Chamber Orchestra Shines with Mendelssohn/Jost Double Bill

setting for "A Midsummer Night's Dream" by Shakespeare, Corbett Theater, SCPA, June 12, 2011

Music director Mischa Santora and the Cincinnati Chamber Orchestra have been brushing up their Shakespeare.

Their Woody Allen, too, with a concert Sunday afternoon in Corbett Theater at the School for Creative and Performing Arts.  Featured works were the complete incidental music for Shakespeare’s “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” by Mendelssohn and “Death Knocks” by Christian Jost.

Woody Allen

“Death Knocks” (2001), a thirty-minute chamber opera based on a play by Woody Allen, was a U.S. premiere.

Both works were semi-staged, with the CCO occupying one-half of the stage and the singers and actors the other.   Both were highly inventive, thanks to Santora who continues to show himself a singularly creative conductor/stage director

Mischa Santora

Santora  has done semi-staging with the CCO before, for example, “Mozart’s “Don Giovanni” last season and “Cosi fan tutte” in 2006.  The economy which this necessitates was part of his concept for the Mendelssohn, where the “set” consisted of a garment rack and chairs for the four actors, Aretta Baumgartner, Randy Lee Bailey, Joshua Steele and Alison Vodnoy.

 Consider it “avant garde,” “European,” said Santora, when interrupted during the Overture by Baumgartner protesting about “budget cuts,” “garage sale items” (for costumes) and actors who didn’t show up.

 Jost’s work required a table and chairs for the two characters in the play.

 Despite simple staging for both, attention was rapt throughout the concert.

 Singing the title role in “Death Knocks” was mezzo-soprano Audrey Walstrom, a doctoral student at the University of Cioncinnati College-Conservatory of Music.  Hers was the delightfully ditzy role Allen created for the Grim Reaper, who literally drops in on a middle-aged man (baritone Chad Sloan) to announce his pending demise.  “Knocks” refers to gin rummy, which they play to determine if he will go with her or get a 24-hour reprieve.  The two were well-matched, Sloan nervous and questioning, Walstrom impatient and sarcastic -- appropriately far less menacing than the equivalent role in Ingmar Bergman’s film “The Seventh Seal,” where Allen got his inspiration.  She even lacked white face paint and her blonde hair flowed freely.  Both singers displayed formidable singing and acting skills.

The six-piece orchestra reflected the scene perfectly, whether frenzied, chaotic or quiet.  Growling bassoon punctuated Death now and then, with taps of wood block (knocks) during the card game and lots of eerie bowed vibraphone.  Lights went down and up again as the game progressed, with the man ultimately victorious.  Death made a klutzy exit (she was heard falling on the stairs) and the man observed to friend on the telephone, “She’s such a schlep.”

Often heard in excerpt form, Mendelssohn’s “Midsummer Night’s Dream” contains some of his loveliest and most familiar music (“The Wedding March” being only the most famous example.)  The CCO and members of the Vocal Arts Ensemble gave it lush expression, with fine solos by singers Debra Van Engen and Alison Acord of the Fairy Chorus.

Attention flowed easily from the musicians to the actors.  Dressed in street clothes, they all played multiple roles – the lovers Hermia and Lysander, Demetrius and Helena, the King and Queen of the Fairies, etc.  They ducked behind the garment rack to add hats, wings, banners and other items to identify them as they changed characters, including the obligatory donkey’s head for Bottom.

Vodnoy was a standout as Puck, from the moment she emerged from the audience – a volunteer eager to aid the role-burdened cast – to the final scene where she blew bubbles wishing good luck and happiness to the reconciled lovers and bidding “goodnight unto you all.”

The concert repeats, without “Death Knocks,” at 7:30 p.m. June 26 at Anderson Center.  Tickets are $20.  Call (513) 723-1182, or visit www.ccocincinnati.org