‘The Consul’ Creates Strong Feelings For Audiences

Published in the The Post-Journal, Jamestown, NY
July 24, 2009
By Robert W. Plyler

CHAUTAUQUA - More than any other art form, opera can stir our feelings and make us think and feel at the same time. This weekend, Chautauqua Opera is presenting a work which serves as a punch in the solar plexus: Gian Carlo Menotti's powerful ''The Consul.''

The plot of the opera deals with the human cost of bureaucracy. Anyone who can't get medical attention because an insurance company wants form X signed on a different dotted line, or who sees someone with less talent but more money than his own child, get into an education program - these people will resonate deeply with this opera.

The opera is set in an unnamed European country, and it takes place in two sites: in the tiny apartment of John and Magda Sorel, and in the office of the consul to a neighboring country. At the curtain, John limps home, wounded, and tells his wife that he is wanted by the secret police, and he must flee into the mountains and try to get across the border.

She is left to care for their tiny baby and for his aging mother, with instructions to visit the consul and obtain a visa, so that the family may cross into the neighboring country and meet up with John, where they expect to be safe.

As life at home becomes more and more desperate, Magda goes back and back to the consulate, to be told by an officious secretary that she needs one more paper, one more signature, some new, meaningless bureaucratic item which will keep her family apart and in danger.

Stage director Jay Lesenger has filled the stage with people in a wide variety of national costumes, who just sit and watch, representing the millions of people like the Sorels who have tried to flee in the past, or are trying to flee now. The printed program indicates that as recently as June of this year, the United Nations estimated that there are 42 million people who have fled for their lives to a country which is not their own, who are now living in misery.

Menotti wrote this opera just five years after the surrender of the Nazis, and while the Eastern European nations were being swallowed up by the U.S.S.R., and yet clearly it is as topical today as it was in 1950.

Like the first production of this season, the singing of the cast is thrilling. Lina Tetriani was tiny, yet a powerhouse as this woman, ready to move Heaven and earth to save her family, and seeing all her labors defeated by an incorrect piece of paper or some similar silliness. The scene in which she finally erupts in frustration and anger absolutely stopped the show, and left the audience exhausted from their involvement in her performance.

Kelly Anderson as John, Meredith Arwady as his mother, and Renee Tatum as the secretary, all gave especially fine performances, both musically and dramatically.

Ashraf Sewailam as the secret police agent who regularly calls on Magda was wonderfully sinister, and his interrogations, which were courteous and reasonable on the surface, and yet which managed to convey unbelievable menace and threatening, were a work of art.

Conductor Joel Revzen made the Chautauqua Opera Orchestra into a character in the drama, perfectly nuanced in intensity to the performances on the stage.

Steven Capone's bare and bleak set was perfect for the setting, and Gregory Slawko's costumes fit the characterizations exactly.

Christopher Ostrom's lighting served the plot very well, except that the great many exposed lights at the top of the stage made it a struggle for the audience to look up to read the surtitles, which are present at Chautauqua for the first time, this year. Something made it difficult to read the words through most of the performance. Fortunately, Menotti wrote it in English, so there were no awkward translations to be dealt with.

''The Consul'' will be performed on Friday and Monday evenings at 7:30 p.m. It was reviewed in dress rehearsal at the company's request, so that the audience could have a look at the review before attending. If you're interested in attending, be warned, there were several hundred people in the audience at the dress rehearsal, and when they're through describing it to their friends, there aren't going to be any tickets left.