To the theater glitterati, auteur director Robert Wilson (Einstein on the Beach, A Letter for Queen Victoria, HGO’s recent Turandot) is revered as a god. He’s the Texas-born avant-gardist par excellence. His works buck every dramatic norm, stir up considerable controversy, and send blue-hairs swooning onto their divans. His unique Messiah accomplishes this with a vengeance.
First off, this is not Handel’s oratorio – or not as he originally composed it. Written for a Dublin premiere in 1742, it is a masterpiece of Baroque music. But the orchestration is small: strings, timpani, oboes and bassoons, the antique trumpet, and harpsichord continuo. Four soloists (soprano, alto, tenor, bass) alternate with a chorus of only 11. No Symphony of a Thousand here.
Forty-seven years later, music had dramatically changed. Now in the Classical period, the sound is refined and elegant. The orchestra’s coloring has expanded, new instruments have been created. Already lauded for his operas, if not always remunerated properly, Mozart was commissioned by his Freemason friend and patron Gottfried van Swieten to re-orchestrate Handel’s oratorio for a private showcase in Vienna.
Mozart adored Handel, and set about his task with supreme admiration. He added winds – flutes and his beloved clarinets – trombones, and replaced the Baroque trumpet with horn. He dropped some numbers and rearranged voices to suit his taste. Today, some Period Instrument musicologists decry what he did, but when heard live and as gorgeously played by the HGO orchestra under maestro Patrick Summers (his last engagement as Music Director), it showcases Handel as only Mozart’s genius could overlay. The work sounds lush and fresh and, dare I say, new. It is a radiant transcription.
But what Wilson overlays on this nebulous three-part script by Charles Jennens is hallucinatory and a lot of theater of the absurd. To be fair, Jennens’ libretto is free-form itself – a lot of Old Testament Isaiah, the Annunciation to the shepherds from the New Testament gospel of Luke, and much from the Cloverdale Psalter, or Book of Psalms. There are no characters by name, and it is not strictly a narrative tale, though it chronologically covers His coming (Part I), His suffering, death, and resurrection (Part II ends with the immortal “Hallelujah Chorus”), and His restorative effect on mankind (Part III). It’s definitely a Christian message.
Wilson re-imagines this deep theological text with his customary visual idiosyncrasies, distilled into some stunning tableaux, all lighted to perfection. He’s a master at framing a picture, no question about it. His “eye” is great. It’s what he chooses to show that drains the emotion out of it. This is extremely artful “Europe trash,” that ‘60s and ‘70s era in theater and opera where the director took complete command of the stage and reinvented the mise en scene to suit himself, the composer and librettist be damned. Unfortunately, this egocentric approach is very much still with us.
There’s that ubiquitous Wilsonian neon-edged box set with light bars embedded in the floor. They flash on and off periodically. The “actors” move in highly stylized spasms with strange semaphore hand positions, bus-and-truck hieroglyphics. A dancer in loincloth (lean and lithe Alexis Fousekis) walks on in slo-mo during the “Overture” while a fuzzy moon (or a pearl) floats in projection on the backdrop. The look is sparse, clean, luminous, dreamy. Then he picks up gymnastics ribbons and twirls about as if in competition. Where are we? He will reappear throughout, an Everyman perhaps?, and perform mediocre modern dance routines. It’s not his fault, but he’s a constant interruption, and I have no idea why he’s here.
But that’s the problem. Wilson supplies gorgeous pictures – in a classical bias-cut silver lamé gown, the soprano (a celestial-voiced Ying Fang) slowly punts across a sea of fog during Handel’s sublime “I know that my redeemer liveth.” It’s supremely beautiful, ethereal, full of mystery, as is the aria, but it’s only a superficial image. Why not a picture of Michelangelo’s David? He’s just as lovely. And what does any of this have to do with the text?
I suppose this is Wilson’s aesthetic. He gives us startling, non-sequitur pictures and we have to guess what they mean. We supply the subtext. How does it make you feel? At least those mysterious branches the chorus carries at the beginning come to pass later. Yes, that worked, but what’s with the headless George Segal-esque mannequin with his pet lobster in Scene 5? What is René Magritte doing in “And He shall feed his flock”? Or the haystack man bedeviling that sweet innocent little girl? And let’s not forget the astronaut twirling through the chorus. The images are such a grab bag, eye-catching as they can be, but how do we make coherence out of them? We watch amazed, stupefied, baffled.
But ultimately the program is saved, transformed actually, by the superlative music and singing. Caressed by the maestro, the orchestra, chorus, and soloists transport us into the Empyrean. It’s the music of God, for sure.
Clad in white at the beginning like an angelic emissary, Fang is phenomenal in her HGO debut, lush and cool. International superstar countertenor Aryeh Nussbaum Cohen, singing the alto part, sounded a bit under powered, but his voice was clean and clear as an angel. His “He was despised and rejected of men” was a masterclass in technique and refinement, his diction beyond reproach. Tenor Ben Bliss, though clarion-voiced, was ill-used by Wilson. In baggy clown pants (costumes by Carlos J. Soto), he was often given a vaudeville turn for his arias, winking at us as he swayed in soft-shoe. He has serious important stuff to sing, he’s not to be distracting us with some stale Broadway routine. HGO Butler Studio alumnus, bass Nicholas Newton, boomed impressively through his difficult coloratura, especially in the denunciation of “Why do the nations so furiously rage together.” He was dressed like a Shōgun warrior. You tell me.
The HGO chorus was exceptional, and their great anthems, “Hallelujah” and “Worthy is the Lamb” were spine-tingling. Handel did not make their work easy, for the intricate and florid Baroque passages are murder to sing in unison. They sang as one!
Robert Wilson created his Messiah for the Mozart Week Festival in Salzburg, Austria, in 2020. It contains multitudes: good and bad. Thomas Jeziorski’s projections, whether ice floes erupting, waves crashing, or that mysterious orb at the beginning, are high caliber indeed; while Soto’s costumes evoke Japan, boxy couture, Biblical prophets, or movie icons such as Eraserhead. Wilson’s vision is eclectic, to say the least. He is the ultimate auteur. His sets are beguiling, his lighting incomparable, his mise en scene exquisite, but his actors here are static puppets who pose in a meta-theatrical world that is his alone. No production looks like a Wilson one, and HGO is applauded for bringing Messiah to Houston in its American debut.
I will not revisit his Messiah, but that’s not to say I wouldn’t be tempted by some forthcoming revival of his previous work – he died in 2025. He’s no god but a particular iconic theater guy with an exacting vision and an eye to create it. That is something special in the theater. He leaves the deciphering up to us. His Messiah is no way heavenly, but Handel/Mozart and their HGO interpreters sure are.
Messiah continues through May 3 at 7:30 p.m. Friday, April 25; Wednesday, April 29; Friday, May 1; 2 pm. Sundays April 19 and May 3 at Houston Grand Opera, Wortham Theater Center, 501 Texas. Sung in English with projected English titles. For more information, call 713-228-6737 or visit houstongrandopera.org. The Friday May 1 performance is a special “Under 40 Friday” with discounted tickets for audience members under 40 years old. $25-$290.50.
