Command Performance

The broad spectrum of originality in new American musical compositions ranges from anarchic esotericism on the left to immediately apprehensible banality on the right. Works at both extremes tend to become entertainments only remotely related to serious music. The world premiere Friday and Saturday at Kresge Auditorium of Command Performance by Robert Middleton and Harold Smith added another piece to the repertoire of the right.

The story of Command Performance stems from Queen Elizabeth's negotiations during 1599 and 1600 with the Sultan of Turkey. The basic facts are historical: the Queen actually did send the Sultan a fabulous, animated Baroque organ under the guidance of a court musician from Lancashire, and England's trading power in the East did at that point increase. Mr. Smith has, on his own, made the musician, Jack Wilton (Robert Trehy), fall in love with a lady of the court. Queen Elizabeth (Blanche Thebom) ships Wilton off to Turkey to avoid permitting a misalliance with his inamorata Lady Anne (Doris Yarick). There the michievous Sultan (played to perfection by an appropriately ponderous Ezio Flagello) imprisons Jack in order to keep an excellent organ player. A Venetian damsel in distress named Dorina (actually not in a dress at all, but disguised as a janissary, afraid of the tortures of the Sultan's seraglio, joins Wilton and begs him to help her escape. Jack promises the Sultan to turn Dorina-in-disguise into a musician better than himself within one month, if the Sultan will promise freedom. The Sultan agrees. And so it goes.

Happily, operatic tradition and the difficulties of musical presentation excuse such a trite plot. At the same time they also obscured several of Mr. Smith's funny lines. Obfuscation failed to overcome the genuine slapstick in the organ scene of the first act.

Mr. Smith '43, writes of a time he knows; he is currently completing a dissertation for a Harvard Ph.D. about an unpublished Elizabethan manuscript.

Robert Middleton, who holds a Harvard A.M. and worked under Walter Piston, has wisely scored the opera for a small, six-man orchestra. Performing and conducting himself, the composer gave the piano the burden of the music, so that the musical texture never palled from overspicing.

The music is pleasant, easy to listen to, and appropriately entertaining. But in its use of formulas and constant sweetness, it becomes almost painful. Too often, the musical originality matched the startling news proclaimed by the singers: "Love conquers all," and: "The fates have been at work." Still, the rare opportunity of hearing a coherent lyric line in a new composition made most of the score a happy experience.

Blanche Thebom turned Queen Elizabeth into a live character. Remarkably natural singing, in spite of the artificial setting of some lines, went with the only really decent dramatic performance. She huffed and puffed as a proper queen should.

The Sultan of Turkey, played by Ezio Flagello, while hardly lecherous enough, flaunted his despotism and fat sufficently to be piquant. Ezio Flagello looks like a mean old sultan, and sings a professional bass.

Also perfectly cast was James Billings as the meek and harried organ builder.

The only objectionable character, the Prime Minister, repeated himself too much, and sang too loud, to be funny at all; he ended up merely tedious.

Initially, the six woman chorus seemed musically uncoordinated. The chorus's military maneuvers of the middle acts seemed little removed from bumps and grinds. (Fortunately, no one in the audience seemed to notice that in his ecstasy over the organ music, the Sultan was dancing the stroll.)

Vassar College commissioned the composer and librettist, both members of its faculty, to create Command Performance to celebrate the college's hundredth anniversary. Command Performance is, as intended, "a new musical and dramatic work of major proportions," replete with operatic poses. Its singers deliver love duets into empty space. Its music appeals and its ending is happy. As a dramatic production it never bogs down. It is smooth and polished, though hardly profound.