LA SVENGALI
Under his malign, hypnotic influence, Trilby becomes a famous singer, called “La Svengali” after her “manager.” She’s capable of a four-octave range whenever Svengali moves his hypnotic hands, almost choking out her notes, but when Svengali dies of heart failure, Trilby loses her voice. Having already lost her soul, she sickens and dies–just when Billy promises to marry her at last. Like Antonia, the haunted singer in Offenbach’s Tales of Hoffmann, the creature does not dare to outlive its creator.
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Fortunately Larry Neumann Jr., with his neurasthenic intensity and sepulchrally sallow face, makes Svengali’s plight more than melodrama. (He also gives a whole new meaning to the concept of voice control.) Neumann’s spellbinding Svengali is a sad, congealed thing who can justify the suicide of a student by spitting out, “She had no voice.” Registering the isolation as much as the mania, Neumann makes us think twice about which character is the one possessed. He lifts this production above itself.
