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Elizabeth Futral, Zoe Caldwell & Company Put NYCO in the Mood for Cleopatra |
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by Bruce-Michael Gelbert | >> see bio |
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photo by Christian Steiner
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| Elizabeth Futral |
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The New York City Opera (NYCO), banished from the David H. Koch Theater, formerly the New York State Theater, while it undergoes renovations during the times the company ordinarily performs, and dealing with changes in management, with one leader already out of the picture (Gerard Mortier) and the next yet to be determined, is set to give just two complete opera performances this season, of Samuel Barber's "Antony and Cleopatra," in concert at Carnegie Hall, on January 15 and 16. To get its audience in the mood for re-acquaintance with the Ptolemaic Queen of Egypt in her infinite variety, NYCO presented a symposium entitled "What Becomes a Legend Most?" on January 10 at the Miller Theater at Columbia University. I attended two of the afternoon's four events, Elizabeth Futral's recital, billed as "Cleopatra Sings," and a panel discussion, called "Creating Cleopatra," moderated by NYCO Dramaturg Cori Ellison and featuring noted actress Zoe Caldwell and Professors Francesca Royster and Ann Macy Roth.
Assisted by pianist Susan Caldwell, Futral began with four arias of Cleopatra, reflecting different aspects of the Queen, as she appears in George Frideric Handel's "Giulio Cesare," an opera with a long history at NYCO, beginning on the opening night of its Fall, 1966 season, the performance said to have made Beverly Sills and Norman Treigle into stars. Her soprano fresh, flexible and bright, Futral relished Cleopatra's defiance against her brother, Tolomeo, in the florid "Non disperar, chi sa?" Her voice sounded silky in the hushed legato "V'adoro, pupille," with which Cleopatra seduced Giulio Cesare, and as she lamented her fate in "Piangerò la sorte mia," when Tolomeo imprisoned her for her alliance with the Roman Emperor. The latter aria included a fiery B section, rapidly paced and ornate, replete with fluently executed pyrotechnics. In a jubilant "Da tempeste il legno affranto," representing, as Ellison put it, the "triumphant and proud Cleopatra," seemingly effortless cascades of seamless coloratura pealed forth from Futral's throat, as she ornamented the vocal line extensively and inventively.
From Jules Massenet's final opera, "Cléopâtre," given a posthumous premiere, Futral first sang "J'ai versé le poison dans cette coupe d'or," the seductress' dulcet dare to the men who adore her to drink a poisoned potion she has prepared, in exchange for a kiss as a reward. In Cléopâtre's suicide scene, "Le triumvir est mort!," Futral's Queen dramatically mourned Marc Antoine, contemplated her death, regretted the end of her glory, then embraced death and anticipated reunion with her love.
Turning to contemporary views of the Queen, Futral offered the world premiere of Justine Chen's "Cleopatra," an understated song, filled with foreboding, commissioned for the occasion, and employing Ellison's translation of Anna Akhmatova's poem, in which the poet equated her and her family's persecution in Soviet Russia with Cleopatra's suffering. On very different notes were the Rolling Stones' "Blinded by Love," a gentle rock cautionary tale, beginning "The Queen of the Nile, she lay on her throne, and was drifting downstream on a barge that was burnished with gold," and Pam Tillis' "Cleopatra, Queen of Denial," a he-done-me-wrong country number, with a refrain of "just call me Cleopatra, everybody, 'cause I'm the Queen of Denial," and including an ironic hoochy-coochy quotation.
Futral's ebullient encore was the repeat of the A section of "Da tempeste."
In the panel discussion that preceded Futral's recital, Zoe Caldwell, who played Shakespeare's Cleopatra to Christopher Plummer's Mark Antony at Canada's Stratford Festival Theatre, declared that, though Plutarch wrote that Cleopatra was not beautiful, "she was deeply, deeply sexy" and impressed people as a beauty because "she was so incredibly bright-bright as a teenager-bright when she learned from Julius Caesar, 33 years her senior ... She had a great gift of language." Caldwell quoted Plutarch-"she was the only Ptolemy who spoke Egyptian ... she could pass from one language to another," rarely needing an interpreter-and quipped, "We should make that a prerequisite for our State Department." Cleopatra's reputation in Rome was that "she was the most beautiful woman in the world-being bright is better than beautiful." Recalling her experience in "Antony and Cleopatra," Caldwell observed that "the genius of Shakespeare's play is that Cleopatra's a composite of all women in all aspects" and said that she and Plummer played a pair "so intimate that not even death could part us." Antony and Cleopatra, she added, were "neither wholly great nor wholly corrupt," and concluded, "The tragedy is not theirs, but ours."
Author of "Becoming Cleopatra: the Shifting Image of an Icon" and Associate Professor of English at DePaul University, with expertise in Shakespeare, African-American popular culture, and gender and queer theory, Royster spoke of "the way that African-American women have appropriated" Cleopatra-a "creative sort of appropriation"-and "consumed her," "snatching [her] image away from Claudette Colbert and Elizabeth Taylor," and noted that depictions of Cleopatra "always had a little bit of the other-always white, but surrounded by black and brown bodies," concluding that "exoticism [and] desirability have always been part of her image." She showed a clip from Blaxploitation film "Cleopatra Jones," with Tamara Dobson, swathed in furs, making a grand entrance from a helicopter in lieu of a barge and cited the legendary Queen's appearance in works of Lil' Kim, Lauryn Hill, and Queen Latifah, whose Cleopatra on film is "a lesbian bank robber, very butch." Royster spoke of the diva "in queer culture" having an image of "excess" and, starting with Leontyne Price as Barber's Cleopatra, "being a fighter, being a survivor, creating a mask of excess." Royster drew a comparison between Cleopatra and Condoleeza Rice-"not my favorite person," but one who, similarly, politically uses "soft persuasion that can get torturously tough."
Egyptologist Roth spoke of Cleopatra (the Seventh)'s depiction as "a kingly sort of woman," one of at least five women considered female kings or pharaohs, and wives of the sun god Ra. Nefertiti was another and may have joined Akhnaten in his reign. Sculptures, Roth said, depict both as androgynous.
During a Q&A, Ellison raised the question of whether or not Cleopatra was a feminist, calling her example a "double-edged sword" as she was "intelligent," but "achieve[d] her power by playing to men." Caldwell pointed out, "She didn't have to raise a sword-or even any money." To Ellison's question about ideal casting for Cleopatra, Royster responded, "I would cast Eartha Kitt," calling the singer "a survivor."
Remaining tickets, from $25 to $130, for Barber's "Antony and Cleopatra," starring Lauren Flanigan and Teddy Tahu Rhodes, on January 15 and 16 at 8 p.m. are available at the Carnegie Hall box office at 57th Street and Seventh Avenue, by calling 212/247-7800, or by visiting www.carnegiehall.org.
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