BAYREUTH
There was one touching moment in the new Ring at Bayreuth. It took place not as part of the acting but during the curtain call for
Die Walküre. Alan Titus, the evening's Wotan, kissed his Brünnhilde, Gabriele Schnaut, and the proceedings were touched with human affection.
Affection appears to be an emotion director Jürgen Flimm approaches with skepticism, at least in connection with Wagner, for he wanted his characters to feel nothing of it. As a result, his production was distinctly cold. Flimm seemed bent on extracting from Wagner's drama a message it will not yield. He apparently wanted to stage an unmediated diatribe against commercial exploitation, industrial waste and the excesses of a global economy; this was the Ring of the Seattle riots (that surrounded the World Trade Organization conference last November) perhaps, rather than of the Dresden revolution. But Wagner had other purposes in mind. He was interested in how people survive and how they discover within themselves sources of nobility that may withstand and even stem the rush of humanity toward self-destruction.
Das Rheingold started the cycle promisingly, set in a mythical America, in an attractively seedy environment of wharves, bars and warehouses, somewhere between the worlds of Tennessee Williams and Quentin Tarantino. Gods cracked Budweisers, swept the floor and flirted. The novel setting gave the action unusual vitality, and the relentless onslaught of crime, broken deals and retribution was relieved with refreshing touches of comedy. It looked as if this genial approach might continue in Die Walküre. Hunding's hut was an antebellum mansion, evocatively designed by Erich Wonder, who brought nature into his white drawing room with an elegantly slender tree and rows of brown bullrushes. However puzzling, this poetic concept was aesthetically pleasing.
As Die Walküre progressed, Flimm appeared to lose faith in his material. Wagner's polemic against the inhumanity of capitalism was no longer allowed to unfold at its own pace; suddenly, it had to be force-fed to the audience. Images of America were sustained -- Siegmund was slain in a landscape reminiscent of Nevada, a militaristic Ride of the Valkyries was packed with references to Mad Max and Arnold Schwarzenegger, and the remnants of Hunding's house unaccountably provided the setting for both Mime's forge and Siegfried and Brünnhilde's mountaintop home -- but the icons of steely modernity and institutional oppression, familiar from so many other Ring productions, progressively took over the stage. By the end of Die Walküre, Flimm's staging was fast losing whatever color and individuality it had possessed.
Had Flimm attended to the human drama that is Wagner's main concern, the transformation of the setting would not have mattered. The world in which the Ring is set is, after all, harsh and hostile to the emotional needs of his characters. Nevertheless, the score and poem make it abundantly clear that these needs are palpable and, if fostered, are capable of affecting the course of human affairs. Flimm, however, would have none of this. His characters did not feel the warmer emotions. They pursued their ambitions ruthlessly, unchecked by empathy or compassion. This reduced Wagner's dramatic figures to mere melodramatic ciphers. Take Wotan: in Rheingold, he was a property-developer-cum-architect with questionable ethics; in Walküre he had risen to the level of tycoon, directing his realm from a characterless ultra-modern office, complete with tubular steel furniture, paper shredder and watercooler. But while Wagner's Wotan grows painfully aware of the restrictive environment he has created for himself, Flimm's displayed no resistance to his world. By the time Flimm's Wotan joined the Valkyries, exercising in their thunderdome, he was nothing but a brute, a creature of his own world. He flung selected Valkyries about the stage, then bid farewell to Brünnhilde without an iota of affection or remorse. At this point it became clear that Flimm and Wagner had parted company.
From then on, coherence vanished from Flimm's telling of the fable. Siegfried was a mess that revealed only the ugliness of human nature and devastated landscapes. Things improved somewhat in Götterdämmerung; Act II had an exhilarating theatricality (with interesting use of the horizontal and vertical spaces of the set, which showed a Catholic altar at the back) that complemented the headlong momentum of Wagner's score, and Siegfried's death was not lacking in power. But the closing was truly dreadful, with no attempt made to represent onstage the final cataclysm. Throughout the cycle, Flimm rarely bothered to create stage pictures that either reflected or intelligently contradicted Wagner's score, which made his staging depressingly lifeless, especially at the end. One left the Festspielhaus with the uneasy feeling that he was trying to persuade us that lack of imagination is an artistic virtue.
The straitened circumstances of the production did not allow the cast to explore the full richness of the characters. Alan Titus has the vocal resources to become one of the major Wotans of our time, and one looks forward to a production that will give him an opportunity to render a complete version of the god. John Tomlinson contributed a fascinatingly comatose Hagen, whose constant tendency to sleep suggested he was controlled by powers beyond the character's immediate consciousness. Günter von Kannen was an appropriately brutal Alberich, who, had the rest of the world not been so much like him, would have had greater impact. Vocal honors went to Waltraud Meier and Plácido Domingo, who brought the opening act of Die Walküre blazingly to life; not coincidentally, this scene elicited Flimm's finest, most sensitive direction. Gabriele Schnaut, a few years ago the most accomplished of Brünnhildes, had serious problems with pitch, but there were moments when the old radiance shone through. Although Wolfgang Schmidt sang Siegfried more reliably than he did two years ago in Bayreuth, his voice still showed severe signs of strain. While Birgit Remmert was vocally unremarkable as Fricka, she grew in stature between Rheingold and Walküre to become a commanding presence by her final appearance at end of Walküre, Act II.
There were encouraging signs of vocal and dramatic talent among the smaller roles. The Rhinemaidens (Dorothee Jansen, Natasha Petrinsky, Laura Nykänen) had a vaudeville touch about them. Sexily attired in swimsuits, they reminded one that Wagner's natural world, while alluring, is also treacherous. Johann Tilli and Philip Kang had great presence as Fasolt and Fafner, while Kim Begley was appropriately an utter rogue as Loge. Michael Howard was unexpectedly soft-spoken as Mime, but the subtlety of his evil grew in the course of the cycle. Mette Ejning sang Erda with great surety.
Some of the disappointment with this production must be attributed to conductor Giuseppe Sinopoli. For the first two works especially, the orchestra seemed to accompany the drama rather than participate in it; in Rheingold one even had to remind oneself to listen to it. Matters improved as the cycle progressed. There was a welcome increase in volume from the orchestra pit and, in Götterdämmerung especially, the extended orchestral passages were endowed with life and color. The high tempo of the drama also was well sustained. Sadly, Sinopoli chose not to take a solo bow at the end of his best evening.
It is the wise policy of the Bayreuther Festspiele to allow each production to change every year that it is revived, often radically. There is much work still to be done on this Ring; indeed, much thought must be given to what Wagner's work is actually about. Only then does Flimm's vision stand a chance of achieving the high standards expected of festival performance. Usually, such a policy pays rich dividends. It is to be hoped that in this instance the Festspiele has not encumbered itself with the proverbial sow's ear.
SIMON WILLIAMS
SALZBURG
Herbert Wernicke's new production of Berlioz's Les Troyens at the Salzburg Festival already has been hailed by some as the last great opera achievement of Gérard Mortier's regime as artistic director, even though Mortier has another year to go. The austerity of Wernicke's work does not appeal to everyone, but he can get to the essence of large-scale operas about power struggles, as he has demonstrated here with Boris Godunov and Don Carlo. When the curtain rose on his latest effort, Troy's gleaming white walls made for an almost blinding contrast to the assembled populace, all in black, like the machine guns and corpses strewn about the stage. The image captured not just the irony of the initial chorus, in which the Trojans rejoice over the apparent departure of the Greeks, but the collective sense of relief they feel after the devastating siege is lifted. It set the tone for what followed, which was starkly simple in its modernism but always challenging and probing. One wondered anew how Les Troyens once could have been dismissed as the theatrically hopeless product of an aging composer's obsession with antiquity.
Still, despite its musical glories, the opera is hardly foolproof dramatically. One of the difficulties is the radical change in mood from the agonizing tension of the first part, with its culminating scene of the Trojan women's suicide, to the more relaxed atmosphere of the acts set in Carthage, where the Trojans take refuge en route to Italy and Énée's romance with Didon blooms. Wernicke stresses that it's all one opera by using a single set. The massive white walls, curving out toward the audience at the sides, with an opening in the middle through which the Trojan Horse could briefly be glimpsed, were so right for Troy that it was a surprise to see them again in Carthage. But subtle changes confirmed the new locale, including rippling Mediterranean waves visible through the opening. During the Royal Hunt and Storm, the walls served for projections of Énée's sea voyage. The scenes that follow have an almost languorous tone, but Wernicke dealt with them forthrightly, maintaining the same economy of gesture as before to create a warmly comfortable ambience for Didon's court before the drama rekindles with Énée's impending departure.
Having Deborah Polaski as both Cassandre and Didon also lent unity to the two parts. If one is tempted to think that the opera might benefit from a fresh personality as Didon, it's hardly the fault of Polaski's stirring, generously sung performances. Her luminous dramatic soprano sounded in marvelous shape. Cassandre was no raving termagant but a figure of noble resolve, and Didon gradually took on a similar quality before the singer enacted her second tragic death of the evening.
Jon Ketilsson, the Énée on August 4, displayed a bright, appealing voice and actually managed to sound comfortable with Énée's demanding music. The many supporting roles were luxuriously cast with the likes of Robert Lloyd, noble and authoritative as Narbal; Russell Braun, an ardent Chorèbe, deeply concerned about Cassandre's well being; Tigran Martirossian, an aggressive, firmly voiced Panthée; Yvonne Naef, beguiling as Didon's sister Anna; and Toby Spence, touching in Hylas's expression of nostalgia.
Sylvain Cambreling, conducting the Orchestre de Paris, carried with distinction the torch once borne by Rafael Kubelík and Colin Davis in championing Berlioz's score. He brought out the many orchestral details that have the composer's unmistakable stamp while never letting them sound eccentric. Sadly, the ballet music was cut, but even without it the performance took more than five hours, with two intermissions -- including one an hour long after Act II.
It's sometimes said that with Les Troyens Berlioz reached back to Gluck for artistic inspiration; Salzburg let one judge for oneself by programming the earlier composer's Iphigénie en Tauride, a masterpiece from his Parisian years. Seeing both operas pointed up their differences more than their similarities, even apart from the obvious incongruity in musical styles. In contrast to Berlioz's epic, Gluck's opera is a terse, highly concentrated psychological study. Unfortunately, Claus Guth's production, with sets and costumes by Christian Schmidt, gave it a heavy-handed, ersatz-Freudian treatment in which the house of Atreus became an oppressive Victorian parlor with dark-violet wall coverings. It couldn't have been easy for Iphigénie and Oreste to grow up with parents like Agamemnon and Clytemnestre, but Guth rammed home the point by having a quartet of doubles, with huge papier-mâché heads, act out the singing characters' innermost thoughts (as envisioned, of course, by Guth) -- thoughts that more often than not involved murder. Thus, when the furies torment Oreste for killing his mother, the four doubles were assembled at the dining-room table, repeatedly acting out the sequence of family stabbings: first Agamemnon's ritual sacrifice of Iphigénie, then his murder by Clytemnestre, finally Oreste's murder of her. Not surprisingly, the doubles were largely absent from the scenes that came off best, in particular that in which Iphigénie, about to sacrifice Oreste, recognizes him as her brother.
Perhaps fear of being upstaged by the doubles spurred Susan Graham and Thomas Hampson to perform the siblings with a fevered intensity on August 6. Performances such as these make it hard to believe that some people still associate Gluck more with noble sentiments than with gripping theatricality. Graham's glowingly sung account of the title role confirmed her immense gift for French opera, though the climaxes might have registered even more strongly had there been a little more quiet singing to set them off. Hampson, in exciting vocal form, laid bare Oreste's troubled soul. Paul Groves sang Pylade with an appealing lyricism, though more passion in "Unis dès la plus tendre enfance" would have been welcome. As the one French singer in a cast dominated by Americans, Philippe Rouillon was impressive, with a rich, smooth-sounding baritone, as the villain Thoas.
Conductor Ivor Bolton drew crisp, responsive playing from the Mozarteum Orchestra Salzburg. As with most Gluck performances these days, there were places where one could have wished for a little more weight, but Bolton's reading was more than sufficient to reveal the merits of a score that Berlioz was so right to revere. Unfortunately, the courtyard of the Residenzhof was once again pressed into service as a performance venue for opera; the sound of rain landing on the makeshift roof was distinctly audible.
