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TWO ENIGMATIC LOOKS AT THE MYSTERY OF RELATIONSHIPS
October 6, 2003 BY WYNNE DELACOMA The choices are enough to send avid fans into a swoon worthy of Mimi in "La Boheme.'' At Lyric Opera, audiences can spend an evening chuckling at Mozart's delectable "The Marriage of Figaro'' or getting acquainted with Regina Giddens, a toxic princess of the old-new South in the company's first production of Marc Blitzstein's searing "Regina,'' a 1949 opera based on Lillian Hellman's "The Little Foxes.'' Over the weekend, video opera on a large-size movie screen was an option, with two performances of "Three Tales'' by minimalist composer Steve Reich and video artist Beryl Korot at the Athenaeum Theatre. And on Saturday night, "The Sound of a Voice,'' a new opera by that maximal composer of minimalist music, Philip Glass, with libretto by playwright David Henry Hwang, opened a run through Nov. 2 at Court Theatre. A finely wrought pair of miniatures, "The Sound of a Voice'' looks at a traditional Japanese ghost story from two perspectives, the first set in a unspecified past, the second in modern-day Tokyo. The questions Hwang and Glass raise about human relationships in these austere encounters between a man and woman are both eternally unanswerable and eternally fascinating. Glass may compose with minimalism's tools: short, repetitive, undulating melodies that roam suspensefully up and down the scale, but he has written works for large orchestra and major opera houses like the Metropolitan and Lyric. In "The Sound of a Voice,'' however, like "The Penal Colony,'' a setting of the Kafka tale presented at Court in 2000, he has scaled his forces back to the barest minimum. Court's four-person cast includes soprano Suzan Hanson and baritone Herbert Perry in the first play, "The Sound of a Voice,'' and mezzo-soprano Janice Felty and baritone Eugene Perry (Herbert's twin) in the second, "Hotel of Dreams.'' Robert Israel's set is little more than a small, sharp-edged, frosty white cube of a house, the cube tipped precariously on its corner in "Hotel.'' In the pit are four musicians playing cello, Chinese pipa (a kind of mandolin), Western and Chinese flutes, piccolo and percussion, all ably directed by Alan Johnson. Director Robert Woodruff packed a haiku's breadth of meaning into gestures as simple as a man fumbling with a fedora and a woman hovering over a vase of flowers. Even when played by his own small ensemble, Glass' music typically has lush depths, with the ever-present synthesizer providing a rich, organlike bass. That richness was deliberately banished in "The Sound of a Voice,'' replaced in the first play by the lean, metallic plucks and shudders of Min Xiao-Fen's expressive pipa and the sweet desolation of Susan Gall's bamboo flute. Beneath the elegant, long curves of Glass' vocal lines, they sensitively conveyed the vast, empty miles traveled by Herbert Perry's wanderer in the first play and the complete isolation of the tiny home in which he finds Suzan Hanson. Hwang leaves us guessing about the man's motives. Did he seek out this fabled recluse in order to kill her or did this self-possessed beauty use magical powers to draw him in? With his grave, low voice and commanding samurai swordplay, Herbert Perry was as mysterious as Hanson's woman with her powerful, beguiling voice and burning eyes. Male fear of a woman's smothering love dominated both plays, but surrender proved empowering for Eugene Perry's aging man in "Hotel of Dreams.'' The final, loving confrontation between Felty's stern brothel madam and her longtime customer, a man finally at peace with himself, was tenderly wrought. The shape of Glass' music was more familiar in "Hotel of Dreams,'' with the raw-edged cello setting out a steady rhythmic pulse and flutes and pipa racing away and back in agitated flurries. Glass and the Tony Award-winning Hwang have worked together before, on "1000 Airplanes on the Roof'' and "The Voyager,'' the last a commission from the Metropolitan Opera. They create a music theater of magic and enigma.
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