Carmilla 2003 Margaret Benczak & Nancy (N.C.) Heikin
photo by Jonathan Slaff
"Carmilla," composer Ben Johnston and late librettist-cum-director Wilfred Leach's chamber rock opera, after Joseph Sheridan LeFanu's vampire novella, was first given by La MaMa in 1970 and has been offered periodically since then. A revival this month, a joint effort of La MaMa ETC and the Great Jones Repertory Company, features, amazingly, four of the original leads; the music director of the premiere, flautist Zizi Mueller; and two other musicians, Bill Ruyle and Richard Cohen, from the first instrumental ensemble to play "Carmilla." Ellen Stewart, La MaMa herself, has recreated the original direction by the late Leach and John Braswell. John Coddington contributed projections to augment the action. Matt Aiken, Greg Hesselink and Michael Sirotta are the other musicians. Coddington's film features images from nature, shots of the family manse, bloody body parts, and pertinent information about the vampire (or "ompire"). LeFanu's "Carmilla" may have inspired Bram Stoker to write " Dracula."
"Carmilla" is redolent indeed of the time of its composition, reminding now and then of "Hair," rock operas like "Jesus Christ Superstar," and eclectic musicals by the Reverend Al Carmines. Rock and folk-like ballads, tribal and Gregorian chant, recitative, arioso, and jagged melismas are encountered during the intermissionless hour-and-a-half. I' ve been hearing about "Carmilla" for a long time. It's good actually to hear it.
The focus of the work is the apparently decorous 19th Century romance of the vampire Carmilla and her mortal love, Laura, sung, respectively, by mezzo-soprano Nancy (N.C.) Heikin and soprano Margaret Benczak, creators of these roles. Seated on a sofa with carved wood figures, which come to life as members of the household (Don Arrington and Camille Tibaldeo of the first cast, joined by Audrey Lavine), Benczak's Laura gently recounts, in a rock number, with gypsy strains underpinning it, a dream she had as a child. Was someone with her in her bed? Are those puncture marks on her breast? The family invites Carmilla, injured and abandoned, to stay with them and the two young women find, in their duet, that they shared the same strange dream a dozen years earlier. Heikin and Benczak use microphones until the last few minutes of the opera, when they are easily heard without any amplification at all.
Carmilla 1986 Margaret Benczak &Nancy Heikin
photo by Jerry Vezzuzo
In a wildly rhythmic, wide-ranging dance song, with an ornate cadenza that takes her into head voice, Heikin's Carmilla sings plangently, elliptically of their love and her own vampirism, but Laura only half understands. A funeral passes and Laura joins in the chanting of the " Dies irae." Carmilla is greatly disturbed by the prayer and claims she has no feeling for the dead girl, who apparently had visitations from a strange spirit, who, we suspect, may have been Carmilla herself.
A mountebank, colorfully limned by performance artist John Kelly, enters to mystical Eastern strains, selling charms and amulets, including ones that will ward off vampires. In an agitated aria, punctuated by the mountebank's raucous laughter, Laura describes dreams that plague her, when she doesn't have her charm with her, of a strange silent woman, causing her father (Arrington) and Carmilla to inquire if she is ill and requires a doctor.
Carmilla mesmerizes Laura and, in her reverie, Laura has a vision of someone in a crypt, to Carmilla's growing alarm. Dead (or undead) 150 years, Carmilla caresses Laura and quietly hints of the possibility of immortality together as the opera ends.
"Carmilla" plays on Thursdays through Sundays until April 27.
The Annex at La MaMa ETC, 74A East 4th Street
Tickets $25 212/475-7710 or http://www.lamama.org