EUGENE
ART
TALK
BY B O B K E E F E R
BARITONE PHILIP CUTLIP
HEAVEN, HELL & CONTEXT
at Eugene Symphony’s amazing multi-media performance of Faust
D
id you catch Eugene Symphony’s performance of
The Damnation of Faust the other evening? It was,
I can’t resist saying, one Hell of a show, and if you
weren’t there you should have been.
First, the basics: The symphony teamed up
with the University of Oregon’s John Park and Harmonic
Laboratory to put on the entire two-hour Hector Berlioz
oratorio — that’s like an opera with no sets, costumes or
staging — with a full-on light show inside the Hult Center’s
Silva Concert Hall.
To make sure the elaborate video projections could be
fully seen and enjoyed, the orchestra played under much-
dimmed lighting, making the spacious 2,500-seat Silva
feel wonderfully intimate.
The story is simple. Faust (tenor Matthew Plenk), a
bored and aging scholar, is lured off by Mephistopheles
(baritone Philip Cutlip) to a tavern where he complains
about his dull, arid life. Next thing he knows, he’s falling
in love with the lithe and willing Marguerite (mezzo Sasha
Cooke).
To cut to the chase, she ends up in jail for killing her
mother, and it’s time for Faust to strike that deal with the
Devil: In exchange for saving Marguerite, Faust offers his
soul to Mephisto for all eternity.
Familiar story, beautifully performed. I was rapt for the
entire two hours. In fact, I can easily say this was one of the
best symphony concerts I’ve ever attended.
My favorite of the three soloists was Cutlip, the baritone
Mephisto. Cutlip’s a star in the opera world known for his
charming bad-boy roles, from the double murderer Joseph
De Rocher in Houston Grand Opera’s Dead Man Walking
to the trickster Papageno in Seattle Opera’s Magic Flute
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A pril 20, 2017 • eugeneweekly.com
(where a Seattle Times critic called him “adorable” as an
actor). He’s been repeatedly featured on Barihunks, a blog
about the sexiest baritones in opera.
As Mephisto, Cutlip was quick, engaging and theatrical,
a perfect foil to Plenk’s straight-man Faust.
Now here’s where the opera thickens. Cutlip started
fooling around on stage during the performance. He
slouched in his seat. He took off his jacket and tie. He put
on a cowboy hat. He dropped a water bottle that clattered
noisily on the stage floor.
All the while, I’m thinking this is an unusual but
interesting take on Mephisto. Is this what you get when
you cast a bad boy as the devil? Meta-opera, perhaps?
Then, Sunday morning I picked up The Register-Guard
and read Alison Kaufman’s absolutely scathing review of
Cutlip’s performance.
“Hell was indeed present on stage in the form of
baritone Philip Cutlip,” she wrote. “Never has such an
insulting mess of unprofessionalism been permitted
to share this stage — at least not in my years attending
Eugene performances.”
Let me say here, brava, Alison! I have never before read
in the R-G such a harsh review of anything the symphony
has done. I mean, I’ve written the odd negative review now
and again, but wow!
“How this ‘singer’ gets hired is beyond me, and
hopefully Eugene will not be subjected to this clown
again,” she concluded.
Kaufman is a Ph.D. student in musicology at the
UO School of Music and Dance, which supplies a lot
of musicians to the symphony’s orchestra and chorus.
Obviously she knew something I didn’t coming into the
Faust performance. So I spent some time Sunday checking
in with a few musicians around town.
The story I got is one of a backstage soap opera that
afflicted last week’s rehearsals, with clashes between
conductor Danail Rachev and the chorus and between
Rachev and Cutlip, who was suffering severe allergies and
had pulled his voice back until the concert.
Kaufman and I had utterly different contexts for
the evening: She was, no doubt, seeing the concert —
and Cutlip’s cowboy antics, whether entertaining or
unprofessional — in terms of those rehearsal battles.
Me, I saw and heard an utterly enjoyable concert with,
at the end, a couple strange twists from one of many
performers on the Silva stage.
Context may be everything; will past be prelude? Faust
was Rachev’s next-to-last appearance conducting the
orchestra as music director. Given all that happened last week,
it will be interesting to hear him conduct Richard Strauss’ An
Alpine Symphony for his final Eugene gig May 11.
Tim
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