Janacek’s depressing story centers on Mila (Christine Abraham), who has an out-of-wedlock child with the composer Zivny (Michael Hendrick) and has been kept away from him by her mother (Linda Roark-Strummer).

RONALD BLUM, THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
The Record (Bergen County, NJ)
07-30-2003

Depressing story, exhilarating setting
By RONALD BLUM, THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Date: 07-30-2003, Wednesday

There finally may be a stage on which to launch the U.S. equivalent of England’s Glyndebourne Festival, the annual summer showcase in Sussex where picnicking in formal attire is nearly as integral to the experience as performances.

Approaching the Frank Gehry-designed Fisher Center at Bard College in Annandale-on-Hudson, N.Y., it seems as if a shimmering, silver-colored spaceship has landed in the woods of the Hudson Valley. Inside is a jewel box of a theater that holds 900 for opera, and outside are sprawling lawns.

Three months after the building opened, the first SummerScape festival began Friday night with the American stage premiere of Janacek’s “Osud” in a production designed by Gehry.

Because of budget constraints, Gehry had just one set for the three-act, 90-minute opera, set in a spa, a house, and a conservatory hall. There were two free forms that looked like torsos, one in brown and one in white that turned into a billowing cloud, and other free forms that sort of folded over like a taco.

Much of the breezy atmosphere was created by Kaye Voyce’s bright and pretty 1930s-era costumes, and outstanding lighting by Jennifer Tipton.

Janacek’s depressing story centers on Mila (Christine Abraham), who has an out-of-wedlock child with the composer Zivny (Michael Hendrick) and has been kept away from him by her mother (Linda Roark-Strummer).

Zivny, thinking Mila has betrayed him, composes an angry opera that is a fictionalized account of the events, then reunites with her at the spa where they first met. Four years later, after the pair marry, the mother visits them, gets into an argument, and the mother and daughter go over the balcony to their deaths.

The final act is set 11 years later, when an excerpt of the opera is in rehearsal, and the students realize the still-unfinished work is about the composer’s life. The opera closes with sort of a male Libestod, with Zivny collapsing while fixated on the image of his dead wife.

Abraham, looking gorgeous in red dresses, was impressive and intense as Mila, dominating the stage whenever she was on it, and Hendrick and Roark-Strummer also gave highly polished accounts. Paul Mow portrayed Dr. Suda in a white suit that made him look a bit like Sydney Greenstreet, but the portly tenor displayed a lovely, flowing voice. And conductor Leon Botstein led a colored account of the score from the American Symphony Orchestra.

The problem with “Osud,” which translates to “Fate,” is the drama doesn’t really build as it does in the composer’s “Jenufa” or “The Makropulos Case,” instead unfolding in fits of angry episodes. It’s a work that probably would attract an audience only under ideal conditions, such as these.

SummerScape, which centers on Janacek this year, runs through Aug. 17 and includes a puppet version of Janacek’s “The Cunning Little Vixen” and an adaptation of Mozart’s “Don Giovanni.”

Keywords: THEATER, FESTIVAL

Copyright 2003 Bergen Record Corp. All rights reserved.

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by Ronald Blum

The Associated Press