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American opera may not often be “pretty,” in the conventional sense — full of sweeping orchestral passages, irresistibly tuneful arias and triumphal choruses.
But at its best, American opera is undeniably dramatic, musically inventive and emotionally involving.
Carlisle Floyd’s “Of Mice and Men” certainly fits this description. A faithful adaptation of John Steinbeck’s novella of two friends whose simple dream of a home to call their own comes tragically undone, Floyd’s opera is a powerful piece of American music drama.
Tulsa Opera’s production, which opens Friday at the Tulsa PAC, does Floyd, Steinbeck and American opera proud. (I attended the final dress rehearsal Wednesday.)
Floyd’s score is filled with fragmentary, angular, propulsive music that reflects the precarious situations of the characters, a sonic mosaic of the unsettled and insecure, struggling to find something solid on which to build a real life.
All they have, however, are their dreams, from the almost attainable to the highly improbable.
And it’s only in the hopeful recitation of these dreams that Floyd’s music grows more conventionally lyrical and soaring.
In other words, everything is in this opera for a purpose, which is to forward the story and enrich the emotions that underpin it. The economy of the storytelling, and the richness of the music with which it is told, makes “Of Mice and Men” as compelling as a thriller, as heartbreaking as the saddest love story.
It also helps that Tulsa Opera has gathered some exceptional singers for this show, beginning with Corey Bix and Craig Verm.
This is the second time Bix has portrayed Lennie Small, the childlike giant unable to control either his affection or his rage, and he brings a surprising but appealing delicacy to this character.
Bix doesn’t overplay the part — he shows just enough of that laser-like focus a child can aim at some object he wants, and his smile at moments of joy is a rictus of someone who doesn’t quite know how to express his emotions.
The same is true with Bix’s singing; he conveys this character’s vulnerability in the way he can send high notes floating, in the bright openness of the duet extolling how he and George will “live off the fat of the land,” in the way he transitions from mournful to panicked in the aria that follows his accidental killing of Curley’s Wife.
Lennie is certainly the showcase role, but George is the opera’s true center. He’s as much Lennie’s reluctant parent as traveling partner, the one who has to keep Lennie in line as best he can. And the music he sings highlights the character’s terribly mixed and contradictory emotions about his friend.
Verm handles this role with aplomb, his robust baritone bringing an almost heroic air to George’s outbursts of anger and frustration, as well as a honeyed sweetness when George allows himself to believe that the dream of a farm of his own might just be within his reach. And the way Verm handles the final scene is heartbreaking.
The sole woman in the opera isn’t even granted the courtesy of a name — she’s simply Curley’s Wife, ignored by her bully of a husband and looking for some sort of attention from whoever might be willing to supply it.
Ava Pine treats what could have been a stereotypical character with great sensitivity. The scene of Curley’ Wife flirting with the ranch hands in the bunkhouse reveals her to be a woman unaccustomed to playing the vamp — Pine uses those piercing high notes in the middle of certain phrases as a way to reveal the character’s own vulnerability. She’s trying too hard to play this part, and it shows. It gives this anonymous woman a very real, very tragic humanity.
Matthew DiBattista plays up the ranch boss Curley’s sadism and Napoleon complex with gusto, and Ryan Allen gives the aging ranch hand Candy a dignified pathos. Tim Petty is all quiet authority as Slim, while Steve Sanders gives the proper bluster to Carlson.
Director Kristine McIntyre has shaped the characters and action with great finesse on the heavily stylized sets created for Utah Opera by Vicki Davis (and which seem inspired by the paintings of Grant Wood).
Tulsa Opera artistic director Kostis Protopapas guided the Tulsa Opera Orchestra through this harmonically dense, emotionally complex score with a sure hand, and Lyndon Meyer prepared the all-male chorus.