Michael Bishop

What do a 9-year-old opera adapted from a psychological film and a 170-year-old opera based on medieval legend have in common? One answer: Sex and miracles. Another: they’re both can’t miss productions at Houston Grand Opera (HGO) right now.

In Missy Mazzoli’s 2016 opera Breaking the Waves, a young woman from a traditional religious community in Scotland (Bess) marries an outsider (Jan) who suffers a terrible accident that leaves him paralyzed. At Jan’s request – and with urging of the voice of God in her head – Bess embarks on sexual adventures with strangers, convinced that by doing so she is contributing to Jan’s healing. These escapades grow ever more dangerous and lead to her death… which is followed by Jan’s miraculous (?) recovery.

In Wagner’s 1845 Tannhaüser, sex is sin rather than salvation. The titular knight’s stint in the goddess Venus’s love cave dooms his soul to hell. When he reveals his experiences during a song contest, his fellow knights cast him out and he embarks on a pilgrimage to Rome. The Pope rejects his repentance, but the chaste love of Elisabeth, who dies in prayer for Tannhaüser, leads to a miracle that signals his redemption.

Francesca Zambello’s new Tannhaüser production amps up the parallels by setting the opera not in a medieval principality, but – you guessed it – a traditional religious community. (The HGO men’s chorus is getting lots of practice brandishing Bibles this month.) So Bess and Tannhaüser both get rejected by drably dressed finger-waggers for their promiscuous behavior and both embark on journeys of faith. Bess’s self-destructive, sacrificial spiral achieves its goal, whether by coincidence or divine intervention, while Tannhaüser’s self-pitying masochism fails. (Good thing there’s a woman to bail him out!)

While it provides fun fodder for comparisons, Zambello’s staging robs the opera of much of its poetry and stakes. There are no kingdoms or knighthoods in these toned-down supertitles (never mind what the German says), just the “community;” no swords or spears, just pens. It makes Tannhaüser’s big reveal at the song contest rather anticlimactic when, instead of threatening to kill him for his crime, his fellow poets brandish crosses. (Do they think he’s a vampire?)

This Tannhaüser is also decidedly unsexual. Venus runs a chic art salon (sets are by Peter J. Davison), not a den of decadent iniquity. She has seduced Tannhaüser into (gasp!) premarital sex, but surely that’s not a crime for which it’s impossible to repent? It makes you wonder what all the fuss is about and even root for Venus in her Act III effort to reclaim Tannhaüser.

There’s also an annoying lack of specificity in this production. The projections (by S. Katy Tucker) during the long overture are pretty, but they don’t tell a story or even feel stylistically coherent. The religious community seems vaguely Puritan or Quaker, so why send Tannhaüser to visit the Pope? How long does his pilgrimage take? (Between Acts II and III, the song hall/church has burned down and a tree has grown among the ruins.)

And what year are we in, anyway? Constance Hoffman’s costumes for Venus’s realm include specific fashion references to the 1910s (a Delphos gown, harem skirts, etc.), while the religious faithful seem stuck somewhere in the early-to-mid-1800s. (Quaker dresses, kerchiefs and caps for the women; pseudo-military waistcoats and jackets for the men.)

Michael Bishop

Quibbles aside, I enjoyed Tannhaüser immensely. HGO pulled off a daring musical feat here — role debuts for all ten principal singers and a house debut for the conductor — without a single flop. Maestro Erik Nielsen made the HGO orchestra sound like they play Wagner every day. From the tricky six-instrument start of the overture to the crashing finale, there was not a note out of place or balance. (The musicians say Nielsen has an uncanny ear and great patience for detail work; it shows.) Despite its nearly-four-hour run time, the opera didn’t drag, thanks to sprightly tempo choices and no ballet.

Leading the cast were the magnificent Russell Thomas as Tannhaüser and Tamara Wilson as Elisabeth. I’m on record criticizing Russell Thomas plenty — I never thought Tito suited him, and for a while he seemed to be singing it everywhere —  but as his voice has grown into larger rep, I’ve started to love what I’m hearing. His Parsifal at HGO last season was a triumph, and Tannhaüser suits him even better.

Consistent sound across his range, biting top notes full of delicious tenor squillo, and expressive storytelling with both his voice his eloquent facial acting make for a winning combination. If he occasionally sounds shouty, it’s at least dramatically appropriate. Well-balanced opposite him, Wilson has a focused clarity of sound rarely heard in a voice this size. She deploys a snarling lower register, gentle piano pleas, and steamroller-sized fortissimi at all the right moments.

The sextet of knight-poets are excellent. Their initial hunting scene shows off individual personalities and timbres, while layering beautifully. Bass Alexandros Stavrakakis stands out as Landgraf Hermann (Elisabeth’s uncle), with buttery-rich, smooth tone. As Tannhaüser’s friend and Elisabeth’s (tragically friend-zoned) suitor Wolfram, baritone Luke Sutliff sings with straightforward clarity and heart-wrenching sincerity. Sasha’s Cooke’s Venus turns on a dime from warm, seductive legato to piercing curse. Kudos are also due to the HGO chorus under director Richard Bado. Whether singing sweetly a cappella or thundering over the full Wagnerian orchestra, they consistently produce a glorious and cohesive sound.