At least Guth's staging, for all its obviousness, grappled with the issues raised by the opera in question, which is more than can be said for Hans Neuenfels's treatment of Così Fan Tutte in the Kleines Festspielhaus (seen Aug. 1). Here, Mozart's intricate comedy about the unpredictability of love met Biology 101. All sorts of organisms got into the act: frogs, plants, mushrooms, dogs, even mosquitoes, most on a gigantic scale and none at all concerned with Così. There were also signs of a culinary motif, for Ferrando and Guglielmo participated in the first scene from different kitchens. The two ideas came together unforgettably in a film during the Act I duet for the women that showed a cut-up apple covered with tiny worms being served on a plate. This doesn't begin to explain it all. Neuenfels devised a scenario for Fiordiligi's "Per pietà" in which a blind man was accosted by three thugs.
Only someone with a strong artistic personality -- in this case, Karita Mattila, in radiant voice -- could have made statements of Fiordiligi's arias in these circumstances. Would that mezzo Vesselina Kasarova had had a real chance to express herself as Dorabella. Instead, she almost became lost in the shuffle, despite offering singing that was sweet and musical. Yet the silver-voiced María Bayo, though oddly attired as a male, was somehow able to reveal the makings of a near-flawless Despina. Rainer Trost sang Ferrando with honeyed tones; he deserved a chance at "Ah, lo veggio," which was cut. Simon Keenlyside was a suave Guglielmo, Franz Hawlata a straightforward, vocally plush Don Alfonso. The Vienna Philharmonic made warm, gorgeously traditional sounds under Lothar Zagrosek, who drove the opera at a brisk clip.
In a program note, Charles Mackerras said one advantage of the decision to give Cherubini's Médée in a semi-staged version is that "there will be no directorial interpretation to get in the way of the music!" A welcome thought, but in the event, all was not right with the performance he led in the Felsenreitschule on August 3. The opera was given in its original French form from 1797, but all the spoken dialogue was scrapped in favor of a narration (in German) from the actor Ulrich Mühe. Thus, anyone hoping for enlightenment about the stage-worthiness of the original version vis-à-vis the once-standard text made famous by (among others) Maria Callas -- in which mid-nineteenth-century recitatives conceived for German words replace the dialogue, and the whole thing is sung in Italian translation -- had to be disappointed. Further, the singers didn't have their parts memorized, so little could be done with the staging. But the house lights were dutifully turned off anyway, so one couldn't even follow the libretto. Angela Denoke sang the title role in a clear, sometimes penetrating soprano but showed few signs of a real Medea temperament. Michael Schade, a fine Mozart tenor, seemed to find the French text an obstacle to supple phrasing as Jason, and Kristinn Sigmundsson's Créon was solidly intoned if a little stiff. The best impression was made by soprano Malin Hartelius, who offered a sparkling, technically fluent account of Dircé's aria. Mackerras and the Vienna Philharmonic gave one a fine opportunity to appreciate Cherubini the musician if not Cherubini the dramatist.
The performance of Carl Nielsen's Saul og David on August 5, also in the Felsenreitschule, made no pretense of being anything but a concert performance, and the lighting enabled the audience to follow a German translation of Einar Christiansen's libretto, sung in Danish. The biblical story of the jealous Saul's inexorable surrender of power to the shepherd David has attracted composers going back to Handel and Marc-Antoine Charpentier. In Nielsen's opera, first performed in Copenhagen's Royal Theater in 1902, Saul's plight is especially gripping, since he finds himself positioned between David, who represents the new order, and a reactionary, unforgiving Old Testament God as personified by the prophet Samuel. One reacts against the irrationality of Saul's jealous tirades but at heart sympathizes with him, as he finds himself in a foreordained predicament from which there is no way out. The biblical content and the large role for chorus have led some to liken Saul og David to an oratorio. But perhaps the largely internalized nature of the drama and the complexity of Nielsen's densely textured, highly chromatic musical style are the main reasons the opera has not won a wider audience outside Denmark. There are many striking moments and strong musical contrasts, the latter especially apparent in the turbulent writing associated with Saul, as compared to the pastoral lyricism of much of David's music.
For a Danish opera, the excellent cast was surprisingly international in its makeup. Robert Hale, in commanding voice, maintained Saul's proud exterior while tellingly suggesting his psychological unraveling. As Saul's daughter Mikal, who falls in love with David, Inga Nielsen sang with a gleaming, beautifully formed dramatic soprano. Thomas Moser's vocal heft and smooth phrasing made him a fine David, and John Mark Ainsley sang Jonathan with admirable clarity. Strong contributions also came from Christian Christiansen, as the implacable Samuel, and Susanne Resmark, as the Witch of Endor, whom Saul visits in a desperate effort to ward off the inevitable. Michael Schønwandt led the Danish National Radio Symphony Orchestra and Choir with sure control of the score's intricacies and a fine appreciation of its dramatic force.
GEORGE W. LOOMIS
VIENNA
For Guy Joosten's new KlangBogen production of Massenet's Werther that opened on July 14 (seen 18) at the Theater an der Wien, Johannes Leiacker erected two huge white-tiled walls with a frieze of butterflies reminiscent of a bathroom. Into the corner of these walls he inserted two sides of a room with a door and a window. This room was at the same time a landscape view, with a large tree in the corner that marked the changing seasons of the first three acts. For the final act, the room was replaced by bare tiles, with the dying Werther huddled in the corner. The first three acts also had various tables, chairs and a huge Christmas tree to further denote the scene. Much was made of the unglassed window for greetings and "meaningful parting looks."
Joosten seemed intent on portraying the probable small-town boorishness of the real eighteenth-century Wetzlar, even when it went against the music and the text. The children clearly were cowed by their hard-drinking, tyrannical father, and his companions took liberties with them -- hardly Werther's charming idyll expressed in "O Nature." Similarly, why Werther wanted Albert's pistol for his ultimate suicide was not clear, since he already had put his own gun to his head during suicidal thoughts at the end of Act II -- true, it had been taken from him by Charlotte, then from her by Albert, who later apparently took it to Werther. No messenger or box of pistols, as called for in the score. Another questionable point was having Albert overhear Charlotte and Werther on their return from the ball in Act I, then confront her after Werther's departure. How could it take him till the end of the next act to realize that Werther loved her, or indeed even longer to realize that that love was returned?
Joosten's idea of Werther was less a dreamy poet about to take up a diplomatic career than a small-town seducer who became increasingly wild -- in Act II, he all but raped Charlotte. She was quite passive in the opera's earlier scenes, though she showed an increasing dislike of Albert's crude attentions in Act II. Despite this, both Jennifer Larmore and Marcello Giordani provided much nuanced, well-phrased singing. Her two arias in Act III were particularly fine. Nonetheless, both muffled their naturally brighter voice production, and Giordani in particular was effortful at anything above a mezzo-forte; his only really successful aria was "Pourquoi me réveiller." Not surprisingly, Patricia Petibon's singing of Sophie did the most justice to the French language, but with Joosten's view of the children as being oppressed by the Bailiff, she expressed the gaiety inherent in her music only in her Act III duet with her sister. Martin Gantner's bright tone and fine phrasing belied the crude boor that Joosten tried to make of Albert. On the other hand, Ernst-Dieter Suttheimer and Wolfgang Bankl were just right for the drunkards Schmidt and Johann, and William Powers was a suitably oppressive father figure. The real joy of the evening was the performance of the Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra under Bertrand de Billy. Passionate and rhythmically flexible, with each new passage growing logically out of its predecessor, de Billy's conducting supported the singers without ever asking more volume than the words required, yet he gave the orchestral moments their full due.
CHRISTOPHER NORTON-WELSH
PESARO
The Rossini Opera Festival opened this year (Aug. 5) with Le Siège de Corinthe (1826), the composer's sophisticated adaptation for Parisian audiences of his earlier Maometto II, with a ballet and a new French libretto inspired by the contemporary craze for the cause of Greek independence. This was underlined by director Massimo Castri and designer Maurizio Balò, who dressed their fifteenth-century Greeks in nineteenth-century evening dress. The set, too -- a grassy bank littered successively with Corinthian capitals, ottomans and gravestones -- was purely symbolic in conception, yet within it the characters moved and interacted in convincing harmony with the music (the ballet was persuasive in this respect), and the strong lighting allowed for a clear projection of emotional climaxes.
With the partial exception of Ruth Ann Swenson (Pamyre), whose facial expressions were more reminiscent of Hollywood melodrama than of tragédie lyrique, the cast acted nobly and sang splendidly. Michele Pertusi proved a singularly civilized Mahomet (the invading Turk loved by the Greek Pamyre), and the two other basses, Carlo Lepore and Simone Alberghini, gave substance to Hiéros and Omar. Stephen Mark Brown sang with supreme confidence and handsome tone as Cléomène, and his fellow tenor Giuseppe Filianoti proved touching and vocally proficient as Néoclès. Swenson was impressive above all for the lyrical poise of her singing and the still youthful bloom on her voice, and she was enthusiastically applauded (along with the others) on August 11. What was lacking in all the singers (and in the mediocre Prague Chamber Chorus) was a truly eloquent projection of the French text. Diction was often acceptable, but the words rarely came to life or stirred the listener deeply. One also felt the lack of inspired leadership from the pit. Maurizio Benini accompanied sympathetically but failed to offer a strong overall vision of the work, obtaining only average playing from the Lyons National Opera Orchestra.
Benini seemed much more at ease leading the orchestra of Bologna's Teatro Comunale in La Scala di Seta the following evening. He provided -- together with Gianni Fabbrini at the fortepiano -- a scintillating musical framework for a performance that was better acted than sung. Director Luca De Filippo and designer Bruno Garofalo made persuasive use of the Neapolitan comic tradition to create a convincingly nineteenth-century atmosphere. Figures such as the boastful lady-killer Blansac (Lorenzo Regazzo, who interpolated the concert aria "Alle voci della gloria") and the purportedly stupid servant Germano (Alfonso Antoniozzi) proved as revealing in their exaggeration as the caricatures in a Dickens novel. Antoniozzi, in particular, demonstrated his quite exceptional charisma as a comic actor, but his singing on this occasion was often hollow and strained, and neither Antonino Siragusa (in the tenor role of Dorvil) nor Elizabeth Norberg-Schulz (as Giulia) gave much vocal pleasure.
STEPHEN HASTINGS
SPOLETO
Much of the pleasure derived from Der Rosenkavalier at this year's Spoleto Festival was attributable to the limited size of the Teatro Nuovo, where most of the orchestra was hidden under the stage, and where words, gestures and facial expressions could project with a vividness quite unusual in performances of this opera. Something was lost, as a result, in terms of orchestral luster and glow. One suspects, however, that these were not priorities for conductor Richard Hickox, who obtained a highly competent performance from the festival orchestra and paced the opera extremely well, though he seemed relatively insensitive to the work's heart-tugging nostalgia.
The strongest impression at the July 7 performance (greeted with a mixture of boos and applause) was made by Keith Warner's production (designed by Coralie Sanvoisin), whose aim seemed to be to point up the hypocrisy of those who present Strauss's masterpiece as a work of impeccably good taste. The English director chose to make explicit that which the music merely suggests -- strongly highlighting the eroticism tinged with parody of the opening scene (the sexual interplay between "Bichette" and "Quinquin" began in front of the curtain during the orchestral introduction) and turning Ochs into an absurdly vulgar and at times genuinely threatening sex maniac. In this production, the moments of chaos in each of the acts acquired a dangerously subversive dimension, and cheap effects abounded. (The Italian Singer in Act I was blind.) Warner also made the events range across 200 years, starting in the eighteenth century and ending up in the menacing atmosphere of Vienna in the 1940s.
Though much of this may sound forced and excessive, one could only admire the director's ability to obtain truly vital performances from the whole cast and to highlight -- through brilliant use of lighting -- the moments of magical suspension in each act: the Marschallin's monologue, Octavian and Sophie falling in love, the Act III trio and duet.
In the title role, Pamela Helen Stephen gave an outstanding performance, creating a warm, touching, impetuous Octavian, convincing in every glance and inflection. Laura Claycomb made a real flesh-and-blood Sophie, without sacrificing anything of the ethereal beauty of her upper range. Anne Bolstad's Marschallin was less remarkable vocally, but never less than poised and credible, and Kurt Link's wild overacting as an unusually youthful Ochs was partially compensated for by his solid tone and legato. Some of the secondary roles (Faninal, Marianne) were much better acted than sung, but Adria Firestone's Annina was a memorable portrait in every sense.
STEPHEN HASTINGS
MONTPELLIER
Vittorio Gnecchi's Cassandra, composed some four years before Strauss's Elektra, opened the Festival de Radio France in the lively university city of Montpellier. It is a forgotten opera by a largely forgotten composer, but in 1905, Gnecchi scored something of a triumph, with the premiere of his opera being conducted by Arturo Toscanini, whose markings and score were used by the conductor for this performance. The Italians, however, never took the piece or its composer to their hearts. Although the music remains quintessentially Latin in its exalted lyricism, the influence of Wagner and the opera's mythical subject matter must have had limited appeal for a public hungry for a strictly Italian form of twentieth-century realism.
