NORTH AMERICA
NEW YORK CITYErmanno Wolf-Ferrari's Sly, one of the novelties of the 1927 season at La Scala, had a distinguished premiere there, with Aureliano Pertile and Mercedes Llopart in principal roles, Arturo Toscanini conducting and Giovacchino Forzano, who wrote the libretto, in charge of the staging. The fact that Forzano was a member of La Scala's management team eased the work's acceptance by the Milanese theater. Similarly, Plácido Domingo's eminence on the Met's roster was responsible for this opportunity to bring Sly to New York (April 1), in a production that originated (with José Carreras) three years ago at Washington Opera, of which Domingo is artistic director.
Sly in 1927 was less "modern" than several of its recent predecessors on the stage of La Scala, such as Pizzetti's Dèbora et Jaéle and Puccini's Turandot. Today, it sounds akin to Menotti. In subject matter, it overlays a stock Romantic preoccupation (the plight of the alienated artist) with a sprinkle of lately discovered neuroses (Freud had become fashionable). Though Wolf-Ferrari was half German, his stylistic preference was for the vernacular of verismo, rather than the twists and turns of Expressionism, which more venturesome composers were applying to similar subjects around that time. Strauss in Die Ägyptische Helena, Schreker in Die Gezeichneten and Zemlinsky in Der Zwerg all cooked with more paprika. But the staples of the stew remain the same: reality and illusion are fatally confused, while a perverse prank propels the plot and exotic trimmings garnish its stage picture.
The spark plug of the Sly story is a cruel trick played on Christopher Sly, an alcoholic poet in the Hoffmann mold, by the sadistic Count of Westmoreland, who functions the way Hoffmann's nemeses do in the Offenbach opera. In an elaborate charade, the passed-out poet is carried off to Westmoreland's castle, where he revives in a fairytale stage setting designed to make him think he's a rich lord recovering from years of amnesia. Sly is then thrown contemptuously into the wine cellar. As a literary conceit, it's fraught with intimations of deeper meaning, but on the realistic level, Forzano and Wolf-Ferrari had difficulty making their characters believably human. The Count is just another two-dimensional villain. His mistress, Dolly, functions as little more than a projection of Sly's craving for sympathetic feminine companionship. The title role calls out for something positive to assert. Unlike, say, Canio's jealousy crisis in Pagliacci, Sly's dilemma lacks gut credibility. Beyond a knack for amusing his friends, he has shown no signs of talent, and his creative suffering seems to consist entirely of terminal self-pity.
Wolf-Ferrari's music, piquant and emotional as a film score, is put together with professional fluency and security. He gives the singers plenty of free rein, building each act around an effective focal point -- Sly's ballad about a performing bear in Act I, his duet of awakening love with Dolly in Act II, his long monologue in Act III. The Met cast the work from strength. Domingo, deeply committed to the role, gave it his full range of mature resources as a singing actor. The tenor's clearly articulated voice and stage persona caught the tone of each act -- down and out in the first, confused but hopeful in the second, suicidally depressed in the third. He had a worthy partner in Maria Guleghina, whose strong, penetrating timbre, albeit with patches of reckless vocalism, conveyed passion and conviction. Juan Pons cut a satisfyingly nasty figure as Westmoreland, sounding out the role's arrogance, condescension and hypocrisy. Equally fine were Jane Bunnell as the harried Hostess of the Falcon Tavern and John Fanning, who strutted and fretted with a touch of old-fashioned operatic fustian as a Shakespearean actor, John Plake, ringleader of the tavern's literary crowd.
Plake's Shakespearean costume was the only link to The Taming of the Shrew, the (frequently excised) prologue of which suggested the Sly story to Forzano. Otherwise, this staging places the opera in the 1920s of its composition, though the locale is still London. The use of a scrim creates an appropriate sense of unreality, furthered by the darkness of the sets. Marta Domingo, the tenor's wife, in her Met debut as stage director, has shaped Sly in groupings and gestures as conservative and traditional as the work itself. Michael Scott's designs -- atmospheric in the dingy tavern, glitzy in the movie world of Westmoreland's pleasure palace, stark and semi-abstract in its wine cellar -- offered costumes as moody as his sets. He used redemptive white to single out Dolly in Act II and the Angel of Death (danced by Christine McMillan) in Act III. Marco Armiliato coaxed a full palette of colors from the orchestra, never letting things drag, phrasing gracefully, supporting the singers as Wolf-Ferrari knew well how to do.
JOHN W. FREEMAN
This season's run of Il Barbiere di Siviglia got a boost in news value and artistic interest April 11 with the twice-delayed Met debut of the already celebrated Bulgarian mezzo, Vesselina Kasarova, as Rosina. She was to have appeared at the Met three seasons ago in the same Rossini role, but she cancelled for health reasons and bowed out again last season from her scheduled Octavians in Der Rosenkavalier. Versatility seems to be one of her bargaining chips; her next Met assignment, two years hence, is reportedly Charlotte in Massenet's Werther. That advantage aside, Kasarova proved herself a considerable Rosina, with a strong technique that handles the fioritura with security and aplomb, if not quite all the vocal (or histrionic) warmth and charm typical of the greatest Rosinas. She settles for the conventional shtick involving the laugh-getting extra "ma" in the cabaletta-half of "Una voce poco fa" and pushes her wake-up high notes a bit hard, but for all her genuine "star quality," she worked consistently like a true team-player.
And she certainly had a strong team to play with. Her Almaviva was the young Peruvian tenor, Juan Diego Flórez, continuing his Met debut season with a combination of virtuosity and apparent spontaneity of singing and action. Again, he sang the often avoided "Cessa di più resistere," while Kasarova seemed to enjoy its ten-plus minutes of fireworks as much as the rest of us did. Earle Patriarco's Figaro was rather lightweight but fluent and witty; John Relyea, with make-up that made him resemble Valery Gergiev on a bad-hair day, sang a wonderfully booming Basilio; and Paul Plishka once again delivered his now classic Bartolo, full of poise, nuance, occasional fury and somehow unassailable dignity. Conductor Yves Abel, not incidentally, had restrained his first-of-the-run over-achievement in rhythmic and dynamic manipulation without obscuring his Rossinian aims.
Yet another visit to Rossini's Seville (April 23) was marked by John Osborn's first Met Almaviva, Vladimir Ognovenko's first New York Basilio, and the returns after some time of Vivica Genaux's Rosina and Leo Nucci's Figaro. Osborn, a lyric tenor whose career is still developing, was given the challenge of interrupting Flórez's sensational run in the role, and he acquitted himself honorably. His sound is rounder and slightly bigger but less graceful among Rossini's technical thickets and quicksands than that of the Peruvian star. Osborn also lacks Flórez's amazing grace of movement. But he gave an assured, pleasing performance and upset all probable bets in the audience by tackling "Cessa di più resistere," bravely and thoroughly if not with the last word (or note) of Flórezian élan. Ognovenko, even more than Relyea, commanded "La calunnia" with both finesse and basso thunder. Genaux projected Rosina's charm and wit, but she seemed to be having an off night, sounding thin-toned here, tremulous there and showing little of the brilliance and verve she's spoiled us with so often in other venues and other bel canto roles. Nucci blustered loudly but idiomatically.
A visit to Lulu on April 12 at the Met suggested that Christine Schäfer has most of the right stuff for the tremendous title role. She may lack the thrilling power needed to detonate the "Freiheit" outburst after her escape from jail in Act II, but her lyric-coloratura approach recalls the sparkle and delicacy of Anneliese Rothenberger, to name the most obvious example from the otherwise benighted years of enforced abridgment of what, in its three-act form, strikes me as the twentieth century's greatest opera. Schäfer, by the way, reaches beyond sparkle and delicacy. The petite Austrian soprano invests the role's often careening vocal line with telling touches of wiliness, nastiness, fear and longing. The perilous pitch-patterns seem not to faze her; after all, she has sung the role often and in many places by now, but there's still a freshness to her performance.
As for the others retained from last season's cast, it was a case of previous virtues sustained and previous weaknesses repaired. James Courtney has brought new focus to his characterization of Dr. Schön and Jack the Ripper, and his singing of the dual roles seems tidier than last year. Hanna Schwarz has become a flawless Countess Geschwitz, handling her rich music with mastery and projecting the woman's tragedy (Geschwitz dies for love of Lulu) without becoming maudlin. Franz Mazura's Schigolch, David Kuebler's Alwa, Clifton Forbis's Painter and Stephen West's Acrobat were all familiar and vivid. Among those new to their roles, tenor Gary Rideout sang out nicely as the Prince, a royal stage-door Johnny, and he oozed malevolence as the pimp-Marquis. And mezzo Katharine Goeldner made her Met debut in three roles, including a particularly intense, moving Schoolboy and a quite jolly casino Page. As in many previous years, James Levine drew luxuriant beauty and, when needed, explosive power from his legendary orchestra; the late John Dexter's staging perfectly translated Berg's instructions, and Jocelyn Herbert's scenery was mostly and appropriately an art-nouveau jungle. The lighting-booth people, however, have made Gil Wechsler's 1979 lighting of the final scene so dark that everything up to Geschwitz's spotlit death became nonsensically invisible. Yes, the London attic is dark to the characters, but opera is still theater, which tells lies in order to express truth.
Handel's very early opera, Agrippina (1709), sparked New York City Opera's spring season in a lively but textually crippled production, imported from Glimmerglass, where it was unveiled in 2001. Of the Glimmerglass cast, only countertenor David Walker (a moving and attractive Ottone) returned for the New York performances, a fact that for once minimized the identity of the Cooperstown organization as a City Opera farm-team.
It's no secret that City Opera has long functioned under a union-contract handicap involving overtime costs. Its successes in recent years with Handel's gold-plated repertory notwithstanding, the company has had to abridge the operas to various extents, depending on the specific wo
rk. And so this spring, customers got about three-fifths of Agrippina (by a bar-count of a "standard" complete score and City Opera's abridged version). True, in the real world of opera-house economics, a Semiramide is better than no Ramide at all (apologies to Rossini), and the company did handsomely by this Semi-Agrippina. But much of a dramatically (and comedically) subtle score went down the drain. The company needs not only an acoustically adequate theater but a financial apparatus that lets it serve masterpieces by Handel in full dimension, rather than settle for Handelburgers.
At least the service was just about exemplary, as encountered on April 17, at the New York State Theater. Glover, working from a 1996 edition by Clifford Bartlett, conducted the substantially Baroqued-up orchestra and the singers with eloquently theatrical phrasing and nuances. She also, as expected, helped out at one of the harpsichords. Lillian Groag's staging was undisturbingly modern and sexy, and the cast was smart, handsome, vocally competent and, in a few cases, more than that. Caught in the circumstances of extreme abridgment, Groag sacrificed the political comedy's darker, more sinister side and directed the piece for its sneaky wit, made all the more up-to-date by John Conklin's sleek scenic panels and parodistic allusions to ancient statuary littering hotel lobbies. Jess Goldstein's costumes invited divided opinions. Nero slunk around in informal get-ups, but tuxedos abounded, as did sub-Balenciaga gowns.
Soprano Brenda Harris handled Agrippina's strategies (she wants son Nero to succeed to the Roman throne no matter what) with aplomb and sang her arias neatly and liltingly, especially that smash-hit waltz, "Ogni vento" (partly borrowed from Reinhard Keiser). Nancy Allen Lundy (Poppea) often sparkled in her music, and mezzo Kimberly Barber managed the later moments of Nero with more focus and strength than she did in Act I. As Ottone, the opera's only admirable character, Walker sang with unwrinkled lyricism and acted with many different shades of tragic sensibility. Bass Gregory Reinhart performed the Emperor Claudius with poise and bewilderment, as various scenes demanded; bass-baritone Kevin Burdettte and countertenor Ryland Angel amusingly sang two political spin-doctors on the edge of losing their licenses, and Jason Grant, as a palace staffer, lent the status of comprimario a decidedly good name.
