Morley, a standout in Bard's Huguenots © Stephanie Berger 2009

Leon Botstein deserves great credit for reviving Les Huguenots, long neglected in the U.S., for this year's Bard SummerScape. For nearly seventy-five years, Meyerbeer's 1836 grand opéra (few grander) was central to the repertory and celebrated as a masterpiece. Perhaps it isn't one, but some of the music is genuinely inspired, and some of the orchestration remains fascinating, with conversational passages often set over no more than one or two string instruments. The showstoppers — Marguerite's entrance, Raoul's duets with her and Valentine — are still astounding, with the "Tu l'as dit" section of Act IV's grand duet rising to heights of true passion. On August 5 — the third of four sold-out shows — it was exciting to see and hear this all onstage, even if one also grasped how other passages (such as the shaky Act V) dilute the work's overall effectiveness.

A combination of verismo's rise (with attendant changes in vocal technique and priorities), the general decline of French singing and the pathological antipathy toward Meyerbeer expressed by the influential Wagner had largely killed off the Meyerbeer tradition by around World War I. In its latest attempt to date at Huguenots, in 1915, the Met offered a mouthwatering lineup, starring legends Enrico Caruso, Emmy Destinn and Frieda Hempel; today, it would be fruitless to try assembling an ideal Huguenots cast from opera's international elite. Botstein wisely concentrated on assembling younger singers with some grasp of French style.

The standout was Erin Morley's fresh-voiced, dazzlingly agile Marguerite de Valois, a lovely apparition in some of Mattie Ullrich's best and most flamboyant costumes (which ran a wide gamut in effectiveness as well as in period). She phrased her lines beautifully and tossed off high E flats and Fs like nobody's business. Andrew Schroeder's Nevers was also highly impressive, offering handsome, solid tone, fine French and the requisite elegance in both movement and vocalism. In his first major New York-area appearance, Missouri-born Michael Spyres made a promising showing in Raoul's near-impossible tasks. Acceptably dashing, he sang for long stretches with lyrical beauty and reasonably cultivated style (plenty of voix mixte, something few young tenors bother with). He audibly tired in the considerable rigors of the final acts, taking what should be ringing notes in falsetto; yet one was grateful for what Spyres could provide in this fearsome part.

It was delightful to have vivid native French onstage from Alexandra Deshorties and Marie Lenormand. Deshorties (Valentine) again proved a puzzling artist; one left confused as to what she and director Thaddeus Strassberger wanted to express about this key character. She looked ravishing in a dress from two centuries earlier than those of Marguerite; but would the chief lady-in-waiting be in a gray wig if the queen were not? Oddly, Deshorties's initial entrance into Marguerite's presence evoked a disaffected showgirl working a runway. Valentine seemed a different person in Act III's church scene, and indeed in every scene; Strassberger had her partially disrobe during Act IV's duet, to seduce Raoul; having (offstage) obtained an interview with the Queen, the devout, aristocratic daughter of a great house was improbably still in undergarments and bare feet when joining Raoul in the Huguenot cemetery. Deshorties's phrasing was musical and committed, her tone on high notes alternating steely firmness with outright screams.

As Urbain, Lenormand was Gallic gamine charm itself, utterly bewitching visually and in terms of deportment and diction; alas, on this occasion her timbre evidenced little inherent beauty. Similarly, Peter Volpe gave a terrific performance as the querulous old soldier Marcel, incisive and endearing; the decibels he produced were impressive, but the style was just too rough for his big numbers, "Piff Paff" and the moving scene with Valentine. John Marcus Bindel — an approximate, shouty Saint-Bris — offered little that was positive. Botstein's pit work showed enthusiasm but approximation and uneven control ("Plus blanche que la blanche hermine" skirted disaster), often favoring overloud dynamics.

Strassberger and set designer Eugenio Recuenco's production had some very powerful moments but also some of incoherence or willful perversity. Marguerite seemed to dwell in a freight elevator in a generic airport hotel; four partially body-stockinged attendants took a Ziegfeld-style bath in its swimming pool before Raoul's entrance. The ensuing scene — the encounter between the (here) sexually frustrated queen and the initially blindfolded hero was wonderfully directed and acted, achieving simultaneously an erotic frisson and a fairy-tale air. The Pré-aux-Clercs scene transpired under the Manhattan Bridge, its (ostensibly) tension- relaxing gypsy dancing used to show yet more Horrors of War. Semi-nude bodies were a recurrent obsession; from the opening image to the final tableau, two stripped-to-the-waist boxers were subjected to such repeated (and wildly distracting) physical abuse that it eventually became comic, suggesting Monty Python. In this fashion the famed "oath on the swords" passed for nothing.

The Catholic Noblemen were in the hands of talented young singers Marcus DeLoach, Alexander Dobson, Jason Ferrante, Andrew Garland, Jason Switzer and Tracy Wise. Meyerbeer's many tiny parts were handled in about equal portions by promising beginning vocalists and by choristers out of their depth. As a totality, let me add, James Bagwell's chorus fared splendidly. Cori Ellison's titles kept things reasonably cogent. For all the production's unevenness, I would happily have seen it again; Meyerbeer merits more frequent revival.

Botstein was on surer ground on August 9, leading Mendelssohn's oratorio Paulus (St. Paul), composed the year before Huguenots. (Mendelssohn, who didn't care for his distant cousin Meyerbeer's music, was also of course influential on and summarily denounced by Wagner, though Wagner initially praised Paulus.) Like Meyerbeer's opera, Paulus was a nineteenth-century repertory staple. It remains an extremely accomplished, agreeable work, but it must have seemed very retrograde in the wake of Beethoven: in large part it's like reorchestrated Bach of the Passions and cantatas, with some touches adapted from Handel's and Haydn's sacred works. Still, one listens in vain for the intensity and psychological acumen of Bach or the deep humanity and melodic freshness of The Creation.

Bard's performance was very creditable. Pride of place goes to Bagwell's massed choruses. (One of Mendelssohn's few innovative touches is to vest the women's chorus with the voice of God.) The cellos, flutes and brass also deserve mention. French bass-baritone Paul Gay's light Gallic tinge did not detract from his magisterial vocal artistry as the persecutor turned Christian martyr. Scott Williamson showed musicianship but a slightly weak top voice in his Evangelist-evoking recits; his Part Two cavatine went better. Alexandra Coku gave much pleasure with a beautifully clear soprano deployed with great feeling. My only complaint about Kelley O'Connor is that Mendelssohn did not give her fine-finished low mezzo enough to sing.

DAVID SHENGOLD

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