Beyond the Horizon (Teatro Grattacielo)

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Teatro Grattacielo closed its 30^th season with the world premiere of Nicolas Flagello’s opera, Beyond the Horizon, based on the Pulitzer Prize-winning play by Eugene O’Neill. This marks a shift for Teatro Grattacielo which up to now had specialized in lost or forgotten Italian operas turning to new American works. The performance at La MaMa Shares was graced by the presence of co-librettist Walter Simmons and the composer’s widow, Dianne Flagello. The play has the distinction of being considered the first native American tragedy, as well as being a watershed in the American theater.

While the score to the opera was finished in 1983, a degenerative neurological condition and early death kept the composer from finishing the orchestrations. In 2004, the estate asked composer/music manager Anthony Sbordoni to complete the orchestrations and ready the opera for performance. Composed in the romantic style of Italian verismo, it was chosen by Teatro Grattacielo for its first American production. Composer Nicolas Flagello was the brother of Metropolitan Opera bass Ezio Flagello, New Yorkers both.

O’Neill’s Beyond the Horizon, his first full-length tragedy in a long theater career that produced only one comedy, is set from 1905 – 1913 on a barren New England farm, like several of O’Neill’s famous plays, Desire under the Elms and A Moon for the Misbegotten. Andy and Robert Mayo are brothers who have grown up together but who are very different. Andy is well suited to farm work, while Rob, a dreamer and a lover of poetry who had to drop out of college after his first year, can’t wait to get away. His mother’s brother Captain Scott has given him an opportunity to sail the world and see all the places he has dreamed about. The night before Rob is to leave, their neighbor and childhood friend Ruth declares that she loves him and not his brother. As a result Rob decides to stay on the farm and marry Ruth. When Andy hears what has happened, he takes Rob’s place and leaves for the life of a sailor.

However, Rob and Ruth quickly find out they are unsuited to each other and farm life. Even their one child does not bring them together. When Andy returns after three years, Ruth is ready to tell him she has made a mistake and Rob hopes he will remain and help save the failing farm.  Unfortunately, for them and their two mothers who live with them, Andy is offered a berth as second in command to Buenos Aires where he had planned to go for a business investment. When Andy returns five years later, the mothers have long since passed away, Rob is dying and he and Ruth have lost their only child. Again they are hoping he will stay and help out on the failing farm but ironically he has lost all his money speculating and plans to return to Argentina to recoup his loses. Ultimately, by the final curtain they are all lost souls regretting the choices that they made.

The libretto by the composer and musicologist Walter Simmons is very faithful to the O’Neill play, almost entirely dialogue taken from the original script. Unfortunately, they chose to shorten the text by 25% (as well as cutting the two intermissions) so that the tragedies happen one on top of the other with little time for intense emotional flights. This also dilutes the sense of irony that all the characters are down on their luck. Reducing the cast list by two tightens the play but changing the little daughter to a son and then keeping in the reference to playing with dolls seems inappropriate. Using O’Neill’s original text leaves hardly any room for arias and the opera sounds mostly like recitative set to music. The orchestrations which began with trumpet calls and included triangle and violin solos added to the power of the story. Conductor Christian Capocaccia did fine work with the orchestra but putting them behind the stage affected both the sound and the singers ability to follow them.

The cast was generally fine while the direction by Ian Silverman was solid. The scenic concept designed by Taylor Friel using simply a thrust stage covered with gravel on which a box for the outdoor scenes and chairs for the indoor scenes were carried out not only worked well but sped up what would have been five scene changes for the six scenes. It also added to the grimness of the story, of a failing farm in which the poor tenants were often freezing. As the two brothers, tenor John Bellemer as Robert, the dreamer, and John Robert Green, the farmer who becomes a sailor, made a striking contrast. Bellemer had a short aria in the first act that was well received. Green distractingly used a great many right arm movements to express emotion, always the same way. As their love interest Ruth, soprano Sara Kennedy had a vocal line which was made up mainly of high notes as well as a third act aria that stopped the performance.

As the two mothers, mezzo-soprano Melina Jaharis as the compassionate Kate Mayo and mezzo-soprano Carla López-Speziale (though originally scored for a contralto) as the nagging Mrs. Atkins, Ruth’s widowed mother, made an interesting contrast. Bass-baritone Daniel Klein as the stern father James Mayo had a rather gravelly diction, while baritone Steven Kirby as his brother-in-law Captain Scott had a more mellifluous tone. The only other character, the child Matty, was believably played by Anthony Jimenez Peña as a non-singing role. The cast was suitably costumed by Teatro Grattacielo’s general and artistic director Stefanos Koroneos. While the lighting design by Dimitris Koutas appeared at first to be only four spotlights at the corners of the playing area, it was quite effective with the overhear lights except for eschewing a sunrise that should have ended the play.

The short opera score with its small cast should bode well for further productions by other opera companies looking for an inexpensive new American opera. Written in three acts, the opera here was performed without intermissions. As there were no supertitles, the audience was permitted to keep their smart phones on and to read the text online, as well as take photographs throughout the performance. It is to be hoped that this will not become a tradition for Teatro Grattacielo as it was both distracting and unsettling, continually taking the focus off the live performance as various phones lit up obtrusively throughout the opera all over the theater.

Beyond the Horizon (September 15, 2024)

Teatro Grattacielo

La Mama Shares, 66 E. 4^th Street, in Manhattan

For tickets, visit http://www.grattacielo.org/season/beyond-the-horizon-world-premiere

Running time: 75 minutes without an intermission

Nicolas Flagello’s brief but effective operatic version of Eugene O’Neill’s first full length tragedy given its world premiere.