Revamped
in Red
The Kennedy Center Opera House is Back in Action
Opera House Preview Performance
John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts
Washington, DC
Wednesday, November 19, 2003
by George Jackson
copyright © 2003 by George Jackson
[The Opera House at Kennedy Center closed for major refurbishing in December
2002. It reopened 11 months later for this performance, which Michael
Kaiser, the Center's president, referred to in his introductory remarks
as a "test". Kaiser said of the renovation that it was "nearly
completed", and he also emphasized that a major goal was to make
the Opera House more accessible. An organization for "promoting the
creative power in people with disabilities", VSA Arts, was co-presenter
with Kennedy Center of the three part program. ]
Thinking
of the Kennedy Center's Opera House in its original guise, what comes
to mind first and foremost is red. It was a very red theater when it opened
in 1971 and neither time nor wear and tear altered that. The red was medium
in tone, and the cloths that bore the color covered walls, ceiling, seats
and floor. The stage curtain, on which a golden yellow pattern seemed
woven into the red background, looked texturally festive. The other red
fabrics didn't.
The Opera House is still a very red theater, except that now not all the
reds match.The curtain seems to be the same one as before. Most of the
walls are covered in a darker shade, a deep burgundy that makes the entire
house more dusky than before. There's more wood showing, neat cherrywood,
particularly on the seat backs. The seats themselves are hard, which is
good because you'll not doze off for long. Their total is 2374 seats,
60 more than before. Standing room capacity at the rear of orchestra seating
is 24, with a new rail for leaning support. The chandeliers, from Lobmeyr
in Vienna, still cluster on the ceiling like starfish in a breeding pool.
More elaborate now is entry into the house. From the lobby you used to
pass through one of several outer doors into a small vestibule and then
an inner door. That arrangement has been replaced by low-ceiling lobby
passages that join some of the formerly discreet spaces between each set
of doors.
To see and hear what happens in a performance, the original Opera House
was good. There were no dead spots in the audience portion of the theater
and even seats in the high balcony didn't seem terribly far away. Comparing
it to the theaters of Lincoln Center, the Kennedy Center Opera House was
and is -- in respect to capacity -- more like the New York State Theater
than the vast Metropolitan Opera House. As a setting for lyric theater,
though, it turned out to be distinctive. I never saw George Balanchine's
Vienna Waltzes look better than from the Kennedy Center Opera
House balcony. That ballet has a backdrop of mirrors, and in Washington
they reflected not just the stage picture but the conductor and behind
that personage you could also discern the audience, the contours of the
house and even a hint of its red color. The effect was devilish, far more
so than that of the more mundane reflection at the State Theater for which
the ballet had been designed.
It was the end piece on Wednesday's program, Leonard Bernstein's Mass
(Excerpts), that tested the Kennedy Center Opera House with some
stringency. The stage had been opened to its extreme depth. On stage was
a sizeable force: orchestra, choruses, solo singers, dancers. The sound
that came to my seat was clear and you could locate where it came from.
Nor did I have to strain my neck to see any part of the crowd of performers.
There's not much incline in the front part of orchestra seating (I was
fairly close to the stage, Row L, in the first seat to the right of the
left aisle), yet the heads between me and the stage were well staggered
and allowed for unobstructed views.
This was my first real acquaintance with Mass. It has emotional
force despite and because of the shameless mixture in it of Gustav Mahler,
West Side Story, Roman Catholic liturgy and Hebrew prayer. The
cast—mostly Catholic University students conducted by their dean,
Murry Sidlin, and joined by professional singers Douglas Webster and Harolyn
Blackwell—took unreservedly to Bernstein's obvious contrasts and
subtle surprises, giving them their due. Stage direction was credited
to Michael Scarola and choreography to Dan Knechtgest. There was, of course,
an awareness in the house that Mass had been commissioned for the opening
of Kennedy Center and that now, 31 years later and 40 years after President
Kennedy's assassination, others associated with the original production—Bernstein,
Jacqueline Kennedy and choreographer Alvin Ailey among them—were
also deceased.
The program's midpiece, Solo , showed that a single person can
hold the Opera House stage. The dancer Homer Avila—with his proud
carriage of the head, muscular arms and single leg—summoned control
and did not always hide anger as he did what his profession has to do:
pursue dance . Avila's choreographer was Victoria Marks, and Miguel Frasconi
supplied the music and musical composition. What did not fare well was
Deaf West Theater in excerpts from the Huckleberry Finn musical Big
River. The staging would likely have gained needed intimacy in a
smaller theater and, as Kennedy Center admits, the Opera House's sound
system needs more adjusting for intensely amplified fare.
It will take some time and a varied repertory to bring out the renovated
house's advantages and drawbacks. We will have to wait until December
and the Kirov/Maryinsky companies to learn how the Opera House functions
for fully staged opera and ballet. A "sprung" wooden floor placed
over the regular stage floor will still be installed for dance performances.
And, will it take a season or years to grow used to those mismatched reds?
The photo is of the Kennedy Center Opera House in its reconstruction phase. Your can find more photos and more information on the project the Kennedy Center's web site.
Originally
published:
www.danceviewtimes.com
Volume 1, Number 9
November 24, 2003
Copyright ©2003 by
George Jackson
|
|