Opera Review | Preacher Feature

Having watched director Richard Brooks’s powerful 1960 film Elmer Gantry as research for catching Opera Santa Barbara’s (OSB) production of the operatic adaptation of the piece, I was a bit disarmed by the narrative differences between the two. Alas, the opera telling the story yolks closer to Sinclair Lewis’s groundbreaking 1927 novel than the Burt Lancaster film. But the deeply embedded themes — the fragility of spiritual faith, the lure of religious hucksterism, and MOB mentality in the American grain — remain the same.

It all adds up to ripe fodder for operatic treatment, and OSB is to be commended for bringing this fascinating contemporary piece to our town, and in grand style, turning the Lobero Theatre into a surrogate tent preaching house of cultural worship. 

Happily off the grid of familiar crowd-baiting opera standard fare, this opera — written in 2007 by composer Robert Aldridge and librettist Herschel Garfein — is a thoroughly American endeavor, thematically and also musically, weaving together strands of contemporary, classical, natural gospel music strains and musical theater lingos. 

With OSB maestro/domo Kostis Protopapas holding forth in the orchestra pit, Tara Faircloth as stage director and Evan Bravos and Christina Pezzarossi magnetizing us in the key roles of the opportunistic Gantry and the pious preacher Sharon Falconer, this Elmer Gantry was a win-win, on its own terms and for the cause of promoting American opera. The production design, from scenic designer Laura Fine Hawkes, made resourceful use of a lean set, with generous help from the work of lighting designer Helena Kuukka.

We meet Gantry, a seminary student with a wild side, in a bar, carousing and entertaining the patrons with the natural charismatic prowess that will make him a winner in the world of business, nefariously winning the girl — the seminary president’s daughter Lulu (boldly sung by soprano Brooklyn Snow) and eventually building a tabernacle and a Pentecostal circus with Falconer. The plot thickens as his connection to Falconer crosses the line into carnal love. Built-in tensions and frailties in the narrative build to a holy ghostly and ideally operatic climax, putting the fire into fire and brimstone: The tabernacle burns, our heroine perishes (this is opera, after all), and holy ghostly exhortations flow. It all ends with the recurring story’s theme of “What is love?” — a nagging philosophical riddle posed in terms of spiritual and earthly love in this narrative.

A fourth-wall-breaking effect entered the Lobero Theatre as cast members appeared in the aisles, passing tithing baskets to the audience, a touch that reminded us of the darkly comedic undertone of the tale.

Opera and religious practice and ritual are natural bedfellows, both spectacles involving historically informed and deeply ingrained formulae, traditions, not to mention a certain suspension of disbelief. This take on Gantry, dutifully and beautifully brought to the Lobero stage by OSB, takes effective advantage of that common ground.

But through it all, beyond appreciation of the artistic work before us, it is hard not ponder the relevance of Gantry to the charlatanism and “pretender to the throne” aspect of life in the White House at the moment. It circles back to a comment in director Faircloth’s statement in the program: “This opera does not offer a tidy moral. Instead, it reflects a deeply upsetting truth. American public life rewards performance over substance.” And when a leader or a reverend’s performance is in a tailspin, the congregation’s ire may reach some transformative boiling point and cathartic action. Is the festering tabernacle combustible?

But we digress. Suffice to say, OSB’s Elmer Gantry caps off another strong season at the opera in town, with style, grace and fittingly plate-passing audacity.