Not a premiere, but close to it—Marble City Opera boarded the Heartbreak Express this past weekend with three performances of the one-act opera—score by George Lam and libretto by John Clum. These performances were the first ones outside of New York City since its premiere. Heartbreak Express was created and premiered in 2015 by Rhymes With Opera, a Greenwich Village opera ensemble that shares many characteristics in common with chamber opera companies like MCO. These performances were the first by MCO at the Old City Performing Arts Center on State Street, a physical pairing that seemed to work really well—both acoustically and theatrically—and that will be repeated later this season with The Infinite Energy of Ada Lovelace in March.
Although marketing blurbs call this a “Dolly Parton-inspired” story, that is only accurate in the most basic way. The title does allude to a Parton album and song from the early 80s, “Heartbreak Express”— “Leavin’ behind what once was mine with sad regrets; But it’s all gone now and I’m leavin’ town on the Heartbreak Express.”
The actual inspiration for the libretto’s underpinning was a documentary film by Tai Uhlmann, For the Love of Dolly, that explored the psychology and motivations of five of Parton’s avid and obsessed fans. In Clum’s libretto, four Dolly “superfans” have been given the chance to meet their idol and await their turn in a holding area. The real premise here involves the fragility of hero worship as a crutch to avoid facing the missing pieces and opportunities in one’s life.
Two sisters, Luanne (soprano Whitney Wells) and Darlene (soprano April Hill), won their opportunity to meet Dolly through an essay contest. Of the two, Darlene has a fragile psyche and is looking for some kind of reassurance, if not a reason for being, from her meeting with Dolly. Luanne, though, has a much more cynical view of life, but is there to support her sister out of a sense of obligation.
A long time couple, Don (Daniel Spiotta) and Travis (Ben Rorabaugh) have devoted much of their relationship and home to collecting Dolly memorabilia. They are there to get the approval to manufacture a new Dolly doll, a project in which they have invested their life’s savings. Like Darlene, Travis is hoping for some kind of quasi-religious experience to give meaning to that which is missing in his relationship. And, in a role that floats somewhere between a comic Greek chorus and Absurdist Theatre character, “the assistant” (countertenor Min Sang Kim) was tasked with moving the guests into, and out of, the unseen Dolly’s presence.
Stage director Marya Berry defined the characters successfully—attiring the sisters in butterfly-wing costumes; Travis in a PeeWee Herman-esque suit, Don in suspenders—each revealing bits and pieces of their challenged psyches. But it was satisfying and strong vocal and dramatic performances that recommend this production. Hill’s Darlene was a marvelous mix of the alternating opaque and transparent facets of her fragile personality, matched with soft and powerful vocal moments. Wells, too, was masterful in her skepticism and hard love that came across as lyrical sweetness with a tinge of life’s bitterness around the edges. Tenor Rorabaugh painted his character with a blissful naïveté, while baritone Spiotta painted a deeply expressive portrait of Don, a man resigned to accepting the reality of a failed journey.
The one-act is divided into two scenes—in the first, we see a room backed with Dolly posters and we are introduced to the characters through exposition; in the second, the Dolly posters have been turned around to reveal mirrors that are visual metaphors for the self-examination that is to take place. After the scene is prefaced by a remarkable, but eerie, aria from Kim, we deal with the psychological aftermath of the four characters’ meeting. As a result, the first scene is a bit dry texturally and musically, while the second scene comes alive with conflict and introspection and is, thus, much more compelling musically, both in instrumental colors and in vocal drama. Conductor Logan Campbell, fully done up in Dolly-esque blonde wig, dress, and make-up, led a nicely balanced ensemble of violin, viola, cello, saxophone, percussion, and piano.
There is one more performance of Marble City Opera’s Heartbreak Express this Saturday evening at Old City Performing Arts Center, 111 State Street in the Old City, at 7:30 PM.
