{"id":23997,"date":"2021-07-27T14:25:27","date_gmt":"2021-07-27T21:25:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/forallevents.com\/reviews\/?p=23997"},"modified":"2021-10-05T10:17:15","modified_gmt":"2021-10-05T17:17:15","slug":"elizabeth-cree","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/forallevents.com\/reviews\/elizabeth-cree\/","title":{"rendered":"Elizabeth Cree: a review by Victor Cordell"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Keith Phares as John Cree.<\/p><\/div>\n

Murder!\u00a0 Mayhem!\u00a0 Ghoulish entertainment for the lower classes!\u00a0 Terror in the night on the foggy, shabby back streets of Victorian London!\u00a0 It sounds like the makings of a Gothic suspense novel.\u00a0 But an opera?\u00a0 With a canvas that is the amalgam of a 19th<\/sup> century English music hall milieu, a courtroom trial, and serial murders, it hardly seems likely.\u00a0 Of significant works intended for the opera house, only Alban Berg\u2019s \u201cLulu\u201d comes close to being as lurid.<\/p>\n

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Keith Phares as John Cree, Katy Pracht as Elizabeth Cree.<\/p><\/div>\n

In \u201cElizabeth Cree,\u201d the eminent Pulitzer Prize winning team, composer Kevin Puts and librettist Mark Campbell, have crafted a score and a darkly comic libretto with Gothic atmosphere that is absolutely riveting.\u00a0 West Edge Opera\u2019s stellar new production at its wonderful outdoor venue channels the creepiness of the events even at a broad daylight matinee.<\/p>\n

The opera is loosely based on fact.\u00a0 Elizabeth Cree suffered a hard scrapple upbringing with a mother who badly abused Elizabeth\u2019s genitals as punishment for the girl\u2019s having been raped. \u00a0\u00a0However, she rose from the bowels of society to take on as a performer with music hall troupe.\u00a0 Later, she met and married John Cree, a literary critic and failed writer but with a comfortable income from his family.\u00a0 John would be implicated in a series of Jack the Ripper like murders but would die from a dose of poison administered by Elizabeth, who would be tried for his murder.<\/p>\n

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Samuel Faustine as Dan Leno, Joe Meyers as Little Victor Farrell, Leslie Katter as Aveline Mortimer, Christopher Job as Uncle.<\/p><\/div>\n

Like the company producing it, the opera is edgy in every way.\u00a0 The plot line is delivered briskly in a series of 29 vignettes that move back and forth in place and time.\u00a0 At one point Elizabeth reveals her unhappy childhood and at another her sexual frigidity.\u00a0 Vaudevillian-like music hall entertainers in silly costumes amuse us.\u00a0 Real-life luminaries Karl Marx and George Gissing are encountered at the reading room of the British Museum, also frequented by John Cree, and are interrogated on the witness stand of the trial.\u00a0 Most vividly, we see the scenes of the swarthy, rakishly handsome John Cree enacting and describing in gory detail the bloody, precise vivisection of the murder victims.<\/p>\n

The composer\u2019s dizzying score engages throughout with the same rapid movement as the scenes.\u00a0 The orchestra tinkles and tingles and screeches and pounds like a punch in the gut.\u00a0 It soars as Cree contemplates impaling the next victim.\u00a0 But at the same time, the music allows for a variety of lyrical vocalizations which are delivered with consummate skill.<\/p>\n

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Samuel Faustine as Dan Leno, Katy Pracht as Elizabeth Cree.<\/p><\/div>\n

Mezzo Katy Pracht soars as Elizabeth with a mellow voice and full vibrato, conveying a panoply of enigmatic emotions from her lost innocence to her deadly scheming.\u00a0 But her murderous character is mundane when contrasted to her male counterparts.\u00a0 Pracht\u2019s real-life husband, Keith Phares, portrays the sinister John Cree with flair.\u00a0 His silky, rounded baritone includes a lilting high end and warm vibrato.\u00a0 Finally, Samuel Faustine is the brassy and gaudy comedian Dan Leno, the head of the music hall performers.\u00a0 His versatile tenor voice includes a well-controlled countertenorish high end that is put to great use in low volume passages.<\/p>\n

This opera may not have the gravity of Verdi or Mozart works.\u00a0 However, the score is multifaceted, fitting, and eminently listenable.\u00a0 Not to mention, the libretto is clever in structure; gripping and engaging; and as propulsive as the music.\u00a0 To top it off, there is an element of suspense with an intriguing denouement.\u00a0 The West Edge production touch is a perfect fit to this delightful opera.<\/p>\n

\u201cElizabeth Cree,\u201d composed by Kevin Puts, with libretto by Mark Campbell, is produced by West Edge Opera and plays at Bruns Amphitheater, 100 California Shakespeare Theater Way, Orinda, CA through August 7, 2021.<\/p>\n

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Murder!\u00a0 Mayhem!\u00a0 Ghoulish entertainment for the lower classes!\u00a0 Terror in the night on the foggy, shabby back streets of Victorian London!\u00a0 It sounds like the makings of a Gothic suspense…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":104,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"yasr_overall_rating":0,"yasr_post_is_review":"","yasr_auto_insert_disabled":"","yasr_review_type":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[664],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-23997","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-victor-cordell"},"yasr_visitor_votes":{"stars_attributes":{"read_only":true,"span_bottom":"