'Verlaine and Rimbaud' has the poetry but not the passion

Intermezzo: The New England Chamber Opera Series adventurously alternates standard 20th-century chamber operas with new works. The company opened its third season last night with its sixth world premiere, "Verlaine and Rimbaud" by David Paul Gibson.

In brief pre-performance remarks Gibson referred to his 15-year friendship with baritone John Whittlesey, founder and artistic director of the company, and thanked him for the opportunity to experience his own music in performance -- "now I can take it home and work some more on it." Let us hope he does, because the piece does need work, but it also has something going for it beyond the sensational subject matter, the erotic and artistic relationship between the established poet Paul Verlaine and Arthur Rimbaud, the rebel genius 10 years his junior.

Eighteen brief, pivotal scenes adding up to about an hour chart the emotional temperature. The libretto, Gibson's own, alternates exposition with settings of poems by the pair in new English translations. The exposition is elementary and sometimes pretentious (Rimbaud's poetry, Verlaine's wife sings, is a pearl produced by "a cancerous oyster"). And there is way too much of it -- the text treats this complex symbiotic relationship in shorthand terms reminiscent of "The Owl and the Pussycat." The poems, and their settings, are effective and even eloquent, and Gibson skillfully moves among recitative, aria, and ensemble in a conservative musical style influenced by Britten and, appropriately, French composers. But the piece needs to be longer, to probe deeper. Too much of it advances at the same tempo and emotional pitch; it lacks variety and real passion. The accompaniment is scored for piano and violin; the violin is occasionally intrusive, like a gypsy bearing down on your table in a restaurant, something you probably wouldn't feel if the composer were to rescore for a slightly larger ensemble.

The climax comes when Verlaine has been imprisoned for sodomy after shooting Rimbaud in the hand, and here Gibson makes a serious misstep, turning over the musical and emotional center of the work to another composer, Gabriel Faure -- this is the place where his own music must burst into flame.

The composer's staging was fluid and sometimes striking, and there was a very good performance of Rimbaud by tenor Aaron Sheehan, insolent, provocative, and sensual in demeanor and earnest in song. He made a more plausible Rimbaud than Leonardo DiCaprio in " Total Eclipse," the 1995 movie of this story. Whittlesey has a warm, somewhat muffled voice and he brought compelling sincerity to Verlaine. Soprano Kaja Schuppert was both touching and irritating as Verlaine's wheedling, much-abused wife, and alto Sharon Brown brought strong voice and presence to the part of her uncomprehending and unforgiving mother. Pianist James Busby and violinist Stanislav Antonevich played the instrumental parts with skill and conviction.

The David Friend Recital Hall in the Berklee College of Music is an intimate, attractive but acoustically challenged space; there was no juice in the songs by Debussy, Faure, and Britten on texts by Verlaine and Rimbaud that opened the evening. The vocalism was variable, the interpretations pallid, and most of the French unpersuasive. Sheehan fared best in a group from Britten's "Les Illuminations," but the real illuminations came from Busby's insightful and elegant playing.

Verlaine and Rimbaud
Opera by David Paul Gibson, presented by Intermezzo: The New England Chamber Opera Series
At: David Friend Recital Hall at the Berklee College of Music, last night (repeats tomorrow afternoon).