HOT in the News – HOT’s Siren Song has ‘offbeat’ appeal

If opera confuses you with its weird, convoluted stories, you shouldn’t have any trouble identifying with “Siren Song,” Hawaii Opera Theatre’s latest production.

Although “Siren Song” is based on the story of British sailor Davey Palmer, the plot bears a striking resemblance to the catfish incident involving Hawaii football star Manti Te’o and his mystery girlfriend. In both cases the men fell victim to a hoax perpetrated by a scam artist.

HOT isn’t shying away from the connection, serving up catfish at a fundraising event for the opera.

British composer Jonathan Dove based “Siren Song” on the Palmer incident, which occurred in the late 1980s. Its titillating appeal and modern yet accessible musical palette proved to be tempting bait to HOT Artistic Director Henry Akina and Executive Director Simon Crookall, who hope it will attract a new audience to opera.

“This is the kind of thing we’ve always wanted to do in Hawaii but we haven’t gotten our teeth into,” Akina said. “We looked at several pieces, but this one stood out to both of us as the one.”

HOT is giving the production an urban spin by staging it in a Kaka­ako warehouse and servicing the audience’s culinary needs with Street Grindz. While street noise may be a problem, the venue should suit the small-scale production well. “Siren Song” is about 70 minutes long, has only five cast members and needs a chamber orchestra. A simple stage setting will be enhanced by the use of scenes projected behind the stage.

“We have a videographer (Adam Larsen), so we’re trying to be ‘with it,’” Akina said with a laugh. “The video is the meat of the piece, and the actors work in front of it, so it’s like an ever-changing background. … It creates an atmosphere of foreboding on the one hand and of location on another.”

Musically, the opera should be enjoyable, though there will be some challenges. The libretto is in English, so there will be no supertitles. That means the audience must pay attention to keep up with the twists and turns of the plot. There are extended songs, but there is no grand aria to provide a focal point for the story.

The music itself will remind listeners of minimalist composers Philip Glass (“Einstein on the Beach,” “Koyaanisqatsi”) and John Adams (“Nixon in China,” “The Death of Klinghoffer”).

Despite its unfamiliarity and unconventional style, conductor Vincent de Kort said the audience won’t have trouble with the music.

“I can imagine that when they see a composer which they don’t know and they see that he’s still alive, they think, ‘This is modern music,’” he said. “But it has texture which is obviously influenced by Glass and Adams … and the music is very romantic.”

Portraying the “hopeless, hapless” Palmer is tenor Vale Rideout, who last performed with HOT in 2012 in “The Pearl Fishers.” He sees his character as a person who would be out of place no matter where he is.

“There are some who grow up being sheltered, inexperienced, naive, who can easily reverse that, who can easily absorb the education the world might offer,” Rideout said. “Davey’s not one of them. He doesn’t like foreign food. He doesn’t like garlic. He doesn’t really like the places he travels because they’re so strange that he can’t absorb them.”

All that makes him an easy mark for a scam, especially one involving women. “He desperately wants a girlfriend, definitely wants to share his life, but he doesn’t know how,” Rideout said.

Hawaii soprano Rachel Schutz will make her HOT debut as the mystery woman, model Diana Reed. She found inspiration for her role in a book about the incident, “Siren Song: A Story Stranger Than Fiction,” by British writer Gordon Honeycombe. His book detailed the scams that were pulled on Palmer by a man named Jonathan Reed (portrayed by Wes Mason), who claimed to be the woman’s brother.

“It really was a soap opera,” she said. “There was a lawsuit in New York and somebody has a stroke, and then the father’s hit by a car and he’s in a coma.”

For audiences getting the third-person perspective, that soap-opera quality will only amplify the absurdity of the situation.

“Halfway through the opera, she loses her voice to cancer,” Schutz said, “so there are several phone calls where she’s tapping a code out instead of speaking.”

Schutz has been “having a ball with the role,” letting the ethereal quality of her character take her on flights of fancy.

“With other characters you really do a lot of character study,” she said. “You try to make their histories fit. You take as much you can from the opera and build on that. You build your own story so that the characters fit.

“With this character I can do anything. It doesn’t even have to make that much sense.”

From the March 20, 2015, Print Edition of Star-Advertiser’s TGIF by Steven Mark