I loved Erhard Rom’s set and Hannah Wasileski’s projections onto it.  The entire set had wooden cargo boxes, presumably from previously looted ships, stacked and filling deep into the back of the stage.  It meant a lot of hopping from box to box for the singers, but it helped tell the story and added dimension to the space.  The projections of waves, fire, and even rats added texture to the staging.

The first act opens with the terrific chorus –the community–singing about their starvation and the fear they feel that there hasn’t been a ship in a while.  They’re living out of the crates they’ve looted and desperate for food.  It movingly conveyed the sense of desperation the townspeople must have felt, and put the wrecking into relief.  These weren’t greedy looters, these people were just trying to survive and were doing what they believed God wanted them to do.  And leading and encouraging that righteousness was Pascoe, their pastor.  Baritone Louis Otey was a commanding Pascoe, it was easy to see why the townspeople would have listened to and looked up to him.  The only one who appears unfazed by him and his power is his young wife, Thirza.  She looks down upon wrecking and refuses to go to church because she despises his fiery sermons encouraging plunder.  Instead she finds herself entranced by Mark–a young fisherman who had been wooing another woman, Avis–perhaps in part because Mark was warning ships away from the coast by setting fires.  Katharine Goeldner was a solid Thirza, and I found the end of the opera where she and Mark, the lovely tenor Neal Cooper, are tied to the cave and about to drown as punishment for being traitors and adulterers the most moving singing from these two.

The fiery young Avis was sung by Sky Ingram.  I enjoyed her range and diversity.  Her character was rebellious, trying to blame Pascoe as the traitor when in truth it was her former love, Mark, who was warning ships away, and Ingram had a strong stage presence. 

There appear to have been some changes from the original story that made the plot confused.  Avis strikes and knocks out Pascoe with board, just after Pascoe discovers Mark and Thirza together about to light a fire to warn away a ship.  This odd plot point doesn’t quite work.  It doesn’t make sense that Avis would hit Pascoe with the board.  It attributes too much aforethought to Avis and took me out of the opera a bit.  I cannot tell if Smyth intended for this to be in the opera or if this was an addition by director Thaddeus Strassberger, but it is not in the synopsis.  I think the story stands better on its own without this additional device.   Similarly earlier in the opera, Pascoe lecherously approaches Avis and when rebuffed takes her necklace, claiming it will be used to help the poor.  This seemed inconsistent with Pascoe’s character—yes, he was righteous about wrecking but he seemed rather smitten with his wife, Thirza.  It appears that there was a conflation of the righteousness this community felt toward wrecking with other sins.  Regardless, while the plot had its flaws, the American Symphony Orchestra as conducted by Leon Botstein and the chorus alone are worth another trip to Bard to see what they have in store for opera lovers next.

Like some sort of twisted gynecological version of Jurassic Park.

And that is a bit what The Wreckers itself felt like.  A not fully developed alien hybrid fetus.  Fascinating, beautiful in certain aspects, completely alien in others, but completely undercooked, and in need of several more months of in utero development and growth.

This is not to say I didn’t like The Wreckers at all.  There were moments, especially the choral sections, which grabbed me completely.  Chorus master James Bagwell is to be greatly commended. 

Director Thaddeus Strassberger had some interesting and effective choices, many of them forced upon him by the deficiencies in the story.  For example, during act one the preacher Pascoe attempts to seduce the young girl Avis.  All of this was pantomimed stage right while the main musical action is taking place stage left.  This was added no doubt to give more context and motivation to Avis’ eventual betrayal of Pascoe but it felt very odd to have such a pivotal sequence take place as a non-musical side note to the action.  But Strassberger’s choice to add it makes sense as without it Avis’ motivation in attacking and betraying Pascoe is convoluted almost to the point of incoherence.

But while giving a more linear track for the girl’s motivations, it muddies Pascoe’s already convoluted motivation as if he is willing and eager to seduce Avis, how is it he is willing and eager to sacrifice his life for his wife just a scene or two later?

Again none of this is Strassberger’s fault and he and set designer Erhard Rom have wrung all the story and drama possible from The Wreckers, the story just does not particularly work.  

All of the singers were good.  Louis Otey particularly in the dramatically muddled role of Pascoe.   His onstage conviction almost made me forget the lack of clear motivation for his character.  Katharine Goeldner and Neal Cooper as Pascoe’s wife and her lover, and Sky Ingram as Avis all sang well, at times beautifully, but their characters suffered greatly from the same dramaturgical opaqueness as the rest of the show.  

Now, composer Ethel Smyth was an amazing woman, as I detailed here, and Leon Botstein is to be commended greatly for continuing to re-introduce overlooked and underperformed works to the public but The Wreckers did not fully work for me. 

Regardless of that I very much look forward to Botstein’s next discovery and the chance to descend into the strange metallic womb of the Fisher Center at Bard again. 

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