Opera Company's "Abduction From the Seraglio'

Abduction From the Seraglio has historical and musical significance. But does it make much impact on audiences in 2012? This production was only partially successful.

While the German title, Entfuhrung aus dem Serail, is hard enough for American audiences to grasp, the English-language alternative is not much better. Rescue From a Harem would work better.

Obsession with strange people from the Middle East was rife when Mozart was a young man. Algeria, Morocco and Tunisia were known as the Sea-Pirate States, and slave trading was at its peak. Europeans were afraid that Turks and Arabs would enslave, rape and murder Christians. In this atmosphere, audiences attended many plays and even an earlier opera by Wolfgang, Zaide.

But director Robert B. Driver changed the time period from the late 1700s to 1918, and he designed the production to resemble movies from the 1920s that dramatized the closing days of World War I. During the overture and opening scene, black-and-white movie clips (including Wings and Mata Hari) gave us a good sense of time and place— in this case Istanbul, capital of the Ottoman Empire, an ally of Germany in the war, where an American spy was captured by the Turks and an Allied flying ace came to her rescue.

It's impossible to take the plot seriously, because audiences are asked to accept the plausibility that the dictator of an evil empire would have two female captives in his harem and allow them to spurn his sexual "advances." Come on! This production mitigated that idiocy to some extent as Driver likened the evil Selim to the relatively progressive Mustafa Ataturk, who was a Turkish military leader in the war and then helped found the modern Turkish republic. Ataturk, however, was accused of perpetrating genocide against Armenians.

Needed: A superstar soprano

Seraglio was unique in its time because Mozart turned away from the Italian language to write an opera in his native German. It also provided a musical milestone when Mozart wrote a precociously mature dramatic soprano aria for the leading lady, "Martern aller Arten" ("Tortures of all kinds").

With this aria, Mozart shattered the conventions of his day, accompanying it with four solo woodwinds and orchestra. The heroine, Konstanze, sings how she risks everything and is even willing to die. It's a role that requires a superstar.

Curtis student Elizabeth Zharoff sang the part musically enough, but it came through as a coloratura showpiece rather than a dramatic one. In her appearance and spunky demeanor, Zharoff resembled either Mary Tyler Moore or Sutton Foster in the movie and stage versions, respectively, of Thoroughly Modern Millie.

Plenty of ramps, no scenery

Her love interest was a light-voiced Spanish tenor, Antonio Lozano. Elizabeth Reiter, a recent Curtis graduate, was a petite and charming soubrette called Blonde. Per Bach Nissen, a Danish bass, was excellent as Osmin, the Turkish overseer of the harem. Krystian Adam was the exuberant second tenor, while Peter Dolder was a bland Selim.

Driver's staging of the big soprano number was clever. Selim retreated into the auditorium so that Konstanze was able to face him directly while simultaneously singing to the audience. Throughout the evening, Driver made good use of ramps to provide varied entrances to the stage. Aside from the movie projections, however, the large stage often looked empty, with virtually no scenery.

Corrado Rovaris led a crisp reading of the orchestral score, which incorporated some Turkish-sounding instruments, such as bass drum, cymbals and triangle.♦


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