IDOMENEO
The current production of Idomeneo indicates that the company is also fighting for its artistic life. In the grand scheme of things Chicago Opera Theater has established its niche as a fish swimming near the maw of the Lyric shark, snapping up the morsels that escape. Its stock-in-trade is mounting productions of moderate size in a more accessible and intimate format than is available from its wealthier cousin. The accessibility comes from the use of English translations and appropriate repertory, the intimacy from the comfortable size of the Athenaeum Theatre.
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The company desperately needs a hit now, but unfortunately we are presented not with a workmanlike production that would help expand the general interest and accessibility of opera, but with a bit of recycled Eurotrash. This refuse is in the tradition of the overwrought, angst-ridden aesthetic that came predominantly from Germany after about 1970 and supplanted the austere approach of the late Wieland Wagner, which no longer seemed sufficiently avant-garde to the jaded cosmopolites who reckon themselves the arbiters of the artistic world. There have been occasional contributions to this dismal parade from France and even this country, but mostly they have been a poor lot, aping their Teutonic mentors.
The staging and set design were cheap imitations of stale ideas that have been done more pretentiously elsewhere in America and in Europe. Contemporary dress no longer shocks even the most naive operagoer. However, it can be dull, and it does nothing to assist the players in conveying a sense of the drama. Robert Tannenbaum’s stage direction was as empty as his supercilious moralizing in the program notes. Since he apparently has no understanding of the aesthetic that underlies this 210- year-old work, it is hardly surprising that his direction was without aim or purpose. John Boesche’s projections were even more irrelevant than the ones he used last fall for Lyric’s The Voyage of Edgar Allan Poe.
