Carl Orff’s Carmina Burana was given a remarkable choral and dance performance at the the Granada last weekend, to the evident delight of an enthusiastic full-house audience.
Saturday night’s patrons were bowled over by the spectacle, and spectacle it was: The State Street Ballet dancing in front of the entire Santa Barbara Choral Society and Orchestra, with a full orchestra in the pit. JoAnne Wasserman, music director of the choral group, conducted the singers and orchestra, and it was magical.
Especially rewarding was the ballet choreography, by William Soleau. This New York choreographer has made endearing works on the company before, including a somber and wrenching work immediately after the 9/11 terrorist attacks on New York City.
Here, with Carmina, Soleau again explored the presence of death amid life. Of course, Carmina is set to the poetry of a bunch of renegade 12th-century monks, for whom Death was a vivid presence in lives that were brief and often wretched. Consequently, the lovely parts — maidens and men reaching out to one another, coupling, carousing — had a subtext of human mortality. In the final movement, Death himself walked among the young and beautiful dancers, a fearful skull hooded in a flowing cloak.
The company’s men continue to provide strong elements. Ryan Camou and Bayaraa Badamsambuu gave especially vivid performances, and Sergei Domrachov as always was a dominant force. Among the ballerinas, Victoria Luchkina and Terez Dean were standouts.
Of course, this is also a mighty choral work, and the singers were also beautifully trained and compelling. Wasserman is a petite woman, but quite commanding as a conductor. She held all the elements of the performance together, no mean feat.
Carmina is a kind of beautiful monster. It is an immense musical work, and Soleau created an equally profound dance vocabulary for it.
Orff’s reputation suffered after World War II. If not an active collaborator with the Nazis in Germany, he did manage to continue his career successfully while they were in power. Politics aside, he created a prodigious work in Carmina and this triple-threat version at the Granada was thrilling. No doubt, it won’t disappear after such a successful introduction, and that’s to the benefit of us all.
The performance was repeated Sunday, presumably to the same kind of rapturous reception.
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