Dueling themes open festival

The first day of Spoleto Festival USA 2007 was dominated by the unlikely twin themes of reconciliation and alienation.

The reconciliation came at noon, with the opening ceremony in front of City Hall. Present on the platform was the mayor of Spoleto, Italy, the Honorable Massimo Brunini. As longtime Spoleto attendees know, Gian Carlo Menotti — who founded the Festival of Two Worlds in Spoleto, Italy, in 1958 and its sister festival here in Charleston in 1977 — severed ties with Spoleto Festival USA in 1993. (As to how that rift came to be, any festival veteran will be happy to give you his version, probably at some length.)

"Spoleto and Charleston are united by a special tie that only culture can create," Brunini told the rapt crowd, via his translator. The best way to honor the late Menotti, he said, is "to guarantee the continuity and quality of the events." Furthermore, the bond between the two cities "should exceed the confines of the festival." Astute observers will note that these statements are deftly devoid of actual specifics. But it sounds as though it might nonetheless be the (second) beginning of a beautiful relationship.

The alienation came that evening, at the Sottile Theatre, courtesy of Kurt Weill and Bertolt Brecht. Make no mistake: The alienation in "Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny" is deliberate, and Brecht strove for this effect in nearly all his plays. (His name for it in German was "Verfremdungseffekt," but I'll just continue to use the word "alienation," if no one minds.) Brecht (and to a lesser extent, Weill) didn't want to coddle or delight his audiences; he wanted to challenge them. Brecht accomplished this partly by dismantling certain aspects of operatic tradition, including the "suspension of disbelief" principle. Brecht never wanted his audience to forget they were watching a play, so characters frequently address the audience directly, and often accusingly. This would be hard to swallow, but the insidious attractiveness of Weill's catchy, lilting score — a brilliantly original synthesis of jazz, cabaret and early 20th-century classical music — carries the day, making Brecht's polemics about mankind's sorry state eminently palatable, both here and in their better-known "Threepenny Opera."

In "Mahagonny," a colorful trio of miscreants fleeing the law become stranded in the desert. Able to proceed no farther and unable to turn back, they decide to establish their very own City of Sin on the spot. They will use the temptation of whiskey, women and leisure to lure free spenders from all over. One visitor, a fellow named Jimmy, buys a round of drinks for all of the guests, then confesses that he has no money. For this cardinal sin — being poor and unable to pay his debts — Jimmy is sentenced to death, and none of his so-called friends is willing to step in and front him a little cash. Not only that, as one of the projected captions declares, chances are that no one in the audience would have paid Jimmy's debt, either. We're all guilty!

Directors Patrice Caurier and Moshe Leiser — along with their design team of Christian Fenouillat, sets; Agostino Cavalca, costumes; and Christophe Forey, lights — contribute enthusiastically to the Brechtian challenging of conventions. The stage is stark, and scene changes are accomplished behind a drop which looks like a large Venetian blind on its side. The city of Mahagonny, garish and tacky, is first represented by a bright, rotating disco ball, suspended on a rope. Some set pieces, like cardboard cutouts of a cloud or an ocean liner, are deliberately jokey. The cast members are dressed in bright, cheerfully mismatched colors, and they form quite a striking tableau at the top of Act II as they stand in a big clump, backs to the audience, watching the progress of a hurricane across a map.

Delivering this kind of self-conscious manifesto in an opera can be difficult for the performers, who have to keep the whole thing from slipping into self-parody. Tenor Richard Brunner, as the doomed, broke Jimmy, strikes an excellent balance, singing his often preachy texts with a vibrant, natural delivery, working himself into a lather without sacrificing vocal beauty. As Leokadja Begbick, the founding mother of Mahagonny, Karen Huffstodt is imposing and convincing, but her dramatic soprano voice is too heavy for this role. She's actually at her best in her chesty low range, and in her scenes she proves herself to be an adept actress.

The always impressive Timothy Nolen, as her cohort Trinity Moses, knocks out one of Jimmy's friends in a boxing match; serves as presiding judge at the trial; and, if that weren't enough, shows up at the end as God Almighty himself. Nolen's swaggering, confident stage presence and rich, focused baritone are captivating. Tenor Beau Palmer as Fatty, the third member of the trio, sings with a welcome tenderness. Soprano Tammy Hensrud as Jenny, one of the local prostitutes, conveys toughness and vulnerability equally well and has some of the opera's best music.

Musically, the evening was a wonderful treat. Conductor Emmanuel Villaume started off with an excellently energized overture. He took the indestructible, gleefully bizarre "Alabama Song" at a slower than usual tempo, but this emphasized the bedraggled condition of the women on their way to Mahagonny and also allowed us to savor the wonderfully sour chords in the accompaniment. Ensemble singing was a little precarious when the performers were preoccupied with stage business, but facing front for those classic Brechtian confrontational moments, they sounded wonderful.

At the very end, as Mahagonny is dismantled by stagehands amid smoky, red lighting, the ensemble comes staggering toward the audience, holding signs declaring all of mankind's sins. At the last moment, the lights turn accusingly on us. This is not exactly feel-good entertainment, but art should be able to provoke and this production certainly did. It's a bold and exciting choice for the season opener.

So much for reconciliation and alienation. Chamber music, of course, is all about collaboration. I heard at least five people say in various ways that Charles Wadsworth's Chamber Music series is the glue that holds the festival together. Audiences love Wadsworth for his dry wit and down-home charm. As it happens, he also unfailingly matches superb musicians with terrific, well-chosen repertoire.

The highlight of Friday's program was Menotti's "Suite for two cellos and piano" (a highly unusual combination), which Wadsworth commissioned Menotti to write in 1973 for cellist Gregor Piatagorsky's 70th birthday. It's a beautiful, unashamedly Romantic work; you'd hardly even know it was written in the 20th century until the rhythmically playful fourth movement. Maybe it is this reactionary aspect that has prevented the piece from receiving wider acclaim. Cellists Andres Diaz and Christopher Costanza, accompanied by pianist Wendy Chen, certainly made the best possible case for it.

The concert opened with two of Menotti's most famous arias, "Steal Me, Sweet Thief" and "The Telephone Song," performed beautifully and with a sly sense of humor by soprano Courtenay Budd, with Wadsworth at the piano. Harpist Catrin Finch played a stunningly virtuosic arrangement of Smetana's popular "Moldau." No collaboration here — just dazzling natural technique and exquisite phrasing. Violinist Chee-Yun joined Diaz and Chen to conclude the program with Brahms' "Trio in B Major," a comfortable repertory item, splendidly rendered.