An exhibition in the foyer of Montpellier's impressive modern concert hall, the Corum, posed a fundamental question regarding the creation of Strauss's Elektra, displaying a number of convincing thematic similarities between his work and Gnecchi's. Although Strauss later denied having read the score, it seems he had acknowledged receipt of a copy. Coincidence, subconscious absorption or straightforward plagiarism?
Teasing questions, but it is the individual composers' treatment and development of the given themes that make Strauss's Elektra a masterpiece and Gnecchi's Cassandra just good fun. Anyone familiar with Montemezzi's L'Amore dei Tre Re will find common ground with the musical world of Gnecchi: big effects, sweeping but short-breathed melodies and a hothouse emotional atmosphere, in which singers give their all in an admittedly Straussian fashion, all helped by Luigi Illica's libretto.
The concert performance with the excellent Orchestre National de Montpellier Languedoc-Roussillon, complete with a hard-working wind machine, captured the spirit of the work under the inspired direction of Enrique Diemecke. The Latvian Radio Choir made a strong contribution. Among the soloists, Denia Mazzola-Gavazzeni, as Clitennestra, dominated the evening, providing just the sort of high-voltage emotional performance that is the lifeblood of this music. She did a great job, though her sonorous chest register was not quite linked to a passionately vibrant upper range. The title role, the ever-gloomy Cassandra, who appears only in the latter stages of the opera, was sung with suitably rich tone by Georgian mezzo Tea Demurishvili. Alberto Cupido was in tremendous voice as the doomed Agamennone, a role that gave him the opportunity to display some ringing high notes and a suitably plaintive timbre. As Egiste, Arnold Kocharyan was bound to his score. The cast was completed by Nikola Mijailovic, as a firm-voiced Prologue, and Jean-Marc Ivaldi, as a workmanlike Captain. Though it was warmly received, it seems unlikely that producers will be rushing to stage the work.
It had always seemed doubtful that Hildegard Behrens would sing the taxing role of Medea at this stage in her career, but it was sad to learn that the German soprano had been hospitalized with a serious heart problem just ten days before the climax of the festival's activities. The organizers turned to the star of their first opera, Mazzola-Gavazzeni, who learned the title role of Cherubini's opera in just nine days. Her achievement was quite extraordinary in the circumstances; she turned in an electrifying performance, seizing with relish on all the dramatic possibilities of the role and confronting all the vocal problems head-on. She alone cast aside the constraints of a concert performance and deserved every minute of her standing ovation. This surely will become a great role for the soprano; vocally all that is needed is a better matching of her vigorous chest notes with the rest of the voice. At present, a couple of notes just above the passaggio are systematically weak, occasionally upsetting Cherubini's essentially classic line. This etched classicism -- something Callas understood so well in this music -- was a quality largely missing from the evening, with the notable exception of Jeanne Piland as Neris, whose aria with bassoon obbligato was the musical highlight. Michael Sylvester sang with clear, clarion tones as Giasone, but despite some encouragingly menacing looks from his Medea, the tenor remained in oratorio mode, looking neither right nor left with any great interest.
After a positive start in Glauce's recitative that begins the opera, Tatiana Lisnic ran into serious vocal problems at the climax of her aria, and while Roberto Scandiuzzi showed off his rich bass timbre as Creonte, he also contributed a fair amount of muffled tone at the top of his range. Once again, the style was too overtly nineteenth-century for Cherubini's opera, written in 1797.
It was a shame this French festival did not perform Cherubini's opera in its original opéra-comique version with spoken dialogue rather than using Franz Paul Lachner's recitatives in Carlo Zangarini's Italian translation. The Orchestre National de France and Radio France Chorus played and sang well, but nothing could enliven Friedemann Layer's leaden conducting, which robbed the music of a good deal of its grandeur.
STEPHEN MUDGE
GARSINGTON
Over the years, Garsington Opera has developed a reputation not only for quality but also for championing unusual repertoire, and through the festival's advocacy several neglected but worthwhile pieces have enjoyed a measure of rehabilitation. Garsington's highly successful 1999 staging of Richard Strauss's Die Liebe der Danae, for example, was the first in Britain since 1953. This year it was the turn of Robert Schumann's Genoveva, in a production that opened 150 years to the day after the opera's premiere in Leipzig and was billed as the score's first professional presentation in Britain. (I saw the final performance of the series, on July 9.)
Genoveva was born under an unlucky star. Having already conquered the fields of song, piano, chamber, orchestral and choral music -- almost in the manner of a planned campaign -- and longing to compose an opera, Schumann searched hard for a subject he could respond to. Eventually, he hit on the medieval figure of Geneviève of Brabant, whose virtuous fidelity in the face of malicious calumny (and worse) made her the heroine of operas or operettas by Offenbach and Satie, among many other stage pieces. Schumann produced his own libretto from an earlier draft by the poet Robert Reinick, who had worked from Ludwig Tieck's play on the subject, and incorporated further material from Friedrich Hebbel's drama on the same theme.
If composer/librettist Schumann's inexperience is evident in certain defects (he rarely went far enough to make a point), as a whole the result is a creditable achievement. Liszt greatly admired Genoveva, preferring it to "all other operas produced over recent years -- Wagner's, of course, excepted." (Wagner himself considered it "bizarre," but then he and Schumann famously didn't get on and had almost nothing in common artistically.) Within a few years of its premiere, however, Schumann had become mentally ill, and he died in an asylum in 1856. In the light of this distressing end, many of his later works came to be regarded as the products of a mind in terminal decline, and only in recent years has this view seriously been challenged. Genoveva, meanwhile, had become one of the main casualties of the hypothesis.
Even some of its detractors, however, have admitted virtues in the music, which is through-composed in the manner of Weber's Euryanthe (with whose plot there are many similarities). Schumann's individual genius shines in the score's melodiousness, its variety and in the many sudden and distinctive bursts of originality that are typical of his output as a whole. Genoveva is notable above all for its penetrating psychology. The music for the guilt-ridden villain Golo -- whose lust for Genoveva leads him to attempt to force himself on her, then to besmirch her reputation after he has failed to have his way -- is outstanding, as is that for the witch Margaretha, who assists Golo in his nefarious schemes.
Garsington made a good job of this important revival. Conductor Elgar Howarth drew spirited playing from the orchestra and selected tempos judiciously. The chorus was excellent, and Ashley Martin-Davis's designs were straightforward. Aidan Lang's production generally made the plot comprehensible but went adrift when it tried to improve upon it: the demonic Margaretha disappears before the final act, but Lang brought her back as a cross-clutching penitent, inevitably silent since the thoughtless Schumann hadn't supplied her new incarnation with a vocal line.
In the title role, soprano Susannah Glanville had her finest moments in the powerful scene near the close, when Genoveva's imminent murderers are sufficiently moved by her praying to stay their hands, allowing time for her husband to arrive and rescue her. Here, Glanville's unstinting involvement mitigated some unfocused tone in her top register. As Golo, Nigel Robson sounded indisposed, his voice thinning out alarmingly on occasion, yet his ardent phrasing and dramatic engagement were, as always, rewarding. Mezzo Kathryn Turpin sang Margaretha -- a role that ideally requires the weight of a classic Ortrud. Though that was not hers to command, she offered a glamorous stage presence and impressively fiery vocal temperament. Danish baritone Johannes Mannov sang Siegfried, Genoveva's husband, whose departure for the wars leaves her vulnerable to the plots of his servants. Mannov's powerful, handsome instrument fit the bill more than adequately, yet, as with most of the principals, there was not quite enough definition to the delivery of the German text, robbing the piece of some of its potential force.
Garsington's repertoire has been built around four composers: Mozart, Rossini, Strauss and Haydn -- the latter's operas being almost totally neglected elsewhere. Received opinion tells us that the music is good but undramatic. A revival of Il Mondo della Luna contradicts this. Goldoni's satire, first composed by fellow Venetian Baldassare Galuppi in 1750, was set several times in the latter half of the eighteenth century. Haydn's version -- replete with a succession of brilliantly varied numbers that Jane Glover conducted stylishly -- was written for Eszterháza in 1777.
This unusual opera buffa -- in which the merchant Buonafede is duped by the bogus astronomer Ecclitico into believing he has traveled to the moon -- shows a variety of human characters, either foolish or cunning, grasping or amiable, among them Buonafede's daughter Clarice, a part that introduced soprano Joyce Guyer to Garsington audiences. She took to it with aplomb, her bright personality matching nicely with this lively young woman and her tricky, high-lying music, which she negotiated with considerable brilliance. Other strong elements included Jonathan Veira's classic buffo performance as the gulled merchant, and the vividly enunciated, expertly vocalized Ecclitico of tenor Mark Tucker.
The staging was a revival of Michael McCaffery's 1991 production, whose sets -- which, together with the costumes, were the work of Paul Edwards -- had been largely redesigned. Regrettably, the mock-lunar setting tempted the team to introduce an endless parade of visual references to Star Wars and Star Trek, with characters entering as Darth Vader or Princess Leia, or with Mr. Spock ears, or "moon-walking," and so on, ad nauseam.
GEORGE HALL
BUXTON
The spa town of Buxton is set high up in the Derbyshire Peak District, one of England's loveliest locations. In the great days of water-based health cures it held a high position, alongside Bath, Leamington and Cheltenham, as a fashionable resort. During this time it developed a wealth of fine Georgian and early-Victorian architecture, to which was added in 1903 the Opera House, the work of Frank Matcham, whose best-known creation is the London Coliseum, home of English National Opera.
Though the town's fortunes are no longer sustained by the annual visits of gouty retired colonels and their entourages, Buxton has spruced itself up over recent decades, and its houses, public buildings and green spaces look as splendid as ever. Since 1979 it has provided the perfect setting for a summer festival, in which the Opera House features prominently. This year, it staged its own production of Schubert's rare Fierrabras and hosted the Irish Opera Theatre Company's Rodelinda, as well as Music Theatre Wales's staging of Jane Eyre, a new piece by Michael Berkeley that had been given its premiere three weeks earlier at the Cheltenham Festival.
Jane Eyre is Berkeley's second opera, but due to an unfortunate circumstance it nearly didn't happen at all. In May 1999, with the first of the work's two acts nearing completion and the remainder sketched out, Berkeley left the case containing the entire work-in-progress outside his house as he unloaded his car and returned to find it gone. Despite appeals on national media, it was never returned. The devastated composer eventually set to work to continue with the libretto from the point he had got to, then rewrote the lost section. Meeting Berkeley -- a member of the board of the Royal Opera House -- on the occasion of the theater's reopening, Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II commented that his loss was "the worst story we have ever heard." Fortunately it had a happy ending.
For his librettist on the project, Berkeley turned to the Australian-born writer David Malouf, with whom he had previously collaborated on Baa Baa Black Sheep, an opera successfully launched by Opera North in 1993, that brought together the miserable childhood experiences of the writer Rudyard Kipling with the fantastic characters of his Jungle Book. For the new piece, Malouf contrived to reduce a sizable nineteenth-century classic novel to a ninety-minute stage piece with just five characters, while retaining the essence of the original. In broad terms, he has succeeded well, though some doubts must remain as to how those coming to the opera without knowledge of the Charlotte Brontë novel will pick up the threads.
The entire action takes place at Thornfield Hall, where Jane has come as governess to Adele, ward of the stern but attractive Mr. Rochester. In addition to these characters we meet the housekeeper, Mrs. Fairfax, and the strange figure of Rochester's wife, permanently deranged and kept (against her will) in an attic, whence she occasionally escapes with terrifying and finally devastating consequences.
Berkeley, who is fifty-two this year, is a son of the late composer Lennox Berkeley and a godson of Benjamin Britten. The benign influence of the latter -- whose The Turn of the Screw has similarities with Jane Eyre in terms of plot and setting -- looms large over the piece. There are quotations within Berkeley's score from Screw, as well as A Midsummer Night's Dream and (a reference to Mrs. Rochester's madness) Donizetti's Lucia di Lammermoor.
These are but passing fancies, however, and Berkeley's work is very much his own: traditional in mode, lyrical in vocal expression and drawing fascinating and varied sounds from a small orchestra of thirteen players (the same number -- though not precisely the same instrumentation -- that Britten used in Screw and other chamber scores). As a whole, it is highly effective and immediate in its appeal.
