By CB Adams
There is a particular sadness when the pieces of an opera production, many of them individually accomplished, never quite cohere. Union Avenue Opera’s decision to close its 32nd Festival Season with Camille Saint-Saëns’ “Samson et Dalila” is ambitious.
Taking it on means wrestling with a work whose substantial oratorio DNA—formal choral writing, sumptuous vocal set pieces and orchestral architecture—can make it glorious to hear and stubbornly resistant to theater.
Under Scott Schoonover’s direction, Saint-Saëns’ gorgeous score makes the strongest case for the evening. The orchestra provides much of the production’s emotional life, supporting impressive voices whose differences sometimes make its mismatched power dynamics audible.
Jonny Kaufman’s clear, penetrating tenor finds Samson most persuasively in extremis, whether appealing to God or surrendering to Dalila. As the strongman weakens, Kaufman grows more compelling, turning desire into the vulnerability that undoes him. Bass-baritone Eliam Ramos brings resonant warmth and commanding authority to the High Priest of Dagon.
Melody Wilson’s warm, richly timbred mezzo creates an intriguing mismatch with her cool, regal Dalila, though that reserve eventually becomes a remoteness that keeps the character’s emotional depths beyond reach.
That distance matters because Samson and Dalila’s relationship is the hinge upon which everything turns. The opera asks us to believe in a complicated history that happened before we arrived.
Director Kathryn Frady’s intricate, tango-like Act II encounter is well sung and carefully staged, yet cannot make that unseen past feel lived. Even Samson’s blinding becomes a prolonged tableau of soldiers poised above his eyes, a theatrical device that exposes itself.
The sumptuous fabric-draped set impresses initially but evolves mostly through colored light, its palatial luxury tonally disconnected from the oppressed Israelites of Act I.
Teresa Doggett’s costumes fare better, especially Dalila’s gleaming gold Bacchanale gown—she definitely said yes to the dress—and the High Priest’s finery.
When Saint-Saëns finally demands theatrical abandon, the Bacchanale remains curiously contained. Its awkward dance reenactment of Samson and Dalila muddles rather than intensifies the cruelty. After Kaufman makes Samson’s brokenness convincing, his sudden restored strength feels unearned, while the palace’s destruction registers as cheesy stagecraft rather than inevitable catastrophe.
At curtain call, the cast’s response to the applause felt different: relief at completing this difficult undertaking, perhaps, coupled with an almost urgent hope that the audience embraced what they had created. After so much beautiful singing and committed work that never fully cohered, the moment carried its own sadness.
Union Avenue Opera’s “Samson et Dalila” continues Aug. 21 and 22 at 8 p.m. at Union Avenue Christian Church, 733 N. Union Blvd., St. Louis.
CB Adams is an award-winning fiction writer and photographer based in the Greater St. Louis area. A former music/arts editor and feature writer for the St. Louis Globe-Democrat, his non-fiction has been published in local, regional and national publications. His literary short stories have been published in more than a dozen literary journals and his fine art photography has been exhibited in more than 40 galley shows nationwide. Adams is the recipient of the Missouri Arts Council’s highest writing awards: the Writers’ Biennial and Missouri Writing!. The Riverfront Times named him, “St. Louis’ Most Under-Appreciated Writer” in 1996.