'Platee' reviews Mark Morris DG reviews

While I sat waiting, I surveyed the list of baroque instruments being played by the orchestra. Made within the last decade from models attributed to Antonio Stradivari, there were at least six, four constructed in Parma, one in Bloomington, Indiana, one in Portsmouth, England and one in Petaluma, California. Copies of Violas were constructed in Davis, California and in New York City, Basses in Northampton, Massachusetts after Michelangelo Bergonzi. The woodwinds came in for their share as well, two flutes constructed in Mendocino and one in Brussels; both piccolos were fashioned in Oakland, California after 18th century Willems, and New York, Utrecht and Decatur, Georgia handed the Oboes while Holland did the honors for the two Bassoons. The two harpsichords came from a Berkeley, California artisan while the percussion instruments from Boston and San Francisco. Several instruments dated from the mid-seventeenth century and from the late eighteenth. I was as bowled over by this record of devoted reconstruction as I was supposed to be by the production. If there are young 'uns as entranced as these middle-aged musicians, the future of the baroque tradition will live on for a healthy number of decades.

The singers must have enjoyed being directed by Morris, for he knows his music and his sense of drama is unerring, if scarcely orthodox. It would be difficult to envision this opera mounted as Jean Philippe Rameau may have done to celebrate the marriage of a Bourbon prince to a homely princess from Spain, using an audacious plot of Platee yearning for love and being tricked into believing Jupiter would wed her, all a guise to get Juno to desist in her jealousies.

With costumes by Isaac Mizrahi, Adrienne Lobel's set design and James F. Ingall's lighting, Marika Kozuma's U.C. Berkeley Chorus provided the oral glue of the commentary along with the principals, and Mark Morris' dancers the visual continuity. There is no doubt that in another age, with his acute awareness of the ridiculous, Morris would have been celebrated as a supreme court jester. In this supreme comic opera, he defines comedy as it once was described to me by the Indian poet S.H. Vatsyayan, "Comedy is an exaggeration of the manners and behavior of a society where there is an established code of behavior, so that any lapse can be the source of dismay, amusement and ridicule." Given the occasion and the setting, Rameau was totally in that groove.

While the Morris dancers were decked out as creatures of the swamp, the singers found themselves in garments which seemed like leftovers from someone's makeshift, home grown entertainment, which historically it was, in a manner of speaking. Like Morris' Hard Nut, the style of the production fits in to the Morris' penchant of accenting the plot, American plebeian style, while remaining scrupulously faithful to the music itself. You may not agree, but you must give it full marks for the thoroughness of the presentation, even when it bursts the bounds of propriety with broad demonstrations of bumps, grinds and come ons in the Prelude. That scene takes place in a seamy little bar somewhere between the theater district and the village, where a variety of night folk gather and Thespis has collapsed on a table. Bacchus, (Guillermo Resto) exhibits a suggestive penchant of stroking the handles of the beer machines excessively, pours whatever to a Show Girl who is being stalked by a lesbian and a secretary teams up with an artist, while a satyr (I think he was in leather minus coverage for his buns) tries to make every skirt that saunters in. The scene starts before the music and before the audience is entirely seated, which was a very nice touch, and its effectiveness owes much to the Morris ensemble.

The dancing qua dancing was rather minimal for it required jumps, hops, leaps and emphasis, rather than consistent movement. You might call it characterization, except that the full marks for that went to the singers, Jean-Paul Fouchecourt as Platee; Philip Salmon as Thespis/Mercure; Marcos Pujol as both Satyr and Citheron. Mary Philips in the role of Juno was the regal equal of Jupiter in stature and warmth of voice, and except for the high registers, was Amy Burton in the dual role as L'Amour and a Folie.

The summary impression was Mark Morris is one adroit director and the production a hoot which verged on discomfort at the callous sport the Gods visited upon Platee. It could so easily be translated in to a dizzy social scene in some contemporary sophisticated setting. In that regard, Morris definitely accomplished his aim.