On March 21, the same day that George W. Bush said that U.S. troops would remain in Iraq at least through the end of his presidency, a group of fed-up soldiers’ wives came together. To end a seemingly never-ending war and their strategy, they decided to withhold sex until a truce was called.
The women, of course, weren’t American or Iraqi but from Athens and Sparta. They appeared on the stage of the New York City Opera as characters in gay composer Mark Adamo’s new comic opera “Lysistrata or, The Nude Goddess.” The opera’s New York debut may have been timely, but thoughts of current world affairs didn’t last for long during the evening’s ribald exploits.
Adamo, 43, wrote both the words and music and showed the same nimble gifts that made his first opera, “Little Women,” such a huge success. But where that was a thoughtful look at the pains of growing up, “Lysistrata” is a hyperactive battle between the sexes and Adamo’s smart, sometimes fussy techniques are more obvious.
Actually there’s an amazing amount of laughter for an evening at the opera. But the libretto’s seemingly endless rhymes got a bit tiresome coming out of the mouths of buxom, toga-clad Greek babes. An example: “We will greet their rigidity with our frigidity.”
Speaking of rigidity, by the middle of the second act, every soldier on stage is tenting his tunic. It’s a joke that gets old fast and undermines the quieter arias that come late in the opera.
Director Michael Kahn keeps the characters busy on the revolving, brightly colored set by designer Derek McLane. Conductor George Manahan led the small orchestra in one explosion of color and affect after another. Standouts among the almost uniformly fine cast were soprano Emily Pulley as the agile Lysia, contralto Myrna Paris as a wisecracking den mother, and the robust baritone Stephen Kechulius as leader of the Spartans.
