A popular trend nowadays is the vocal recital “plus”: adding
a visual or theatrical element, or at the very least a theme, to the
performance of a selection of songs or a song cycle. Tuesday night, the Lyric Theater
presented a number of Eastman School voice students in two
different approaches to lyric theater — in a space well suited to them.
“Hearing Ophelia,” conceived and directed by Megan Steigerwald, takes Ophelia’s lines from “Hamlet,” adds a
number of musical settings to them, and artfully slices and dices them into an
intriguing theatrical format, in which a Composer (Emily Siar)
studying the character is confronted by a multitude of Ophelias,
each telling one bit of her story (acted and sung compellingly by Ashley
Cooley, Julia Fedor, Amanda Guidi,
Caroline Nielson, Hailey McAvoy, Michele Currenti, Kelly Whitesell, Robin Steitz, Elizebeth Barnes, and
Sara Neally).
Shakespeare gave Hamlet the title role, but he gave Ophelia
the good tunes; this production offered some songs that were discoveries to me.
I did not know of Brahms’ straightforwardly lyrical songs, Berlioz’s haunting
“La mort d’Ophelie,” or a real rarity, Richard
Strauss’s slightly freaky “Ophelia Lieder,” whose weird harmonies and
Expressionist atmosphere certainly don’t sound like any of his popular art
songs – though they certainly are effective.
“Theater Lieder,” as its title suggests, was a much
less elaborate, but just as effective, presentation — in part because it
is based on Schumann’s “A Woman’s Life and Love,” one of the most popular of
Romantic song cycles.
In these nine songs, a woman goes from first love to wedded
bliss to motherhood to mourning, all in about 25 minutes. Schumann’s exquisite
music lends sublimity to some rather obvious and sentimental poetry, and Andrea
McGaugh’s interpretation makes the piece engaging
without trivializing it. She takes the piece at face value, acting out a
simple but emotional story with the help of three (almost) silent partners:
Henry Benson, Jennifer Lawrence, and Galen Otten.
And, not least, McGaugh has a beautiful mezzo-soprano
voice and a pleasing, unaffected stage presence — both ideal
for this piece.
Both of these presentations also represented outstanding
collaborations with a fine pianist: Edward Rothmel
for “Hearing Ophelia,” Shichao Zhang in “Theater Lieder.”
Both “Hearing Ophelia” and “Theater Lieder” have ended
their Fringe runs.
This article appears in Sep 21-27, 2016.