LEIGHTON KERNER
A placard hung before the curtain in Christopher Alden's production of John Philip Sousa's operetta The Glass Blowers at New York City Opera: "In life, as in a football game, the principle to follow is hit the line hard. -- Theodore Roosevelt." T.R. needn't have worried: Alden directed his cast to hit every line hard. All afternoon (April 20), the cast oversold jokes and bypassed wit. Though Alden kept things moving briskly, his stylized production (originally mounted at Glimmerglass in 2000) never achieved the light touch essential to this and every good operetta. The Glass Blowers is itself like a piece of glass, sparkling but easily broken. That the cast managed not to shatter the work is a tribute to their talents rather than the rightness of the directorial approach.
Rich with satire, character comedy and corny gags, Leonard Liebling's libretto (restored and recreated by William Martin) starts off much like that in Anna Russell's "How to Write Your Own Gilbert & Sullivan" routine: Annabelle Vandeveer (Anna Christy), a Manhattan socialite who is also a socialist, refuses to marry any man who doesn't show sufficient social awareness. Callow Jack Bartlett (Jeffrey Lentz) struggles to prove his mettle. Sundered by a misunderstanding, both wind up working at a glass factory, where Bartlett organizes the laborers; the proceedings are interrupted by the onset of the Spanish-American War. Annabelle joins the Red Cross, Jack defeats the Spanish, and everybody goes home happy, with a bonus
rendition of "The Stars and Stripes Forever."
Christy looks all of sixteen, possesses a sweet, high-lying lyric instrument, and winningly portrayed her character's stubborn politics and generous heart. Nobody on earth, however, could redeem the over-earnest Red Cross anthem she was assigned in Act III. As her blonde, glamorous and quite funny rival, Jennifer Dudley glittered in the operetta's cleverest numbers: "Cleopatra's a Strawb'ry Blonde," in which she "updates" Shakespeare to the requirements of 1898 Broadway, and an Act III pageant, in which she glorifies the American girl (herself, naturally). In his City Opera debut, Richard Whitehouse was stodgy even for the English lord he played, but he sang with a true operetta baritone, lightweight and ingratiating. Lentz kept a firm grip on his character's implausible transit from playboy to union boss to war hero, and he delivered his songs with clarity and point. He was the vehicle for one of Alden's favorite visual effects -- stripping the tenor to his underwear -- but he maintained his dignity.
Jonathan Sheffer conducted with hands nearly as heavy as Alden's. Sousa's flavorful score contains ingenious waltzes, cakewalks and more (heroically restored by Jerrold Fisher), but Sheffer treated everything as marching-band material. Designer John Conklin's unit set, a shiny box trussed with iron beams and gaslights, looked best suited to the glassworks in Act II, less suited to the drawing room of Act I and unsuited to the Army camp of Act III; Mark McCullough kept it all glowing with blue, red and amber lighting. Gabriel Berry's costumes reinterpreted turn-of-the-last-century styles in a Crayola fever of bold, saturated colors. Victoria Morgan provided the choreography.
WILLIAM V. MADISON
SEATTLE Seattle Opera's first production specifically designed for the Mercer Arts Arena -- the company's temporary home until the new house is completed, in 2003 (it is hoped) -- was Strauss's Salome. The set was semi-abstract, the costumes were semi-historical; the lighting, though occasionally related to the stage-action, seemed mainly designed to provide a series of pretty contrasts. All lacked dramatic consequence. Strong voices were needed on this set (full of dead spaces), in this arena, with a huge orchestra (the score calls for 105 musicians) playing in a large, open, out-front pit. Fauré called Salome "a symphonic poem with additional voice parts," and this production sometimes sounded that way. Though Gerard Schwarz conjured a sumptuous sound, full of spine-tingling details, from his orchestra, the singers occasionally suffered from what felt like heavy-handed underlining. Even Richard Paul Fink, a solid, vocally centered Jochanaan, disappeared once or twice in the orchestral tsunamis.
Thomas Studebaker, dressed like an errant tank-commander from Rommel's Desert Corps, sang a sweetly clear Narraboth, but his suicide was clumsily staged, the nadir of Sharon Ott's unfocused, erratic direction. Joyce Castle made a spectacular Herodias, wearing the best costume onstage and singing well, a harridan of royal lineage. Peter Kazaras (Herodes) had a much harder time competing with the orchestra. Gustav Andreassen (as
the First Nazarene) and the quintet of Jews (William Saetre, Mark Tevis, Steven Goldstein, Wesley Edwin Rogers and Rob Toren) were all in fine fettle on both nights I attended the opera. I'd never realized before how obviously the quintet anticipates the musical chaos in the final act of Der Rosenkavalier.
Salome depends for its kick, its magic and its mystery on the woman who sings the Judean princess. Happily, Speight Jenkins (the general director) alternated two strong singing actors for the title role. Nina Warren has won praise for her Salome, especially in Germany. Warren (April 6) was always audible but not always appetizing: loud, sometimes undigested sound, sharp because constantly pushed. Her princess was petulant, coarse (her mother's daughter), lascivious and frankly impatient. All the notes were there; the voice was imperious but the interpretation unsubtle. Her movements looked calculated, and she sang the role without convincing one that she knew more than the director had told her about it.
What a contrast the Salome of Eilana Lappalainen (April 5)! At first young, bewildered by the Baptist's magnetism and her own sexual awakening, Lappalainen's princess was carefully colored, vocally, from scene to scene, growing stronger and more terrifying after Herod asks her to dance. Her dance of the seven veils is simply the best I've ever seen (including Welitsch, Borkh and Stratas -- on film, perhaps the greatest Salome ever). Lappalainen's extraordinary physical lightness and agility, her diverse vocal palette and her grasp of the character's complexity were deeply moving. When she sang (addressing Jochanaan's severed head) "If you had seen me, if you had looked at me, I know you would have loved me; and the mystery of love is greater than the mystery of death," one felt she had touched the quick of Strauss's magnificent portrait of this legendary princess. Lappalainen reprises the role for New York City Opera in the fall.
JOHN F. HULCOOP
COSTA MESA, CA Ecstatically acclaimed -- in some quarters, at least -- at its San Francisco Opera premiere, in 2000, Dead Man Walking has already grown new legs. A wholly new production of the Jake Heggie/Terrence McNally heartstring-tugger, introduced by Opera Pacific in Costa Mesa's Orange County Performing Arts Center in April for a five-performance run, now moves on to engagements at Cincinnati Opera (July 11), New York City Opera (Sept. 13), Austin Lyric Opera, Michigan Opera Theatre, Pittsburgh and Baltimore Operas. (Meanwhile, designer Michael Yeargan's original San Francisco production gathers no dust, being slated for a run at Adelaide's South Australia State Opera in August 2003.)
Portability was, of course, the principal mandate of Broadway director Leonard Foglia's new staging (seen at the premiere, April 16). In place of San Francisco Opera's prison panorama, with inmate-filled cell-blocks, tricky lighting effects and a veritable Stonehenge of massive stage pieces, designer Michael McGarty offered an open-spaced, abstract look. Panels of chain-link or clear plastic move up and down, suggesting nothing so much as a chorus of unmanned guillotines; on spiraling staircases on both sides, again enclosed in chain-link, guards and prisoners in constant motion create a harrowing sense of the frame around a soulless machine. Sister Helen and Joe DeRocher enact their colloquy on small raft-like surfaces with a beam of light between them symbolizing the separation of their souls across a space that could be a narrow river or an interplanetary void.
This open space is, indeed, the principal triumph of this reborn Dead Man. Operagoers who find comfort in Heggie's listener-friendly musical gestures and McNally's simplistic wordplay -- and even the growing chorus of those who don't -- are set free to react to the humanistic concerns of Sister Helen Prejean's harrowing Death Row memoir, without confronting the informational overload of San Francisco's grandiose visuals. Opera Pacific's artistic director, John DeMain, conducted a taut, driving performance punctuated by wrenching bursts of fury from Henri Venanzi's small, expert chorus.
As Sister Helen, Kristine Jepson -- who alternated with Susan Graham in San Francisco -- gave an altogether satisfying performance, somewhat less frazzled than Graham's larger-than-life theatricality but ultimately most touching. (In the last two performances, Theodora Hanslowe assumed the role.) Repeating their San Francisco roles were John Packard as DeRocher and Frederica von Stade -- for whom Heggie is virtually house composer -- as his mother. Packard and von Stade summoned maximum sympathy, both for the characters they had been enlisted to portray and -- in the view of one listener at least -- for themselves. One wished that they had been vouchsafed stronger, more defining music.
The true-life Sister Helen attended the Opera Pacific premiere and, beaming approval, took her bow onstage at the end. Outside the hall, peaceful protesters collected signatures against capital punishment. One had to assume, therefore, that both this beautifully spirited, compassionate woman and the cause her book has evoked consider themselves well-served by having their thoughts made into operatic grist. Some, however, might disagree.
ALAN RICH
SARASOTA As part of artistic director Victor DeRenzi's ongoing twenty-four-year traversal of Verdi's complete oeuvre, Sarasota Opera this season offered a genuine repertoire curio with Le Trouvère, the rarely performed French version of Il Trovatore. Unlike Don Carlos and Les Vêpres Siciliennes, which were originally written in French and now receive occasional mountings in their original versions, Il Trovatore seems so much a part of Italian blood-and-thunder drama that it's jarring to encounter the opera in its Gallic recasting. Trovatore was hugely successful from its premiere in 1853, yet Verdi was frustrated by artistically dubious productions of his operas in France and spent much time battling copyright cases in the Paris courts. If he reworked Trovatore himself, Verdi reasoned, he could better protect his work, as well as produce a healthy financial windfall.
In addition to the language switch, there are some less obvious changes in Le Trouvère, including minor orchestral rescoring and some extra lines for Azucena in the dungeon scene. Most jolting is the insertion into Act III of a ballet, a feature demanded by nineteenth-century Paris audiences at all opera performances. (Even Wagner was not immune, making a similar addition to Tannhäuser.) Verdi's ballet music is charming, gracefully wrought and disruptive to this violent tale. Hearing Verdi's familiar melodies performed in a different language proved disconcerting, yet one soon adapted, largely because much of the cast's French was so diffuse and impenetrable.
At a time when even the world's largest houses have trouble fielding a consistent cast for this demanding work, it would have been too much to expect Sarasota Opera to do so. Yet under the first-rate musical direction of DeRenzi, one of our finest Verdi conductors, the company turned in a respectable showing (seen March 15), with a roster of unknown but mostly gifted young singers. As Léonore, Marie-Adele McArthur was the standout. Looking like a young, less starchy Joan Sutherland, the New Zealand-born soprano displayed a lovely lyric-dramatic voice. Though the top of her range was a bit thin for this heavy role, McArthur sang with limpid tone and offered natural, understated acting.
To the Comte de Luna, William Andrew Stuckey brought a robust (if occasionally blowsy) baritone and forceful stage presence. He lightened up to sing his Act II aria with sensitive phrasing. Malin Fritz lacked the dusky contralto color and malign weirdness for Azucena, but the mezzo-soprano brought compelling vocalism to the dungeon scene. Andrew Funk was a sonorous Fernand.
The weak link in the cast was Dallas Bono. The tenor lacked the heroic demeanor and vocal command for the role of Manrique. Bono's weak voice, tremulous pitch and threadbare top were below this company's usual standard; the singer took a pass on several high notes, which, considering his frightful attempt at a high C in "Supplice infâme" (aka "Di quella pira"), seemed wise. John Farrell's sets and Renaud Doucet's direction served the company's brand of space-saving traditionalism well. DeRenzi led the superb orchestra with idiomatic pacing, uncommon vitality and taut dramatic tension.
