Spartan women to the right of her, Athenians to the left: Lysistrata (soprano Anya Matanovic) stands boldly against sex in a effort to end the war. From Odyssey Opera/Boston Modern Opera Project’s production of Mark Adamo’s Lysistrata: the Nude Goddess, Feb. 15 in Boston’s Jordan Hall. Kathy Wittman/Ball Square Films photograph
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Fed up with war, Lysistrata leads both Athenian and rival Spartan women in a sex strike. For Aristophanes, some centuries ago, that was the premise for a bawdy punfest of a comedy.
For composer/librettist Mark Adamo, the weak-kneed standoff between lusty women and their agonizingly erect men tries comically not only to end a war, but attempts to engender a broader discussion of fate and identity.
Sometimes it succeeds.
Odyssey Opera and the Boston Modern Orchestra Project, conducted by Gil Rose, semi-staged Adamo’s Lysistrata: The Nude Goddess on Feb. 15 in Boston’s Jordan Hall. Lysistrata is Adamo’s second opera of four: Little Women was first, and most recently Adamo wrote the libretto for husband John Corigliano’s The Lord of the Cries as well. Lysistrata premiered in Houston and New York in 2005/06, and has had several stagings since.
Adamo has written a rich score—too dense at times—that was nimbly served by Rose, his orchestra and the astutely assembled cast of singers. Soprano Anya Matanovic sang the title role, with tenor Dominic Armstrong as her love interest Nico. Mezzos Katherine Beck (Myrrhine), Lucy Schaufer (Kleonike) and Alexis Peart (Lampito, the tongue-twisted leader of the Spartan women); with bass-baritone Kevin Deas (Leonidas), baritone John Moore (Kinesias) and a dozen ensemble singers in supporting roles, sang with authority and blended beautifully.
Tenor Dominic Armstrong (left, as Nico, leader of the Athenians) and bass/baritone Kevin Deas (Leonidas, Spartan leader) discuss ending the sex strike. Their soldiers lie on the floor and try to think of something else. Kathy Wittman/Ball Square Films photograph
Adamo’s ambitions are broad, but not easily defined. The sexual shutdown makes for moments of humor—the hapless men spend Act II with perpetual boners, while the equally conflicted women bemoan their “unplucked flax.” (The sex wars are exclusively hetero here, although Sappho makes a cameo, garnering some lesbian shade.)
Adamo employs the humor, but wants more. A central premise—“Things always have been like this, and always will”—wants to encompass not only the discomfiting slapstick of desire, but war, identity and duty. Those thoughts are sometimes too hazily articulated for the characters to bring them to life.
The embracing intimacy of Jordan Hall loves singers, and the vocal score had heft, and sat easily with these voices. Matanovic sang with lyric style and tenacity—she was central to most scenes. Her intense concluding aria, “I Am Not My Own,” was shaped beautifully, sung with narrative drive. Matanovic paired well with Armstrong, both lovers weighing duty and desire.
Other pairings were equally compelling, like Armstrong and Deas, generals mulling surrender in “Too Late in the Day, Sir”; or Beck, Peart and Schaufer in multiple scenes exploring the fractious alliance of women.
The libretto, mostly rhymed, strove for a kind of musical theatre panache. Overall, the score presented an amalgam of styles, sounding Sondheim- and Copland-esque at its best. Gil Rose has decades of experience articulating scores for one-offs or short-runs, and that translates into confident performances, like this one, of challenging works. Rose conducts unambiguously and never takes a measure off, and singers and instrumentalists benefit.
Costumes from the party store: tenor Neal Ferreira (the Spartan solider Alpheus) tries to look classical in his Ninja Turtles breastplate. Kathy Wittman/Ball Square photograph
Adamo directed, and used the stage fringe organically. Costumes were modern, although the women were classically toga-ed for some scenes. The men were uniformly mocked, not only with bulges, but armor purchased from a party store. The plastic breast-plate that tenor Neal Ferreira wore, in a deus-ex-machina as Ares, undeniably invoked the classic tale of the Teenage Ninjas. Ferreira had trouble suppressing a grin as he sang the ominous “Never Will It End.”
Adamo’s Lysistrata makes no attempt to update a classic, but its own goals need to be intuited, since they are incompletely articulated. The music buttresses Lysistrata, which at times plays greater than just a comedy. When it doesn’t, the music rescues it.