Under the confident baton of Michael Rafferty, the piece made a strong impression on July 18. Natasha Marsh (winner of the 1999 Young Welsh Singer of the Year competition) sang Jane with weak diction but a strong line and clear tone. In the darkly mysterious role of Mr. Rochester, Andrew Slater's strong, dashing presence matched well his vivid, trenchant bass-baritone. The light-soprano role of his young ward, Adele, was sung with charming aplomb by Eiranedd Fflur Wyn, who has not yet begun her vocal studies at London's Royal Academy of Music. As the housekeeper, Mrs. Fairfax (a part similar to Mrs. Grose in Britten's Turn of the Screw), mezzo Beverly Mills created a warm, likable character. Most complex of all is the role of Rochester's imprisoned wife, and contralto Emily Bauer-Jones drew a fine balance between the woman's terrifying demeanor and the unbearable poignancy of her position in what was often a vocal tour-de-force.
The doom-laden atmosphere of Thornfield was conjured up in a subtly colored unit set full of mirrors, with Mrs. Rochester imprisoned behind a grille on a higher level. Richard Aylwin's designs were lit evocatively by Ace McCarron, while director Michael McCarthy judged the tone of the piece to a nicety, focusing attention on this strange group of characters and their desperately Gothic situation.
GEORGE HALL
HAMPSHIRE, ENGLAND
Country-house opera is all the rage in Britain. Almost every summer, it seems, some new venue opens up, usually involving a fine, old building set in a rural landscape, picnickers in formal evening attire and an opera performance divided by a dinner interval.
Among the most recent of these to make a mark is Grange Park Opera, whose setting is deepest Hampshire. Now in its third season, the festival this year ran to twenty performances of three works from mid-June to mid-July. The house boasts a Greek-temple-like, early-nineteenth-century exterior (by William Wilkins) added on to an earlier brick structure. The result is an architectural gem. The surrounding park (which includes a lake and some venerable trees) was landscaped by Robert Adam. The Grange has not been lived in for decades, and its interior is dilapidated in a picturesque, even surreal fashion that brings to mind the image of Miss Havisham. Performances take place in the adjacent Orangery, whose seating (capacity 366) was salvaged from the Royal Opera House three years ago, when it was closed for refurbishment.
Run by the enterprising Wasfi Kani -- founder of Pimlico Opera and formerly closely associated with Garsington -- Grange Park Opera this year offered a widely praised Mikado, which I did not see, Eugene Onegin and Rinaldo.
Onegin (June 18) seemed an especially appropriate choice, since the Grange was used as a location for the recent film of Pushkin's narrative poem. Regrettably, Ian Judge's production lacked a feeling for the social nuances of early-nineteenth-century Russia: indeed its sense of period was more or less non-existent. Some of designer Deirdre Clancy's costumes, for instance, looked as if chorus members had been asked to bring along anything they might have at home. Monsieur Triquet (Harry Nicoll) wore a lounge suit and a 1960s kipper tie and sang his birthday greeting to Tatyana as a camp, old gay stereotype. The vitally important dances, too, were sketchily done. (Space is at a premium on such a tiny stage.)
The performance was in English, using the translation by Russian-music expert David Lloyd-Jones, who also conducted, producing playing of some emotional warmth from an orchestra that nevertheless frequently sounded as if it were feeling its way through the score. Irish soprano Majella Cullagh sang with confident assurance as the lovelorn heroine, offering clean, forthright lyric tone, though never getting near the bookish introvert of the first half of the plot. Robert Poulton handled Onegin's lines roughly, with a degree of bluster totally at odds with the perfect self-control of Pushkin's cold-hearted aristocrat. The Lensky of Jeffrey Lloyd-Roberts was closer to character tenor than lyric tenor. Easily winning the vocal honors was the Prince Gremin of Brindley Sherratt, whose graceful phrasing, firm tone and noble bearing brought a three-dimensional quality to his creation that was lacking elsewhere.
For Handel's Rinaldo (July 6), the orchestra players picked up period instruments, and John Toll -- well known for his interest in Baroque performing practice -- conducted them confidently. This was the first of Handel's London operas, and indeed the first Italian opera ever written for the British capital. With a colorful plot (derived from Tasso's epic poem Gerusalemme Liberata) that pits Crusaders against Saracens and sees the knight Rinaldo escaping from the clutches of the sorceress Armida to return to the arms of his beloved Almirena, Rinaldo was a huge success in 1711, and Handel revived it regularly.
Here the problem was one of language. Very few of the singers conveyed the Italian text with meaning, or even in some cases clarity, which meant that the recitative, in particular, was extremely dull. An exception was the young bass Tim Mirfin -- as Argante, Saracen King of Jerusalem -- whose vigorous diction and purposeful tone made his character stand out from a vocally limp generality. Even Sara Fulgoni (Rinaldo), whose Carmen for WNO a year or two back was of international standard, seemed disengaged on this occasion. Perhaps the singers were hampered by a production (designed and directed by David Fielding) whose visual jokiness added up to a constant ironic commentary on an opera written in the heroic mold. When Almirena (Emma Bell) urged Rinaldo on to fight bravely for the Christian cause, she picked up and waved a football cheerleader's pom-poms -- though not with any conviction -- and it was the half-heartedness with which the cast adopted such facetious stage business that sabotaged the show, as much as the dearth of textual involvement. Mezzo Yvonne Howard sang solidly as Goffredo, the Christian commander, while soprano Susan Roberts's Armida was marred by a tendency to drift away from the written notes in various interesting directions.
GEORGE HALL
SAVONLINNA
The Savonlinna Opera Festival decided several years ago to greet the new millennium with something meaty. Concept and librettist were decided on even before a composer. Paavo Rintala, one of Finland's best-known writers at the time of his death, in 1999, furnished the text for a triptych that deals with nothing less than the relationship between good and evil since the time of Christ, looking at the question from a distinctly European perspective by juxtaposing Christianity with institutionalized brutality. The result is The Age of Dreams, which had its world premiere on July 15, with music by three Finnish composers: Herman Rechberger, Olli Kortekangas and Kalevi Aho. Although the component operas purport to stand alone and are strikingly different from one another, all are very much bound up with the whole, even if one felt the absence of a single coordinating personality.
Rechberger's ... nunc et semper ..., a thirty-five-minute prologue with a high choral content, sets the tone by mixing liturgical texts with military images. But it was too long for a prologue and too short for dramatic development. Nor were Rechberger's choral sonorities especially distinctive or original. Olli Kortekangas's Maria's Love, loosely based on theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer's martyrdom, comes the closest to traditional narrative opera by opposing human love to spiritual ideals in the context of an attempted assassination of a dictator. There's dramatic potential here, but Kortekangas was diverted by subsidiary plot issues and never fleshed out musically the central issue. Would that The Book of Secrets had presented Aho with comparable dramatic opportunities, for his wind-dominant orchestral textures and intricate tonal patterns make for consistently engaging music. Yet it faced an uphill battle in this piece, which reexamines the circumstances of Christ's crucifixion in a courtroom scene that drags on like the O. J. Simpson trial, then shifts abruptly and confusingly to medieval France for a final scene in which Christ is equated with King Charles VI (the "Mad" or "Well-Beloved"). As with the other operas, it was more about concepts than characters and short on theatrical vitality. At nearly four hours, including a single intermission, The Age of Dreams outlasted La Forza del Destino the night before.
Jussi Tapola's production, with sets by Hannu Lindholm and costumes by Sari Suominen, expertly coordinated the large forces involved, which included the excellent Savonlinna chorus, and effectively combined modern and ancient visual details. Osmo Vänskä's inspired conducting seemed to bring out the best in each piece, and the cast included some of Finland's best singers. Monica Groop stood out in the twin roles of Maria and Mary Magdalene, singing ecstatically upon the latter's discovery of the empty tomb but also making the haunting final lament Kortekangas gave his Maria into a moment of pathos. Jorma Hynninen was a powerful presence as the narrator Bertrand Person, whose arias help tie the piece together. Hannu Niemelä's vibrant baritone caught the spirituality of the twin roles of the Bonhoeffer figure Paul and Christ/Mad King. Juha Kotilainen scored as the work's most lively character, the devilish Blazer in Maria's Love.
The Age of Dreams enjoyed the benefits of improvements made recently to Savonlinna's unique performance venue, the courtyard of the fifteenth-century Olavinlinna Castle. The changes are scarcely noticeable, but new seats are arranged in a slightly different configuration, and a new canopy supplies increased protection not only from rain but from sun, thus facilitating more effective production lighting.
GEORGE W. LOOMIS
DROTTNINGHOLM
The remarkable state of preservation of the exquisite Drottningholm Court Theater, a short boat-ride from Stockholm, makes it uniquely capable of recreating eighteenth-century stage settings. So it came as a surprise to learn that Pierre Audi, one of Europe's more innovative stage directors, was engaged for Handel's Tamerlano this year. Planning sessions between Audi and the Drottningholm administration must have been a tug of war between innovation and tradition. But the results proved to be healthy -- even for Handel. Above all, Audi's production succeeded in projecting the unusually tragic dimension of this great opera.
First performed in 1724, it takes its name from the ruthless, fourteenth-century Tartar conqueror, Tamerlane, but the central figure is one of his victims. Bajazete, the Ottoman emperor defeated and imprisoned by Tamerlano, recognizes at the outset of the opera that suicide is his only honorable course. By the end he achieves his desire, taking poison in full view of the audience, his action postponed only out of concern for his daughter, Asteria, after whom Tamerlano lusts.
Like many directors today, Audi is cavalier about the rules of Baroque opera governing the characters' entrances and exits, and not all his ideas for the gripping final scenes worked. But from the moment Bajazete, his head shaved, first arose unsteadily from a trapdoor and into the columned hall of Tamerlano's palace, the opera's pathos was established firmly. One aria after another kept the intensity alive, whether the characters sang to one another or writhed on the floor. Matthew Richardson's astute lighting maintained a musty, candle-like hue yet was still capable of bringing a character discreetly into relief, and Patrick Kinmonth's eighteenth-century costumes were an asset too.
Audi brought the theater's cloud machine into service for the duet between Asteria and her lover, Andronico, a Greek prince. Otherwise, he used only one set, and even that was stripped away in Act III, exposing the theater's empty side frames and wooden rear wall. Audi seemed determined at this point to get down to basics, for when Bajazete appeared for his riveting death scene, he was bare-chested and wearing only the flimsiest of breeches. The effect was undeniably dramatic, even if it did go against the grain of the music, which makes it clear that Bajazete dies with his dignity intact. Instead of exiting during his final moments, Bajazete remained seated upright in a chair, staring out inconclusively at the audience.
This made for a striking close to tenor Nigel Robson's memorable performance as Bajazete. The not-always-steady voice is hardly youthful in timbre, but it is capable of poignant expression and proved more than equal to the role's musical demands. Handel deliberately made Tamerlano appear brazen by comparison, and Bejun Mehta fit the bill splendidly, both in the strength of his countertenor and in the fluency with which he delivered Tamerlano's arrogant coloratura. The primo uomo role, however, is Andronico, a role originally taken by the castrato Senesino. Anna Larsson's evenly produced contralto conveyed the pent-up emotions of a character never free to act decisively, but it lacked the ultimate tonal richness to do full justice to Andronico's gorgeous music. Sandrine Piau's beautifully controlled soprano made her a ravishing Asteria. Her use of vibrato for expressive ends was a model of stylistic awareness. Contralto Kristina Hammarström had the right deep tones for Irene, Tamerlano's betrothed, though the charming siciliana "Par che mi nasca in seno" (with clarinets) needed to be more seductive. Bass Lars Arvidson's fine singing amply justified the inclusion of Leone's "Nel mondo e nell' abisso" from Handel's 1731 revival.
In his first Drottningholm engagement, Christophe Rousset drew responsive, handsomely textured playing from the period-instrument orchestra. Textually, the performance, which used Terence Best's edition for the Halle Handel Edition, was almost ideal, progressing as it should from Bajazete's death to the final chorus via a brief recitative. Asteria's aria "Se potessi un dì placare," which concludes Act II, was cut, no doubt because of the decision to take a single intermission during that act, a practice that grossly underestimates the theatricality of Handel's act endings.
GEORGE W. LOOMIS
SANTA FE
The past summer's season at Santa Fe Opera, the company's forty-fourth, was the last under the management of founder John Crosby, who will not, however, retire from the podium. A longtime Richard Strauss devotee, he is slated to conduct a revival of the composer's Die Ägyptische Helena there next summer.
During the week of August 7, the company showed its full 2000 repertory over five consecutive nights. On the first of them, Kenneth Montgomery's careful attention to Mozart's fp markings distinguished his reading of the overture to Le Nozze di Figaro. Tempos all evening were brisk -- one seldom hears "Porgi, amor" or "Voi che sapete" this fast -- but they were not inflexible, despite the singers' chronic tendency to hang back. In the fandango of Act III, aided by Peggy Hickey's choreography, the conductor gave the opera one of its rare Spanish twists.