One undeniably loses the full force of chorus numbers and the spectacle of works such as Trouvère on Sarasota Opera's small stage. However, the excellent acoustic and setting are wonderfully apt for more intimately scaled operas, as was shown with Mozart's Così Fan Tutte (heard March 16). In addition to offering some of Mozart's most glorious music, this comedy remains as fresh and insightful as the day it was written.
Things got off to an unpromising start with conductor Yannick Nézet-Séguin's hard-driven account of the overture, with violently clipped accents and breakneck speeds that battered Mozart's buoyant music. The versatile, twenty-seven-year-old French-Canadian conductor contributed busy harpsichord continuos for the recitatives, in addition to his furiously impassioned conducting. He settled down a bit after the overture, but his excessive haste nearly made a hash of ensembles and both act finales. The young maestro needs seasoning, elegance and charm to balance out the vivacity of his Mozart conducting.
In the opening scenes, the two pairs of lovers seemed such a dull, uncharismatic quartet, it was a wonder any of them was attracted to any other. Things picked up considerably with the entrance of Alicia Berneche as Despina. The soprano's delightful stage presence and agile vocalism made for a deliciously feisty performance. She seemed to spark her colleagues, whose performances gained in vocal distinction and momentum thereafter.
Both tall, angular-featured brunettes, Jennifer Ayres as Fiordiligi and Rosa Maria Pascarella as Dorabella made plausible sisters. Though Pascarella's Dorabella seemed tentative and oddly expressionless at times, Ayres improved with each scene, delivering a commanding "Come scoglio" and a sensitive "Per pietà, ben mio," one jarring register break notwithstanding. Galen Scott Bower's Guglielmo seemed an unfortunately appropriate mate for Dorabella, blank dramatically and indifferently sung. Jonathan Boyd's Ferrando, however, was the standout of the quartet. Possessed of a plangent, refined yet muscular voice, the tenor floated a beautiful "Un aura amorosa," with some ravishing mezza voce singing. Stephen Eisenhard's Don Alfonso was a bit precious and mincing for this cynical old reprobate, yet he offered serviceable singing.
LAWRENCE A. JOHNSON
BALTIMORE Baltimore Opera's new production of Verdi's Otello turned out to be a mixed bag, vocally and theatrically. On March 16 at the Lyric Opera House, Jon Fredric West did valiant work in the title role. He delivered "Esultate!" in firm, ringing tones and made some subtle expressive points during the love duet. His low register disappeared early on, however, and much of his singing seemed more about getting the notes out (not always squarely on pitch) than about interpreting them. West's acting also could have used greater finesse. There were a few hand-on-head gestures too many, and his death scene suggested a man carefully getting into a comfortable position to take a nap.
As Desdemona, Aprile Millo had to contend with an abundant blond wig that made her look like Bette Midler impersonating Mae West. But the soprano gave the character a telling combination of innocence and strength, and she filled the theater with her ample, warm voice, paying keen attention to the shape of Verdi's melodic lines. For all the lovely sounds, though, there was a rather monochromatic quality to the singing; dynamics tended to remain constant all night. This limited the willow song and "Ave Maria" in poignancy and tonal shading.
Alexandru Agache brought a large, dry voice and generally stiff movements to the role of Iago. He put across the Credo with sufficient force but did much more effective singing as he subtly related Cassio's dream. Taylor Hargrave, a member of the company's Opera Studio, revealed considerable vocal promise and smooth acting skills as Cassio. Ryu-Kyung Kim was the sympathetic, if strident, Emilia. A few coordination slips aside, the chorus sang in sturdy, stirring fashion.
Christian Badea's conducting had plenty of fire and lyricism; his sure hand gave the performance a solid anchor. Other than an unreliable cello section, the orchestra acquitted itself ably.
Allen Charles Klein created a huge, clunky-looking set with stark, unchanging walls looming in the background. It was all terribly imposing, without being terribly impressive, and the design forced most of the action into a narrow space downstage. The choral scenes looked stiff, with bodies squeezed into tight spaces. And whenever the choristers were repositioned, it meant lots of steps gingerly navigated. The costumes were certainly stylish, though one detected a strong Spanish accent, as if they were really meant for Don Carlos.
Director Beppe de Tomasi directed traffic with efficiency, if not great imagination. The mock sword-fighting in Act III between Iago and Cassio, for example, each parry timed to a recurring phrase in the orchestra, wore very thin. But the staging of the last scene delivered a strong visual and theatrical statement (Donald Edmund Thomas's lighting was at its most atmospheric here), driving home the plight of a man whose enormous physical strength is no match for the "snaky coils" of that "hydra" called jealousy.
TIM SMITH
WASHINGTON, D.C. Strong casting, mostly effective conducting and a strikingly handsome set served Verdi and Un Ballo in Maschera well in the Washington Opera's performance March 30 at the Kennedy Center. In this production, set in Boston, there were lots of tricorn hats, and Riccardo bade farewell to America just before dying (though not in the projected titles), but otherwise, there really was nothing too overtly American in the staging, originally from La Scala. The characters and their problems were presented in such a way that their nationality became irrelevant. This left the drama and the music front and center.
Marcello Giordani, as Riccardo, sounded a little under the weather. His lower register turned gravelly, but the rest of the tenor's voice was in terrific shape. Gleaming top notes poured out in rich virility; phrases were invariably shaped with remarkable sensitivity. Persuasive acting completed the handsome package. Ines Salazar made a fascinating Amelia. The soprano did not demonstrate an entirely smooth technique (gears shifted awkwardly at times), but her tone often had a wonderfully burnish
ed quality. The upper register, whether at full-throttle or pianissimo, hit home most expressively. She was also an involving actress, summoning considerable pathos in the Act III confrontation with her husband.
Stephan Pyatnychko's Renato was sometimes short on vocal wattage, but he was unfailingly communicative and capable of eloquent legato. After a slightly effortful start, Youngok Shin, as Oscar, produced lots of secure, charming vocalism to complement a vibrant personality. Mezzo-soprano Elena Zaremba offered lush low notes and a flair for the grand phrase as Ulrica. Supporting roles were effectively handled, and the chorus produced a solid, vibrant sound.
Conductor Eugene Kohn threw himself into the performance, arms whirling like a windmill in a gale. He didn't avoid coordination slips between pit and stage, but, for the most part, he did succeed in generating potent amounts of tension and lyricism. Except for an uncooperative oboe, the orchestra held firm.
Director Marina Bianchi moved the action along seamlessly. The assassination scene, with the onstage musicians slowly realizing what was happening, had particular theatrical power. Dante Ferretti's scenic design of classic Georgian lines provided strong visual appeal, from the opening image of a bustling legislative session to a stark, chic, contemporary interior for Renato's house. Gianni Mantovanni's lighting enhanced the sets, most memorably in the gallows scene, with faces half in the dark, just like the characters themselves.
TIM SMITH
INTERNATIONAL
MUNICHThe house lights continued to dim moments before the orchestral prelude to Wagner's Das Rheingold (Feb. 24, the first night of a new production), until both auditorium and orchestra pit were plunged into total darkness for much of the prelude, almost as if one were in the Bayreuth Festival Theater. When the curtain opened, it revealed director/designer Herbert Wernicke's set, most of which was occupied by a detailed replica of the interior of Wagner's Festspielhaus: the decor, color scheme and thirteen rows of notoriously uncomfortable seats. Adding to the image, Wernicke filled the seats with people in evening clothes, still the preferred dress for a Wagner Festival performance. From the front, the Munich audience watched the performance, which played out on a small, serv
iceable apron that stretched across the proscenium, while the Bayreuth "audience" watched the same performance from the rear. [Wernicke died in Basel on April 16; see his obituary in this issue.]
This Rheingold was decidedly not action-filled. The atmosphere was dictated by the set, and the set had nothing to do with the story being told. Still, with nearly everything sung and acted on the front lip of the stage, vocal projection was optimized. Voices did not need to be forced, and I'm not sure I have ever heard the text so clearly enunciated. A great deal of credit for this achievement must go to Zubin Mehta's chamber-music reading, full of nuance and detail. He kept the score moving without rushing, and he lent shape and contour to each scene.
The onstage auditorium was used at times for entrances. The Rhine was represented by a medium-sized aquarium, in which swam three large, live goldfish. From the onstage audience came the three Rhinemaidens (Margarita De Arellano, Ann-Katrin Naidu, Hana Minutillo, singing splendidly), dressed in green, form-fitting evening gowns. Franz-Joseph Kapellmann sang Alberich, with more emphasis on characterization and diction than on fullness of tone. Not quite a down-and-outer, he was costumed in casual clothes. Alberich not only tried to get the gold out of the fish tank, he stole jewelry from the "audience." Dressed as businessmen and carrying contracts in an attaché case, the human-size giants were seated next to Valhalla, a miniature Greek temple, couched in the last rows of the onstage auditorium.
As is the current trend, Wotan (in black tie and tails) was portrayed as whining, unsure and immature. John Tomlinson was more than up to his somewhat unenviable task. The voice thinned out as the vocal line rose, but his burnished, smoky timbre and his enormous stage presence made him a god of distinction. Each giant had his own personality and incorporated individual character traits into his singing. A gentle, lovable Fasolt, albeit one with raging hormones (he could not keep his hands off Freia), Jan-Hendrik Rootering was in splendid, towering voice, mastering long phrases with ease and imbuing his part with melancholy. The much smaller Kurt Rydl was an unpleasant Fafner, seeming only too eager to rid himself of his sentimental brother. His darker, threatening tone made a fine contrast to the more tender Rootering.
Though suave and eel-like, Philip Langridge tended to overplay Loge. Marjana Lipovsek was her usual solid self as Fricka; Anja Harteros, in her Bavarian State Opera debut, sang with crystal-clear tone and made a splendid impression as Freia. Hans-Joachim Ketelsen was a more lyric than forceful Donner; Jon Ketilsson made little impact as Froh. An elegantly dressed woman could be observed in the onstage parterre, following the opera with a score. She turned out, to no one's surprise, to be Erda (or Erda's double), played by Anna Larsson, in her Bavarian State Opera debut, a luxurious addition to the cast.
JEFFREY A. LEIPSIC
PARIS The revival of Phyllida Lloyd's 1999 production of Verdi's Macbeth, with its baton-wielding, voodoo-like witches, brought one of the best evenings of Italian singing the Opéra National has heard this season. Leading the cast at the Bastille was Deborah Voigt's Lady Macbeth, a quite extraordinary performance, launching into the first aria with a prodigious flood of sound and glistening high notes. "La luce langue" stills needs a greater sense of seamless legato line, and on opening night (March 7) the final D-flat of her intensely acted sleepwalking scene was hardly the eerie effect Verdi had in mind, but this was nonetheless a great performance. Dramatically, she even managed to suggest a powerful sexual control over her husband, the Ma
cbeth of Leo Nucci, who reminded the public that for big-scale Verdi baritone singing, he still has few serious rivals. Lloyd explores the relationship of the upwardly mobile couple with great skill, as their spiraling perfidy finds them literally trapped within a gilded cage, one of many fine creations in Anthony Ward's sets.
Almost stealing the show was the Macduff of Marco Berti, who on this evidence is destined for a great career. The voice is large and unfettered, and his aria was performed with a vocal generosity that recalled great tenors of the past. Dramatically he is unprepossessing. Eldar Aliev was a typically Eastern European-style Banco, who had the required weight of voice but tightened slightly at the climax of his aria. James Conlon conducted with Shakespearean grandeur and breadth, producing rich, smooth orchestral playing and a forceful choral contribution, even if the abrasive rough edges of Verdi's work were smoothed over a little too assiduously.
