Opera Festival, was second in the trio of scores he produced before the 1843 "Flying Dutchman," which set the great Wagnerian juggernaut rolling.

Based on Shakespeare, "Liebesverbot" -- or, the ban on love -- is 99 percent a study in everything the mature Wagner is not: light and frothy (in a stormy, Germanic way), based on Italian precedents (soaked in the thicker brine of German composers such as Carl Maria von Weber), filled with choruses, duets and ensembles (all but banned in Wagner's "mature" works), and decidedly dedicated to entertaining its audience (verboten pandering by the later standards of Wagner's "holy German art").

And yet it is the other 1 percent of what it has to offer that makes "Liebesverbot" worth a trip to Upstate New York. What audiences will encounter at this scrappy but adventurous opera festival on the shores of Lake Otsego is a heavily cut, imperfectly cast, clumsily directed and generally disappointing performance of an opera that even Wagner derided as a "sin" of his youth. But dedicated Wagnerians will go anyway because this is probably as good as any production of "Liebesverbot" will get. To do it any better would require an obscene use of resources for a dubious end: yet more lipstick on a singing pig.

Wagner based his second foray into opera on Shakespeare's "Measure for Measure," one of the playwright's darkest comedies, about sexual impropriety, abuse of power and the need for measure in all things. The composer, who was 21 when he began the project, wrote the libretto himself, generally keeping to the shallows of Shakespeare's complex ruminations on law and desire. He removed the all-important figure of the Duke, the ruler who dons a disguise to survey the corruption of his magistrates and who, in the end, gives the play its moral gravitas, its humanity and its basic argument: Between justice and mercy is the mean, which we should strive for in all things.

Wagner dumped all that. The result, despite his excision of everything noble in the original, is still a libretto of excessive length that concentrates all the inherent brutality and sadism in Shakespeare into something peculiarly Wagnerian.

Musically, he follows suit, concentrating the effervescent sound of comic opera into something exceedingly heavy and monotonous. The opera begins with a series of rapid, descending-scale figures, the manic running sound of overtures by Mozart and Rossini. Its frenetic energy never really lets up, except for a few ponderous interludes. By the end of the opera, when the theme has been revealed as the central melody of one of the signature arias, it has become leaden, a lashing motif rather than a sparkling one.

So often, in productions of opera, what you see onstage is the logical if unfortunate continuation of the composer's reductionism. What Wagner did to Shakespeare -- cut, warp, trivialize -- the director of this production (Nicholas Muni) does to Wagner. Although he deserves great credit for handling the musical-comedy mechanics -- the choreography, the entrances, the arrangements onstage that let you know who can be heard by whom -- Muni cast the whole opera as a much sillier piece than it is. It is marred by unnecessary gags and ridiculous costumes (by Kaye Voyce), an unfortunate updating to a generic 1950s setting, and broad shtick from all involved. John Conklin's sets would make more sense for a production of something by Kurt Weill and Bertolt Brecht. And under Muni's guidance, Kelley Rourke's supertitles introduced infuriating anachronisms to the text.

The casting is also scattershot. As Friedrich, the dour prude who rules Sicily with Germanic chilliness, bass-baritone Mark Schnaible is the strongest Wagnerian, with confident diction and firm command of the declamatory anguish and inwardness that defines so many of the composer's later villains. Kevin Glavin, a bass, is a delight in the ridiculous role of Brighella, a randy suck-up with totalitarian fantasies who tries to enforce Friedrich's "Liebesverbot." Ryan MacPherson is a welcome dramatic presence, if not always a fully realized musical one, as Luzio, the Wagnerian rake who is a distant cousin of Shakespeare's self-destructive chatterbox, Lucio.

The women, unfortunately, are mostly inadequate. Claudia Waite, as Isabella, the virginal sister of a man condemned to die by Friedrich, has a vibrato that undermines the very real merits of its size, power and solid pitch. It is a difficult role, already filled with Wagnerian challenges. It is also an essential role, with much of the banished Duke's puppet-string pulling given over to Isabella; without a strong soprano in the part, the opera can only limp.

Under conductor Corrado Rovaris, the orchestra and chorus struggled gamely with the demands of the score. It is a strong ensemble, mostly at ease with the speed of the music and capable in the act-ending finales that produce a satisfying tumult of organized chaos.

Wagner turned away from so much of the spirited energy he let loose in "Liebesverbot." When it premiered in 1836, he stood, briefly, for free love and revolution and the creative destruction of the collective libido. By the end of his life, in 1883, he viewed sexuality as a kind of sickness, and his final work, "Parsifal," celebrated a monkish cult of men devoted to celibacy and arcane religious rituals.

Between sex and abstinence, revolution and withdrawal from a corrupt world, there was no middle ground. This temperamental extremism shows up in the dogmatism of Wagner's writings, and his music. Even in early works such as "Liebesverbot," he can be heard trying clumsily to hammer together a dark, low, censorious motif with the flitting energy of comedy and sexuality. It doesn't work, but that wouldn't stop him from trying again and again for the next half-century. "Liebesverbot" is fascinating -- not because Wagner discarded its musical and ethical worldview, but because he would spend his life thrashing its remnants out of himself.

He would never be a man of measure in anything.

Das Liebesverbot continues through Aug. 22 at Glimmerglass Opera. For more information call 607-547-2255, or visit http://www.glimmerglass.org.