The Saturday before Memorial Day and the centennial year of the outbreak of World War I seemed the ideal occasion to present Nancy Van de Vate’s “All Quiet on the Western Front,” a two-act opera based on the novel by Erich Maria Remarque.
The opera by Ms. Van de Vate, an American composer now living in Vienna, had its premiere in Osnabrück, Germany, in 2003, and a partial performance that same year in New York, as part of the New York City Opera Vox showcase. It received its American premiere at Roulette on Saturday, with Philip Nuzzo conducting the Metro Chamber Orchestra in a semi-staged performance.
In Ms. Van de Vate’s libretto, adapted from the novel and the film script of the 1930 movie, Paul Bäumer, a teenage German soldier, is encouraged by his schoolteacher, Kantorek, to join the army shortly after the war begins. Along with his classmates, he looks up to Kat Katczinsky, the leader of their battalion, whose death devastates Paul.
During Saturday’s performance, a screen at the back of the orchestra featured archival footage, with grainy images and text during the overture conveying the sequence of events that led to World War I. Live, black-and-white video images of the ensemble and singers were interspersed with the footage throughout the performance.
Ms. Van de Vate’s skill as an orchestrator is evident from the opening measures of the eerie, brooding overture, whose gently dissonant arc built in tension to an apocalyptic climax. Later in the work, harmonically pungent interludes alternated with a more lighthearted cabaret style, such as in the scene conveying the German soldiers’ rendezvous with three Frenchwomen. Ms. Van de Vate’s lyrical vocal lines were evocatively woven through the orchestral textures.
However, her skillfully wrought score would have benefited from a more polished and tighter-knit performance; untidy playing sometimes blemished this rendition. The vocal soloists were variable, with inconsistent, albeit expressive, singing by the tenor Christopher Lucier as Paul. The tenor John Horton Murray sang with dramatic conviction and a resonant voice as Kantorek; Scott Lindroth sang with an appealing baritone as Kat.
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