ST. LOUIS — Verismo. Literally translated, it simply means “realism.” In the operatic world, however, it’s a catchall term for the artistic movement that, to quote Stanley Sadie in his 1990 History of Opera, brought opera “into line with the other arts of the late 19th century in its readiness to accept the daily life of common people, even (indeed especially) at its most squalid, as apt material for treatment.”
One of verismo’s leading lights has always been Ruggero Leoncavallo’s Pagliacci (Clowns), whose libretto the composer also wrote. Since Pagliacci is too short for a full evening, producers have routinely paired it with Pietro Mascagni’s Cavalleria rusticana, so much so that the double bill has acquired the nickname Cav/Pag.
Through Aug. 1, though, St. Louis’ Union Avenue Opera is pairing Pagliacci with, as they say on Monty Python, something completely different — the 2016 monodrama Josephine with music and libretto by contemporary American composer Tom Cipullo.
Based on the life of the acclaimed entertainer, war hero, businesswoman, and civil-rights activist Josephine Baker (1906–1975), Josephine takes place in Baker’s dressing room at the Bobino music hall in Paris, where she’s being interviewed by an unseen journalist preceding her final comeback performance days before her death in 1975. As the interview unfolds, Baker both recalls and relives key events of a life that was, to quote Cipullo, “a mix of triumph and disaster.”
“What made her so mercurial, so volcanic, so alternately charming and volatile?” Cipullo asks in a composer’s note he wrote preceding the work’s premiere in Washington, D.C. “That’s the question I pursued as I composed the opera.”
The pursuit led Cipullo to create a work that feels more like a contemporary musical theater piece than an opera, with separate songs and a mix of spoken dialogue and breaks for applause. There’s also a cabaret feel to it — a sense of direct, emotional honesty that makes it easy to sustain the illusion Baker is speaking to us directly.
Which, in a way, she is. “In creating the libretto for Josephine,” wrote Cipullo, “I was inspired by her own words. Indeed, the more controversial, more colorful statements are direct quotes.”
That’s consistent with Cipullo’s reputation as a composer who has a deep respect for the lyric. In a Fanfare review of Cipullo’s 2009 disc Landscape with Figures, William Zagorski noted that Cipullo “excels by pulling off the conjuror’s trick mastered by all the great writers of poem-based song from Schubert forward — the blurring of the demarcation between where the word ends and the music begins.” I can’t think of a better way to describe the seamless integration of words and music that characterizes Josephine. The individual songs stand out enough to work as solo arias while still sounding deeply embedded in the overall narrative.
The Baker revealed in the opera is a mass of contradictions: vain, noble, proud, self-pitying, sentimental, bitter, and ultimately rather heroic. “The public,” she tells us, “is like a man. They’re happy to stay with one woman…as long as she keeps changing.” And change she does. She drops names of the rich and famous, flirts with the interviewer, and generally reminds us that, as Shakespeare wrote of Cleopatra, “Age cannot wither her, nor custom stale / Her infinite variety.”
Josephine is, in short, a nuanced portrait of a complex and remarkable woman. I would have liked more emphasis on Baker’s work with the French Resistance during World War II and perhaps less on the grimmer aspects of her life, but overall I found it to be a dramatically compelling piece with a wonderfully eclectic score that expertly matches the mercurial moods of its subject.
Bringing Baker’s multifaceted character to life demands a soprano who has a big, flexible voice that can purr or rage as needed, as well as a commanding stage presence. As her opening-night performance demonstrated, Manna K. Jones is just the woman for that job. From her first moments on stage, she demanded and got the audience’s attention.
Her opening number, “The Public is Like a Man,” was jazzy and seductive, and it captured the emotional kaleidoscope of the piece. Within the space of five minutes, her performance, combined with Cipullo’s music and lyrics, conjured up the essence of Baker’s act: the flashy costumes (“I was the best dressed nude dancer in history”), her range of material (“A comic song! A torch song! A joke, a blues, a dance, wild and primitive”), and her energetic stage persona.
Jones also showed us Baker’s sentimental side in “Twelve Children” as the character tenderly reflects the multi-ethnic “Rainbow Tribe” of children she adopted. The musical line is wide-ranging in this number, but Jones navigated it with apparent ease. And the singer perfectly captured Baker’s white-hot rage as she describes how, at the age of 11, she and her mother fled their home to escape the infamous East St. Louis Race Massacre of 1917.
In the final scene, Baker proudly recalls sharing the podium with the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. at the 1963 March on Washington. In her memory, she returns to that moment and takes us with her. “I am not a young woman,” she says to the crowd, “and there is not much fire left inside me now…I want to use what is left to light that fire in you.” Her speech is interrupted by the arrival of an invitation to the White House and, once more addressing the crowd, Baker declares that “a black woman is not going to visit the President. It is a woman. It is…Josephine Baker.”
Blackout.
Jones’ performance of this journey from quiet reflection to proud triumph was masterfully done, bringing Baker’s long emotional journey to a quiet and dramatically satisfying conclusion.
Josephine is a musically and theatrically demanding piece for both the singer and the orchestra. Scored for a quintet consisting of violin, cello, flute, clarinet, and piano, the music covers a range of emotions with the most economical of means. The Union Avenue Opera musicians played flawlessly under the direction of Stephen Hargreaves.
The contrast between Cipullo’s portrait of Josephine Baker and Leoncavallo’s lurid tale of despair, betrayal, and passion gone rancid could hardly be stronger — possibly too strong to make the combo work as a double bill.
Quoted in the company’s press material, director Kathryn Frady says she sees the pairing as a study in opposites that ultimately reveals a shared core. “Josephine celebrates the voice of a woman who chose her path, shaped her image, and used the stage to tell her truth. Pagliacci shows us what happens when personal pain is buried beneath performance until it erupts.” That might be stretching the comparison to the breaking point. Josephine is a near-documentary of a real person. The story of Pagliacci, while based on an actual criminal case, is completely fictional. The characters are less stereotypical than was the norm back in 1890, but they still lack any real depth, the verismo label notwithstanding. Bottom line, it can be hard to take Pagliacci seriously after seeing Josephine.
Fortunately, a solid cast of great singers can still make Pagliacci tremendously entertaining, and Union Avenue has assembled just such a cast. Tenor Jonny Kaufman was a boiling reservoir of rage as Canio, the Pagliaccio of the troupe’s show. When he uncorked that big, dramatic voice in “Vesti la giubba,” it was easy to forget what a damaged person Canio is.
Baritone Andy Papas was the black-hearted clown Tonio, who also acts as the opera’s Prologue. Papas has a voice that can make one’s ears ring, and he put it to good use here.
Soprano Meroë Khalia Adeeb played Canio’s long-suffering wife Nedda. She’s yet another high-powered singer with solid acting skills. She let us see both Nedda’s longing and her capacity for cruelty.
Baritone Kenneth Stavert was Silvio, the villager in love with Nedda. He and Adeeb brought warmth and powerful vocals to their Act I love duet. Tenor Marc Schapman’s Bepe was a welcome breath of decency in the sordid world of Pagliacci. Conductor Hargreaves led the 20-piece orchestra in a rousing account of the score, and the Union Avenue chorus demonstrated impressive versatility as the assorted villagers.
This year marks Union Avenue Opera’s 31st season, which began with My Fair Lady in July and concludes Aug. 15-23 with Strauss’ lurid succès de scandale, Salome. Their performance space in the Union Avenue Christian Church is acoustically problematic, but the company has made a name for itself by presenting a wide variety of repertoire both ancient and modern in productions that are long on professionalism and short on attention-grabbing visual gimmicks. Long may it continue.
