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Sunday Happenings
A couple of weekends ago, this Bostonist's mom dropped off a children's book, withdrawn from the New Britain Public Library, titled Adventures of Richard Wagner. The mischievous protagonist, "little Dicker," slides down banisters, carries wet puppies in his woolen cap, and hand-copies the score of Carl Maria von Weber's Der Freischütz. The last few pages had been pulled out, so who knows how this ends?
The bulb in the overhead projector blew out during Weber's very German fairy tale on Friday night, but Bostonist (mostly) got the ending, thanks to some expressive (if garish) staging. Opera Boston's production at the Cutler Majestic looked somewhat plain at first glance, with a combination of John Deere green picnic tables, new hiking boots, Bavarian hats, un-fraktur typography, and some stiff German-storybook poses placing the action (and inaction) in a vaguely recent, vaguely Alpine once-upon-a-time. The second act revealed a bolder, more playful aesthetic, with myriad picture frames hung on towering slabs of faux-wood-paneled interior. These were later flipped around to their black and grey camouflage b-sides, with one structure unfolding further to show an enormous target, an infernal anti-halo or a cross, depending on which character stood in front of it. Daniel Snyder, as the unlucky ranger Max, endures some sort of inexplicable Satanic frat hazing here.
This unsubtle visual device was most at its most effective behind Emily Pulley, who, as Max's fiancée, corseted in bridal white, holding a bridal bouquet in one hand and a dead bird in the other, sang movingly about divine order. Opening the third and final act, Agathe's "Und ob die Wolke sie verhülle" was a confession of faith, beautifully and bravely sung as if to persuade herself of its truth, in defiance of the bull's-eye at her back.
Andrew Funk, as Kaspar, also impressed us, with his deft shifts between joviality and demonic seething, and with the resonant force of his last, furious outbursts. "Dem Himmel Flucht!—Fluch dir!" (Very roughly: "Fuck God. Also, fuck you.") The all-around solid cast included David Kravitz (whom Bostonist last saw expounding upon economics) as Prince Ottokar and Angela Hines Gooch (whom we last saw in her pajamas) leading a ladies' auxiliary in chunky burgundy heels. Heather Buck did not lack for agility (vocal or otherwise) as Ännchen, the heroine's obligatory non-fainting sidekick.
Der Freischütz has its final performance tonight at 7:30 pm.
Press photographs by Clive Grainger.
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