The St. Louis Symphony Orchestra closes its two-year journey away from Powell Hall this weekend at Stifel Theatre with a fully staged production of Edvard Grieg’s Peer Gynt.
“It will be a very festive way to end this nomadic season,” music director Stéphane Denève says of the hybrid concert-and-play, framed as the orchestra’s final voyage before it returns home next fall after the $140-million renovation and expansion in Grand Center. “We began with Symphonie fantastique, played Mason Bates’s Nomad Concerto, even welcomed E.T., the ultimate traveler. So the whole season has been filled with this idea of traveling with music.”
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The project reunites Denève with writer-director Bill Barclay, whose Concert Theatre Works turns symphonic scores into lean pieces of “concert-theatre.” Barclay’s script compresses Henrik Ibsen’s five-hour verse saga into 95 fleet minutes, weaves in rehearsal-room humor, and restores large chunks of Grieg’s incidental score that almost never make it to the concert hall.
“What is so great about Stéphane’s history is that he came up as a repetiteur in the opera world,” Barclay says. “This is a beautiful way for him to bring his opera intelligence into the concert hall without going into a full staged opera. He’s a true collaborator: he listens, he’s aware, he gives people and soloists the opportunities they need to shine. He’s an egoless center of this organization, and we’re very lucky we get to collaborate with him.”
The cast of Peer Gynt features Boston actor Caleb Mayo as swaggering Peer and Swedish soprano Camilla Tilling as steadfast Solveig, with Norwegian folk star Vidar Skrede supplying Hardanger-fiddle bite. Even the St. Louis Symphony Chorus leaves its comfort zone, trading German motets for troll howls, a plainsong hymn, and bursts of Ibsen’s original Riksmål—the 19th-century Danish-Norwegian tongue Peer would have spoken. “With this piece I wanted to unleash its character, which is huge and theatrical, giving a certain storytelling aspect to the music,” Denève says. “The most important thing is to really be narrative and suggestive and poetic.”
Barclay’s staging embraces what he calls “poor-theatre inventiveness.” A handful of trunks, tables, and coat racks morph into fjords, ships, and the Mountain King’s cavern. “When props transform before your eyes, the audience leans in to finish the picture,” he says. “That playful spirit is pure Ibsen.”
Denève, who will cue every line by sight, likens the assignment to live film-scoring. “Actors don’t speak in strict tempo, so I’m constantly adjusting timing—like landing a plane,” he laughs. The payoff, he adds, is a performance that welcomes regulars and rookies alike. “Sometimes we don’t associate classical music with something so full of wit and humor. It’s not a Broadway show, it’s not a concert, it’s not an opera: it’s a hybrid of all of that.”
Peer Gynt will be performed May 3 at 7:30 p.m. and May 4 at 3 p.m. Tickets are available at slso.org or by calling 314-534-1700.
