The production, too, smelled strongly of crafted contrivance. As with a number of other contemporary works, including Two Boys and the recent Adams operas, it was highly presentational: we moved along through a series of sparsely indicated scenes, the characters  positioned in them to perform prescribed actions, as in an animated department store window. Nothing drew us into a place or into the characters’ interactions with it or with each other. We merely observed. I’m not inclined to blame the production team^(I). The work virtually dictates such an approach, which the designers have executed at the high-tech skill level we expect of the Metropolitan. Their visual effects were at least pleasing to look at and, in their emblematic way, appropriate to the indicated locales.

The personal direction was another matter. It was by Michael Mayer, who has no operatic track record, but a fine one, including numerous awards and nominations, in theatre. In keeping with current Met practice, he is not given a professional identity of his own (as, “designer,” “choreographer,” etc.—his would be “director”). Instead, alongside his name appears the noun “Production,” as in “responsible for.” Increasingly, this way of designating the director’s role as if it were an industrial function, like that of “Time and Motion Facilitation,” “Factory Floor Supervision,” or simply “Boss,”  seems accurate. Once the show’s designs have been conceived and co-ordinated along these lines (and again, I emphasize that the nature of the work’s progression, in both scenario and music, strongly suggests something of this sort), the work becomes a matter of assembly, and the creative element of character behavior (read: “acting”) is put in a box. So most of the time, people enter, take up a position, mime something, and sing to us. There’s a fair amount of choreographic co-ordination in the staging (Lynne Page, choreographer). The Expressionistic execution of office rituals in the opening scene looked like a revival of The Adding Machine, and a grey-clad group of males who moved set pieces in and out also writhed about in a manner reminiscent of what we once called “Interpretive Dance.” ^(II). Yet these components were neither consistent with the rest of the storytelling nor set off from it, as in a grand opera ballet sequence, so they only added to the impression of artificiality.

Isabel Leonard was the Marnie. Her voice, yet another of the many classified as mezzo-soprano though in no way distinguishable from that of a midweight lyric soprano, is lovely in timbre, well-tuned and evenly produced, and thus enjoyable to listen to in an instrumental sense. However, it’s also smallish as operatic voices go, and its vowel profile so dominated by a round but neutral color that word meanings remain mysterious except in a few low-lying conversational instances. She looked great and moved through the staging requirements with unexceptionable assurance. But no trace of emotion—at least that I could detect—intruded on her admirable poise of voice and body.