Limited by the modest size of Santa Fe's revolving stage, Robert Perdziola's dollhouse sets were unnecessarily busy and crowded -- there was no room for Figaro's measurements during the opening duet -- but theaters in Mozart's day weren't so big, either. Thor Steingraber's direction made more than usual of Cherubino's attachment to the Countess, and he had Figaro give the youth a shave and haircut during "Non più andrai." On the whole, however, this was a traditional staging, played with ensemble spontaneity and precision.
As Susanna, Catrin Wyn-Davies showed ample spirit and temperament, but hers was a slender sound for the ensembles and for John Relyea's Figaro. With his hearty voice and peppy manner, Relyea played a positive protagonist with a rough-and-ready sense of humor. Alwyn Mellor brought dignity and sustained phrasing to the Countess; her description of the Count as rash and jealous was borne out by Jochen Schmeckenbecher, who played and sang the role as headstrong rather than suave or seductive. Joyce DiDonato, a graduate of the company's apprentice program, though more soprano than mezzo in timbre (except toward the top, where her tone thinned out), acted Cherubino more boyishly than most. Judith Christin's jolly Marcellina offered an amusing foil to Dale Travis's dour, punctilious Bartolo, with Jerold Siena a busybody Basilio of insinuating timbre.
August 8 brought Rigoletto, further proof of how well a standard opera can still work when played according to the librettist's and composer's directions. Making further use of the revolving stage, Mikael Melbye, a singer turned director and set designer, provided a long gallery with a ramp behind it, creating a split-level unit; when it revolved, the ramp became the street leading down to Rigoletto's house. Throughout the opera, the motif of gallery and arches within a small space reinforced a mood of oppressive confinement. The Duke's court of Act II needed only a half-turn to convert to Sparafucile's dumpy inn for Act III, which followed without intermission. Unfortunately, though, the setup did require some pause between scenes, disrupting the dramatic flow of Richard Buckley's tensile conducting. Moments of repose thus were made all the more effective.
One of those, Gilda's "Caro nome," marked allegro assai moderato, was uncharacteristically slow for this conductor, but it suited Elizabeth Futral's unaffected soprano; touching the notes lightly and shaping the phrases with natural ease, she presented Gilda as an innocent teenager. Martin Thompson, on the other hand, overstated the Duke's case with lusty, declarative singing; for this Gilda, gentle suavity would have worked better. Kim Josephson's Rigoletto, suspicious and insecure at court, played a sympathetic father to Gilda, generous with bel canto melody; by the opera's later scenes, however, he had begun to sound short-winded. Raymond Aceto was a somber Sparafucile, Beth Clayton an earthily attractive Maddalena.
Rossini's rarely heard Ermione came next. In his Racinian subject and experimental use of the chorus as commentator, the composer was responding to French influence, writing over the heads of his 1819 Naples audience, or at least beyond its sphere of interest. The absence of recitativo secco in this intense music drama suggests Gluck's reforms; Ermione abounds, however, in the type of elaborate vocalism that Gluck rejected but Italians expected. The opera deals with the aftermath of the Trojan War. Ermione herself, a Medea type rather than a pitiful heroine, eventually dissolves in a mad scene that generates more depression than tragedy. Meanwhile, she has driven both Pirro, her betrothed, and Oreste, her infatuated admirer, to distraction. The seconda donna, Andromaca, widow of Hector, has acceded to Pirro's offer of marriage only to save her son, Astianatte; she intends to take her own life right after the wedding.
At the August 9 performance, Robert Tweten took over the podium from Evelino Pidò. Given the difficulty of their roles, the singers certainly needed his support, which he provided with verve and precision. The spotlight fell on Alexandrina Pendatchanska, whose singing in the title role was notable for accurate, expressive fioriture and passionate, highly colored vocal shading. The other principals, too, more than fulfilled their assignments. Rossini used tortuous tenor-writing to depict the anguish of his characters. Gregory Kunde's Pirro, torn between two women, kept exploding into cascades of coloratura, while Barry Banks seemed beside himself as the rejected Oreste, yet neither slipped or fell amid the torrents of notes. Oreste's more composed friend, Pilade, engaged the cast's third proficient tenor, Charles Castronovo. The dignified mezzo of Sara Mingardo offered much-needed respite in Andromaca's elegiac music, conveying the noble grief of a widowed mother.
Isabella Bywater's designs for Ermione concentrated the action between stark, slablike gray walls, crumbling at the edges, pierced by plain doors and windows suggestive of a military wardroom. Director Jonathan Miller furthered this motif, via Bywater's costumes, by setting the opera in a generic postwar period, with a look suggestive of both the American Civil War and World War I. Rossini's vocal music is all about constraint and release, and Miller caught this in his characters' look and deportment.
The classical figure of Orestes reappeared in Elektra the next night, with Crosby on the podium to coax and restrain the enlarged orchestra. In the hands of director John Copley and designer Bruno Schwengl, this was another traditional production, also another gloomy one, with the usual faceless fortress of a palace, the usual wall-climbing histrionics, the usual dearth of daylight. The damaged head of a broken statue of Agamemnon lay to one side, giving Mary Jane Johnson someplace to direct her first monologue and to suggest her final dance with a few contortions. Though her soprano is large and powerful, it started off without steady projection and never developed the kind of laser-beam focus that would transcend the orchestra. Dramatically, Johnson was right on track, giving Elektra as much emotional latitude as the role allows. Susan B. Anthony, with less to attempt, fared well as the only-too-human Chrysothemis, floating her voice with enough edge to convey emotional tension. Judith Forst's richness of tone gave Klytämnestra, regally gowned in blood-red, some dimension beyond the caricature of a wasted harridan, while Ragnar Ulfung tossed off Aegisth's handful of lines with a veteran's skill. Greer Grimsley played his ominously patient Orest in a strong, firm bass-baritone, an anchor point amid all the hysteria.
Crosby's company has been famous for American premieres, especially of operas by Hans Werner Henze, represented this year by his 1997 Munich opus Venus und Adonis. With this ingenious, crisp
ly tailored score, the old career Marxist has created a model of "culinary opera" (Brecht's term), an aesthetic game for the intelligentsia. Musico-dramatically, the work is indebted to French opera-ballet and Strauss's Ariadne auf Naxos. The point of literary departure is Shakespeare's long poem "Venus and Adonis."
A strong aftertaste of Pirandello pervades Hans-Ulrich Treichel's libretto, which deals with the interfacing of two love triangles. In one, enacted by dancers, Venus rejects the courtship of Mars and sets her sights on the young Adonis, who at first is too self-absorbed and innocent to notice her. Eventually she prevails, but Adonis is killed by a wild boar (representing Mars's jealous rage) and ascends like Ariadne to join the stars in heaven. The second triangle, a mirror of the first, involves present-day singers rehearsing an opera version of the same story. These singers keep their personal comments separate from their scripted lines by reading the latter from bound copies of the score -- not an easy distinction for the listener to follow. Clemente, who is to play Adonis, ends up stabbed by the Hero-Player, an older singer (Mars), over the affections of the Prima Donna (Venus). Meanwhile, a sextet of madrigalists intervenes from time to time with descriptions of nature, and the trio of dancers interprets the story in a series of boleros and pantomimes.
All this layering over a simple tale suggests another Shakespeare title, Much Ado About Nothing. Henze's lushly decadent music, however, has tricks up its sleeve. Like most other composers inclined toward a post-Lulu expressionistic atonality, tinged with late (not to be confused with neo-) Romanticism, he treats the voice mercilessly, but his music avoids the monotony common to this genre; instead it ranges from violent to serene, from complex to lucid. His orchestral palette is vibrant with variety, while the dance movements are alive, muscular and compelling. Richard Bradshaw was the alert conductor, with a plain rehearsal-room set by John Conklin, soap-opera staging (singers emoting while reading from scores) by Alfred Kirchner and dance/pantomime economically choreographed by Ron Thornhill on the limited playing area.
The outstanding acting and singing came from Lauren Flanigan: her role offered the most humor, and she managed to launch the Prima Donna's angular soprano lines on some Straussian flights. Making the most of the Hero-Player's emotional crisis midway in the score, bass-baritone Stephen West sang expressively and acted stoically, frustrated by the easy charm and warm tenor of Christopher Ventris's Clemente. Among the six dancers (three of whom play animals), Sarita Allen's severe Venus dominated the thwarted machismo of Peter Mantia's Mars and the athletic, susceptible Adonis of Brock von Drehle Labrenz.
Santa Fe's titles -- similar to the Met's, with optional private screens on the seat backs -- worked discreetly, offering essential support in the case of Venus und Adonis. Downpours, famous for intrusions in this partially open theater, held off all week, and remote lightning failed to outflash the artificial kind in Rigoletto.
JOHN W. FREEMAN
SEATTLE
Seattle Opera has forged half of its new Ring (the production will be unveiled in its entirety in August of 2001), and it's already clear that the company has struck gold. The new Das Rheingold and Die Walküre, directed by Stephen Wadsworth and conducted by Armin Jordan, bring together all the elements of compelling music-drama: huge, spectacular voices (including Jane Eaglen's Brünnhilde), naturalistic, beautifully detailed sets (by Thomas Lynch) and staging that bypasses every opera cliché to create vivid, compellingly natural theater. The response to these two productions in the press and on the street was so strong that all three cycles of the complete 2001 Ring sold out the week after the first two shows were unveiled.
If this sounds like a lot of enthusiasm, perhaps it's because a Ring this good will have taken twenty-six years to materialize in Seattle. The company's first production, which ran annually from 1975 to '84 under former general director Glynn Ross, was charmingly old-fashioned but static; the second (1986-95) was produced by general director Speight Jenkins in a postmodern style, with aerial Valkyrie steeds and a Wagner-is-Wotan concept. This new production, dubbed "the green Ring" by Jenkins, emphasizes nature -- a fact made clear from the opening underwater scene, with the mermaid-tailed Rhinemaidens swooping and flying in Peter Pan harnesses. Peter Kaczorowski's lighting, with wavering watery effects on a scrim, adds to the spectacular coup de théâtre.
Though there's plenty to look at in Thomas Lynch's thick, dense forests and rocky mountaintops, the real nature here comes from Wadsworth's staging. Gone are all the stock gestures; instead, there's a remarkable adherence to Wagner's own stage directions, interpreted in fresh new ways. Fricka (Stephanie Blythe) and Wotan (Phillip Joll) have their big argument (Walküre, Act II) in Hunding's hut, from which Siegmund (Mark Baker) and Sieglinde (Margaret Jane Wray) have recently fled. When Alberich (Richard Paul Fink) turns himself into a toad, Wotan and Loge (Peter Kazaras) toss the slimy creature back and forth. Brünnhilde (Jane Eaglen) knuckles the tears from her eyes like a kid when Wotan scolds her, and she leaps up to punch the air with a tomboy's victory gesture when Wotan grants her a less severe punishment. Freia (Marie Plette) is clearly fascinated by the giant Fasolt (Stephen Milling), who longs for her. Erda (Nancy Maultsby) is eerily seductive; it's not at all hard to believe that Wotan will return to her to father all the Valkyries. For once, we have a Ring -- a demi-Ring, anyway -- in which everything makes sense.
Most remarkable of all was the singing. Chief among the well-chosen cast was Eaglen, who was a compelling actress, as well as a singer of radiantly easy power and resonance. Wray's Sieglinde, big-voiced yet subtly expressive, was matched line for line by Baker (a Siegmund who didn't sound like a loser). Joll made an effective if not earth-shaking Wotan, Blythe a compelling Fricka. A big surprise in the cast was Danish bass Stephen Milling, a spectacularly intense singer who riveted both the gods and audiences as Fasolt in Das Rheingold, returning in Die Walküre as a terrifying, brutal Hunding.
As Alberich, Fink poured on the intensity, slithering realistically on Lynch's underwater rocks and delivering a curse on the ring that threatened to melt the metal. He truly sang the music instead of barking it. Harry Peeters (Fafner), Thomas Studebaker (Froh), James Courtney (Donner) and Thomas Harper (Mime) also made memorable impressions. In the three Rhinemaidens (Lisa Saffer, Mary Phillips and Laura Tucker), Jenkins found not only strong singers but nimble acrobats, who actually did aerial somersaults, dives and swoops high above the stage while singing.
The Valkyries (Emily Pulley, Malmfrid Sand, Jennifer Roderer, Ellen Rabiner, Marion Dry, plus Plette, Tucker, Phillips), given nifty stylized winged helmets by costume designer Martin Pakledinaz, were a wildly hilarious bunch who brandished sacks full of body parts and severed heads. Their scene, one of the real staging challenges of Walküre, was particularly well done. The orchestra, drawn from the Seattle Symphony, surged forward under Jordan's baton for fast-paced, lyrical playing that supported and never overpowered the singers.
