Texas Classical Review

Whatever else one can say about Missy Mazzoli’s Breaking the Waves, one thing is certain: It contains one of the most demanding roles for soprano in all opera.

In Houston Grand Opera’s production, which opened Saturday at Wortham Theater Center, Lauren Snouffer turns in a powerhouse performance as the heroine.

Breaking the Waves was inspired by the 1996 movie of the same name by director Lars von Trier. Innocent young Bess, a villager in remote northern Scotland, has fallen in love with a Norwegian oil-rig worker, Jan. The elders of her church—proponents of the strictest brand of old-time religion—give her permission to marry him, and during the ceremony, the elders’ leader commands to obey her husband.

Bess’ sexual awakening comes quickly, but Jan soon leaves her for another stint on the oil rig. An accident leaves him grievously injured, and in the hospital he shocks Bess with a demand: He tells her to take other lovers. 

As she does, she comes to believe her actions are helping him survive. The more condemnation and danger she confronts, the more resolute she becomes.

Mazzoli’s score doesn’t call on Bess to fire off bel canto coloratura or match decibels with a Wagnerian orchestra.

But she stays onstage, usually at center stage, for virtually all of the opera’s 2-1/2 hours. And as Bess develops from the girlish fiancée of the opening to the self-sacrificing wife of the climax, she has to radiate commitment at every step.

Snouffer does that in spades. Compelling as she has been in roles as varied as Cherubino in Mozart’s The Marriage of Figaro and the cheerful Sister Constance in Poulenc’s The Dialogues of the Carmelites, the intensity and vividness of Snouffer’s Bess on Saturday delivered a whole new impact.

Snouffer built the intensity rapidly. She sketched in Bess’ first description of Jan, which opens the opera, in light, playful tones; her voice soared and blossomed to reveal the new bride’s passion. When Jan’s departure for the rig brought on Bess’ first burst of agitation, Snouffer sang with an edge and urgency that suggested Bess had more anxiety waiting to come out.

And as events pushed Bess to new emotional extremes, Snouffer’s voice rang with more and more abandon, even taking on the grittiness of desperation at times. When Bess channeled what she imagined as the voice of God—embodied musically and visually by the elders—her dry, bloodless half-singing made the aura all the more nightmarish.Yet Snouffer pulled back from all that and returned to sweet, quiet tones when Bess harkened to the hope and devotion that sustained her.

Dramatically, Snouffer also faced a tall order from revival director Sara Brodie: While charting Bess’ trajectory from smiling bride to fatalistic man-chaser, the directors at one point demonstrated Bess’ abjectness by having her shed nearly all her clothes as she begged a man to take her. Snouffer played that out with the same conviction she brought every scene, be it idyllic or horrific.

As Jan, bass-baritone Ryan McKinny spent less time at the forefront of the action. Nevertheless, the heldenbaritone heft he has brought to roles such as last season’s Amfortas in Wagner’s Parsifal enabled McKinny to make impact galore—first as the brawny but affectionate bridegroom, then as the injured man issuing pleas and orders from his hospital bed.

In the final scene, the tenderness McKinny gave Jan’s farewell to Bess—even a moment of falsetto as he recalled her voice—helped end the story on a note of consolation. And when the staging illustrated the sexual fireworks between the newlyweds, McKinny and Snouffer played out the scenes unabashedly but without raunchiness.

The supporting roles all contribute to the forces at play in the opera’s story, and all received potent portrayals.

Tenor David Portillo’s fresh, sometimes ethereal singing helped make Jan’s physician, Dr. Richardson, one of the most sympathetic figures in the saga—especially in his attempts to console the distraught Bess.

As Bess’ friend Dodo, mezzo-soprano Maire Therese Carmack was a fount of rich, plush tones that exuded Dodo’ affection. And bass-baritone Sam Dhobhany brought good-buddy gusto to the role of Jan’s oil-rig pal Terry.

On the harsher side of the story, baritone Michael Mayes—who played Verdi’s Rigoletto for HGO in 2019—laced his booming tones with an occasional knife edge as the elders’ leader, who relishes consigning people to hell. And as Bess’ mother, who heartily condemns her actions, soprano Michelle Bradley sang with full-throatedness and implacable force.

As the church elders, the men of the HGO Chorus played a Jekyll-and-Hyde role: sometimes the elders themselves, sometimes a nightmarish transformation of them in Bess’ mind. The men sang with brusque precision as the one, with biting ferocity as the other.

The compelling performances were all the more valuable because Breaking the Waves needs the boost. The vocal lines, though they work up to moments of forcefulness, don’t necessarily have strong profiles in terms of melody or declamation. The text, by Royce Vavrek, doesn’t have the line-by-line expressive conciseness that might lend itself to that.

But Mazzoli’s adroitness with the orchestra helps make up the difference.

The vividness of the HGO Orchestra, led by Patrick Summers, played a key role in telling the story. Mazzoli’s orchestral score, with its rapid shifts of texture, color and force, sometimes fleshes out the drama more tellingly than the vocal lines and text do. Sometimes it’s spare and still, sometimes ethereal, sometimes churning and violent. Summers and company savored its kaleidoscopic shifts.

Designer Soutra Gilmour contributed a spare but effective set: a cluster of columns that, thanks to Will Duke’s projections, could transform from a church to an oil rig to a hellish red ship to the restless sea.

Director Brodie capitalized on the revolving setup to craft action that flowed quickly from scene to scene. The staging tackled the story’s violence head-on, but it also worked in moments of calm as characters tried to comfort one another.

And the whole way, Snouffer’s galvanizing presence made everything fit together.

Breaking the Waves runs through May 4. houstongrandopera.org