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Falcon & the Sailor Boy · Nov 20, 09:22 AM
Took half a dozen students to the opera night before last. Clarkson is located in Potsdam, New York, in close proximity to the Crane School of Music, which produces a lot more concerts & musical productions than I can ever keep track of. Sadly, since I moved to the country, I hardly ever manage to go back into town (14 miles) for an evening event. I stuffed six freshmen into the Pathfinder, which is two more than the law allows, & drove from one campus to the other so we could see The Falcon & the Sailor Boy, the libretto based on a story by Isak Dinesen. Thanks are due Randy Lamson of Clarkson’s Student Life office for getting all of us free tickets.
It was a good production technically, the pit orchestra particularly excellent. Half the students with me had played in high school musicals of some sophistication & they each remarked on the quality of the playing. My students all had a good time — I think Ti, who claims he listens to nothing but heavy metal, was the most exuberant — & I enjoyed the production, too, though with reservations. The sets were ingenious & the dancer who represented the falcon throughout the production was quite beautiful — she managed to be birdlike without any embarrassing attempt to be overly naturalistic. As noted, the musicianship was good & that goes for the singing, too. Not big, but adequate. The acting was a little predictable, though enthusiastic.
Unfortunately, the libretto & the score — obviously, the heart of the matter — were not up to the potential of the folk material on which Dinesen based her story. Musically & lyrically this opera takes a mysterious & fairly dark story about a young sailor who accidentally kills his friend, another sailor, & turns it into something closer to musical comedy. The killing, in the opera, is presented as simple murder, which is completely out of character for the young sailor. Unfortunately, this is such a bad piece of stagecraft, that one is left suspended in disbelief through the rest of the production.
Main problems: The libretto is prosy & too long; the music, for all its rhythm changes, would be melodically comfortable in the 19th century; nothing happens in the first act (this could have & should have been a one-act composition); the use of Danish folk materials was obvious & heavy-handed — people keep breaking into dances, which is of course the convention, but here the convention might have been modified to good effect. Perhaps the central issue was that The Falcon & the Sailor Boy followed the conventions rather than the story, resulting in a superficial treatment of what might have been profound.
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