Lynne Lane

I intentionally avoided Lars van Trier’s film before watching Mazzoli’s opera, preferring to judge the work as a self-contained piece rather than an adaptation. (If intermission chatter is any indication, few of my fellow operagoers had seen the movie, either.) And on its own terms, Breaking the Waves is an astounding musical drama. I almost hesitate to call it an opera – although the score is its driving force – because it feels more like a sung play or even, true to its source, a film. The plot unfolds with relentless speed. The vocal text is set with an ear for the cadences of speech. Even arias and ensembles are part of the action, not pauses for reflection. The result is less beautiful but more exciting than most of what you’ll see in the opera house; it’s up to you whether that’s a warning or selling point. (I loved it.)

That’s not the only way Breaking the Waves scares off the usual opera crowd; there’s also the subject matter. This isn’t a story that can be told without a fair amount of sex, nudity, and cussing onstage. In Tom Morris’s production, nothing is gratuitous. Yes, there are sex acts onstage: the joyful sex between Bess and Jan as they discover intimacy with each other, as well as Bess’s first few encounters with strangers. (Obligatory warning for the pearl-clutchers: these include bare buttocks and bare breasts.) All of it serves the plot and feels both necessary and real. The brutal violence of the ending is (thankfully) implied rather than shown.

The staging is both simple and striking. A “V” of columns on a rotating stage transforms from beach to church to hospital to oil rig to boat deck, thanks to mind-bogglingly well-mapped projections by David Butler. (They are so precise and deceptive – even as the stage turns – that I initially thought the columns were screens.) The singers move through these settings with a sense of purpose and naturalistic ease. Except for God. The all-male chorus that serves as the voice of God startles with their first slithering entrance from among the church risers. Their creeping gaits, obsessive repeated gestures, and sibilant consonants border on comical (What is this, a zombie movie?), but never quite overstep.

The chorus also gets some of Mazzoli’s most beautiful music. They urge Bess to her death (“Complete the task…”) in flowing harmony, singing one of the night’s only memorable melodies. Of course, catchy tunes aren’t this opera’s selling point. Rather, the score impresses for its breadth and dramatic drive. Mazzoli’s music is a bit Glass, a bit Dvorák, a bit Saariaho, and a lot her own.

She builds a lyrical but eerie soundscape full of screeching, tinkling, whistling, and sliding. A rhythmic throughline keeps the momentum strong. The jagged, tense transition between Acts II and III — scraping violins punctuated by crashing percussion — and the intrusion of an electric guitar during the “boat scene” were two of my favorite moments, but there was a lot to love. And there was a lot to love about the HGO Orchestra’s precise delivery under Patrick Summers’s baton. Flawless coordination both among the orchestra and with the singers, combined with a brisk and energetic approach, proved the perfect formula for this material.

Royce Vavrek’s straightforward text  — few attempts at rhyme or metaphor here, though some words and phrases provide powerful recurring motifs — and Mazzoli’s skillful setting don’t mean the singers have it easy. This opera makes extraordinary demands: compelling acting, emotional and physical vulnerability, and a wide range of pitches and techniques. Every performer in HGO’s production was up to the challenge. (And they did it all with such good diction, I barely needed the supertitles – no mean feat when singing in English inflected with a Scottish burr!)

Soprano Lauren Snouffer was devastatingly convincing as Bess, portraying a mix of uncanny naiveté and dangerous certainty. The contrast between her emotive demeanor as Bess and her slack-faced expression when she declaimed God’s messages — Bess speaks over the chorus in these conversations with herself/God — was especially striking. Her music demanded a broad technical repertoire: stratospheric top notes that were alternately rounded, screeching, and straight; long, sliding glissandi; and crisp staccati. Snouffer managed it all, without ever letting the effort of singing break her character.

Lynne Lane

Importantly for the opera’s emotional impact, Snouffer also had great chemistry with Ryan McKinny’s Jan. McKinny’s baritone was all honey for most of the happy first Act, later adding a rasping growl as Jan turned towards illness, self-loathing, and grief. By his final scene (“My Bess, I’ve stolen you back”), both his voice and posture dripped with pain. His quiet closing phrases were more visceral than beautiful and deeply affecting.

As Bess’s friend and sister-in-law Dodo, mezzo-soprano Maire Therese Carmack made an HGO debut that has me hoping for a quick return. Her voice has a pleasingly rich texture and the easy legato of rolling hills – an ease that somehow persisted even as she spat venom in her fiery last scene. Soprano Michelle Bradley sang the role of Bess’s mother with a ringing voice that soared over ensembles. Her condemnation of Bess’s promiscuity (“I won’t ask what you’ve been up to”) was pointedly delivered, each word its own sharp sentence. Tenor David Portillo reprised the role of Dr. Richardson (having created it in the opera’s 2016 premiere) with bright tone, vocal agility, and an earnest demeanor.

As Breaking the Waves unfolds, the various roles of the men’s chorus start to bleed together. Their slinking physicality as the God-chorus infects their scenes as churchmen and sailors. Those blurred lines are a hallmark of this spring season: how do you distinguish between order and destruction, faith and delusion? If religious groups judge and reject, is individual belief the key to salvation? Can we save ourselves, or can redemption only come through the sacrifice of others? Apt questions for HGO’s Easter-time operas, which should leave audiences thoughtful – and ecstatic.