To honor one of American opera’s brightest lights on what would soon be his 100th birthday, Houston Grand Opera’s Butler Studio presented a most definitive production of Carlisle Floyd’s masterpiece, Of Mice and Men on Friday night. It made the case with certainty and an emotional professionalism that the future of opera is secure in these young hands. At the end, the audience rose as one with shouts of approval, a testament not just to Floyd’s radiant work, adapted by himself from Steinbeck’s own stage play, but also to the excellent quality of staging and execution.
Floyd has often been called the “dean of American opera,” and though too many of his works for the stage have quietly slipped from view, he’s hardly obscure. Certainly not at HGO where he co-founded the Butler Studio which trains young singers, and where five of his operas have enjoyed world premieres. He was a singular force in Houston as mentor, guide and teacher for 60 years. His gentle and cultivated manner, his distinctive musical style, his passion for truthfulness, was a torch for all to follow. His light lives on.
The light from Of Mice and Men burns bright. This classic tale of itinerant farm laborers in California during the Depression has the grit and passion of grand verismo works. It’s rough and jagged but traced with luminous subtle passages as if a lullaby or half-remembered dream. Even the downtrodden George and Lennie have an ideal future to sustain them: a farm to call their own. This motif circles through the score to haunt them, curse them, or uphold their fragmented lives. It’s the only constant they have, except each other.
Lennie (tenor Demetrious Sampson, Jr., in a beguiling interpretation) is simple of mind. He’s under the care of George (bass Sam Dhobhany) who looks after him like a beloved brother. He will not see harm come to him, he protects Lennie from himself when he can; when he can’t, they run away. Trouble has followed them yet again into the night as the opera begins with a distant police siren and the searching beams from flashlights. It is classic “chase” film music, frantic and getting closer. Lennie loves soft things, like fur and fine hair. He only wants to pet it. It’s his weakness. He was touching a woman’s skirt a few hours ago when she panicked and shouted that he was about to rape her. The pair ran. Lennie knows full well that George is going to yell at him. He can almost recite verbatim what he will say. He has been “bad,” but he didn’t mean to harm anyone. When confused, Lennie becomes violent. His tragic weakness. A large man, his sudden strength turns deadly.
George does in fact berate Lennie, singing his credo of wanting to be alone, not beholden to anyone. But he can’t turn Lennie loose upon a world he cannot understand. He must protect him. They are bound together in their fantasy of that farm somewhere on the horizon, just over the river and out of reach. It is a lovely dream, however distant, and Floyd sets this scene as in a reverie, building to a stunning climax of hope. Throughout the opera, Sampson and Dhobhany are magnificent. Sampson, childlike and charismatic; Dhobhany, battered but controlled. They are fixated on that dream.
If you know the story, tragedy follows them to Curley’s farm (tenor Shawn Roth) where the temptress awaits. The eternal snare, she is not given a name but only known as “Curley’s Wife” (soprano Alissa Goretsky). She’s newly married, extremely bored, and has a dream of her own – Hollywood. This vision is as futile as the men’s, but she taunts the ranch hands for attention and love she cannot attain with Curley. Brazen. Uncontrolled, her action starts a fight that will end by Lennie crushing Curley’s hand. Later in the barn, her vanity will lead to Lennie stroking her hair. His petting becomes more aggressive, and when she screams to stop, Lennie panics and breaks her neck. He flees.
Lennie has gone too far and will be hung by Curley if discovered. There is no way out. As George lures Lennie into singing their dream, so he will not die scared, George shoots him. Utterly defeated, George has his first wish granted from the opera’s opening: to be alone. It’s devastating to say the least.
It’s a very human drama with the farm workers watching their own dreams die in this brutal world of toil, low pay, and constant movement to find another job. The Ballad Singer (honey-voiced tenor Luka Tsevelidze) is given a stirring anthem, “Movin’ On,” when old man Candy’s dog is shot. Candy (bass Ziniu Zhao), as decrepit as his dog, realizes full well that his time will soon expire. He offers George all the money he has saved if they will allow him to share their farm. It’s a bright spot in this world of dirt and broken promises. The other hands are neatly limed by tenor Michael McDermott as Carlson, and silky baritone Geonho Lee as Slim.
Lovingly conducted by Benjamin Manis, crisply directed by Kristine McIntyre, lit with atmosphere by Kate Ashton, costumed with sweat and grime by Kara Harmon, the production has the feel of those iconic Dorothea Lange photos from the ‘30s: rough barn slats and creaky bunkhouse beds, a dawn sky into which George and Lennie stride into at the end of the first scene with their backpacks slung over their shoulders, the dusty barn, and that bucolic river bank where fate deals its final ironic blow. Luke Canterella’s impressionistic and sparse settings create the proper mood, but his projections are a bit sketchy and jarring, maybe the fault of a technical problem on opening night.
Floyd has had a spectacular run at HGO, and this production – which only lasts two performances – is a most honest and fitting tribute to him. Although bleak and unforgiving, Of Mice and Men is one of the truly humane operas in the rep. We can hear ourselves in it. And by hearing Floyd we see the world.
Of Mice and Men continues at. 2:30 p.m. Sunday, March 15 at Houston Grand Opera, Cullen Theater at Wortham Theater Center, 501 Texas. For more information, call 713-228-6737 or visit houstongrandopera.org. $62.50-$157.50.
HGO will stream the March 15 performance on Facebook and YouTube.