Opera Review: The House on Mango Street; The Rake's Progress

Samantha Sosa, Kaylan Hernandez, and 
Mikaela Bennett in
The House on Mango Street.
Credit: Kayleen Bertrand/
The Glimmerglass Festival

The Glimmerglass Festival in Cooperstown, NY celebrates its 50th anniversary season with departures from traditional operatic fare. In addition to Stephen Sondheim and James Lapine’s Sunday in the Park with George, an unconventional Broadway musical in both its form and content (previously reviewed), the Festival is presenting The House on Mango Street, a world premiere opera based on Sandra Cisneros’ beloved coming-of-age novel featuring an eclectic score by Derek Bermel, and Igor Stravinsky’s 1951 The Rake’s Progress which employs 18th century forms through a modernist lens. The results of these stylistic blendings are bracingly exciting in both productions.

William Raskin and Mikaela Bennett in
The House on Mango Street.
Credit: Kayleen Bertrand/The Glimmerglass
Festival

It’s hard to imagine Mango Street in stage or operative form since the original is a kaleidoscopic series of short vignettes detailing the adolescence of Esperanza, a Latina teen growing up in an immigrant neighborhood in Chicago. The libretto by Cisneros and Bermel fashions the fragments of the novel into a dazzling, cohesive tapestry. Just as the libretto stitches together the myriad threads of Esperanza’s story and her numerous friends, relatives, and neighbors, Bermel’s score incorporates many different musical styles to reflect the diverse milieu of the plot. No less than 13 different genres can be detected, ranging from salsa, ranchera, mariachi, and Tex-Mex to rap and hip-hop with touches of gospel, polka, and klezmer. Somehow these disparate elements come together to form a harmonious whole, under conductor Nicole Paiement’s baton, just as the bits and pieces of Cisneros’ novel do. 

Chia Patino’s direction manages to keep the multiple storylines clear with the aide of John Conklin’s suggestive sets, Amith Chandrashaker’s versatile lighting and Greg Emetaz’s evocative projections.

Taylor-Alexis DuPont
and Mikaela Bennett in
The House on Mango Street.
Credit: Kayleen Bertrand/
The Glimmerglass Festival

Before the first note of music is played, the audience can hear a strange metallic sound. When the curtain rises, we see that noise is being made by Esperanza (expressive Mikaela Bennett) typing on an old-fashion manual model at what appears to be a kitchen table. Behind here is a scrim upon which dozens of sentences from Cisneros’ novel are projected. From here we are taken into Esperanza’s world as Conklin’s set consisting of two large, wooden-frame houses are rolled on stage. We meet the various characters of the neighborhood as her family moves in. There’s eccentric Cathy, Queen of Cats (delightfully daffy Catherine Thornsley costumed by Erik Teague in imaginative, feline-festooned finery); siblings Lucy and Rachel (funny Samantha Sosa and Kaylan Hernandez) who promise to be Esperanza’s friends forever if she will give them five dollars to buy a bike; Sally (outstanding Taylor-Alexis DuPont), the sassy local flirt who covers up the abuse she suffers at home with a boisterous presence; and cynical landlady Edna (marvelously dry Tzytle Steinman) and her sister Ruthie (magnificently melancholy Natalie Corrigan) who longs for her romanticized past and bemoans her disappointing presence. 

Off-B'way/Regional Review: The Gospel at Colonus; Sunday in the Park with George

Stephanie Berry, Davone Tines, Frank Senior, and
Samantha Howard in The Gospel at Colonus.
Credit: Julieta Cervantes

Musical styles are mixed to maximum emotional effect in unusual productions in one new outdoor venue in Manhattan and at the 50th anniversary season of a long-established festival in upstate New York. Lee Breur and Bob Telson’s The Gospel at Colonus returns in a soul-stirring staging in the Amp at Little Island, affording spectacular views of the Hudson River as a galvanizing cast retells the Oedipus myth with passion and fervor. Meanwhile in Cooperstown, New York, the Glimmerglass Festival celebrates its golden anniversary with a moving world premiere (The House on Mango Street) and a pair of innovative, imaginative restagings of two modernist classics from Broadway and the opera repertory (Sunday in the Park with George, The Rake’s Progress).  

The Gospel at Colonus has an unusual production history. After opening at the Brooklyn Academy of Music in 1983 and winning an Obie Award, the adaption of Sophocles’ tragedy Oedipus at Colonus set in an African-American Pentecostal church service was performed to acclaim in Washington, DC, Philadelphia and Atlanta and was filmed for PBS. An unlikely Broadway transfer in 1988 starring Morgan Freeman ran for only 61 performances and received only one Tony nomination (for Breuer’s book). 

Kim Burrell (center) and company in
The Gospel at Colonus.
Credit: Julieta Cervantes

Breur's original production was on a grand scale with an enormous choir. Shayok Misha Chowdhury’s new staging is more intimate with David Zinn’s minimal set suggesting sylvan glades and ancient ritual environments. The role of Oedipus, seeking sanctuary and shelter just before his death after a tragedy-strewn reign as king of Thebes, was originally taken by the Five Blind Boys of Alabama. (This casting echoed Oedipus’ horrific self-blinding after discovering he had unknowingly killed his father and slept with his mother.) Here his lines and solos are divided between an intense Stephanie Berry who also serves as narrator and preacher of the service, and operatic bass-baritone Davone Tines and jazz singer Frank Senior.