Sequenza21/The Contemporary Classical Music Weekly

Wednesday, August 24, 2005

Naive: Perelà, Uomo di fumo / Pascal Dusapin

In 2003 L’Opéra National de Paris-Bastille premiered Pascal Duspain’s fourth and most ambitious opera to date: Perelà: Uomo di fumo (“Perelà: the Man of Smoke”). Later that same year Naive made a live recording of the work at L’Opéra National de Montpellier, and twenty-first century opera lovers can now get their hands on this major work.

Dusapin himself adapted the libretto from a story by the early twentieth century Italian writer Aldo Palazzeschi. It concerns the strange messianic appearance and disappearance of a man, Perelà, who is literally made out of smoke. At first taken in and idolized by the citizens of a local town, he is eventually accused of causing the death of the King’s butler, Alloro. Alloro in fact kills himself in a fire while trying to become like Perelà. Perelà is subsequently sentenced to lifetime imprisonment, but, in the last scene, dematerializes into the void from which he sprang.

Running about two hours and divided into ten “chapters,” “Perelà” boasts many fine qualities. The vocal writing, syllabic and very close to the rhythms of speech, defines each character vividly: the enigmatic and aloof Perelà, the impassioned and melancholy Bellonda (who tries to defend Perelà), the hysterical Queen, and the swarm of royal bureaucrats are all roles filled with opportunities for singers to stretch their acting abilities.

Dusapin places these figures atop a continuous bed of mysterious, sustained sound which flows elegantly from the murky and ominous to the light and ethereal. “Perelà” is unusual for a contemporary opera in its practicality: neither the orchestral nor the vocal writing struck me as especially fatiguing or complicated. Dusapin prefers to sustain a few musical ideas into languorous textures rather than bombard us with complexity.

Yet it’s all a bit tepid. Particularly in the opera’s first four chapters, the scenes carry little dramatic pull, and the real conflict of the story (that involving Alloro) seems unnecessarily delayed in retrospect. Dusapin’s music, while often beautiful (particularly Bellonda’s chapter five trio with the English horn and harpsichord, and Perelà’s final ferocious apostrophe), is also bland for long stretches at a time.

For all its faults, though, one wishes City Opera would take on projects like this one instead of “The Little Prince.”

posted by David Salvage 3:33 PM