Articles
Lord Byron
VIRGIL THOMSON: Lord Byron. Matthew Lord (ten), Jeanne Ommerle (sop), D'Anna Fortunato (mezzo), Richard Zeller (bar), Richard Johnson (bass), Gregory Mason (ten), Stephen Owen (bass),
Adrienne Csengery (mezzo), Thomas Woodman (bar), Louisa Jonason (sop), Donald Collup, David Murray, Jorg Westerkemp (bar), Martin Kelley, Ted Whalen (ten), John Holyoke, David Stoneman (bass), Debra Vanderlinde (sop), Marion Dry (mezzo), Manadnock Festival Orchestra and Chorus, c.James Bolle. Koch 3-7124-2Y6x2.
At one point in his autobiography Virgil Thomson listed a number of his works. He then said, "My other works I know will make their way; these also perhaps. But they worry me because I love them." At the conclusion of the autobiography, he mentions an opera libretto in verse which had been written for him, saying that putting it to music seemed vastly urgent. That opera, Lord Byron, would come to head that list of works which he loved and worried over. It is Thomson's largest and grandest work. There is good reason to think that he intended it as the summation of his life as a composer. It contains somewhere in it all the styles, methods, and techniques that he used in his career. Although he lived almost twenty-five years after its completion, no work he wrote after it came anywhere near it in breadth of statement or in its length or its size.
Each of Thomson's operas is mythological. Fours Saints in Three Acts is concerned with the religious life as exemplified by the lives of St. Ignatius and St. Teresa of Avila (who are presented as friends and collaborators, but who lived centuries apart); The Mother of Us All takes as its subject eighteenth-century American political oratory presented as a backdrop to the very public and political life and struggle of the American suffragette Susan B. Anthony. Lord Byron is about worldly fame and its relationship to an artist's work and life as demonstrated in the life and posterity of the poet. Unlike its predecessors, which, although not at all easy, somehow have lent themselves to performances by community and college groups, and although it was at first envisioned, by Jack Larson, its librettist, at least, as a work that could be performed in schools and universities, Lord Byron is a Grand Opera. It has three acts (and originally contained a ballet). There is a large orchestra and chorus; there are many parts, and all of them are hard. Its demands in terms of forces are pretty much irreducible.
Lord Byron was originally commissioned by the Ford Foundation for the Metropolitan Opera. In the event, however, the Met never produced it. Its first (and only) production, by the opera department of the Juilliard School in 1972, directed by John Housman, who had been the director of the first production of Four Saints in Three Acts, was something of a flop, possibly due to Thomson's insistence that it be given the grand treatment. (Larson has said that finally he reached an agreement with Thomson that the first production was Thomson's: he could have it any way he wanted it; the second production was Larson's). Suffering the effects of the reception of the original production, Thomson made numerous cuts, many of them perhaps unnecessary. In celebration of his 90th birthday there was a not very remarkable concert performance in New York of a badly mangled two-act version. Those remained the only performances of this magisterial work until James Bolle and Manadnock Music presented three concert performances in the early fall of 1991. (Calling them "performances" is perhaps stretching things a bit--they were actually public recording sessions.) It is these performances which are preserved in the present recording.Lord Byron takes place in the nave of Westminster Abbey, and presents there the three worlds of Byron's public and private existence: his public, represented by the people of London who mourn his death and later on express disbelief and anger at his being denied burial in the Abbey; the poets, his colleagues in greatness, whose spirits as well as statues inhabit the Poets' Corner; and his friends, sister, and wife, who have come to the Abbey to present a statue of Byron to the Abbey and to petition for his burial there, both as a great poet and as the hero of the struggle for the freedom of Greece. The news that Byron had written his memoirs plunges his friends, pledged to maintain his posthumous fame, into complete panic, since they believe that whatever the poet has written will surely completely damage his reputation. The arrival of the statue (uncrated right in the Abbey), which is an extraordinarily faithful likeness, causes them to remember events in their common life with their friend (presented in flashbacks): his first meeting with his future wife, their increasing intimacy, the night before their wedding (Byron's bachelor eve party and Miss Milbank's finishing of her wedding gown with her aunt, Lady Melbourne, and Byron's sister Augusta Leigh), and Lady Byron's discovery that Byron is the father of his sister's daughter and her insistence that Byron and Augusta Leigh must never see each other again, which leads to Byron's leaving England forever. Fearing the worst from his still unread memoirs, his friends burn them in a brazier, just as the Dean of Westminster arrives with a full retinue of acolytes and a choir. On discovering that his friends consider Byron's account of his life to be unfit to be read, the Dean refuses to permit his burial in the Abbey. After his friends withdraw from the Abbey and as the people of London question the Dean's refusal of burial, the poets welcome Byron into their company.