STEPHEN MUDGE
LONDON Revivals of early-nineteenth-century works preoccupied both London houses recently. Bellini's touching pastoral La Sonnambula came to Covent Garden (March 16) in a co-production with Vienna by Marco Arturo Marelli that replaced a traditional staging created for Joan Sutherland back in 1960. Before it was retired some twenty years later, its subsequent sleepwalkers had featured the likes of Renata Scotto, Ileana Cotrubas and Luciana Serra.
A new look at Bellini and Romani's dramatically innocent, musically exquisite tale was clearly overdue, but director/ designer Marelli's portentous program note made one fear the worst with its facile observation that "Amina," the name of librettist Felice Romani's heroine, only required the transposition of two letters to become "anima" -- thus opening the door to all kinds of irrelevant sub-Jungian possibilities. But while transpositions were indeed involved -- the setting was moved to the chic dining-room of an expensive-looking hotel or sanatorium (Marelli's own dual description) in 1920s Switzerland, a country whose population, for the purposes of this production, had to be imagined as ignorant of the phenomenon of somnambulism -- the match between libretto and visuals was on the whole deftly managed.
Fashionable period costumes for the well-heeled clientele were provided by the director's wife, Dagmar Niefind-Marelli, and the stage picture, which included a scenic view over the mountains, was sumptuously realized. By the time the curtain rose on Act II, the storm that had started to blow in through an open window in the last measures of Act I had lifted the dining room's grand piano onto a substantial snowdrift, while moonrise over the Alps allowed lunar imagery to enrich our perceptions of the nature of Amina's nocturnal amblings.
In its delicate manner, the opera touches suggestively on matters more scientifically explored by twentieth-century psychology, and just as immaculate as Marelli's stylish sets was the sensitivity with which he handled the interactions between the emotionally disturbed characters. The jealous Lisa -- here working the bar of the establishment, and painfully aware of the forthcoming marriage of a colleague (Amina) to a guest or patient (Elvino) -- offered plenty of meaningful motivation for her outrageous flirting with the visiting aristocrat, Count Rodolfo.
Inger Dam-Jensen had confident fun with the difficulties of Lisa's music, contrasting in its flamboyance with the more tender and spacious melodies of Amina, which require heartfelt expression in addition to the greatest coloratura skills. Elena Kelessidi rarely sounded as if she was enjoying the battle with so many scales and roulades, and there were some distinctly sketchy moments. The director's most serious error -- bringing the protagonist before the curtain to sing a final, would-be triumphant "Ah! non giunge" -- only served to point up the fact that Kelessidi is not a diva. Anne Mason sang Teresa with an appropriate air of maternal concern, while as a slightly raffish Rodolfo, Alastair Miles delivered shapely phrase after shapely phrase in "Vi ravviso."
But the evening belonged to the Elvino of Juan Diego Flórez, who was cheered to the echo for his graceful way with Bellini's deceptively simple-sounding melodies, and for his easy reaching up into the tenor stratosphere. Add to this a stage persona of great charm and a characterization that took in Elvino's petulance, insecurity, unreasonable jealousy and eventual remorse, and one has as complete a traversal of the role as one is likely to encounter. Exceptional conducting came from Maurizio Benini, whose sense of the music's natural rhythms was infallible, and who drew classy playing from the orchestra and strong singing from the chorus.
Spontini's La Vestale (1807), for decades a mainstay of the repertory of the Paris Opéra and a work hugely admired by both Berlioz and Wagner, never really caught on in Britain. The last full-scale London staging was in 1842, though the twentieth century saw important revivals at the Met for Rosa Ponselle in the mid-1920s and at La Scala for Maria Callas in 1954. English National Opera recently took it off the shelf for a new production by Francesca Zambello (April 3), focusing on Jane Eaglen as Giulia, the love-struck Vestal.
For admirers of the British soprano, this was a discomforting experience. The voice sounded stressed and out of tune for the first half of the evening, though it later settled down into a firmer, fleshier line. Just as crucially, Eaglen lacked the dramatic range to make Giulia's plight involving: a passionate attack is needed for its post-Gluckian nobility to move an audience.
John Hudson partnered her as Licinius, her former betrothed who returns to tempt her away from her duties, with dire consequences. As they discuss the claims of love and duty, Vesta's flame flickers and dies. Giulia is condemned to death for neglecting her sacred office -- though divine intervention brings about a happy ending. Hudson's clarion tenor rang out impressively, but he too failed to seize the dramatic initiative. Gerard O'Connor was a rough-toned High Priest, Anne-Marie Owens a suitably grand Grand Vestal.
Zambello's production was designed by Alison Chitty on a plain circular base with a plain background. The final act looked like a down-market Stonehenge. The costumes, a mixture of military, civilian and hieratic, had a 1940s air. It all proved unconvincing. Who were these latter-day vestals, and why should their cult matter in the twentieth century? Some eccentric group hand-movements timed to the music looked particularly silly.
This was a pity, because much of the appeal of the piece lies in its imposing choral tableaux, which were ruthlessly cut. (The opera's overture also vanished, giving it a lame start.) Conductor David Parry secured an efficient but distanced performance of the remainder, as if the opera's imperial grandeur, so admired by its contemporaries, meant little to him. It's likely to be quite some time before Spontini's hour chimes again for London audiences.
GEORGE HALL
RIO DE JANEIRO Rio's Theatro Municipal opened its opera season in April 2002 with a high-spirited, entertaining production of Puccini's Turandot that, although clumsy at times, still offered moments of rare charm. But the production also suffered from excess -- between the flying acrobats, belly dancers and Star Trek-influenced swordsmen, the opera almost felt as if one of Rio's Carnaval parades had been transported to an Arctic version of Peking.
The set, adapted by Alfredo Troisi from Hugo de Ana's 1978 production for this theater, created a magical atmosphere: a winter kingdom of smoke and ice, with shards of silver lining the sky. Stairs, bridges and towers curved to form the glistening body of a giant, sinuous dragon; ill-fated princes entered its gleaming jaws to meet their doom. Especially witty use was made of the dragon's head, when its long, raspy tongue was unfurled as a sharpener for the executioners' blades. The production was most captivating when the set, lit by the soft glow of Chinese lanterns, functioned as the serene backdrop for the theater's chorus and excellently prepared orchestra, under the direction of Silvio Barbato.
The proceedings took on an edge with the entrance of Daniel Muñoz as Calàf -- the tenor appeared strained and uncomfortable from the start, and inattentive to his superior colleagues, Cláudia Riccitelli as Liù and Luiz-Otávio Faria as Timur. Turandot was played by the glacially commanding Giovanna Casolla, a veteran of the super-production of Turandot in Beijing in 1999. Before Act III, an announcement was made that Muñoz was having voice problems but would continue. However, the showstopper "Nessun Dorma" was blighted by the singer's cautious approach; his voice completely gave out by the end. Minutes later, Muñoz was smuggled offstage to be replaced by Pedro Gattuso, whose vigor brought the remainder of the opera to life.
Muñoz's exit wasn't the only quick-change business going on -- the roles of the ministers Ping, Pang and Pong (played by Inácio de Nonno, Weber Duarte and Ricardo Tuttmann) were well sung, but the ministers' entrances and exits took on an antic quality, since they were performed by back-flipping and trapeze-descending acrobats in costumes identical to those of the ministers. Periodically, the acrobats would wander offstage to be replaced by the somewhat less slender singers. Many of the acrobatic flights seemed like a winking reference to the film Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, while the ice-covered pedestals used for the riddle sequences between Turandot and Calàf made them look like an expectant host and contestant on a television game show. These pedestals played an even more unfortunate role when Liù broke off an icy pinnacle during her gorgeous final aria, leading to the first death-by-icicle scene I have ever witnessed. Did the director, Pier Francesco Maestrini, see no option but to turn this fairy-tale opera into a camp spectacle? Even so, the adventurousness made for an opera that was constantly fun to watch and, well, Puccini-esque in scale.
Rio de Janeiro was the fourth city ever to see Turandot, in 1926. This year's audience maintained the city's original enthusiasm, although this time it wasn't necessary for police to break up the crowds storming the Theatro Municipal.
AMY RADIL
NORTH AMERICA: Lang's The Difficulty of Crossing a Field bows at San Francisco's American Conservatory Theater; Tosca in San Diego; Die Zauberflöte in Los Angeles. Morris is Boris in Miami; Tannhäuser is heard in West Palm Beach; Ariadne auf Naxos and Lucia di Lammermoor in Sarasota. Chicago Opera Theater stages The Rape of Lucretia. Washington Opera season continues, with Salome. In New York, Lukács, Guelfi in Met Tosca; OperaWorks performs Bibalo's Glass Menagerie. Capalbo in Toledo's Turn of the Screw; Evitts, Turner Wilson in Kansas City's Don Pasquale; Genaux, Kelly in Opera Carolina's Barbiere; Candide at Dayton Opera; Gershwin's Lady Be Good at Milwaukee's Skylight Opera. Student performances: Manhattan School of Music hears Lortzing's Der Wildschütz; in Bloomington, Capobianco revisits Lucia di Lammermoor. INTERNATIONAL: Parsifal is Abbado's farewell as music director of Salzburg's Easter Festival. Opera Australia unveils a new Cav/Pag in Melbourne. In Paris, Gardiner conducts Oberon, Christie conducts Il Ritorno d'Ulisse. In Venice, Viotti conducts Galouzine's Otello; Anderson stars in Naples Capriccio; Margison in Brussels Pagliacci. In Innsbruck, Tiroler Landestheater presents Salieri's Falstaff and the world premiere of Demetz's Der Häftling von Mab. Manon Lescaut in Copenhagen; La Traviata in Valletta, Malta. In Germany: Wagner's Liebesverbot in Munich; a "spellbinding" Peter Grimes in Oldenburg; Handel's Alcina and Janácek's Káta Kabanová in Hamburg; Aho's Before We All Have Drowned in Lübeck; Weill's Die Bürgschaft in Dessau. Hong Kong hears Lam's new opera, Wenji, plus staged cantatas by Bach, Monteverdi. CONCERTS AND RECITALS: Springtime is sing-time in New York: Gheorghiu and Alagna concertize at the Met; Lincoln Center's Handel tribute continues, with Jacobs leading an Easter Jephtha; New York Festival of Song souvenirs; Flanigan joins Collegiate Chorale for Weber's Oberon; Muti leads N.Y. Philharmonic; Jansons leads Pittsburgh Symphony; Levine paces MET Chamber Ensemble, MET Orchestra in concerts; songsters Quasthoff, Bostridge, Goerne, Fouchécourt, Kirkby, Schäfer, Gauvin. In Philadelphia, Wagner from Watson, A. Davis. Boston Baroque rarities.
NORTH AMERICA SAN FRANCISCO American Conservatory Theater made its first foray into opera with The Difficulty of Crossing a Field, a new work by composer David Lang and playwright Mac Wellman, based on a short story by Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914). The plot is simple -- an antebellum plantation-owner named Williamson walks into a field and disappears -- and Bierce tells it with utmost concision. Wellman's job, then, was to expand two pages of no-nonsense prose into a seventy-five-minute drama. In doing so, he looked to the secondary characters, creating important roles for Williamson's wife, daughter, brother and the plantation's slaves, all of whom Bierce mentions only in passing. Certainly what is interesting about the story, from a dramaturgical point of view, is not so much what happens to Williamson, as how his disappearance affects those around him. Yet the librettist's penchant for poetic wordplay and philosophical deliberation does little to make any of the characters particularly compelling or even sympathetic.
Lang's minimalist score does not help. His vocal writing sounds neither grateful to sing nor sufficiently expressive. Heard March 22, the drama only took shape in the scenes where the lines were spoken. Part of the blame for this may lie with the singing, which in this production veered closer to Broadway than to opera. Julia Migenes (Mrs. Williamson) crooned most of her lines à la Streisand, while Lianne Marie Dobbs (the Williamson Girl) belted hers with relentless perkiness. The vocal standout was Michelle E. Jordan (Old Woman), whose bluesy song, "Creation," in Scene 4, was richly intoned. Another liability was amplification -- necessary, perhaps, given the size and shape of the Theater Artaud -- which put an unpleasant edge on voices that were already pushing too hard.
