Spring Break
Opera Theater tests life and death
Dora Wilkenfeld
Issue date: 3/30/09 Section: Focus
Opera may be an acquired taste for many people, but Von der Mehden Recital Hall's musical program offers UConn students and locals the chance to expand their horizons, or, if already a fan of the genre, settle in for an evening of finer music.?
Ralph Vaughn Williams' "Riders to the Sea," the first of last Saturday's double bill of two short operas, gave listeners an opportunity for one more night of Irish cultural heritage despite St. Patrick's Day being long since passed. The pace and rhythm of Aran Island speech and the cries of a death-haunted people crushed by grinding poverty and mortality gave the piece a sense of weight and solemnity, despite its brevity.?
Rachael Binaco, a first-year master's student at UConn, is possessed of a powerful voice and presence, both of which were put to excellent use in Williams' opera. As Maurya, Binaco's fatalistic premonitions of death grew in intensity, from the old widow's querulous denial of a blessing to her last remaining son, to her moans of agony as she bathed his sea-shattered corpse. Swathed in yards of sun- and wind-worn linen skirts and aprons, the women of this opera, adapted from J.M. Synge's play of the same title, are already haggard with grief; Maurya, a fragile matriarch, has lost five of her sons, her husband and father-in-law to seemingly inexorable watery deaths. When Bartley (Howie Reith), the sixth and final son, resolves to travel up the coast to sell a horse, his eventual destruction lags pitilessly behind him.
The opera is a brief one, and Bartley's death strikes him down, as foreseen by his superstitious mother, just in time for a chorus of fisher-women to join in Maurya's final lament. Anointing her son's body with holy water, Maurya's final blessing culminates in acceptance of her own emptiness: now that all her sons have been taken by the sea, there is nothing left for it to demand of her, and nothing left for her to give.
Joining Binaco in her musical wails, Mary McCue and Janet Pohli as her daughters and a chorus of similarly bereaved women end the piece on a note of stirring melancholy and mournfulness.?
Ralph Vaughn Williams' "Riders to the Sea," the first of last Saturday's double bill of two short operas, gave listeners an opportunity for one more night of Irish cultural heritage despite St. Patrick's Day being long since passed. The pace and rhythm of Aran Island speech and the cries of a death-haunted people crushed by grinding poverty and mortality gave the piece a sense of weight and solemnity, despite its brevity.?
Rachael Binaco, a first-year master's student at UConn, is possessed of a powerful voice and presence, both of which were put to excellent use in Williams' opera. As Maurya, Binaco's fatalistic premonitions of death grew in intensity, from the old widow's querulous denial of a blessing to her last remaining son, to her moans of agony as she bathed his sea-shattered corpse. Swathed in yards of sun- and wind-worn linen skirts and aprons, the women of this opera, adapted from J.M. Synge's play of the same title, are already haggard with grief; Maurya, a fragile matriarch, has lost five of her sons, her husband and father-in-law to seemingly inexorable watery deaths. When Bartley (Howie Reith), the sixth and final son, resolves to travel up the coast to sell a horse, his eventual destruction lags pitilessly behind him.
The opera is a brief one, and Bartley's death strikes him down, as foreseen by his superstitious mother, just in time for a chorus of fisher-women to join in Maurya's final lament. Anointing her son's body with holy water, Maurya's final blessing culminates in acceptance of her own emptiness: now that all her sons have been taken by the sea, there is nothing left for it to demand of her, and nothing left for her to give.
Joining Binaco in her musical wails, Mary McCue and Janet Pohli as her daughters and a chorus of similarly bereaved women end the piece on a note of stirring melancholy and mournfulness.?
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