POSTCARD FROM MOROCCO
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Don’t go running to your regular opera reference books for information about Postcard From Morocco. Most of them stop sometime shortly after World War II, and this work didn’t hit the boards till 1971. It is supposedly set in a train station in Morocco in 1914, but the setting is unimportant and really provides nothing more than a catchy title. In fact, the only link to the time before World War I is provided by the costuming. It’s ironic that works whose characters and attitudes are inescapably linked to an earlier time and setting–the Middle Ages, or the Enlightenment–are dragged willy-nilly into the 20th century through inappropriate costumes in the name of a dogmatic eclecticism, while a work that has no special frame of reference and could be plausibly set anywhere in the last 170 years was nailed to a specific time and place.
There is nothing remarkable about the story line of Postcard From Morocco, such as it is. A motley group of travelers alternately entertain and annoy each other with their insecurities. It’s sort of a Waiting for Godot at Union Station.
The orchestra and conductor were onstage, which allowed the set to extend out over the pit. The design, by Mary Griswold and John Paoletti, was Spartan yet in accord with the work, though the lack of a backdrop other than the bare bricks of the back wall of the stage also seemed a little too self-consciously artsy. The costuming, also by Griswold and Paoletti, followed the musical score, mixing a couple of dancers from the 20s with the prewar singing characters.
