Chicago Opera Theater Presents ELIZABETH CREE Review—A New Operatic Thriller

Fin de siècle describes the mass psychosis which gripped Europe at the end of the nineteenth century, as people’s faith in all the old assumptions about their place in the universe fell apart. In never completely dissipated, and a century later, Peter Ackroyd used late nineteenth century London as his setting for his novel The Trial of Elizabeth Cree. The book studied the absurd juxtaposition of violence, nihilism, social reform, and burgeoning feminism during the time of Jack the Ripper. In 2016, it was adapted as the movie The Limehouse Golem.  Now, it’s being presented as a new opera by Pulitzer Prize for Music winners Kevin Puts (music) and Mark Campbell (libretto), co-produced by Opera Philadelphia and Chicago Opera Theater. A play that is psychological thriller, gothic horror, and courtroom drama provides a lot of ground to cover in ninety-five minutes, but cover it they do thanks to a score conducted by Geoff McDonald that’s as flexible as director David Schweizer’s staging.

A Gruesome Image Sets the Stage

Elizabeth Cree (Katherine Pracht) has been hanged for poisoning her husband, John Cree. We see her dangling body before the play begins. The music starts with a flash back to her trial, where her finery, poise, pride, and apparent indifference to the proceedings made her an obvious media darling. When asked to recount her life, she describes how she was raised by a single mother in an extremely religious household in Lambeth Marsh. For a moment, we suspect we’re being razzle-dazzled, until she describes how, as a tween, she stabbed her abusive mother to death in self-defense, an action she has never regretted for a second. The first thing she did with her freedom was go to a music hall, where she saw the cross-dressing comic Dan Leno (Richard Troxell) perform in a skit portentously about Bluebeard.

Years go by, with Elizabeth joining the company, while drama critic and former medical student John Cree (Christopher Burchett) describes in his diary his many horrific murders. While Cree begins his slaughters with a prostitute, he does not limit himself to them. He acquires the moniker “Limehouse Golem” from having slain a cantor and left his severed penis on a book of Jewish lore. While less visually explicit than Grand Guignol, these eerie moments are the opera’s most distinctive, with the murders acted out through shadow-puppet style projections. John Cree’s lyrics are stomach-twisting and Burchett’s performance nightmarish. His baritone warble captures emotions from obsession, to rage, ecstasy, and self-satisfaction. But Burchett masters tender moments as well. When he proposes to Elizabeth their duet is so sweet it’s chilling as we realize we are going right along with someone making a terrible mistake.

A Starring Role for Katherine Pracht

Pracht in the title role is nothing short of outstanding. The mezzo plays Elizabeth at several ages and changes her physicality to represent the confidence level of each. She is also equally adept at her in-universe music hall numbers and her modern arias, which the well-contained Elizabeth breaks into only sparingly. Pracht’s Elizabeth is as funny as she is cruel, and it’s easy to see why she would become the star of Dan Leno’s troupe. Even when playing a Sweeny Todd-style butcher, the character comes across as aloofly sophisticated. It’s also understandable why the other troupe members, besides Dan, hate her, since in some way, she is always performing. The exception comes at the very end, with a mad scene in which we finally understand her and the full horror of the story.