Review: Juilliard Opera Takes FLIGHT in the Airport from Hell

Like a morsel of Proust's madeleine soaking in a cup of tea, the setting of Juilliard Opera's new production of Jonathan Dove's opera FLIGHT took me back to another age, and Eero Saarinen's modernistic TWA (now Jet Blue) Terminal at Kennedy Airport in New York. But the only thing retro about the evening itself is a return to a golden age, with the excellent performance of the cast and orchestra, under conductor Steven Osgood and the direction of James Darrah.

Dove's music slithers in and out of the action, seducing us with its comic highs and eerie intensity. It provides a solid opportunity for the Juilliard Orchestra and conductor Osgood to give an urgent, first-rate account of the soaring score, showing off the musicians' ability to create the odd environment in which the cast resides. For the most part, Dove has struck an easy collaboration with his librettist April de Angelis, who leads the cast on that fine line between real and unreal, farce and would-be tragedy; only in the drama of Act II does the pace seem to lag a bit.

The opera reminds us that some things never change: Here are a group of strangers stranded in an airport (cagily designed by Ellen Lenbergs with Adam Larsen's nimble video backdrop, Cameron Jaye Mock's lighting and Mattie Ullrich's right-on costumes) because of the weather, taking advantage of the anonymity of travel to behave badly, reinvent themselves or dream about 'what-if.'

The cast was uniformly top-drawer, showing good comic chops along with fine vocal training, with Darrah helping them to show their individuality rather than simply be archetypes. For example, baritone Dimitri Katotakis and mezzo Kelsey Lauritano are expert singer-farceurs, as the Steward and Stewardess who don't wait for the 'mile high' club to hook up, but otherwise have little to say to each other. On the opposite end, as the Minskman and -woman--on their way to relocate to one of the former Soviet states-- baritone Xiaomeng Zhang and mezzo Natalia Kutateladze make a less-than-happy pair, particularly she, heavy with child.

Tenor Matthew Swenson and soprano Nicolette Mavroleon get the bickering just right as Bill and Tina, trying to put some zest back in their relationship (though his fling with the Steward, to show he's game for something new, is not exactly what she had in mind). Mezzo Amanda Lynn Bottoms is touching yet amusing as the Older Woman who's a little past her sell-date, but dreams that a youthful admirer will show up and sweep her away. Finally, bass-baritone Cody Quattlebaum, in the TSA role, doesn't have much to do except look ominous for most of the opera, until his thoughtful last-minute rescue of the Refugee, who is the one joker in the deck.

The Refugee (the ethereal countertenor Jakub Jozef Orlinski) is caught in purgatory, without passport or other identity papers that would release him from his world of travel-without-travel at the airport. As he has also proved on other occasions, Orlinski's voice makes an oversize impression, with more heft to it than others in his fach. He tries to insinuate himself into the lives of the others by handing out "magical" stones that will help them live out their wishes, but his most interesting relationship may be with the Airport Controller, sung with almost Valkyrian intensity in a sensational turn by soprano Rebecca Farley. The pair seem to exist on parallel planes--at least, until the end, when the airport has reopened and the others carry on with their lives, while the Refugee and Controller don't have anyplace better to be.

If the story sounds somewhat familiar, it has the same source as the Tom Hanks vehicle, THE TERMINAL, directed by Steven Spielberg a decade or so ago, and based on real events. But this being opera and not the movies, the narrative is not linear and there's a kind of mystical element to it-=which the production at Juilliard got just right.

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