"Spaghetti Western" is a term that, for many of us, conjures a steely-eyed Clint Eastwood in Italian filmmaker Sergio Leone's "A Fistful of Dollars." The phrase likely wouldn't bring to mind Italian composer's Giacomo Puccini's "Girl of the Golden West," now onstage at Seattle Opera.
Yet Puccini beat Leone to the punch by a good 54 years when the composer wrote "La Fanciulla del West," a melodrama based on American David Belasco's play of the same name about California's Gold Rush of 1849. Puccini's take on the West isn't nearly as bloody, and the traditional roster of all-male leads has yielded to a spunky, gun-wielding heroine.
Contrary to the usual Puccini opera, there's a happy ending to "Girl of the Golden West"; and contrary to the usual spaghetti Western, it's a woman who saves the day. Minnie, the saloon-keeper with the soul of a forgiving schoolmarm, gives villainous sheriff Jack Rance his comeuppance and redeems goodhearted bandit Ramerrez from his errant ways.
In Seattle Opera's production, deftly directed by Bernard Uzan, Andrea Gruber is a compelling Minnie, a feisty young woman who refuses to let her fears stop her from risking everything for love. Gruber, last seen in Seattle as Chrysothemis in Richard Strauss' "Elektra," has a passionate voice that dipped and soared effortlessly - including one breathtaking, improbable vault to a high note - in the opening performance on Saturday.
In contrast, Richard Margison was-n't convincing as the bandit Ramerrez. Margison was just too nice, so accommodating at times that the dramatic tension went missing. Still, how could Minnie not help someone so personable? Margison's de-licious tenor, as smoothly warm and comforting as a snif-ter of fine, heated brandy, atoned for his too-congenial portrayal of the bandit.
Greer Grimsley, on the other hand, makes his Jack Rance a force to be reckoned with. It's not just his imposing height - the man's a giant - but his high-proof presence, whether coiled in watchful waiting, intimidating a suitor for Minnie's hand or courting Minnie. Grimsley doesn't settle for an easy, black-and-white version of Rance the scoundrel. True, his sheriff can be detestable, yet while he's pursuing Minnie there are unexpected spikes of erotic heat. Even more startling were the flashes of pity Grimsley's Rance engendered more than once on opening night as Minnie rejected him. Grimsley's potent baritone reverberates in your bones with all the shades of his darkness, from fury to grief.
Of course, Puccini's lyrical music, at its most nuanced and mutable in this opera, provides a solid base for the singers' abrupt shifts of feeling. The symphonic score, behaving much as a movie soundtrack would, also magnifies the opera's impact by representing both the emotion and the action. You can hear in the music both the drops of blood that give away Ramerrez' hiding place after he's shot and the terror of the risk Minnie takes when she gambles her future and Ramerrez' on a game of poker with Rance. A song in which the character Jake Wallace sings of his longing for home, admirably executed by David Adam Moore, packs into its haunting strains all of the loneliness, sacrifice and disillusionment of the miners who failed to strike it rich.
Conductor Oleg Caetani and his orchestra gently coaxed the best from Puccini's score, as did the all-male chorus, arriving at some delicately gorgeous moments. The entire supporting cast did fine work, particularly Morgan Smith as Sonora.
R. Keith Brumley's sets evoke the sense that the miners' camp and Minnie's cabin are buried deep in the woods, and that the living is rough, right down to details like the saloon's chandelier, which is lowered by rope in order to light it. Christine Reimer's costumes provide the same sort of grittiness, varied to reflect the characters' differing personalities and the places from which they came.
Freelance writer Maggie Larrick lives in the Seattle area and is the former editor of the News.
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