Promiscuous — it’s not a pretty word. But when a matron in black underwear cavorts with two dozen naked hunks, what else can you call her?
That’s one of the more striking images director Jay Scheib devised for Thomas Adès’ 1995 “Powder Her Face,” which this weekend jolted the New York City Opera’s brief spring season to a sizzling start.
In this fanciful tale of the Duchess of Argyll — a real-life 1950s British beauty whose husband divorced her on 88 counts of adultery — the notorious lady makes a pass at a room-service waiter. As her aria subsides to a strangled murmur, 25 nude male extras crowd into the room like gym-toned spirits of one-night stands past.
Other scenes are overlaid with garish video imagery taken by an onstage videographer, as if the Duchess were the subject of a reality-TV show.
In most operas, such lurid staging would seem over the top. But here it’s a perfect fit with the nerve-jangling score, which sounds like Stravinsky, Ravel and Alban Berg run through a Cuisinart.
The lead singers proved adept multitaskers, landing intricate vocal lines while bouncing on beds, wrestling in their underwear or snorting “cocaine.”
Mezzo Allison Cook hurled out the Duchess’ imperious lines ferociously while striking anorexic poses in a series of drop-dead chic gowns by Alba Clemente. Soprano Nili Riemer giggled the coloratura flights of the Duchess’ maid as precisely as bass Matt Boehler plumbed the subterranean depths of the Judge’s aria.
Bravest of all was tenor William Ferguson, who sounded clear and fresh whether flouncing about in drag, stripped to the buff, or getting ambiguously gay with actor/acrobat Jon Morris as a scruffy waiter.
Jonathan Stockhammer conducted with precise bite, though the tangy colors of the chamber score got a little muffled in the expanses of the Opera House.
Kudos, too, to Sunday’s audience, which observed all this debauchery with hardly a snicker before exploding in bravos for cast and director. With a public this discerning, there’s hope yet for the troubled NYCO.