The Classical Review

Since its establishment in 2003, Bard SummerScape has become a destination to hear operas that are rarely presented elsewhere. Like Anton Rubinstein’s Demon back in 2018, this year’s offering leans to the exotic and murderous. Richard Strauss’s sensational mythological opera, Die ägyptische Helena from 1928, opened Friday evening at the Fisher Center, on Bard College’s tree-covered campus by the Hudson River.

The libretto was the last that Hugo von Hofmannsthal completed for Strauss, Arabella being left unfinished. After the end of the Trojan War, Menelaus returns home with his wife, Helen, who has spent the last ten years with her lover, Paris. The unhappy couple are shipwrecked on the island of Aithra. The sorceress emerges as a quasi-marriage counselor, who uses her magical powers—and the advice of an all-knowing mollusk—to trick Menelaus into a reunion with his estranged spouse.

The opera requires a dramatic soprano of extraordinary power for the title role. Hailey Clark, making a noteworthy SummerScape debut, commanded the stage with a robust vocal presence and towering high notes. Her acting proved no less accomplished, with an emotional range veering between wounded ego, seductive vamp, and despairing wife. Her full-bodied soprano made the intensity of Helen’s raptures and despondency in the Wagnerian climaxes of both acts almost overwhelming. 

Tenor John Matthew Myers brought heroic force to Menelaus as well. The character spends most of the opera in a sort of fever dream, his uxoricidal rage managed only by the application of various mood-altering substances. Myers sang with remarkable volume through a punishing amount of stage time, with only slight flagging at the top of his range.

As Aithra, the sorceress at the heart of the story, soprano Jana McIntyre displayed sparkling coloratura technique and some shimmering high notes. Occasionally her top paled a bit in terms of volume, but she cut an alluring Jayne Mansfield-like figure in the blonde wig and 1950s starlet gown of the opening scene (costumes by Mattie Ullrich). Christian Räth’s updated, psychological staging reimagined her as the “director” of this story, and her performance held up to that vision.

Two younger singers who impressed at Washington National Opera and Wolf Trap Opera in recent years made strong appearances. Blake Denson’s vehement baritone imbued Altair, an African prince who shows up in Act II to woo Helen, with an imposing, even dangerous edge. Deborah Nansteel’s burnished mezzo brought the right mixture of comedy and otherworldliness to the bizarre character of the Omniscient Mussel.

Nansteel doubled as the Second Servant to Aithra, paired with the agile soprano of Catherine Creed, a SummerScape Resident Artist, as the First Servant. Shawn Roth’s lighter tenor served well for Da-Ud, Altair’s son, displaying a sound fresh and youthful in timbre.

The Bard Festival Chorale sang the music for the elves and soldiers with gusto, if not always precision of rhythm and intonation (chorus direction by James Bagwell). Räth enlivened the spectacle with a troupe of dancers (choreography by Catherine Galasso), who furnished the visions of the abduction of Helen, including eerie, youthful doppelgängers of Helen and Menelaus. The sense of Freudian sexual complication came across in the final sequence of Act II, when the male dancers appeared in drag. Like a dream, past and present mingled freely in the characters’ minds.

Räth’s largely gray-toned production was set in the style of a 1950s film noir in Act I, turning into a Cecil B. DeMille epic in Act II (scenic design by Räth and Daniel Unger). In Act I, Aithra sat abandoned at a table set for dinner, like Miss Lonelyhearts in Rear Window. She dialed the telephone, reaching the Omniscient Mussel, who first appeared on a screen over the fireplace and later entered the stage. The staging implied that the whole opera occurred in the hallucination (or imagination) of Aithra, as the storm and shipwreck played out in dramatic video on the set’s back wall (projection design by Elaine J. McCarthy, spectacular lighting by Tyler Micoleau). The lotus juice was stored not in a chest, but in an old icebox like medication.

Menelaus and Helen entered as the back wall opened in segments, arguing violently. In a telling addition, Räth had the couple’s daughter, Hermione (played by child singer Cecilia Popp), appear in this scene, clutching a stuffed animal as if awoken by her parents’ screaming fight. When Aithra used her powers to make Helen younger, she and Helen exchanged wigs, blonde for brunette, a gesture that heightened the idea of Helen as a sort of double for the sorceress, or perhaps a memory of her younger life. The troupe of elves who assist Aithra also looked like her, with blonde wigs tipped with purple. Mirrors added to the sense of multiplication of personality.

The American Symphony Orchestra surged and swooned with emotional force to bring the score to life, down to the harp, organ, wind machine, and off-stage band. Strauss pinballs back and forth among idioms, both comic and tragic, which the full orchestra, filling out even the wing walkways of the pit, negotiated with skill. The woodwind solos and the massed violin sound proved highlights.

Leon Botstein led these vast forces with a steady presence, although occasional details escaped his attention. The conductor-academic was forced to step down from the presidency of Bard College earlier this year due to his long association with Jeffrey Epstein, yet he remains music director of the ASO and the Bard Festival. No protests met his appearance Friday night, unlike the booing Botstein encountered at Bard’s commencement in May.

Die ägyptische Helena runs through August 2. fishercenter.bard.edu