MSO’s Colorful Staging of Ibsen/Grieg’s ‘Peer Gynt’

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Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen’s unconventional verse play Peer Gynt, published in 1867, broke 19th theatrical century conventions with its sprawling construction in brief episodes. Based in folk legend, it tells in fantastical ways of the 50-year restless travels of Peer Gynt, a self-absorbed free spirit who encounters trolls, riches, ruin, and ultimately a return home to his Norwegian village to die. The play has been interpreted in thousands of ways, from literal to abstraction.

Ibsen asked Norwegian composer Edvard Grieg to compose incidental music for the 1876 premiere of the play. The score is most familiar in two often-performed orchestral suites. However, this past weekend the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra presented an adaptation of the entire play and score in staging with actors. The highly truncated English adaptation by Bill Barclay was originally commissioned by the Boston Symphony Orchestra, and most of the original Boston cast performed at MSO.

It's a combination of surrealness and tenderness spelled by rustic comedy. Only one of the cast members was a singer, the rest actors generally playing in a broad theatrical style. This is tricky stuff which can be interpreted in a myriad of ways, but the direction, cast and simple production were decidedly convincing, and the audience readily responded. 

Ken-David Masur conducted the orchestra and chorus. Audiences are very familiar with various movements, including “In the Hall of the Mountain King,” “Morning Mood” (first learned by most from classic cartoons), and “Anitra’s Dance.” The colorful orchestrations came through with committed, good playing. The Milwaukee Symphony Chorus, seated in the choral terrace behind the players, sang with well-balanced sound, particularly in a brief, unaccompanied, sentimental chorale. 

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Soprano Georgia Jarman is acclaimed for her bel canto opera roles. As Solveig she was only given two songs (I hesitate to call them arias), sung with silvery, sincere, almost artless simplicity, without a hint of a diva. Though the rest of the production was in English, except for some choruses, her songs were sung in Danish, the original language of Ibsen’s play. (Danish was the common written language for Norway in the era.)

I have attended a couple of concerts in the new Bradley Symphony Center. At long last we have a real concert hall in Milwaukee worthy of MSO. The splendid, eclectic architecture of the theater has been widely covered. The sound of the hall, with its noticeable reverberation and warmth, is incalculably better than in the multi-purpose Marcus Center for classical performances. To my ears, the orchestra and its conductor are still adjusting as to how to play in the hall. Brass, and even woodwinds, usually often overwhelm the string sound. And even at the loudest levels, the strings don’t ring the hall as much as my ears would like. 

There was one annoying and avoidable factor from the Sunday afternoon performance I attended. The supertitle translations for the Danish texts were obscured from my seat in the gallery by a conspicuously large lighting fixture. Couldn’t this have been addressed?