By David Rubin
http://www.cnycafemomus.com/David_Rubin.html

To open its 2011 season, the Glimmerglass Festival outside Cooperstown, New York offered two French operas with strong (and nasty) women at their centers: Georges Bizet’s chestnut Carmen, and Luigi Cherubini’s rarity Medea. First performed in 1797, Medea has never been very popular. Carmen was clearly meant to sell tickets. Medea was meant to attract attention.

Here is a prediction. Medea will be an unexpected sensation and should outsell a lackluster Carmen. The opera is musically exciting; and it features a riveting, fearless performance by soprano Alexandra Deshorties in the title role. I saw it with a large group of Glimmerglass regulars who all asked, "Where has this opera been all our lives?"

If Medea is familiar at all it is because of the Maria Callas performance in 1953 at La Scala that helped define her as a singer with extraordinary acting talents. Its vigorous overture has been recorded, but opera lovers unfamiliar with the Callas CD probably haven’t heard a note of the rest of it.

Cherubini was much admired by his contemporary Carl Maria von Weber, who wrote Der Freischütz. He influenced the course of French opera all the way to Bizet. His music iswas studied by Brahms, Bruckner and Wagner. Today he is remembered, if at all, as a gifted teacher and musical administrator. As a composer, however, his operas were popular only in Germany.

He lacks Mozart’s divine melodic gift, but he knew how to use the orchestra to convey emotion and build tension. In Medea he makes effective use of woodwinds (particularly oboe and English horn) and percussion. It is no surprise that Wagner admired him because the orchestra expertly conveys and supports the emotions on stage.

The mythological Medea provides Cherubini with a gruesome but intriguing — even sexy — character. She is the sorceress who employed her dark arts to help Jason steal the Golden Fleece from her home island of Colchis in exchange for his promise of marriage. Cad that he is, Jason then conveniently overlooks that she murdered her own brother to help them escape from Colchis. He abandons her anyway in order to marry the princess Glauce, daughter of King Creon of Corinth. When Medea’s entreaties to Jason fail, she takes her famous revenge by killing their two children so that Jason cannot raise them. The hapless Glauce becomes collateral damage.

Once Medea appears onstage in the middle of the first act she is rarely absent. Cherubini has given her a role requiring the stamina and the voice of an Isolde. But any singer who assumes the part must make her much more than a monster. If the audience is unwilling to see the situation from her perspective and take her part against Jason, the whole thing can fall to pieces.

This no doubt explains why the opera is rarely done. Not many sopranos combine the vocal goods, the acting ability, the stamina, and the physique to pull it off. Given that most opera impresarios don’t offer it, why bother to learn it?

Despite all these challenges, the performance by Alexandra Deshorties was jaw-dropping. If opera houses are not beseeching her to sing this part from here to Vienna and back, then there is no justice in the opera world (which is probably the case).

Deshorties is a tall woman with an angular, handsome face and sallow cheeks. With long black hair, she looks both beautiful and evil. With the assistance of director Michael Barker-Caven, she mastered the ability to contort her body into the position painted on classic Greek vases. Or she slithered around the stage like the snake that was part of the set.

Her grief flowed through her limbs, out her throat, and into the audience. Her plea to Jason to remain with her was gripping. Her request to King Creon for asylum in Corinth, and then for permission to remain with her children for just one day, was entirely credible. She had the audience hanging on her every word.

Deshorties modulated her medium-weight soprano perfectly for the size of the Alice Busch Opera Theater (just under 1000 seats). She used her voice to snarl, plead, threaten, beg, conspire and declaim. She totally inhabited the character of Medea. In the final scene she emerged from the crypt, having slain her children, covered in blood, wearing little more for modesty’s sake than an antique version of a Greek bikini, triumphant and hysterical.

This part is delicately poised on the knife-edge of believability. One wrong move or gesture and it can easily become camp—an operatic Fatal Attraction. Deshorties made not a single false move.

She had two very strong singing actors to help her. Bass-baritone David Pittsinger sang King Creon. He projected nobility in both bearing and voice. His instrument is a bit pale at the top end of the range, but his overall sound is warm and full. He stood his ground with Medea in his big scene when he refuses to grant her asylum but then foolishly allows her just one more day with her children.

Medea’s confidante, Neris, was sung by mezzo-soprano Sarah Larsen. She is a member of the company’s Young Artists Program. Neris has some important singing to do in the scene leading up to the murder of the children. This is not a small role for the typical handmaiden. Larsen was just as riveting as Deshorties, able to project both loyalty to her mistress and horror at what she knew was to come. She sang confidently and she projected easily into the hall. She should have a strong career.

Jason was sung by tenor Jason Collins. He has the physique of a Greek hero. The middle of his voice is pleasant, and he has sufficient volume. But the top is a bit shaky under pressure and the basic instrument lacks juice, making the voice somewhat monochromatic. Next to Deshorties, he seemed not to be acting at all. She ate him up.

The hapless Glauce, killed off by Medea with a poisoned crown presented to her as a wedding gift, was sung by soprano Wendy Bryn Harmer. She recently sang Freia at the Met in Das Rheingold. Here she sang as if she had to fill a house of 3800 seats. If she files down the voice and focuses on the lyricism of the part, it will work. At the performance reviewed, she was far too loud. At the top of her range she was quite unpleasant to hear.

Conductor Daniele Rustioni threw himself into the score, never letting up the tension. Coordination with the singers was excellent. Tempos seemed very well judged. He accompanied Deshorties with great skill and they seemed in complete agreement about how the role should go. Despite his youth, he has conducted at Covent Garden, La Scala, St. Petersburg, and Venice, among other prime locations. Given the rarity of the work, he did an amazing job. He is a valuable addition to the Glimmerglass conducting roster.

The set was antique grunge, with objects strewn here and there in a vaguely classic setting. The Golden Fleece was hoisted over the stage during part one, and after the interval a pale full moon (which would have been at home in a production of Salome) glowed ominously over part two, turning a predictable blood red at the end. No matter that the setting was so dull. Everyone was transfixed by Deshorties. The set simply disappeared.

The opera was given in an Italian translation, with the recitatives sung.

The New Grove Dictionary of Opera reports that the very first Medea, Julie-Angelique Scio, died young from tuberculosis "attributed to vocal gymnastics" in roles such as this one. We are all in Ms. Deshorties’ s debt for taking it on.