By far the most successful musical element of the production was the refined and incisive playing of the Kronos Quartet. Lang writes effectively for instruments, and quite often, the quartet's conversation seemed more involving than what was being sung. Kronos was appropriately accorded a good third of the stage space, playing on a raised wooden platform that fit naturally with Kate Edmunds's spare scenic design. Director Carey Perloff also aimed for simplicity, although the slaves' comings and goings were unduly exposed by the stark setting.
For all the big ideas Wellman introduces here about racism, morality and the elusive nature of reality, The Difficulty of Crossing a Field is an intimate tale -- or at least, it was the way Bierce wrote it. That impression is underscored by Lang's decision to write for string quartet rather than orchestra. Set on a smaller scale and performed in a more musically conducive venue, this opera might be more persuasive -- though on first hearing, Lang's score simply does not seem strong enough to carry the weight of the dramatic material -- if, indeed, the material is even worth carrying.
ANDREW FARACH-COLTON
SAN DIEGO It's difficult to imagine, but so shielded was the West Coast from the more radical manifestations of "director's opera" that when Jean-Pierre Ponnelle's production of Tosca first appeared at San Francisco Opera, in 1978, it was considered avant-garde. At the time, the famous director-designer was apparently exposing the artifice of opera staging by experimenting with a behind-the-scenes approach to various works, including Pagliacci.
Act I of Ponnelle's Tosca adopted a perspective from behind the altar in the Church of Sant'Andrea della Valle. One could see the Sacristan's props, dry-land flotsam and jetsam, and wooden support beams that let one know the lovely marble altar was really fake. Similarly, Act III showed the great winged statue atop the Castel Sant'Angelo as a shallow papier-mâché figure propped up by wooden braces.
When these sets first appeared in San Diego Opera's Tosca, in 1996, many of the oddities had already been toned down, to the extent that they were hardly noticeable. Reappearing this season in a conservative, determinedly non-radical "director's cut" of Tosca, they served superbly. Running the show was company general director Ian Campbell, and he gave his audience a Tosca just the way they like it -- straight, without gimmicks and faithful to the composer's intentions. Campbell endured some mild artillery shelling from hostile operagoers after Bruce Beresford's "Rodeo Drive Rigoletto," which opened the season, but those criticisms had less effect on Campbell's Tosca concept than did his own inner convictions.
Campbell had an excellent cast to work with. Both Richard Leech (Cavaradossi) and Galina Gorchakova (Tosca) are accomplished in their roles and were in excellent form for the opening. Gorchakova displayed more evenness throughout her registers than do many other Toscas, and she was gave the drama everything she had. Leech maintained a high level of intensity, but without much dynamic variation -- his "Recondita armonia" and "E lucevan le stelle" failed to stand out.
Baritone Kimm Julian proved a Scarpia to be reckoned with, physically and vocally. He appeared to tower over everyone else. His portrayal of villainy was also seductive, his vocalism impressive, except for a slight tendency to scoop for dramatic emphasis. Conductor Edoardo Müller demonstrated an affinity for Puccini, putting the lushness and theatricality in all the proper places. The brass playing was some of the best to be heard at San Diego Opera in some time.
Jamie Offenbach (Angelotti), the venerable François Loup (Sacristan) and Joseph Hu (Spoletta) offered fine work. The costumes by Suzanne Mess and Ray Diffen were excellent, and chorus master Timothy Todd Simmons's forces worked to good effect.
DAVID GREGSON
LOS ANGELES In Los Angeles Opera's recent Die Zauberflöte, conductor Lawrence Foster made the most of Mozart's uplifting music, while never failing to find the true spirit of the lighter parts of the score. Through polished playing, the orchestra became an imposing, moving presence. Foster truly located the work's center of gravity, which must be the sun of Sarastro and his followers, and not the moon of the Queen of the Night and her retinue.
Some people do go to see this opera just to hear the Queen's two big arias, or perhaps Papageno's folksy hit tunes. Those people got what they paid for. As the Queen, soprano Sumi Jo provided the requisite vocal pyrotechnics, despite a perilous Act I descent from the heavens marred by conspicuous mechanical difficulties on opening night (March 24); but once firmly on the ground, she was spectacular, her steel-razor fingernails flashing and her diaphanous midnight-black frock swirling dramatically.
Eschewing the excessive cuteness that often mars the role of Papageno, baritone Rodney Gilfry managed to convey the right mix of charm and lowlife lust, while his singing seemed especially refined, his German fluent and assured. This must be counted among his best efforts with this company.
As Pamina, soprano Andrea Rost sounded shrill at times, but the size of her voice and the beauty of her legato phrasing offset any faults. She was matched with a superlative, princely suitor, tenor Michael Schade, one of the best and most confident Taminos heard in many a year. Bass Reinhard Hagen sang Sarastro's godlike music with all the seriousness it deserves.
As the Three Ladies, Robin Follman, Cynthia Jansen and Suzanna Guzmán were a marvel of coordination, while giving each role a touch of individuality. Tenor Greg Fedderly had great fun with the role of Monostatos, a bulbous grotesque with a protruding belly; he was green, instead of the non-P.C. "blackamoor" prescribed by Mozart. Bass James Creswell did superb work as the Speaker.
Deftly "redirected" by Stanley M. Garner from Peter Hall's original concept, this production accentuated the work's seriousness without skimping on the fantasy. In their second LAO appearance, Gerald Scarfe's cartoonish sets and exotic, colorful costumes, not to forget that menagerie of charming animals, would give the Harry Potter/J. R. R. Tolkien crowd plenty to talk about, if they would just give Mozart a whirl.
DAVID GREGSON
SARASOTA Strauss's Ariadne auf Naxos made a neatly complementary bit of programming, with its Mozart-inspired composer in the prologue and the witty combination of Classical elegance, modern lyricism and self-mocking commedia dell'arte elements in the opera proper. Despite its long gestation period and offbeat structure, Ariadne remains one of the composer's most lighthearted inspirations. Sarasota's production (seen at the matinée, March 17) had much going for it, including breakout performances by two young artists. Mary Phillips delivered an outstanding turn as the Composer. Appealing and energized, the mezzo-soprano was alive to every turn of the hectic comedy, as well as singing Strauss's soaring closing lines with a lovely, refined timbre. Jami Rogers scored a knockout company debut as Zerbinetta. As light-footed as a dancer, the petite soprano inhabited her role completely. Rogers's high voice handled "Grossmächtige Prinzessin" with fine style and agility, even though her top register was not entirely seamless. She brought an irresistible joie-de-vivre to her performance.
The opera-within-an-opera was less successful than the prologue. Stephanie Sundine directed Ariadne and Bacchus to stand like Doric columns for most of their eighty-minute scene, a deadly bit of staging, not helped by the stiff acting of soprano Lisa Willson as Ariadne (though she sang reliably). Wearing a preposterous high-school-pageant getup, Daniel Cafiero provided strong, if not very refined, singing as Bacchus. Richard Cordova was an aptly pompous Major-Domo, Russell Cusick an inspired Music Master and Mark Walters a lively Harlekin, among the rest of a worthy ensemble. DeRenzi conducted the Sarasota Opera Orchestra with a strong feeling for Strauss's extended vocal lines, providing the right touch of rococo elegance as well.
The company's production of Donizetti's Lucia di Lammermoor (March 17) was less successful, sparked by an unintended bit of extra drama. As Lucia, Christine Bouras displayed an attractive stage presence, but the young soprano was clearly overparted for this demanding role. Her voice sounded light initially, grew weaker as the performance progressed and by Act II was virtually inaudible, at which point DeRenzi announced that Bouras was suffering from a cold and would be unable to continue. For the remainder of Act II, her understudy, Melanie Vaccari, sang from the pit while Bouras mimed onstage. Vaccari then took the stage for Act III, coming on cold to sing Lucia's mad scene, one of the most demanding showpieces in the repertory. Given the circumstances, Vaccari did an admirable job, even though some of Donizetti's high-flying coloratura was negotiated with more precision than virtuoso flair.
As Edgardo, Benjamin Warschawski, while not the last word in elegance, proved a dramatically strong figure, sturdy and big of voice. The tenor's lyrical rendering of his Act III scena, beginning with "Fra poco a me ricovero," was a big hit with the Sarasota audience. Todd Thomas was a brawny-voiced Enrico, Lawrence Long a sonorous Raimondo. Young conductor John Di Costanzo led the orchestra with a skillful sense of dramatic pacing and bel canto refinement, though occasionally he swamped his singers in climaxes.
LAWRENCE A. JOHNSON
MIAMI Despite brief flashes of inspiration, Florida Grand Opera's production of Boris Godunov (seen March 13) at Miami-Dade County Auditorium was a dismal, provincial show. Dramatically inert, with tacky sets, the staging only fitfully captured Boris's dark Slavic atmosphere and brooding drama. Alternating spectacle with scenes of private conflict, Mussorgsky's deep-textured work dispassionately plumbs the Russian soul, finding casual cruelty, political intrigue and religious hypocrisy among the country's leaders. The Russian people, represented by the large chorus, are really the opera's protagonist, forever abused, betrayed and manipulated by those in control. The story has rung true for centuries, whether the leaders have been tsars, Soviet commissars or today's post-capitalist oligarchs.
Stewart Robertson opted for the performing edition by Rimsky-Korsakov, which smooths and refines Mussorgsky's original, rough-edged orchestration. Robertson dispensed with the Polish scenes, which Mussorgsky added in his 1874 revision.
As the tortured Boris, James Morris provided most of the evening's fleeting highlights. The American bass-baritone, who first sang this role in Miami (in English) twenty-five years ago, has lost some of the dark luster of his voice, but he brought compelling dramatic presence and intelligence in a well-rounded portrayal of the tortured tsar. Boris's coronation scene monologue was fittingly quiet and internalized, yet Morris showed fierce conviction when lashing out at the duplicitous Prince Shuisky. The clock scene and (especially) Boris's death were most affecting; Morris sang the tsar's farewell to his young son with uncommon tenderness and sympathy.
As Pimen, Kevin Langan brought a rich bass and expressive point to the monk's long monologue. Tenor Jeffrey Springer was a vital Grigori, his energy and solid acting compensating for a rather dry sound. As the wastrel monk Varlaam, Mikhail Svetlov's huge Slavic instrument proved more imposing than steady; however, he easily overshadowed Douglas Perry's Missail.
The ever-reliable tenor Allan Glassman was an excellent Shuisky, insinuating and devious. Adults Sarah Miller (Xenia) and Audrey Babcock (Fyodor) were nearly believable as Boris's children. Pierre Lefebvre, an affecting Simpleton, achieved the properly elegiac mood, as he cried for his lost kopek and equally lost Russia. Though Bernard McDonald clearly has made strides in his attempts to upgrade the company's chorus, the group is not yet up to this daunting assignment. While the chorus (enlarged for this production) effectively registered the people's vehemence in the Kromy Forest scene, the coronation scene and Boyars' meeting lacked sonority, strength and clarity; enunciation of the Russian text was poor.
One would have expected more professional blocking from Lotfi Mansouri, who just left San Francisco Opera after an acclaimed twelve-year stewardship. Apart from the Kromy Forest scene, Mansouri's flat, lethargic direction repeatedly sacrificed dramatic tension, and the listless crowd scenes had all the riveting intensity of tired travelers waiting for a bus transfer. Apart from a striking, icon-laden backdrop, Robert Dahlstrom's cheesy-looking sets (originally designed for Seattle Opera) added to the dramatic flatness; even Malabar's costumes looked resplendent by comparison.
