Beatrice and Benedict – A Seattle Opera Original

I almost didn’t get to see Beatrice and Benedict at Seattle Opera, but my mom saved the day and bought tickets to opening night. I’m so glad we got to go, because there was so much to love about Seattle Opera’s Beatrice and Benedict. Besides being wonderful in all the usual Seattle Opera ways, it introduced me to a new composer and took a balletic, Shakespearean approach to opera. I probably need to explain that last comment.

Balletic Opera What?

Last month I saw Swan Lake at Pacific Northwest Ballet and was struck by the evolutionary process of ballet. Of course any art form develops over time, but individual ballets evolve as well. Not so opera, or at least that’s what I thought. Compared to ballet – compared to almost anything – opera has a reputation for staid tradition. The opera canon feels as fixed and dogmatic as church. That’s why we’re still watching performers in period costumes sing about the romantic affairs of long-defunct nobility, right?

Like the ballet Swan Lake, Seattle Opera’s Beatrice and Benedict is the culmination of long evolution – in this case centuries of it. Shakespeare wrote his comedy Much Ado About Nothing in 1698 (probably). The French Romantic composer Hector Berlioz saw it performed in Paris in 1827 and lost his shit.

Shakespeare struck me like a thunderbolt….I recognized the meaning of grandeur, beauty, dramatic truth..I saw, I understood, I felt….that I was alive

In French for a German audience, Berlioz based his 1862 opera Beatrice and Benedict on Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing. He left out the scene where Claudio denounces Hero, leaving modern audiences to wonder what happens in an opera with no conflict. We don’t have to find out, because the opera evolved for this production. For their first foray into Berlioz’ oeuvre, Seattle Opera paired with Seattle Symphony conductor Ludovic Morlot (we’re sad to see him go), who is a Berlioz expert. They drew from other Berlioz compositions to restore the denunciation scene and give Claudio a rage-filled, heartbroken (baritone! yay!) aria.

Shakespearean Opera

Besides representing the pinnacle of the English language, the thing that has kept Shakespeare alive is the endless malleability of his plays. They have been adapted to every time period and cultural group, produced as films, operas, and ballets, and performed by a single actor, puppets, and all-female casts. No matter how you tinker with the source material, Shakespeare always works.

The original Beatrice and Benedict was opéra-comique, closer to musical theater than proper opera (so maybe that’s a sign I’ll like Porgy and Bess after all?) In opéra-comique there is a lot of spoken dialogue instead of recitativo. Instead of sticking with the original French, Seattle Opera paired with ACT Theatre artistic director John Langs, who has a solid resume of Shakespearean productions. They made the obvious choice of using Shakespeare’s original English rather than Berlioz’s French translation for the spoken dialogue and casting regular actors in speaking roles that don’t have arias. But that forced the more challenging decision whether to translate the French arias into English or switch languages repeatedly throughout the performance. Foreshadowing next season’s English-heavy line-up, and consistent with WWSD (What Would Shakespeare Do?), they chose English all the way. (I really might end up liking Porgy and Bess after all.)

Another non-traditional, but necessary, choice was to mic the performers during the dialogue. I am so grateful that they took the trouble to turn the mics off and on throughout the performance so the audience could properly hear the dialogue without the Fifth Avenue-overload of amplified singing.

The end result of all this evolution and tinkering is a new Seattle Opera original production.

Does it work? Dear reader, it totally works.

{By the way, this production hews pretty closely to the cut that Kenneth Branagh made of the play for his 1993 film. Now I really want to go back and watch it again and compare them both to the Joss Whedon version.}

Wings of the Soul

Here’s another Berlioz quote:

Which power can uplift man to the sublimest heights? It is a large question; yet it seems to me that one should answer it in this way: Love cannot give an idea of music; music can give an idea of love. But why separate them? They are the two wings of the soul.

Except perhaps for the Nocturne and the second half of Beatrice’s love aria, I don’t think Berlioz quite made my soul soar. But as his fellow Romantic Lord Byron said, “It can’t all be good poetry.” This was my first exposure to Berlioz; although I love Romantic poetry and painting, I usually yawn at Romantic music. So in this case, the middling praise of “merely pretty” is fairly strong. He is my favorite of a class I usually dislike. I definitely like that his heroines are usually mezzo-sopranos.

The Escher-like set was a true delight and another contrast to Wagnerian fat lady opera stereotypes. I would be out of breath running up and down all those staircases; I can only imagine the training that would allow one to do it while singing opera. Truly hot barihunk Craig Verm is perfect as Claudio and obviously fit enough to pull it off. I can’t remember why I missed his Seattle Opera debut in Magic Flute last year, but I won’t make that mistake again.

Performance Details

I did see some Seattle Opera debuts this time around, and not just the ACT Theatre performers, either. Laura Tatalescu (the cynical Despina at last month’s Cosi fan tutte and a sharp-tongued Susanna in 2016’s Marriage of Figaro) was scheduled to sing Hero but was unable to perform on the night I attended. Shelly Traverse, who has been in the SO chorus since 2015 made her debut as Hero. Especially in her first appearance on stage, there was a tremulous quality to her voice that so perfectly suited the shy character of Hero. It might have been nerves, though, because she did sound stronger later in the show. I also got to see mezzo Daniela Mack debut in the lead role of Beatrice.

On the old favorites front, Beatrice and Benedict has two bass roles. Kevin Burdette was Somarone, the “Big Ass.” Although not as over-the-top as Michael Keaton’s Dogberry, Burdette got to be funnier than usual, playing conductor and talking to both the onstage musicians and the real-life orchestra (including “correcting” Morlot’s approach to one song). Don Pedro was Daniel Sumegi, formerly Daland in the Flying Dutchman. Although I have no complaints about tenor Alek Shrader, I was a little disappointed not to see Andrew Owens in the role of Benedict (he performed on the day I usually attend). He is such an incredible actor, I would have loved to see him in a role that had as much dialogue as singing.

Cast (that I saw)

Leonato                                                  Marvin Grays^†

Messenger                                             Chip Sherman^†

Beatrice                                                  Daniela Mack^†

Hero                                                       Shelly Traverse

Don Pedro                                              Daniel Sumegi

Benedict                                                 Alek Shrader

Don John                                                Brandon O’Neill^†

Claudio                                                   Craig Verm

Borachio                                                 Avery Clark^†

Somarone                                               Kevin Burdette

Margaret                                                 Christine Marie Brown^†

Ursula                                                     Avery Amereau^†

Friar Francis                                            Chip Sherman^†

Conductor                                               Ludovic Morlot^†

Stage Director                                         John Langs^†

Scenery Designer                                    Matthew Smucker^†

Costume Designer                                  Deborah Trout

Lighting Designer                                   Connie Yun

Beatrice and Benedict Details

Music and Original Libretto by Hector Berlioz
English translation of French lyrics by Amanda Holden
English dialogue by William Shakespeare
In English with English captions
Marion Oliver McCaw Hall
Performed at Marion Oliver McCaw Hall: February 24, 25, 28, and March 3, 7, 9, and 10, 2018
Evening performances 7:30 p.m. Matinee 2:00 p.m.
Approximate Running Time: 148 minutes, including one 30-minute intermission
Premiere: Baden-Baden, Germany 1862
Seattle Opera Premiere

 Buy tickets here.