Nearly twelve years after its world premiere in Chicago and subsequent silence, composer Bruce Saylor and librettist and poet J.D. “Sandy” McClatchy’s dramatically intense operatic setting of Tennessee Williams’ 1957 play, Orpheus Descending , exploring the dangers of being different in a narrow-minded small town, finally reached New York, at the end of March, thanks to Queens College’s Aaron Copland School of Music and the school’s Department of Drama, Theatre and Dance. The two leads of the Lyric Opera of Chicago’s Opera Center for American Artists’ June 1994 cast, Victor Benedetti and Juliana Rambaldi, took their places beside faculty, students and alumni for performances at the Goldstein Theater at Queens College’s Colden Center. Saylor’s music for Orpheus often blooms with full, Straussian tonal color. McClatchy’s text is a skillful reduction of Williams’ own. The March 25 hearing of the work, which deserves greater exposure, is considered here.

Singing in a resonant baritone, Benedetti assumed the role of Valentine Xavier, an alluring drifter-with-guitar, the opera and play’s Orpheus-with-his-lyre figure, with the orchestra’s harp representing the lyre. Men whom Val meets hate him on sight. Women all fall for him. This combustible combination leads to his downfall and death, torched by an angry lynch mob, much as Maenads, infuriated Dionysian revelers, tore the mythological musician to shreds.

Bruce Saylor, J.D. “Sandy” McClatchy & Tennessee Williams (after)

Val encounters three very different women and, to two of them, Benedetti sang most tenderly. Soprano Rambaldi was a strong-voiced, spirited Lady Torrance, the town’s token Italian and the Eurydice whose hopes he restores after her 15 years in a loveless marriage to Jabe--actor Louis Vuolo--who, unbeknownst to her, helped bring about her father’s death. High soprano Siri Howard made wayward Carol Cutrere, an even less centered Blanche DuBois type, who is the first we see putting the (unwelcome) make on Val. Soprano Eleni Calenos was a dippy Vee Talbott, a painter and visionary, who brings Val to Lady in hopes of getting him a job and is married to stern Sheriff Talbott--sonorous baritone Larry Beale Small. Directed on stage by Susan Einhorn and, from the pit, by Maurice Peress, all created vivid characters. Peress also guided the 24-piece orchestra through this compelling score.

Benedetti’s voice soared as he told Lady a fanciful tale of a legless bird, also a drifter, who sleeps on the wind. Rambaldi was forceful in the turbulent scenes in which she confronted her old lover, David Cutrere, Carol’s brother--played by Larry Raiken--about their baby, aborted when he left her for another, and when she learned her dying spouse had been involved in burning her bootlegger father alive in his vineyards, because he had dared to sell his alcohol to black people. Benedetti and Rambaldi’s expansive romantic scene, just after her exchange with Raiken, and her ecstatic rhapsody, when her Lady realized she was now pregnant with his Val’s baby, stood in stark contrast to the dark turmoil of the angry episodes. The pair’s happiness was short-lived, however, as Vuolo, cutting a forbidding figure as the dying Jabe, shot his wife, who, in a touching moment, died in Val’s arms.

Calenos’ Vee had her moment to shine when she told Val of the colorful visions that inspire her to paint. When she was overcome, he held her warmly, an instant soon shattered when Small’s Sheriff and his goons (Deepak Marwah and Adam Somer) arrived and, in a scene of almost sexual tension, as they harped on his good looks and tore open his shirt, ordered him to leave town or risk his life. Completing the cast were Robin Flynn and Jennifer Toohey, relentless as the gossips Beulah and Dolly, and Rasia Rzezwicka-Gajdek, as the humorless nurse who gave Jabe morphine, which loosened his tongue, and who made Lady aware of her pregnancy.

Troy Hourie designed the versatile set, lit by Aaron Mooney and encompassing Jabe’s shops and home. Meghan E. Healey designed the costumes, with Lady’s festive garb for the final scene sharply contrasting with her drab attire, reflecting her demeanor, for the earlier ones.

Victor Benedetti & Siri Howard. Photo by Nancy Bareis.

Goldstein Theatre at Queens College, Kissena Blvd. & LIE, Flushing

March 23 at 7 pm (preview); 24 & 25 at 8 pm; 26 at 3 pm; & 28 at 10 am