An understanding of how music-theatre works seems to come naturally to the composer Mark Adamo. His way of finding a drama's emotional nerve and projecting it to an audience is at the root of the success of his 1998 opera Little Women, which has had some 30 engagements in North America. At its world premiere by the Houston Grand Opera, his second opera, Lysistrata, or the Nude Goddess, proved no less effective, even if, or perhaps because, Adamo treats his source - Aristophanes' anti-war satire - as merely a point of departure. His own libretto is really a new play, with the characters fleshed out, in particular the title heroine, who, fed up with war between Athens and Sparta, leads the Greek women in a sex strike.
The opera culminates in a classic operatic dilemma when Lysistrata chooses between making private peace with her lover, the Athenian general Nico, and duty to her cause. But the confrontational nature of Aristophanes' original is retained, as is its bawdy humour. Lysistrata moves swiftly as one arresting number succeeds another in the largely tonal score. Sometimes, though, the music seemed secondary to the drama. The comedy could have done with a sharper satirical edge, and the thoughtfulness Adamo shows in the serious scenes might have profited from a bolder expressive force. Pacifists will regret the muting of Aristophanes' anti-war voice when at the end the gods Aphrodite and Ares imply that war is inevitable. This must be anti-war opera, Texas-style.
Michael Kahn's zesty production (sets by Derek McLane, costumes by Murell Horton and lighting by Mark Doubleday) evokes ancient Greece with contemporary flair. Emily Pulley shone as Lysistrata, and Chad Shelton sang Nico with a virile lyric tenor. The excellent cast also included two powerful mezzos, Myrna Paris, as a cohort of Lysistrata, and Victoria Livengood, as the wife of the Spartan general Leonidas, firmly sung by Joshua Winograde. Laquita Mitchell sang with sweet lyricism as Myrrhine. The opera calls for only a chamber orchestra, which Stefan Lano led in fine fashion.
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