By ROBERT MOYNIHAN

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'KISS ME KATE'

This Kate is the anti-”lady” of Shakespeare’s “Taming of the Shrew.” She is almost domesticated by Cole Porter following the travails of put-upon heroines in literary history, Penelope, Dido, Griselda, and other almost forgotten remnants of repression.
It might be remembered that women in the Elizabethan age had the barest legal rights. Before marriage, papa controlled their cash absolutely. After the rite, their estates went to husbands who frequently gambled away the proceeds and drank the profits, should there be any. The only solution to this abysmal state was revolt.
Shakespeare with his penetrating wit and social awareness realized that women were not merely co-equals but often superior in intelligence and moral insight to their frequently stupefied mates. His plays are filled with women more able or sensitive than their fathers or husbands.
The often irrational impulse of desire. What can women do to make men behave? Withdraw. But in the practical world of narrow social options, men could erect their own hurdles to matrimony and eventual “domestic bliss” – perhaps one of the more cutting oxymorons in platitude-land.
In Elizabethan England, upper and even mid-class marriage was not for “love.” It was for profit. It ensured alliances to increase whatever power or influence was at hand. What if someone said “no” to this arrangement?
One of the most subversive writers in human history, Shakespeare bounces the character of Kate off the fortified superiority of the “Virgin Queen,” for the leading questions almost until her death were “does she, will she, how, and when?” Rarely, of course, women like Queen Elizabeth I could refuse to allow the moves in this social game of matrimonial chess – and this gives us the splendid character of the “shrew,” who wants nothing more than her independence. But in this musical and the earlier play, she is battered into submission – apparently.
Cole Porter saw this plot as an occasion for his own creativity – which was considerable. Beginning as an undergraduate at Yale, the Indiana-born Porter quickly took to wit, irony, and sophistication, all in academic short supply of both then and now New Haven. Porter, escaping Yale’s muscular pretensions, reversed repression and myopia, giving us the world of Kate, the scenes of social limits apparently incapable of correction.
Does Kate triumph either in the scenes of the Bard or the American Porter? Words, mere words, are the solution, for they move without the channels of literalism imposed by social convention. Even the imposition of rhyme, in the hands of genius, becomes a form of liberation.
When a skillful rhyme finally arrives after the cliches of most pop music and bad verse, an audience invariably responds with delight – for surprise is hidden in the promise of language.
There are many such delights in “Kate”: the promise of “Tex” who sends “checks” inevitably results in “sex,” but “I’m always true to you, darlin’, in my fashion.” As for “I hate men,” the high point was the parody of Donizetti bel-canto, with, of course, flute obligatto provided by Floyd Hebert. There isn’t room enough to list every manifold display of excellence in the Glimmerglass production. The choreographer was Darren Lee, the superb chorus prepared by Bonnie Koerstner. The cast, including Brad Little, Courtney Romano (a priceless comedienne by instinct), Lisa Vroman (as Elizabeth I manque), the unique Damian Norfleet, and Machale Mott and Bradley Nacht with their “Brush up your Shakespeare” (rhyming “bonus-Adonis, Alice-Pitti Palace, Lisa-Tower of Pisa” and the added stanza including “potent Liebesverbot”) only added to the delight of performance.
What is good, if not great, art but the reversal of pattern and expectation?

Robert Moynihan, retired SUNY Oneonta English professor, is record critic for Listener magazine; his writings have also appeared in the New York Times.


by JIM KEVLIN

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‘Giulio Cesare in Egito'

The first two acts of Handel’s “Giulio Cesare in Egito” are like a roller-coaster’s tension-building climb. Act Three is the wild, roaring rush down the far side.
The curtain rises, Julius Caesar’s army has lost a battle with Ptolemy’s forces (which ensued during the intermission) and is thought to have drowned at sea.
And Ptolemy turns to punishing his sister, Cleopatra, Caesar’s recent lover: “I will see you humiliated, humiliated.”
Exit.
Then Cleopatra, “In a single day, I lose everything – cruel fate ... But once I am dead, I will torment the tyrant night and day!”
A rectangle of light appears at the top of the spare, Globe-Theatre-like set, and Caesar returns: “Breeze, heal me ... comfort me in my sorrows.”
Achilla, Ptolemy’s former right hand, appears, stabbed, and – as he dies – offers 100 men to Caesar to avenge him.
Sesto, whose father, Pompey, Ptolemy beheaded, also seeks vengeance: “The bow of justice holds the arrows of revenge.”
A delighted Cleopatra, reunited briefly with Caesar before he goes off after Ptolemy, sings: “The battered ship that survives the storm desires nothing more.” Right.
Sesto assassinates Ptolemy: “I heed nothing but my own desires.” And his mother, Cornelia, praises his act: “You are clearly son of the great Pompey.”
The survivors of all this carnage hail “the return of joy and peace” and the curtain falls.
The roller coaster comes to a stop and heartbeats begin to slow.
This particular reviewer has no expertise in opera.
So what you read here is simply Everyman-Who-Doesn’t-Know-Much-About-Opera’s reaction to a matinee at Glimmerglass Opera’s seemingly intimate Alice Busch Theatre – seemingly, because it actually fits 900 people, although no one is farther away from the stage than 70 feet.
According to the opera staff, there are usually several dozen seats available on the Monday matinees. So if, at the last minute, you want to slip away from whatever daily toils you face, go. It feels like playing hookey, sitting in the darkened theater, watching the orchestra and hearing marvelous sounds.
There are some dissonances in “Cesare in Egito” – purposeful ones.
Dressing the Roman soldiers in uniforms that echo the Mussolini Era – the “Indiana Jones” movies come to mind – shakes the imperial impetus out of the ancient setting. You can’t help reflecting on how American Caesars are continuing to play out that dynamic today in Iraq.
And there are racist parallels, too. Cornelia spurns Achilla, in part because she is a grieving widow, but also because “I am a Roman” and he a lowly Egyptian. Caesar and Sesto, Pompey’s son, are both played by women. Dragging an ear during the intermissions, the thinking was that the original cast may have been populated by castratos, and this was an effort to capture that.
But it might be argued that, as with the uniforms, this is an effort to shake the characters free of stereotypes, in this case gender ones. Is Carly Fiorina any less driven – and scarey – than Dick Cheney? And Ptolemy sings falsetto. A bit of a buffoon he; it plays perfectly.
When he squeekily sings, “I am not afraid of a woman,” it’s quite hilarious. “Take her away. I will see her kneel before my throne.” Again, no expert here, but Lyubov Petrova, as Cleopatra, delivers impossible rills effortlessly. And her depiction of the legendary beauty – brassy, sassy, tempting, infuriating, meddlesome, .rash – is perfect. A deft touch: The conquest of Egypt in Scene One is depicted metaphorically. Jack-booted Italians beat a turbaned peasant. Point made. All in all, “Giulio Cesare in Egito” will bring fi rst-timers back to the opera. What are YOU doing Monday afternoon?

Labels: Giulio Cesare in Egito, Glimmerglass, Glimmerglass Opera, Kiss Me Kate, Opera, Theatre