Lisbon, OperaFest 21 : Gian Carlo Menotti, The Medium

The score for chamber orchestra, compact, elusive and dramatic, is on par with this tale of human weakness and cruelty. Menotti’s neoclassical music has often been compared to Puccini’s; here, it leans more towards Weill and, most of all, Britten’s Jamesian opera The Turn of the Screw (another story of childhood and ghosts). For a little more than an hour, the melodic motives exposed in the Overture irrigate a tenuous orchestral discourse that envelop and stimulate the human voice – be it sung, spoken, whispered or screamed. Menotti has often proclaimed the pre-eminence, in his work, of theater over music: The Medium is a striking demonstration of this. Directed with precision and bravado by Diogo Costa, the MPMP Ensemble comes through this deceptively simple music with flying colors.

The mezzo-soprano Cátia Moreso is a « Madame Flora » straight out of the world of cabaret (let’s recall that The Medium was a huge hit in Broadway). Her powerful voice is capable of the most subtle nuances, essential to render the complexity of her character, part-tormentor part-victim, where the explosive violence seems to hide a secret wound. In the role of Monica, the soprano Cecília Rodriguez, both woman and child, gives the full measure of her talent in the moving lullaby that closes the first act, where she soothes her mother’s fears. The vocal cast (and Toby, a silent role performed with sensitivity by Benjamim Barroso) offers a convincing reply to the formidable Baba. Faced with this Saraghina of sorts, who is in turn terrifying, moving or pathetic, the medium’s clients oppose their desolate humanity, locked in a pain that also condemns them to the margins of reality.

The staging makes the most of the constraints of the relatively narrow stage. A special mention goes to the lightings, which, through the play of screens, deploys a fascinatif shadow theater reinforcing the nightmarish atmosphere of Menotti’s tale.

Once vanished in Lisbon night the last notes of Menotti’s music, the statues in the garden, as if in tune with the unreal atmosphere of the opera, mingled with the audience, accompanying with their silent standing ovation the thunder of applause honoring the artists of this beautiful production.