Spoleto Review: Flesh, faith clash in absorbing, gilded 'Thaïs'
Maura's Spoleto review in Charleston City Paper
If you think the Oval Office is going for the gold these days, you haven’t seen fourth-century Alexandria. It spills from the deep pockets of Egyptian swells. There’s gold in these trills. It drapes seductive frames of women primed to whet their appetites. And it can pit the prosperous against the pious to tragic ends.
And it flashes through Thaïs, Spoleto Festival USA’s absorbing world premiere production of Jules Massenet’s 1894 opera, with a libretto by Louis Gallet based on the 1890 book by Anatole France. In short, it’s a monk-meets-courtesan cautionary tale of faith, lust and not-so-self-evident truths.
Directed by Crystal Manich, the production stacks the stage of Charleston Gaillard Center’s Martha and John M. Rivers Performance Hall with all the stuff of opera. On it, festival music director Timothy Myers conducts the Spoleto Festival USA Orchestra, which takes much of its prime real estate. The musicians are flanked upstage by members of the Spoleto Festival USA Chorus, led by its director Joe Miller (in his final year with the festival).
As such, the principals mainly hug the apron, traveling the sand-whipped desert to thronging Alexandria and back as the plot progresses, with the set taking the form of images projected on the back and sides of the stage.
From silk to sackcloth
First, we meet a cluster of monks, who are soon joined by the die-hard ascetic Athanaël (Troy Cook). He’s hot and bothered by the existence of Thaïs (Nicole Heaston), a courtesan and priestess of Venus from his native Alexandria. He aims to travel there to convert her to Christianity, with the notion that doing so will banish all evil from the world.
It’s easier than one would think to pry Thaïs from her lavish, pampered life, even with Athanaël’s mega-rich childhood pal Nicias (Michael McDermott) luring her down the gilded path to hell. Still, the stakes are mortally high for the object of the monk’s so-framed spiritual awakening (and his motives shakier than he claims).
Star power in sequins
What powers this production is the mesmerizing Heaston, whose stunning soprano and magnetic stage presence makes it palpably clear why men of all stripes are fixated. Making short work of the capacious Gaillard, time and again she dazzled in golden voice and matching sequins, eclipsing all around her — and hitting some high notes that elicited euphoric applause from the audience. In the third act, Cook’s rich baritone rose also to poignancy as he channeled the soul-searching of Athanaël.
That was not always an easy task, given that most of the stage accommodated the orchestra and choir, which together formed a vast black organism a mere few feet away. Upstage from that was a constant swirl of outsize, ever-changing projections — a towering, teeming Alexandria, vast desert drifts, a forever twirling Thaïs, hypnotic constellations and raging fires. All these components could at times compete with one another and perhaps even distract from a complete immersion in the work.
Beauty and its burdens
True, the resulting sound was glorious. Massenet’s seductively lush score, with its exotic interludes, drives home both the allure of Thaïs and the impulse for one holy man to stoop to conquer. She is certainly gold-dipped catnip for this monk, masked as he may be in a higher calling.
When it comes to underscoring such feminine draws, there are also some dance segments that further underscore the atmosphere of exoticism— complemented at times by contrasting performances from Olivia Knutsen’s Charmeuse, Emily Skilling’s Myrtale and Alexandra Hotz’s Crobyle. With inviting smiles and metallic trim reminiscent of the flash of the 1980s, the louche look of city living for me harked back to New York City at times, when such excess was served up at gala dinners in unapologetic supply.
Still, a shift to asceticism is not the antidote Thaïs had prayed it would be. In “Thaïs,” trading bling for hair shirts is a fraught proposition, particularly when, well, you know, men will be men.
IF YOU WANT TO GO: Spoleto Festival USA will offer Thaïs at 7 p.m. on May 25, at the Charleston Gaillard Center.