Robertson conducted the Florida Philharmonic Orchestra with more efficiency than inspiration, eliciting light, sometimes pedestrian playing, which was swamped by a souped-up recording of tolling bells in the coronation scene. The opening-night performance contained more than the usual share of problems, including loud stage noises, repeated glitches in the projected titles and appalling audience rudeness, including a duet of competing cell-phones during Boris's death scene.
LAWRENCE A JOHNSON
WEST PALM BEACH, FL It's a curious phenomenon that when South Florida opera companies dare to stretch their repertoires, the results are usually more successful than when they play it safe. Palm Beach Opera's season-closing production of Tannhäuser (in the Dresden version, seen April 12) did not offer a Wagnerian experience on a Bayreuth level. Yet with a mostly strong cast, inspired stage direction and richly layered musical support by company artistic director Anton Guadagno, Wagner's opera proved an outstanding achievement in what was billed as the work's belated Florida premiere.
Tenor Gary Bachlund looked the part of Tannhäuser and provided a sturdy tenor and solid dramatic instincts. He doesn't quite possess the vocal heft for this demanding role, but he sang with passion, intelligence and a youthfully clarion timbre. Bachlund made the knight's tortured state palpable during the Act II festivities, bursting in with his licentious ode to Venus with an almost crazed ardor. Though he betrayed some vocal wear by the time he arrived at the climactic Rome narrative, Bachlund characterized the music with compelling intensity, spitting out the word "verdammt" (damned); Tannhäuser's redemption was deeply affecting.
Cast as both Venus and Elisabeth, soprano Susan Owen, like Bachlund, doesn't have the sustaining power for this opera. The double casting sacrificed essential vocal contrast, and the soprano offered a generalized Venus, limited to vaguely enticing or threatening gestures. As Elisabeth, Owen turned in a more creditable performance; despite a lack of refulgence in her tone in "Dich, teure Halle," Owen made up the balance with her intimate singing in Act III, including a radiant prayer.
As Wolfram, Daniel Washington presented a noble yet unfocused portrayal. Though his song to the evening star was ardently rendered, the baritone's dry, husky timbre did not fall easily on the ears. Reda El Wakil was superb as Hermann the Landgrave, skillfully wielding his resonant bass and cutting a tall, dignified figure. Dennis Petersen, Bruce Reed, Harold Wilson and, especially, Michael Mayes (as the hot-tempered Biterolf) made a vocally firm, vividly characterized band of knights. Marie Ashley was a fine Shepherd, delivering her song in a pure, boyish tone.
Hugh Lester's well-traveled New Orleans Opera sets offered an attractive, split-level Wartburg Hall. Less successful was the design for the Venusberg; with its red drapes and overstuffed pillows, it looked less like the goddess of love's abode than a four-hour-nap hotel in Hallandale Beach. Kathy Waszkelewicz's wigs and Malabar's costumes made the knights a resplendent group, though the white-on-white robes for the guests lent visual monotony to the extended entrances of Act II.
Michael Leinert elicited natural movement and acting from his principals. The German director utilized a lean, traditional staging that worked well, deploying scrims, fog and lighting deftly to evoke a mystical atmosphere. The opera's climax sacrificed some dramatic focus, but otherwise Leinert's direction was consistently well-conceived. The dramatic ensemble that closes Act II was thrilling in its immediacy.
The large chorus (expanded for the occasion), led by Seymour Schonberg, sang with robust tone and refined expression, save for repeated lack of coordination in the Great Hall choruses. Guadagno proved every bit as inspired by this difficult score as he is by his usual verismo repertory. Ideally, this music should receive more muscular brass and symphonic weight, but Guadagno drew playing of great eloquence, fervor and commitment from his players, making the big choral climaxes and set pieces register with exciting impact.
LAWRENCE A. JOHNSON
CHICAGO For the second production of its season, Chicago Opera Theater presented Benjamin Britten's chamber opera, The Rape of Lucretia, at the Athenaeum Theater in mid-March. Written in the shadow of World War II and first performed when Glyndebourne re-opened in 1946, Britten's Lucretia registers some familiar Brittenian themes (e.g., the imbrication of violence, tragedy, guilt and loss) in unusual ways. Scored for thirteen instrumentalists and a modest cast of eight, Lucretia juxtaposes some of the familiar and lurid elements of nineteenth-century operatic melodrama (the rape alluded to in the title) with a recurring appeal to Christian morality (as embodied by a Male and Female Chorus who comment on the actions onstage). The Choruses are actually hefty solo roles, performed here by Michael Colvin and Kara Shay Thomson (seen March 13), dressed in eveningwear of the mid-1940s. Beyond mediating between "us" (in the audience today) and "them" (the world of Ancient Rome, onstage), the choral soloists register the anxieties produced by onstage events and their (our?) implication in them. They give voice to their own desires, and these desires start to bleed over into and even meld with those being expressed by the "proper" characters of the opera. Thus, some of the most vexing questions raised by The Rape of Lucretia involve culpability: who rapes whom, and according to whose desire? Just who are these Romans and Etruscans? Who is this terrifying usurper, Tarquinius, this warmonger who "treats the proud city as if it were his whore"?
This production had little time or energy for these questions. Geoffrey Curley's set was conceptually apt -- a Roman temple within the outlines of a Gothic church -- but evacuated of any political reference. There was no hint here that Tarquinius and his new bride "rule Rome by force and govern by sheer terror." The juxtaposition of ancient and gothic looked flimsy rather than eerie or sinister. The same held true for Curley's costumes: the soldiers sported breastplates and swords straight from an elementary-school playground. It seemed unlikely that Curley and director Michael Halberstam were seeking to associate the military camp with, well, camp. Nonetheless, throughout this production, the soldiers came off as the stuff of parody: rote, earnest and grandiloquent. Not so Lucretia (Julia Bentley) or her attendants, Bianca, the old nurse (mezzo Kathleen Flynn), and Lucia, the maid (soprano Thea Tullman). The ladies were no more carefully inflected in their dramatic reference, but at least they were less mannered.
The production's dramatic oversights were all the more unfortunate as some of the musical performances were remarkable. Colvin's tenor and Thomson's soprano were light and agile enough to convey the moral subtleties and ambiguities of the Male and Female Chorus intelligently, though both could turn on the power for occasional moments of outrage and anguish. Julia Bentley's Lucretia was excellent: the final aria ("Give him this orchid"), which pushes the extremes of contralto register, was a model of control. David Giuliano as Tarquinius came off as sensitive and lyrical rather than as a testosterone-fueled rapist, though this musical suggestion went unnoticed on the level of drama or costuming.
Alexander Platt, resident conductor of the COT, conducted with energy and precision. Lucretia is almost a concert piece: much revolves around the transformation and recontextualization of musical motifs through subtle shifts of pacing and texture. Unfortunately, Platt's thoughtful efforts were at times undone by the erratic acoustics of the Athenaeum Theater. Voices diminished in power as they stepped back from the front of the stage, leaving the soldiers in the opening drinking sequence, for example, muffled and remote rather than stentorian. This did not affect the ensemble onstage, but it did produce some obvious problems of balance in the auditorium.
MARTIN STOKES& DAVID J. LEVIN
WASHINGTON, DC Nearly a century after its premiere, Richard Strauss's Salome hasn't lost its ability to stun and inflame the senses. Washington Opera's hot production confirmed that on April 9. It put an unabashed emphasis on the raw sexual current that relentlessly propels the work to its gruesome conclusion, and it boasted a physically ideal soprano who truly inhabited the title role.
Sylvie Valayre's voice could not always slice through Strauss's beefy orchestration, and it didn't reveal a particularly distinctive or tingly timbre. But the singer's exceptional combination of talents still fit the role snugly. Except for a few signs of wear near the end of the performance, she sounded fresh and firm. More impressive still, she didn't let a single note pass without conveying its message. When she came on to Jochanaan, Valayre caressed the lyrical lines with great suggestiveness and spat out the venomous ones to electric effect. When she tapped him on the shoulder to get his attention, it was the natural instinct of a spoiled-rotten teenager used to being the center of attention. Then, as Jochanaan fell to his knees and stretched out his arms in prayer, urging her to seek forgiveness from the man in a boat on the sea of Galilee, she imitated his movements, more in awe than mockery. A subsequent epileptic-like fit turned her, for an instant, into a strangely sympathetic figure.
The dance of the seven veils was somewhat tepid but had its allure. And when this Salome sat on the floor, legs spread around the silver tray holding the prophet's head, her feet keeping time to the music, there was something at once grotesque and (forgive me) endearing about the image. Less convincing were Salome's sudden straddling of Jochanaan on the floor at one point during their confrontation; and her demise, which looked more like an awkward, stylized bit of ballet with the soldiers.
Jan-Hendrik Rootering could not quite match the descriptions in Salome's poetic panting over Jochanaan's physical features, but, in a way, the disparity underlined the bizarre nature of her lust and the prophet's inability to comprehend it. The bass sang with warmth and conviction, if not always with all the desired power. The role of Herodes suited veteran Wagnerian tenor René Kollo. A wobble or occasional glitch in the upper register never detracted from the colorful inflections in his phrasing. Catherine Keen was a dynamic Herodias in voice and action. Corey Evan Rotz sang Narraboth's lines in sweet, well-focused tones. The rest of the cast proved basically sturdy. Heinz Fricke conducted with authority and sensitivity; the orchestra turned in lush, disciplined playing.
Peter Hall's original concept for Los Angeles Opera was taken over by director David Kneuss, who let the action unfold effectively within John Bury's unfussy scenic design. Elizabeth Bury's costumes and, especially, Joan Sullivan-Genthe's moody lighting completed the elegant stage pictures.
TIM SMITH
NEW YORK CITY Georgina Lukács and Carlo Guelfi made their Met debuts as Tosca and Scarpia (Feb. 27). The kindest thing one can say about the evening was that luster was lacking, at least onstage. The pit had plenty of it, because Julius Rudel was leading the orchestra. But the Hungarian soprano sang a rather routine Puccini heroine, going through most of the proper motions and missing most of the excitement that even many less vocally equipped divas manage to offer. "Quanto?" More than this, baby. As for Baron Scarpia, Guelfi sang with a pleasant lyricism that would have done Bohème's Marcello proud, but his efforts would have met with contempt from a real Scarpia, scornful as he is toward lovesick serenaders. The work of Richard Leech as Cavaradossi and the rest of the cast smacked, understandably perhaps, of contagious but at least more competent routine. The debutants had sung their roles in Met concerts in the parks, but indoors it seemed to be raining on their parade.
LEIGHTON KERNER
The best plays of Tennessee Williams are set to music already, spoken operas of rhythmic poetry, dense atmosphere, heightened characterizations and Wagnerian leitmotifs of speech or sound. (Sometimes, as in the "Varsouviana" of A Streetcar Named Desire, the leitmotifs are musical.) The composer who dares to set Williams's work must be a kind of stage director, respecting the original "score" and assigning tempo, dynamic and intensity to the text. Any miscalculation or disrespect for Williams's work will undermine the composer's, yet too close an affinity will render his or her work redundant.
After an already wobbly opening to his opera The Glass Menagerie, Italian-Norwegian composer Antonio Bibalo signals his failure to strike any kind of balance or meeting of artistic minds with Williams and his autobiographical "memory-play." In the second scene, Amanda Wingfield, the monster-mother of the piece, is carrying on at the dinner table, upbraiding her son for his table manners and trumpeting the values of good digestion. She is babbling. (She is also betraying the emptiness of her pretensions to Southern-gentry status, since no proper Southern lady would discuss gastric juices at the table.) Amanda babbles because she loves the sound of her voice, because such airy conversation reminds her of more elegant dinners past, because no one else can speak of less pleasant subjects so long as she dominates. The music of Williams's speech demands a quick, lively tempo. Because Bibalo stretches out the lines, Amanda is transformed from chattering parrot to lugubrious hippo. The score never recovers.