MELINDA BARGREEN
INDIANOLA, IA
Maria Callas and her increasing legend have created a standard for the role of Norma that has made life difficult for all who follow her. Even today, finding a soprano who can conquer the high-flying coloratura and provide convincing dramatic fire and intensity in the role of the noble, self-sacrificing Druid priestess is not easy. While good performances of Norma are plentiful, great ones are rare. So it proved again with Des Moines Metro Opera's production, heard July 14.
Caroline Whisnant has the right regal bearing and vocal resources for the title role. "Casta Diva" was sweetly sung, with an agile cabaletta, but hardly as rapt or ethereal as this prayer to the pagan goddess requires. While she has the notes and, for the most part, handled Bellini's vocal hurdles skillfully, Whisnant's upper register often emerged harsh and glassy, not a good thing in Bellini's often stratospheric writing. Dramatically, Whisnant proved only fitfully successful, tenderly maternal and touching in her concern for her children, yet failing to provide the fire and commanding stature of this leader of her people.
Jeffrey Springer made a solid showing as the two-timing Roman proconsul Pollione. While the handsome young tenor managed to avoid looking ridiculous in Roman garb -- a major feat in itself -- and invested the weak character with more dramatic bite than usual, Springer's lower notes often had a husky, covered quality that undercut his otherwise fine singing. As Norma's confidante, Adalgisa, Gwendolyn Jones provided the most satisfactory, fully rounded portrayal of the production. Apart from some effortful scooping up to her top notes, Jones managed the wide vocal range of the part superbly, her nut-brown lower range rich and full. The mezzo was most effective dramatically, ardent and believably anguished in her long Act I scene with Pollione. Matthew Lau was a dry-voiced, tremulous Oroveso.
The traditional production was done with the company's wonted solid dependability. There were a few missteps: a tacky, painted red moon on the backdrop, Norma's climactic summons emerging with a seven-second delay after she struck the onstage gong, and the Druids' futuristic, Star Wars-like robes -- especially Oroveso's get-up, which, with his long white beard and sceptered orb, looked like a cross between Neptune and Father Christmas. Though Robert L. Larsen did not entirely avoid the pitfall of letting tension sag during the numerous sections of the long final scene, his conducting was excellent overall.
The company's production of Gian Carlo Menotti's The Consul, the following evening, was likewise a respectable effort but proved more of a disappointment, largely because one expected so much more, given Larsen's commitment to Menotti's music. Presented in the fiftieth-anniversary year of the opera's premiere, The Consul remains sadly timeless in its unsparing depiction of the cold inhumanity and faceless dehumanizing bureaucracy of a nameless authoritarian state.
Patricia Coffin, whose touching performance last season as Anna Maurrant did much to make the company's Street Scene a huge success, is a credible actress and solid singer. Yet the pivotal role of Magda Sorel calls for more, vocally and dramatically, than the soprano was able to provide. Magda is a woman at the end of her rope as she watches her entire world -- and, by extension, the worlds of all the other Magdas who have suffered under totalitarian governments -- being systematically destroyed. While affecting in an understated fashion, Coffin seemed too inhibited to convey the full dimension of Magda's situation; even her self-sacrificing suicide seemed merely sad, rather than overwhelmingly tragic. Her big Act II showpiece, "To this we've come," should lift the audience out of its seats; while Coffin's rendering was effective enough, it failed to create a powerful emotional climax.
Apart from an overdone limp, Gary Martin provided a strong performance and huge baritone voice as John Sorel, Magda's resistance-fighter husband. As the Mother, Anne Larson's words were fitfully inaudible, but her lullaby to her doomed grandchild registered nicely. Most effective of all was Dorothy Byrne as the Secretary. The mezzo perfectly captured the mundane mind-set of the bureaucratic drone while revealing her humanity subtly, without overdoing it, in a rich-voiced reading of her Act III aria. Marc Schreiner as the Magician and Richard L. Richards as Mr. Kofner stood out among the motley group of people waiting for their papers to be approved.
David Gordon's sets were supremely atmospheric; his spare, gray, dingy setting for the Sorels' apartment aptly conveyed the sense of barren authoritarianism, and the massive thirty-foot file cabinets, dwarfing all in the consulate waiting room, provided the ominous sense of massive bureaucracy and the constant unease of police-state surveillance. Larsen's blocking proved uncharacteristically ill-conceived at times; such key moments as the two dream sequences were especially awkwardly staged, with the Secretary's contorted, menacing movements like something out of The Bride of Frankenstein. No complaints about Larsen's handling of the score, however; the conductor's vital direction of his orchestra made the strongest possible case for Menotti's most inspired moments.
LAWRENCE A. JOHNSON
CINCINNATI
Cincinnati Opera got its eightieth season and the new millennium off to a resounding start on June 22 with artistic director Nicholas Muni's Victorian-era Salome. Set in Herodes's opulent observatory (designed by Peter Werner), the production was dominated by a giant telescope, its gearboxes and base serving as the king's throne. A large bubble window looked down into the depths of the palace to allow commentary on "offstage" action. Most of Muni's offbeat conceptions worked, though they troubled many in the audience. At Herodes's international court, composed exclusively of male friends and sycophants, Herodias's Page was a samurai, who doubled as messenger-slave and the executioner of Jochanaan. The Nazarenes were converts from Herodes's soldiers, tortured and blinded for their beliefs. Less successful was the onstage decapitation of Jochanaan, with Herodias delivering Jochanaan's head to Salome too soon, and with no stage action during the gigantic crescendo Strauss wrote for the initial appearance of the head from the cistern; Salome merely discovered the head nearby, as if by accident. Almost as bad was Herodias's unmotivated change of heart at the conclusion, when she stabbed Salome as the lights went out. John Norris's clunky choreography made an amateur ballerina of Salome and involved Herodes in an erotic, perverse waltz.
Musically, the opera was in fine shape, with the Cincinnati Symphony powerfully led by Stefan Lano. Stephanie Friede's first outing as Salome was a triumph. Secure of voice and projecting through the orchestral turbulence, she seemed just right as the deranged princess. Jacque Trussel offered a curiously subdued Herodes, short on musical values. As Herodias, Susan Parry sang beautifully, forging a stronger personality than that of Herodes. In his U.S. debut, as Jochanaan, Ronnie Johansen seemed ill at ease, displaying a strong voice of no particular interest and even less personality. Most impressive was the opulently sung, sincerely acted Narraboth of Scott Piper. Stephanie Novacek sang the Page with generous, warm tones. The quintet of Jews (Gary Rideout, Thomas Baresel, Richard Furman, Daniel Weeks, Thomas Sherwood) was extraordinarily fine, and David Michael and Wayne Tigges made sturdy Soldiers, but Richard Bernstein failed to project as the First Nazarene.
The only comic spot in this year's repertoire was La Cenerentola (June 29, July 1). David Gately served up a cleverly inventive but not overly broad slapstick staging in Gary Eckhart's picture-pretty sets from Baltimore Opera. Steven Crawford, who also presided at the piano for recitatives, led a confident, secure performance that was remarkable for ensemble work from a solid cast. Phyllis Pancella's first Angelina had a certain toughness that seemed at odds with the character, but she could also turn softly feminine of voice, with warm, flexible coloratura and a strong low register. Bruce Fowler's handsomely expressive tenor, with blazing high notes, made for an elegant Don Ramiro. Stephen Powell, at ease in Dandini's comic stances, exhibited a winning combination of heft and flexibility. Once a fine Dandini, Timothy Nolen took on the coloratura depths of Don Magnifico, proving as detailed and charming an actor as ever, with expressive textual nuance. Bernstein fared much better as Alidoro than he had as the Nazarene, his bass-baritone carrying easily through the house. The ebullient sisters of Blythe Walker (Clorinda) and Frankie Hatcher (Tisbe) were a vocal and visual delight.
Debussy's Pelléas et Mélisande was given its company premiere on July 13. Muni's detailed staging probed the opera's psychological depths with an overwhelming mixture of tension, sadness and a feeling of doom. Dany Lyne's production from Canadian Opera -- a Jackson Pollock-inspired gray, black and white forest, with a high bridge spanning the width of the stage to delineate Arkel's castle, abetted by Thomas C. Hase's dramatic lighting -- got off to a good start. However, it soon became tediously bland and oppressive in its lack of color against Debussy's lush writing. Lyne's costumes were an inconsistent mish-mash, derived from a variety of far-Eastern cultures. Arkel was a majestic stand-in for Timur, his grandsons appearing to have arrived recently from India. Mélisande was tarted up as a veiled water nymph with red hair and wearing a slinky, red gown. Geneviève also wore red until the final scene, when she changed into black Victorian dress. Female castle attendants were garbed in a kind of black sari, but the Physician sported a modern, Western-style business suit.
Despite visual peculiarities, the opera's musical performance was near-perfect. Jean-François Lapointe was a genuinely moving Pelléas, singing with exquisite diction, his pliant baritone a fine complement to the limpid mezzo of Ruxandra Donose, whose forceful portrayal of Mélisande was not particularly innocent. At the center of the drama stood David Pittman-Jennings's powerfully tragic Golaud, richly detailed in characterization, with a wide variety of vocal color and dynamics. Malcolm Smith delivered Arkel with a noble, cavernous bass, and Luretta Bybee etched Geneviève with a lush mezzo. Wayne Tigges's Physician, onstage through much of the opera, was sympathetically sung and acted. Under the inspired leadership of Stéphane Denève, the Cincinnati Symphony exceeded its own high standards of subtle nuance and power.
Aida (July 14, 19, 22) was strongly cast, right down to the voluptuously sung High Priestess of Adrienne Danrich and the dramatically enunciated Messenger of Scott Piper. Of major interest was Denyce Graves's first Amneris, which she pulled off with remarkable aplomb. Not blessed with a huge voice, Graves made the most of her character's intimate moments, her rich, warm mezzo full of nuance and inflection. Though her voice blossomed brightly on top, the lower register emerged husky and weak, never attaining the heft and splendor needed for such passages as the judgment scene. With her sensual beauty and movement, flicking her diaphanous capes, posing with attitude, Graves swept grandly through ancient Egypt.
In the title role, Hasmik Papian etched each note perfectly, whether soaring over the triumph scene or lying flat on her back for a delicate final duet. Radamès was powerfully sung by Gabriel Sadé, whose voice frequently emerged hard as nails, pinning the audience to the back wall; yet he was able to scale it down to a refined caress, as in "O terra addio." Visually awkward (a bad case of nerves from having to enter the triumph scene on horseback didn't help), Sadé's Radamès was histrionically inert. Donnie Ray Albert gave Amonasro a distinguished portrayal -- vocally incisive and ferocious, yet noble and sympathetic. Ronnie Johansen sang Ramfis's music with skill but did little in the way of acting, while David Michael made an imposing King. Edoardo Müller conducted with authority, molding the show into a coherent, sensible whole and carefully supporting his singers.
Within Wolfram Skalicki's handsome, traditional sets, the eye-catching spectacle of the triumph scene in Mario Corradi's staging enlisted six elegant horses and riders from Cincinnati's Mounted Police division, along with the presence of twenty-one volunteer non-violent felons and six officers from the River City Correctional Center. Cincinnati Ballet artistic director Victoria Morgan provided sensual choreography for her dancers. Costumes from Utah Opera were appropriately colorful and effective for the principals, but those for the chorus appeared to be adapted from some amateur Passion play.
CHARLES H. PARSONS
KATONAH, NY
Having honored Donizetti with Lucrezia Borgia in 1997 and Rossini with La Gazza Ladra in '98, the Caramoor Festival turned to Bellini with Il Pirata in a concert performance at the Venetian Theater on July 22. Once again, bel canto specialist Will Crutchfield took to the podium, leading a cast of promising young hopefuls, and a difficult work was well served.
The central role of Imogene, identified in our time with Maria Callas and Montserrat Caballé, fell to Indra Thomas, who joins the Met this season. She is an exciting artist, with dedicated delivery, intensity of tone and the softness needed to float Bellini's finer lines. Her soprano is a shade too rich for nimble runs and coloratura tracery, but she encompassed all of Imogene's conflicted emotions. Given to bursts of sound and feeling, with some loss of focus on detail, Thomas sang best when holding back and consciously striving for control, but in her peak moments, notably the final scena, she managed to wed subtlety with passion. As her companion, Adele, Laura Danehower Whyte showed sympathetic tone and an appealing musical personality.
