EIF: Cécile McLorin Salvant: Ogresse
Festival Theatre - 05/08/23
Cecile McLorin Salvant, singer | Darcy James Argue, conductor
US jazz singer and composer, Cecile McLorin Salvant’s tour de force performance of her 2018 cantata ‘Ogresse’ delighted the large Festival Theatre audience on Saturday. The magical realist fable in seventeen songs is told from several perspectives in a variety of musical styles. Darcy James Argue arranged the music and conducts a thirteen piece band, playing 24 instruments.
Salvant has a rich voice, with a middle and lower range to match the great jazz singers of the past. The upper voice and the growling bass are there too but used more sparingly. She starts in a child’s voice telling a fairy-tale, “In a wood…” while innocuous animations unfold on the screen behind her. But her stage presence, in capacious gold dress and burnished laurel wreath is both beautiful and threatening, and the duality of the Ogresse’s life, and the story of how she became a monster rapidly unfolds. A blues number, ‘She’s big, she’s vast, she’s the size of a tree,’ featuring Josh Roseman on tuba, explores racial tropes as well as monster myths. Every word is clear, there’s humour as well as pathos, and the most devastating lines are delivered in a throwaway sardonic fashion. “Who’s going to marry a black beast like me?”
Ogresse, already a man-eater, roaring against a full wind section, meets Lily, a little blonde girl, who sings accompanied by bells, and the monster craves the taste of white flesh. As her appetite is sated, Salvant makes an ironic shift to a French chanson, apparently poignant but actually celebrating her relish for “blanquette,” a stew of white meat. After this gruesome episode, villagers seek revenge, and a man offers to kill the beast if they’ll give him time. He sets out to seduce Ogresse, and she’s almost tempted, singing a lovely ballad, ‘I want to believe you,’ with minimalist double-bass and piano accompaniment. A robin finds the man’s dagger, tells her ’The man is lying,’ and as the orchestra builds up a crescendo, with all the instruments and Salvant reaching their highest ranges, the Ogresse gives up hope. She poisons him, eats him and so poisons herself. With simple accompaniment (Helen Sung on organ) she sings a Dido-like lament, which might have been an appropriate ending. There’s a forest fire, with lights flickering round the auditorium, and a final song describing how the villagers find a hill on which grow flowers and snakes.
‘Ogresse’ is a fascinating piece of music theatre, with skilfully written lyrics, and music which is imaginative, often lyrical and at times overwhelming, but which always sticks close to recognisable musical forms. The momentum isn’t always sustained – the seduction section is too long – and the ending sentimentalises the duality of the monster, but for the foreseeable future it’s a wonderful calling-card for a world-class singer, and an exceptionally talented band. The Festival Theatre audience gave ‘Ogresse,’ Cecile McLorin Salvant, Darcy James Argue and the band a standing ovation.
Cover photo: Andrew Perry