The result is frankly offensive, a cynical association of an insipid exercise with a beloved masterpiece: surely no one would ever perform Bibalo's work if it weren't for Williams's reputation. Time and again, Bibalo makes the wrong choices. Tom's narrations -- which contain the play's most poetic language -- are mostly spoken, though here they demand to be sung. (Every word of Williams's text is used in Bibalo's libretto.) Arias and scenes requiring heat are rendered coolly; indeed, almost everything in the score is reduced to soupy arioso vocal lines and orchestral noodling that sounds the same from page to page. Bibalo demonstrates no understanding of Williams's play.
Patrick Casey (stage director) and David Leighton (conductor), who produced The Glass Menagerie for New York's tiny OperaWorks company, do understand the play, but their conscientious production (seen March 29) only served to point up the play's strengths and the opera's weaknesses. With set and costumes (uncredited) that would serve any small production of the play, OperaWorks's dedicated cast of four struggled bravely with Bibalo's score. Only mezzo Nina Fine, as Laura, seemed comfortable with the vocal writing and stayed reliably on pitch, but she fell victim to Casey's biggest goof. Laura is supposed to be an invalid who limps. This Laura was hale, utterly normal, far from the cripplingly shy character whose social malaise is a manifestation of the mental illness suffered by the real woman who inspired her, Williams's sister, Rose.
As her "suitor," tenor Robert J. Havens was too vulgar, tenor Christopher Pfund, as Tom, too earthbound. (Why was he allowed to wear a Marilyn Monroe necktie?) Though she commanded the stage, as Amanda must, mezzo Robin Williams had most difficulty with pitch and played too broadly. But these are minor quibbles: the play seemed to speak to every member of the cast. Leighton conducted, using pre-recorded instruments (unspecified and uncredited), heavily reliant on synthesizer. He often achieved a nicely glass-like tinkling from his instrumental forces, but nobody on hand could make this score seem substantial or worthwhile.
WILLIAM V. MADISON
TOLEDO Refusing to bow to the overwhelming trend of regional companies to serve up one Carmen or Butterfly after another, Toledo Opera's general director Renay Conlin bravely schedules a twentieth-century work in each year's season of three operas. (Granted, next year's twentieth-century "opera" is Sweeney Todd -- but in Toledo, that's a riskier choice than you may realize.) Despite a bit of grumbling from some subscribers and a small loss in individual sales linked to the name-recognition of the repertory, this policy ultimately may help to expand the audience. Certainly The Turn of the Screw, in the historic Valentine Theatre (April 14), would have done credit to the reputation of many far more prominent (and resource-rich) companies.
David Gano's set was mainly interlocking platforms and a few furniture pieces and props carried on and off by the cast. Sometimes, as in the schoolroom scene when the Governess's being alone in the house is a key plot point, this proved distracting; but Gano's lighting well evoked the shifting delights and dreads of Bly and its residents. Francis Cullinan's intelligent direction stressed visual flow, occasionally at the expense of the multiplicity of meaning Myfanwy Piper's text invites. He managed Quint's initial appearances on the tower and at the window as well as I have seen them done. The projected titles seemed superfluous, as the uniformly fine cast achieved the verbal clarity the piece demands.
Rising Canadian soprano Michele Capalbo brought not unwelcome spinto weight and scale to the Governess's part, always retaining enough lyric grace for some lovely halftones and skillfully applied high pianissimos. An attractive and affecting stage figure (less bossy or bonkers than some contemporary Governesses), Capalbo gave a nuanced, compelling reading of this challenging but wonderful role.
Thomas Trotter doubled as a bookish Prologue (not quite phrasing the words to maximum ambiguous effect) and a confident, convincingly rough-spirited Quint, with a notably chilling gait. His pleasant lyric tone and musical phrasing enabled him to do full justice to Britten's writing, and he commanded the haunting melismas on the name "Miles," which can linger on for hours in the listener's mind. Vanessa Conlin brought an incisive, personal timbre and real dramatic presence to Miss Jessel (surely one of modern opera's great "Best Supporting Actress" roles). Even more than does Britten, Cullinan deployed the ghosts a bit too often for maximum creepiness.
Jennifer Roderer, looking a little young for Mrs. Grose, sang her in a well-produced and characterful mezzo. Karla Hughes, directed to be hyperactive and almost bratty at times, was exceedingly convincing as Flora and sang very well in a bright, girlish soprano. Seventh-grade treble Ryan Gerhard looked ideal as little Miles and sang quite well, though not always dead on pitch, with a small but aptly uncanny tone that the theater's 901-seat size accommodated well. Perhaps some of the piece's disturbing ambiguity was lost in having the children so clearly seeing the ghosts and in conspiracy with them and one another.
Underlying all of this was Thomas Conlin's sensitive command of Britten's magical score and the delicacies of pit/stage balance. (The conductor is husband of Renay and father of Vanessa Conlin.) The fourteen musicians from the Toledo Symphony, comfortable for a change in the theater's rather too-snug pit, furnished playing on the highest level. Kimberly Bryden (English horn/oboe), Kevin Bylsma (celeste/piano) and Amy Heritage (flute/piccolo) deserve special commendation.
DAVID SHENGOLD
KANSAS CITY When it was new, back in 1843, Don Pasquale was considered revolutionary for portraying not figures from history or mythology but people in the present, in contemporary dress. To be true to Donizetti's conception, in a sense, a modern staging ought to have modern settings and clothes. The engaging Lyric Opera of Kansas City production that opened March 16 at the Lyric Theatre split the difference, setting the opera in Brooklyn, circa 1919. (New York City in those days probably had the world's second-largest concentration of Italians.) Don Pasquale was turned into a robber baron, Norina into a prototypical liberated woman.
John Pascoe's unit set, created for Virginia Opera, was a clever affair, the effect compromised only by long scene-changes. We saw first a grand baronial interior, with great arches and panels. With sheets hanging around, it became a garret, when a down-on-her-luck Norina was reduced to taking in laundry. (Scorch-marks on the sheets told us that housework was a new career development.) For outdoor scenes, with the paneling removed, the arches suggested Brooklyn Bridge steelwork, with the lighted Manhattan skyline in the background. The marvelous lighting was by Rick Goetz.
The title role was a natural for David Evitts, one of the best opera comedians around. Mugging, lurching, prancing and pouting, he poured out a rich porridge of a baritone, and you couldn't take your eyes off him. Evitts met his match, though, in Angela Turner Wilson, a glamorous Norina but one who didn't miss a trick. Pasquale may have been surprised when she took over his household, but we certainly saw it coming. Turner Wilson's coloratura isn't the crispest around, but she was undaunted by the stratospheric tessitura -- and it was good to hear a liquescent soprano in the role, rather than a perky canary.
If any stage director can coax a living, breathing, credible character out of a singer, it's Linda Ade Brand, who also whipped up just enough activity (notably in Norina's introduction) without overdoing it. But even she couldn't quite quicken two characters in this production. Robert McPherson was facile in Ernesto's upper ranges, with a lovely legato. But he was merely serviceable as an actor, and he tended to press too much of a nasal edge on his voice; he needn't have forced in the 1,600-seat theater. Maksim Ivanov's brightish baritone was an effective contrast to Evitts's creamier tone, but he hardly suggested Dr. Malatesta's sneakiness. (He could have passed for a stolid Sharpless.)
The chorus, prepared by Mark Ferrell, sang well and scurried around like the hurriedly assembled household staff it portrayed. Apart from a fuzzy onstage trumpet solo, the orchestra, from the Kansas City Symphony, played commendably, the horns strikingly so. Alas, conductor Valery Ryvkin went for lyricism at the expense of rhythmic vitality. At least in the opening performance, the overture plodded, and thereafter he tended to set tempos just a hair's-breadth too slow to let the music -- and drama -- sparkle.
SCOTT CANTRELL
CHARLOTTE, NC Rossini's Il Barbiere di Siviglia should sparkle, and Opera Carolina's production did just that. The opening night performance (April 4) displayed uniformly excellent singing, judicious staging and enough dash and élan to satisfy any discriminating bel canto enthusiast. Even the shorter roles (such as Jennifer Lee's perky Berta, Timothy Riggs's befuddled double duty as Fiorello and the Sergeant, and especially Kevin Bell's sonorous Don Basilio) were in expert hands, while each of the principals more than rose to the occasion. Dale Travis was equal to the challenge of Dr. Bartolo, both vocally and dramatically, handling the patter of his difficult aria adroitly, as well as being genuinely funny. Oziel Garza-Ornelas was a forceful, if somewhat thick-toned Figaro who brought considerable panache to the role.
But the stars of the evening were the two young lovers. Paul Austin Kelly was a dashing Almaviva, played the comedy well and used his supple, if slender, tone to meet the demands of the flexible vocal line. Mezzo Vivica Genaux actually lived up to her advance billing. The voice is not large, but the tone is rich and sure, and coloratura pyrotechnics are simply no problem at all. Add a winning stage presence, and you have an artist worthy of inclusion in the front ranks of the present generation of coloratura mezzos.
It was refreshing to see the work staged by a director who respected the integrity of Rossini's opera rather than imposing some outlandish "concept." Bernard Uzan's staging was funny without descending to obvious slapstick, and it provided a comfortable framework for his experienced cast.
James Meena, the company's principal conductor, kept things moving at a jaunty pace, and the Charlotte Symphony played well for him. But most of the credit for the success of the evening goes to James Meena, Opera Carolina's general director, for assembling the team responsible for a most enjoyable evening at the opera.
In an unprecedented move, this production was presented again a week later in Winston-Salem, under the auspices of Piedmont Opera. This represents a new phase in the relationship of the two North Carolina companies.
LUTHER WADE
DAYTON, OH Dayton Opera, in cooperation with the Victoria Theatre Association, produced Leonard Bernstein's Candide, in the "Chelsea version" devised by Hugh Wheeler and Hal Prince for Broadway (1973). Without intermission, the evening clocked in at just under two hours. Seen at the Victoria Theatre on April 19, the energy level was still high at this, the nineteenth of twenty performances.
Set and costume designer Fay Conway tossed onstage a colorful, all-purpose set, "the attic of Voltaire's mind," stuffed with exotic props and set pieces, plus a family of mannequins. The clutter was an integral part of Michael McConnell's wild, fast-paced staging. The work's black humor met with audience laughter, though references to the sexual peccadillos of religious leaders struck many as too timely and prompted audible reactions of displeasure from the house.
The Victoria is a small theater (seating about 900); the decision to amplify the performance was questionable. The resultant overall brightness and rawness of sound was less detrimental to the singers than to the orchestra. Although conductor Joseph Bates kept the show alert and lively, speeding it along, inadequacies and flaws in the pit were over-emphasized by the amplification. Scrappy playing (thirteen players, including one on an ugly-sounding synthesizer) and out-of-proportion balance were a real trial to the ear.
The cast was very fine, with Lee Merrill's smart, flashy Cunegonde earning special praise. Candide (Colm Fitzmaurice) was elegantly sung and portrayed with an air of solid virtue and virility. Jamie Cordes belted out Maximilian's music, but his personality was too pallid. Marya Spring lent her capable, sprightly voice to Paquette.
Gary Briggle's gnome-like Dr. Pangloss was an endearing old soul; Briggle was a bit tired and hoarse at the beginning, but as he metamorphosed into Voltaire, the Governor and other characters, he was soon turning in a brilliantly sung performance, with dazzling, solid high notes. With her ample voice and personality, Susan Nicely almost walked off with the show as the Old Lady. Her spirited acting and comic precision enlivened all her scenes; her exotic "Rovno-Gubernya" accent was mostly intelligible.