Stepping into the killer role of Gualtiero on eleven days' notice, Francisco Almanza -- who had been cast in the small part of Itulbo while understudying the lead -- exhibited intelligence, temperament and stylistic understanding. Keeping his vocal placement high, the young Mexican tenor was able to sustain the entire role, right through the taxing final duet and aria, without strain or fatigue. If his topmost notes sounded pinched, the rest of the voice displayed a timbre well suited to Bellinian Romanticism, which many tenors attempt with too much and too heavy a tone. Ernesto, Imogene's husband and Gualtiero's foe, proved a piece of cake for Daniel Mobbs, whose slim figure belied the generosity of his dramatic baritone. Valeriano Lanchas (Soltario) and Richard Slade (the replacement Itulbo) did well in their supporting roles.
One could argue with Crutchfield about indulging the twentieth-century penchant for high notes stuck on to the ends of numbers. These wouldn't have pleased the composer, but of course they delighted the audience. Otherwise, Crutchfield -- both as coach for the singers and as leader of the responsive Orchestra of St. Luke's -- showed his familiar care for Bellinian style, with its long, sculptural lines and variety of dark shadings. There was scarcely a note of routine, even in the obligatory choral pieces: this Pirata was soulful drama from end to end.
JOHN W. FREEMAN
LENOX, MA
Tanglewood's annual Leonard Bernstein Memorial Concert, which nearly drowned in a fierce July 15 rainstorm around the backless, sideless, 5,000-seat Koussevitzky Music Shed, managed to hold on for dear life to the late composer-conductor's sporadic connections to opera. Seiji Ozawa, one of Bernstein's most prominent protégés, devoted the second half of the Tanglewood Center Orchestra's concert to Act III of Verdi's Falstaff, the opera with which Bernstein made his Met debut in 1964.
At the Shed, a cast of established professionals sang in a concert semi-staging by David Kneuss, with semi-atmospheric lighting by John Michael Deegan. Substituting on short notice in the title role for an indisposed John Del Carlo was Paul Plishka, who brought a decent amount of voice and a considerable amount of theatrical expertise to Sir John from the moment he burst out of a laundry basket at prelude's end, through the moving "Mondo ladro," when grabbing a wine-flagon from Ozawa, and on to what the rain let one hear of the fugue-finale, which he sang from the podium while the evicted Ozawa careened among the other solo singers to fling them their cues.
Christine Goerke's Alice was vocally and visually luscious. Heidi Grant Murphy sparkled most of the time as Nannetta, at least when she didn't try too hard to pierce the wet air. Gregory Turay sang Fenton's nocturne almost like a young Bjoerling. Bernadette Manca di Nissa brought her customary verve and sass to Quickly, and Monica Bacelli (Meg), Roberto Servile (Ford), Michel Sénéchal (Caius), Richard Clement (Bardolfo) and Mario Luperi (Pistola) made up a good ensemble, although the noisy weather maimed some of their individual efforts. John Oliver's Tanglewood Festival Chorus managed their fairy music delectably and did much to levitate the fugue. The TMC Orchestra, as usual, amazed everyone.
Two weeks later (July 30, 31), Ozawa led a full staging (also by Kneuss) of the complete Falstaff, with two casts of TMC vocal fellows, providing a quite different audience experience from the earlier semi-staged performance of Act III. In the Theatre, half the TMC Orchestra was crammed in front of the stage (in lieu of what was a pit in the 1940s) for Act I, with the other half replacing the original players for the last two acts. Given the auditorium's super-live acoustic, half a symphony orchestra was sometimes too much; twenty minutes into the opera, the possibility of a re-dug pit in future summers was devoutly to be wished.
Kneuss staged Act I as a mufti rehearsal within skeletal hints of what gradually would become John Michael Deegan and Sarah G. Conly's Tudoresque sets and costumes. Ozawa and his players also wore rehearsal sweat-wear at first but dressed formally by Act III. The Pirandellian concept seemed no less pretentiously gimmicky in its supposed unpretentiousness than it does in many an Ariadne auf Naxos prologue. (An actor playing the stage manager got predictable applause for removing a rehearsal clock.) When the production finally became a production, Kneuss organized his singers into a witty and charming show, and the designer made Windsor Park a magical place by merely flying in some leafy branches onto a practicable, subtly lit choristers' bridge.
Among the two casts, Scott Bearden sang an incisive Falstaff, perhaps too youthfully clean of voice. Andrea Trebnik, from the Met's Lindemann Young Artist Development program and a recent Gluck Iphigénie at Spoleto USA, was a radiant Alice Ford, her soprano voice truly warming and lighting up a passage such as "Gaie comari di Windsor!" without descending into diva-dom. Sharla Nafziger and Tamara Hummel both shone as Nannetta, especially in high, moonstruck stretches, and Mark Uhlemann fired off some exciting bass notes as Pistol. Allyson McHardy was a particularly warm, witty Meg, and Makiko Narumi sang a plummy Quickly. Ozawa left no doubt as to his basic command, in more favorable acoustical circumstances, of this miraculous opera's swift wit, high energy and airy lyricism. But with the Tanglewood Theatre's in-your-face sound, he had many balance problems. The brass drowned out that grand string flourish that ends the "honor" monologue. Too many wind-and-brass piquancies became blatant thuds. Then again, in-your-faceness became a virtue in the fugue-finale, when its stretta-strettissima almost lifted the listener out of his chair.
LEIGHTON KERNER
PITTSFIELD, MA
The small but never lazy Berkshire Opera Company, now installed in the Koussevitzky Arts Center on the Berkshire Community College campus, delivered a brave, occasionally lovely account of Bellini's I Capuleti e i Montecchi at a July 10 matinee. The sixth of the composer's ten operas, it's arguably the first in which Bellini really becomes Bellini in matters of unique lyrical (and rhythmical) style throughout a given work. Thus, any performance of this opera that doesn't fall apart is worth a journey, and Berkshire Opera's effort surely was that. Felice Romani's succinct Romeo-Juliet libretto, derived not from Shakespeare but from Luigi Scevola (1818), was clear in Carleen Graham's simple staging, and conductor Joel Revzen got tidy work from a chorus of New York's Gregg Smith Singers and the Camerata New York, which has fine woodwind players in particular.
Finest among the singers was soprano Marguerite Krull as Giulietta. This former mezzo did especially well musically and emotionally by "O, quante volte" and Bellini's original death scene, forsaking the once fashionable, less innovative finale to Nicola Vaccai's pre-Bellini Giulietta e Romeo that superstars used to prefer. Mezzo Leah Summers acted the considerably longer role of Romeo ardently and intensely, but that very intensity made her voice spread around the right pitches too often. Bass-baritone Gary Aldrich had his moments as Lorenzo; tenor Matthew Chellis had fewer of them as Tebaldo; and bass Bruce Baumer had none as Capellio.
LEIGHTON KERNER
VIENNA, VA
Immorality seldom sounds more beautiful than in Monteverdi's L'Incoronazione di Poppea. Wolf Trap Opera reveled in that captivatingly corrupt realm, on July 21 at the Barns of Wolf Trap, with a classy, sexy new production that tapped much of the score's musical richness and tellingly underlined the libretto's brilliant mix of nobility, earthiness, stoicism, vanity, sorrow and humor.
Resourceful director Gregory Keller had the action unfolding in a naturalistic, unaffected manner. Complemented by Dipu Gupta's sleek set-design and Bobby Pearce's neo-Roman costumes, Keller's concept suggested a hybrid of old gladiator movies and hip music videos. Toss in an assortment of off-color Italian hand gestures, some mature-audience-only behavior (including the de rigueur homoerotic spin on the Nerone/Lucano scene, here set in a bathhouse) and occasional bursts of silliness (such as a stuffed-toy skeleton passed around by Seneca and his students), and this Poppea made an arresting visual statement.
It made a strong musical one, too. Conductor David Fallis emphasized the score's conversational tone, with easy-flowing, seamless tempos that never lacked breathing room when arias bloomed from the recitative. The young cast offered astute characterizations across the board, and the high level of acting compensated a great deal for any vocal unevenness.
Looking rather like Ginger on Gilligan's Island, soprano Cynthia Watters made her entrance as Poppea in a form-hugging evening gown that gave her a timeless, irresistible vampiness. A silken, flexible, highly expressive voice capped her assured, deliciously evil portrayal. As Nerone, male soprano Michael Maniaci revealed an intriguing lightness and brightness of timbre. A warmer timbre would have given his singing even more distinction, but his performance grew steadily in nuance, technical security and communicative force. A sometimes harsh, uncentered tone limited the impact of Elizabeth Shammash's Ottavia, though she brought emotional weight to "Addio Roma." As Ottone, Keith Phares used his beautifully rounded baritone with keen insight. Derrick Parker's ample bass-baritone and eloquent phrasing gave a commanding presence to Seneca. Mezzo Julie Anne Bartholomew needed more vocal firmness in her dual assignment as Arnalta and La Fortuna. Tenor Scott Scully's drag turn as a booze-guzzling Nurse was a hoot; he also took on two more secondary roles ably. Soprano Anna Christy was charming as Amore and Valetto. Other generally effective multiple-role-takers were tenor Eric Cutler, bass Joshua Winograde and sopranos Stacey Tappan and Jessica Jones. The male chorus sang firmly, and the accomplished, stylistically sensitive orchestra of period instruments recreated the score's alternately pastel and vivid coloring with panache.
WTO wrapped up its thirtieth season with a vibrant Don Giovanni that confirmed the key strengths of this year's crop of young singers -- uniformly astute musical instincts and considerable theatrical flair. Cavorting all over a spacious, sufficiently atmospheric set from New York City Opera, on August 17 at the Filene Center, the cast revealed a keen sense of ensemble. Nicolette Molnár's direction underlined the ambiguity of the work and put the humorous elements on equal footing with the darker issues. By the time the good-over-evil moral was hammered home in the epilogue, it was doubtful that any of the characters had really learned a lesson. Just before the curtain fell, the last image was of Elvira picking up Giovanni's wine goblet -- all that remained after his descent into hell; in that simple gesture could be detected the mix of awe, contempt and persistent longing that had propelled her and others through the plot.
Carleton Chambers captured the title role's double-edged appeal in a nimble performance. His baritone didn't always cooperate fully when he tried to put a soft, sexy spin on the tone, but his phrasing was always alert to textual nuances. Derrick Parker stole the show as Leporello, not just for his amusing antics but for focused, vividly flavored vocalism. If Jessica Jones, as Anna, ran into some cloudiness and stridency at the top of her voice, she gave her music an ardent pulse; if only she hadn't swooned so often while lamenting her fate. Eric Cutler did not succeed in making Ottavio seem less of a windbag than usual, but the tenor's sweetly molded, mostly secure accounts of "Dalla sua pace" and "Il mio tesoro" revealed admirable training and innate taste. Cynthia Watters sailed through Elvira, her bright, sturdy soprano invariably hitting home. Anna Christy's Zerlina was surely sung in a deliciously sunny tone, while Kevin Burdette's likewise warm, solid sound and telling way with a phrase fleshed out Masetto. Even though, as with the rest of the cast, he received a boost from amplification (an unfortunate aspect of performing at the huge Filene Center), Joshua Winograde's bass could have used more bloom and boom as the Commendatore. The chorus was cohesive, and the orchestra responded to Stephen Crout's tightly paced, sensitive conducting with mostly fluent, colorful playing.
TIM SMITH
PRINCETON, NJ
Opera Festival of New Jersey has staked a claim to American opera in recent seasons. Following up outstanding revivals of Vanessa, Susannah and Postcard from Morocco, the festival made a strong case for Hugo Weisgall's Six Characters in Search of an Author and Frank Lewin's Burning Bright. Tautly staged and strongly cast, the two productions proved the highlights of the company's 2000 season -- the first to include four works -- at McCarter Theatre. Burning Bright -- given its professional premiere on July 21, seven years after it was first performed at Yale University -- capped the festival. Based on John Steinbeck's play of the same name, Lewin's opera portrays a man's obsession with obtaining an heir. Steinbeck's drama boasts only four characters, but the playwright adds a universal dimension to his intimate story by shifting its locale from a circus tent to a farmhouse and later to the cabin of a freighter moored in New York harbor. Lewin places the opera's final scene in a spaceship -- here suggested by a stunning backdrop of twinkling stars.
Lewin weighs down the simple drama with a Wagnerian score of considerable complexity. The diverse settings inspire the composer to alter his musical style from act to act. In the first, he weaves brassy circus music through the scenes for Joe Saul, his wife and Victor, the young man who fathers her child. The rapid shift of musical mood and the dense writing make this the most difficult act in the opera. Once Joe and his wife, Mordeen, reach the farm, Lewin adopts a more lyrical, folksy style, far more ingratiating than the difficult music of Act I. He achieves some powerful effects in the important orchestral sections in the final act. His score conveys Joe's heated emotional outburst after he discovers he is not the child's father, then dissolves into expansive lyricism as Joe accepts the infant as his own. Lewin displays a gift for crafting big melodic lines. The Act II quartet, in particular, soars radiantly.
