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Boston Lyric Opera’s Seraglio, BU’s Barbiere di Siviglia, Andy Vores’s No Exit, the BPO’s Bartók and Brahms
By: LLOYD SCHWARTZ 4/29/2008 12:55:32 PM
Guerilla Opera presented the world premiere of Boston composer Andy Vores’s No Exit, a hair-raising new chamber opera based on Sartre’s famous one-act play, which concludes, “L’enfer, c’est les autres” (“Hell is other people”).
With Sally Stunkel’s powerful blocking, tenor Michael Rausch as the coward, mezzo-soprano Leslie Ann Leytham as the lesbian, soprano (and general manager) Aliana de la Guardia as the adulterous baby killer, and baritone Peter D. Weathers as the grinning valet who ushers them into Hell sang Vores’s gnarly, unsettling recitatives with intense passion and cool irony, while Kent O’Doherty’s tenor sax (screaming or sweetly flute-like), Elizabeth Holub’s grim viola, Eliza Jacques’s gutsy cello, and Mike Williams’s wild or sneaky percussion revealed their inner hysteria or stymied silences. Vores created a mesmerizing series of musical extremes (some of the scariest moments involved long-held notes on single instruments). I can’t imagine anyone left the theater unshaken. |