The libretto for Lord Byron, which is by the poet, playwright, actor, and motion picture producer Jack Larson, is one of the very best of twentieth century libretti. It is the equal of Gertrude Stein's texts for Thomson's other two operas, W. H. Auden's for Stravinsky, or Stephen Pruslin's for Birtwistle. In continuous rhyming couplets, it skillfully weaves quotations from Byron's poems into its lines. Thomson's music, more formal (and, he thought, more "English") than the music for the Stein operas, adds the wisdom and skill gained over a life time's dealing with words and theatre to his innate sense of musical drama. It is masterly in its setting of the words, and uncanny in its characterization of personalities and in its musical representation of the dramatic situations in which they find themselves. Thomson himself considered Lord Byron a "perfectly good opera," and was sure that it worked.
Under the circumstances one can only be grateful to Koch Records, James Bolle, and Monadnock Music for the devotion and effort which made it possible for this sadly and unjustly neglected masterpiece to become accessible to the world at large. In a better and more just world, however, one would be less grateful and more mindful of the shortcomings of the performance. There are very few large operas, even familiar ones, that can have justice done to them on three rehearsals with the orchestra. The familiarity and understanding to find the singing expressiveness and dramatic passion in what may at first seem simple and repetitive accompanimental figuration simply cannot be gained in such a short time. Among the principals, Jeanne Ommerle (Augusta Leigh) and D'Anna Fortunato (Lady Byron) offer wonderful performances, beautifully sung, clearly enunciated, and dramatically and sensitively acted. They are recorded rather peculiarly, however; not only are they at a lower level of volume than the men, it is sometimes difficult to hear them over their accompaniment. Matthew Lord (Byron) sounds very good and sings as though he is watching himself in a mirror the whole time (which might be appropriate for the character). Richard Zeller (Tom Moore), Richard Johnson (Hobhouse), and Gregory Mercer (Murray) are also quite good. It is virtually impossible to imagine what could possibly have made anybody ever think that Adrienne Csengery should be included in the cast. Perhaps it was the idea that a heavily accented English would be rather charming for the Countess Guiccioli (certainly Laura Betti's recordings of Kurt Weil songs are endearing). Ms. Csengery hardly pronounces the words, let alone conveys any sense that they might mean anything, and sings throughout with a deplorable rhythmic sense. This becomes fatal to the climax of the opera, a grand and elaborate duet by the Countess Guiccioli and her brother, Count Gamba (Thomas Woodman) refuting the aspersions which the Dean has cast on Byron's character, which is highly rhythmic and strictly cannonic throughout. In this case it becomes almost gibberish. Tom Moore's entr'acte in Act II, reminding his friends that the Byron who they knew and loved was known to the world at large only through his books, which is not that hard, is also, surprisingly, just barely together.
The performance of Lord Byron preserved on this recording is far from flawless. It is, however, going to be the only one around for a while, and most of it is at least recognizable. Lord Byron the opera, on the other hand, is a masterpiece. One of the central works by one of the most important American composers who was one of the best opera composers of any time or any country, in any language. One can worry for it because one loves it. The love is richly deserved.