The festival provided a strong production for this challenging score. Conductor Patrick Hansen presided over an impressive musical performance. Baritone Todd Thomas portrayed Joe Saul's dilemma with touching sincerity, his voice conveying intense conviction in Joe's emotional outbursts. Indira Mahajan brought a vibrant, shining soprano to Mordeen. As Joe Saul's friend Ed, John Marcus Bindel displayed a rich, burnished bass. Both acted with conviction. The key role in this opera is Victor, who achieves maturity as his infatuation for Mordeen turns to magnanimous self-sacrifice. Adam Klein sang the role impressively, but why did he walk through every scene with a surly look on his face?
The spare but telling production boasted a strong staging from Karen Tiller and effective scenery by Kris Stone. The designer simply suggested the different locales through backdrops depicting circus tents, windmills and the jutting prows of ships. Marie Miller's deftly designed costumes and F. Mitchell Dana's atmospheric lighting added to the success of this flawed but engrossing work.
Like Burning Bright, Weisgall's opera makes formidable demands on a company's resources. The festival rose to the challenge with an outstanding performance on July 7. The big cast, led expertly by conductor Barbara Day Turner, featured some impressive voices. Albert Takazauckas's keenly focused staging added to the success of this important revival. Librettist Denis Johnston turned Luigi Pirandello's absurdist play-within-a-play into an opera-within-an-opera. The rehearsal for Weisgall's Temptation of St. Anthony has barely started when six strangers enter searching for an author to complete the unfinished opera they inhabit. While the opera singers rehearse an aria about a pig or sing about lamp oil and eiderdown, the six characters introduce darker themes -- incest, prostitution, murder and violence.
Weisgall clothed this provocative intellectual drama with abrasive, angular music. Making no concession to popular melody, he crafted a challenging score that grows in power as the opera unfolds. Pirandello's dense, wordy play does not transfer easily to the opera stage. The playwright's exploration of the relationship between illusion and reality -- even when played out by a group of vivid characters -- is not easily conveyed through music.
The conductor made a strong case for Weisgall's difficult score. Turner paced the music urgently, bringing out the intensity in the vocal and instrumental lines. With an unerring sense of visual drama, Takazauckas created a series of powerful dramatic vignettes, as the father seduced his stepdaughter, and the boy drowned his sister before committing suicide.
From the large cast -- Weisgall's opera boasts twenty-four characters -- several portrayals stood out. Veterans Rosalind Elias and Robert Orth left vivid imprints on the Mother and Father. Michaela Gurevich's rich soprano pealed out the stepdaughter's music with vibrant impact, although she awkwardly suggested the girl's sensuality in her seduction scene. Taking over the role of the Son after rehearsals for Weisgall's opera had begun, baritone Dominic Inferrera sang strongly. The production team also boasted powerful voices. Kent Smith not only sang the Accompanist's lines, he played the piano, too. Ryan Allen turned the Stage Manager into a detailed cameo role. Aimee Willis (Prompter) and Neal Harrelson (Director) performed with distinction.
Productions of Carmen (June 17) and Falstaff (June 28) proved less memorable. Bizet's opera opened the festival in a commonplace production from the Cleveland Opera. To her credit, stage director Elizabeth Bachman filled the stage with action that caught the color and drama of the opera. But why did a mute -- and irrelevant -- little girl dressed in black wander through the performance? Michael Ching led a tautly disciplined musical performance, notable for its rhythmic sweep. Lithe and slender, Suzanna Guzman made a fascinating Carmen, at once tough and predatory, sensual and alluring. She exploited the colors in her imperfect voice effectively in the seguidilla, but as the performance progressed, she slipped into the background, eclipsed by the intense Don José of Gerard Powers, who captured the corporal's disintegration, singing with increasing passion that turned to violence in the final confrontation with Carmen. Kristopher Irmiter conveyed Escamillo's bravado and sang strongly. Karen Ferguson opened up her gleaming voice to thrilling effect in Micaela's aria.
Falstaff -- another borrowed production -- looked better than Carmen but did not sound as good. Michael McConnell's vital staging and Fay Conway's impressive sets and costumes could not make up for the undersung and overconducted musical performance. Willie Anthony Waters plunged vigorously into the opening scene but quickly made it apparent he was more interested in creating a robust orchestral sound than in supporting the singers. More than drowning out the voices, he failed to impose much musical discipline in the effervescent ensembles.
Mark Delavan (Falstaff) sang handsomely, but his baritone lacked the verbal nuance demanded by Verdi's music. With the help of thick body padding, Delavan suggested Falstaff's enormous appetite for wine and women, but his earnest portrayal did not capture the larger dramatic dimensions of the role. Victor Benedetti failed to summon the robust tone and dramatic intensity required by Ford's jealous outbursts. Alice demands a shimmering sound and aristocatic presence, both of which were missing from Juliana Rambaldi's edgy singing and stiff acting. Dame Quickly must sing out her "Reverenza"s and caper through her comic scenes with Falstaff. Vocally reticent and dramatically reserved, Hillary Nicholson did neither. As the young lovers, Kristen Plumley and Jonathan Boyd sang without much vocal charm.
ROBERT BAXTER
West Side Story at La Scala; Billy Budd at Venice's PalaFenice; Piccini's Roland and Rossini's Otello from Martina Franca; Bruno Maderna's Satyricon from Macerata; Rimsky-Korsakov's Le Coq d'Or from Bregenz; Wolfgang Rihm's Jakob Lenz from Vienna; Les Contes d'Hoffmann from Stuttgart; Turandot from Rättvik's Dalhalla; Claude Vivier's Rêves d'un Marco Polo from Amsterdam; Queen of Spades and Lulu from Zurich; Dargomyzhsky's Rusalka from Moscow; Haim Permont's new Dear Son of Mine, plus L'Elisir d'Amore from Jerusalem; Honegger's Jeanne d'Arc au Bûcher from Buenos Aires; Stravinsky's The Nightingale, Vaughan Williams's Riders to the Sea, Satie's Socrates, Peter Maxwell Davies's Our Lady of the Flowers, Louis Gruenberg's The Creation and Stanley Walden's new Kafka, plus Verdi's Don Carlos, all from New York City; Ariadne auf Naxos, Il Barbiere di Siviglia and Weill's Street Scene from Chautauqua; Ariadne auf Naxos from Santa Barbara; John Casken's Golem from Aspen; Dialogues des Carmélites from Central City; Britten's War Requiem from Tanglewood; a sampling from Lincoln Center's Mostly Mozart Festival; and recitals by Thomas Quasthoff and Matthias Goerne.
MILAN
La Scala broke with tradition in July by staging a musical for the first time in its history. The work chosen was West Side Story -- a logical choice considering Leonard Bernstein was the first American to conduct an opera at this opera house, where the revised version of his opera A Quiet Place was given its world premiere, in 1984. Some were scandalized all the same, but at the tenth performance in the run (July 19), the house was packed, and the audience applauded much louder and longer than at most of the opera performances this season.
It was in fact a highly professional show, in which every detail was worked out for maximum effect. Within a set designed by Paul Gallis and constructed logically enough around iron fire escapes and balconies, the action devised by Joey McKneely proved ideally fluent and focused (thanks also to Paul Gallo's lighting), and Jerome Robbins's original choreography appeared as irresistibly attuned to the music as ever.
The most striking single performance was Jim Ambler's Riff, perhaps because it is rare in an opera house to see someone who can sing, act and dance with such dazzling assurance. Christina Marie Horrup was a suitably sultry Anita, and David Miller's Tony was also ideal in appearance, vocally gifted and sensitive in phrasing. Montserrat Martí (Caballé's daughter) proved a sweet-voiced Maria with a suitable accent, though she lacks as yet the sheer charm and pathos needed to leave a strong imprint on the role. As with the rest of the cast, her speech and singing were amplified, and while this allowed for easy projection of words and tone, there is no doubt that the emotional effect of the music was dulled somewhat as a result, the dynamic range slightly cheapened by artifice.
There was nothing artificial about the sound of the La Scala orchestra, however, which responded with unexpected abandon to the musical idiom and to Donald Wing Chan's expert leadership.
STEPHEN HASTINGS
VENICE
It has been said that rum, sodomy and the lash held the British navy together until broad reforms were enacted. Billy Budd depicts just such a floating monarchy: naval vessels, populated by hijacked men who were pressed into service and over whom control was maintained by brutality. This summer, Britten's opera was given eight performances (seen June 29 and July 1) in English at Venice's PalaFenice.
Billy Budd is a densely allegorical work about obsession, power, goodness, evil and the conflict of ideals versus reality -- elements that were delineated powerfully in this stark, haunting production from Cologne, originally staged by Willy Decker and here recreated by his assistant Sabine Hartmannshenn. Wolfgang Gussmann's opening set consisted of the bare, white-planked deck of H.M.S. Indom-itable, its prow facing upstage, steeply raking downstage and giving the effect of being cramped and island-like. In subsequent scenes, the men's cabin below decks was dark and claustrophobic, while the captain's cabin, also raked, encompassed the width of the stage. Back on deck for the opening and closing of Act II, sliding black panels further enclosed the vessel. Gussmann dressed his sailors identically.
Hartmannshenn did a creditable job with the principals, but she failed in her management of the chorus, whose members acted as if they'd never been near a boat, mincing about and making a silly show of pulling ropes across the stage that never became taut. At one point in this work, rife with underlying sexual references, Vere caressed his cabin boy on the head -- whether paternally or sexually was unclear, but both were a distinct possibility. Claggart's obsession with Billy, on the other hand, was unflinchingly clear. Here was a man whose sexuality had been strangled. Another interesting bit of staging at the end of each scene was a long, fixed look between Billy and Claggart as the curtain came down. A major dramatic miscalculation at Billy's hanging, which took place offstage, was to have the visible portion of the chorus raise their heads as Billy hung high, then drop them as he swung out on the yardarm.
Leading the top-drawer crew was the Billy of Mark Oswald, whose baritone emerged beautiful, smooth and virile. He employed an expressive mezza-voce in the upper register, used plenty of dynamic contrasts, and when he wasn't swamped by the unrestrained orchestra, he showed fine coloristic use of diction and words. Vocally, dramatically and physically, he fully expressed the fresh-faced, eager innocence of the young sailor. Keith Lewis was stupendous in his first Vere. The tenor moved from illusory reveries to conflict and conviction with smooth assurance, deploying his rich, distinctively woodwind-colored instrument without stress in climactic moments. The upper register sailed through the most difficult passages, open and sure, carrying forcefully without being forced.
Monte Pederson's towering Claggart, thin and powerful, was all hulking evil. His voice, thrusting, brutal, rough when necessary can also express anguish. He produced a compelling portrait of a man whose self-destructiveness could be controlled only by destroying the object of his passion. Robert Bork used his stentorian voice and imposing physical stature to advantage as Redburn, with Peter Sidhom and Daniel Lewis Williams strongly cast as Flint and Ratcliffe. Conductor Isaac Karabtchevsky was unable to keep the orchestra sound down in this tent venue that has no pit. And his slow tempos sometimes affected the pace of the drama.
ANNETTE SQUITIERI
MARTINA FRANCA
The Festival of the Valle d'Itria opened this year with an opera by Piccinni -- who was born in nearby Bari in 1728 and died 200 years ago. The work chosen was Roland, with which Piccinni made his triumphant Paris debut in 1778, arousing the envy of Gluck, who began the famous querelle with the Italian composer. This production of the tragédie lyrique, mounted in the courtyard of the Palazzo Ducale, was apparently the first revival in modern times, and at the July 22 performance (which lasted four hours) one could understand why. For although the Ariosto-derived story -- which tells of the unrequited love of the crusader Roland (baritone) for Angélique (soprano) and his subsequent madness -- is one of emotional extremes, the music to which it is set moves forward with ceremonious, imperturbable formality, with melodies of undeniable beauty and pathos interspersed with rather frigid pastoral dance episodes (the order of which was changed in this production).
In truth, Italian audiences have acquired something of a taste for such formality over the past twenty years, thanks to the inventive (and expensive) elegance of director-designer Pier Luigi Pizzi, who was the inspiring muse of Massimo Gasparon's Martina Franca production, featuring the familiar neoclassical symmetries and lavish costumes. Yet the overall effect was that of a poor-man's Pizzi (the festival's resources are indeed limited), emotionally restricted in range an