The sixteen-member singing ensemble, including the four members of Dayton Opera's artist-in-residence program, performed the multitude of minor roles with exuberance and fine, close-knit singing.
CHARLES H. PARSONS
MILWAUKEE Lady, Be Good, like all the musicals of its time (1924), was but an assortment of entertaining songs and musical numbers, strung together by a superficial plot. Nothing made the show special -- aside from being the first Broadway pairing of George and Ira Gershwin; the vehicle that confirmed the stardom of the dancing Astaires; and the great, all-time hit songs written for it: "Fascinatin' Rhythm," "Lady, Be Good" and "The Man I Love" (ultimately withdrawn!). Indeed, in the easy manner of the times, the Gershwins wrote some twenty-two songs for the show, most of which were not used.
Reprising that spirit of abundance, Jack Forbes Wilson, musical director for Skylight Opera Theatre's production, fashioned a highly entertaining version of the show for current consumption. He replaced a ukulele number and a yodeling song with less dated Gershwin songs, and inserted the athletic "I'd Rather Charleston"( written for this show's London run) for good measure. Inexplicably, "The Man I Love" was not reinstated, though the pungent strains of Rhapsody in Blue -- which Gershwin composed almost simultaneously with this musical --were often echoed. The whole was arranged for two pianos (the original production had featured duo pianists) and percussion, and it was taken up with enormous gusto (April 6) by a large, talented ensemble of singing dancers.
Tammy Bednash and Benjamin Howes tapped their way through the Astaire roles, Dick and Susie, a brother-and-sister vaudeville team (like Fred and Adele Astaire themselves) down on their luck. Norman Moses played the central role of Watty, a fast-talking lawyer who, chasing a juicy fee, gets Susie to pass herself off as a Mexican heiress. Ray Jivoff played Bertie Bassett, a quirky, ubiquitous character who just happens to speak fluent Spanish -- and so may endanger Susie's impersonation. Stage director and choreographer Pam Kriger kept the frothy story whipped to a peak and the dancing absolutely delightful. Tap solos and duets, dance ensembles and two impressive full-company finales (tap and Charleston) were varied, highly entertaining and polished to perfection. Scenic designer Rick Rasmussen supplied a gorgeous white Ziegfield Follies art-deco set so stylish one expected Eleanor Powell and Fred Astaire to appear at any moment and come dancing down the elegant stairway. Melanie Schuessler's classy period costumes (along with a cascade of bubbles, showered on the grand finale) completed the effect.
JOHN KOOPMAN
STUDENT PERFORMANCES NEW YORK CITY Those who claim -- and wonder why -- comic operas aren't funny might have found a few answers in Manhattan School of Music's production of Albert Lortzing's delectable Der Wildschütz (The Poacher, seen April 24). Unfunnily is how American singers are taught to perform comic opera.
Lortzing's Ur-Romantic score is the airiest of soufflés, with music that lies somewhere between Mozart and Sullivan. On this occasion, the student cast and orchestra, under conductor Steven Osgood, managed the seemingly impossible feat of approximating the correct style of a musical tradition that isn't -- and almost never has been -- practiced in this country. (Songs were in German, dialogue in English.) Osgood kept the whole production aloft, while director Chuck Hudson insisted on underlining every moment in broadly presentational style and allowed one performer to indulge every worst instinct. Hudson created prettily symmetrical stage pictures but missed the fundamental rule of comedy: the plot is always funnier when the characters take it seriously. Lortzing, who was his own librettist, tells a silly story, full of disguises, base impulses and embarrassing revelations, but his satire is still relevant, his characters lovable. Hudson treated the work more as a burlesque.
As Baculus, the henpecked schoolmaster whose poaching sets the plot in motion, Michael Rice offered a nicely poised characterization and a beautifully placed baritone in a role that is traditionally played by ausgesungen veterans. In his big aria, "Fünftausend Thaler," he registered equal measures of horror and delight as Baculus marvels at the ease with which he has traded his fiancée for gold. Mezzo Monica Barnes (the bluestocking Countess von Eberbach) is a less skillful actor, but her fresh, rich voice, with easy carrying power, is ready for prime time. Only slightly less impressive than these colleagues, Jennifer O'Loughlin played Baroness Freimann, a girl playing a boy playing a girl, with a radiant smile and a blooming soprano; she delivered a zesty celebration of early widowhood in "Auf des Lebens raschen Wogen."
The other members of the cast need to ripen a bit. James Schaffner rightly played Baron Kronthal as a Tyrolean Hugh Grant, with easy stage presence, a somewhat edgy tenor and great hair. Museop Kim played his brother-in-law, Count von Eberbach; Kim's often muddy diction prevented him from keeping up with faster tempos, but in his solo, "Heiterkeit und Fröhlichkeit," his mellow tone carried the day. As Baculus's fiancée, Jung-A Lee looked lovely, but her small-scale soprano was lost in ensembles and couldn't carry reliably even in the confines of the school's Borden Auditorium. Benjamin de la Fuente (the mostly non-singing servant Pancratius) swamped his role in tics and grimaces; his catch-phrase, "I'll be hanged," was delivered unintelligibly each of twenty times. His friends in the balcony ate up this hammy performance, but no one else laughed at all, and no responsible director in a professional school should permit such nonsense.
Beowulf Boritt's simple, functional set design was dominated by a painted backdrop of a craggy mountain, beautifully lit by Rick Martin. Daniel James Cole designed the colorful costumes.
It's probably futile to hope that Lortzing's work will ever catch on in this country: if you have to ask what gemütlich means, you'll never know. But this listener has been under Der Wildschütz's spell for years; interested readers are encouraged to locate a copy of the old EMI recording (CMS 7 63205 2, with Anneliese Rothenberger, Gisela Litz, Fritz Wunderlich and Hermann Prey, impeccably conducted by Robert Heger).
WILLIAM V. MADISON
BLOOMINGTON, IN A massive new production of Lucia di Lammermoor brought the Indiana University School of Music's opera season to a triumphant conclusion (April 13). C. David Higgins designed one of the most elaborate settings ever presented at the Musical Arts Center. Faux-Gothic follies, decaying bridges and steps marked a fog-shrouded landscape, romantically lit by a full moon in Michael Schwandt's atmospheric lighting designs. The great hall of Lammermoor Castle, with an extensive balcony and grand staircase, first appeared far upstage, then slowly glided forward to the front of the stage, bearing the choral denizens, while huge chandeliers and giant windows descended into position and the audience cheered.
The performances, sung in Italian with projected titles in English, honored the standard musical cuts (no "Wolf's Crag" scene, for example) but reinstated the Lucia-Raimondo duet and the vocal ensemble that bisects the mad scene.
Guest stage director Tito Capobianco's experience with this opera dates back at least to New York City Opera's 1970 production, starring Beverly Sills. Here, Capobianco opted for a basically static production, with people grouped scenically rather than for dramatic impact. But, ever the master of the "upstage the principals" school, he insisted on frequent, unnecessary appearances by four somberly clad women, like witches left over from an old production of Macbeth. They slowly, silently moved about, while Lucia and Edgardo, with whom the real interest lies, remained generally motionless.
Evelyn Pollack's Lucia was a stunningly beautiful, delicate creature, compellingly acted and strongly sung; she is more a warm lyric soprano than an icy coloratura. Pollack's rudimentary trill was the only shortcoming of her easy negotiation of the elaborate passagework. Scott Six's Edgardo was an operatic oxymoron, with the voice of a fine leggiero tenor housed in the body of a heldentenor. However, he soon engaged the ear with his fresh, boyish sweetness of tone, full of poignancy, and his delicious delivery of musical nuance. Weston Hurt's Enrico was physically imposing, vocally a bit nasal, incisive, but careful and constrained. Due to the illness of his alternate, Brandon Mayberry sang the role of Raimondo at all four performances; though his sandy-textured voice is a bit lightweight, he does possess some impressive low notes.
Jeremy Truhel bravely attempted Arturo's awkward vocal lines; Elizabeth Johnson's small-scale Alisa lent Lucia sympathetic support. Emilio Jimenez Pons's Normanno was bright and ringing, holding his own against the choral competition. The men's chorus was hale and hearty but much beset by ragged entrances and dominated by individual, unblended voices. The women's chorus sounded more perfunctory but more solid. Conductor Imre Pallo, another City Opera veteran, was generally supportive of the singers' needs, sometimes pushing ahead of them but generally turning in a relaxed, romantic performance.
CHARLES H. PARSONS
INTERNATIONAL
SALZBURG Claudio Abbado's farewell as music director of Salzburg's Easter Festival emerged as a luminous, understated and immensely moving performance of Parsifal that combined the Berlin Philharmonic, at the top of its form, with a strong cast headed by Thomas Moser (Parsifal), Violeta Urmana (Kundry), Albert Dohmen (Amfortas) and Hans Tschammer (Gurnemanz). For Abbado, Wagner has never been a top priority. It is not surprising that, with these two Salzburg performances looming and limited rehearsal time, he presented a concert version of the opera in Berlin last November, so that the Philharmonic (which had last played Parsifal with Herbert von Karajan in 1980) could feel comfortable with Wagner's mammoth score. And comfortable they were. The orchestra, about 60 percent of which was engaged post-Karajan, remains a marvel of collective harmony and technical brilliance. Solos were breathtaking, and the dynamics of the score, though somewhat understated, were carefully observed. Abbado chose to emphasize long, fluid lines, combined with an intimate, almost chamber-music approach in scenes involving small groups of people.
Peter Stein, the celebrated Berlin stage director, provided a literal, occasionally affecting series of animated pictures. Act I began with a bare stage and shifted (with the curtain down and no lighting or visual effects) to a semicircular Grail Hall, a curved, three-level structure with a vertical door in the center and niches to hold the standing knights. The Grail table was a long, black altarpiece, and the knights, in white capes, entered rather confusingly in single file from each side, then crossed back to take their places, two to a niche; the boys choir from the Prague Philharmonic Chorus occupied the top row. When Amfortas was carried in, wearing a white tunic and a silver crown, the dark-blue background lighting brightened. As the scene ended, the Grail glowed red amid clouds of incense.
Klingsor's castle, shrouded in black, with a stairway running down one side, provided an appropriate setting for the wily sorcerer (Eike Wilm Schulte), who wore an oriental robe. The castle courtyard, a low, green hedge in geometrical patterns, set the stage for sinuous, seductive Flowermaidens wearing long, brilliantly-colored gowns that could have been bought from Saks Fifth Avenue. Reclining in an opulent, quasi-oriental robe in the middle of this convoluted hedge, Urmana's Kundry must have found it difficult to seduce Parsifal, but she delivered her revelations about her past in a luxuriant, impassioned soprano. As the scene ended, an enormous plastic cross, presumably containing the spear, descended at the front of the stage. The shift from lakeside to Grail Hall in Act III was again accomplished with the curtain down and with enormous Tibetan gongs ringing out from the left side of the auditorium. The Grail glowed red again as Parsifal assumed leadership of the holy order.
Stein has a reputation as a shocking and innovative director, making one wonder why this production took nearly all of Wagner's stage directions so seriously. Contemporary German opera production is noted for twisting familiar works to fit an anti-religious, anti-authoritarian strain that has circulated among intellectuals since Hitler. I would suspect that, for their Salzburg finale, Stein, his designer Gianni Dessi and perhaps even Abbado decided to play it safe. It will be interesting to see if there are any changes when the production is presented, sans Berlin Philharmonic, at the Edinburgh Festival this summer.
JANE BOUTWELL
MELBOURNE For the first time, Opera Australia managed to assemble for a new production of Cavalleria Rusticana and Pagliacci a full cast of singers, every one of whom had the ability to sing verismo music with the appropriate "can belto" technique. Indeed, in the first work (seen March 16), a little less "belto" would not have come amiss. Mascagni manages more light and shade than does Leoncavallo, and nothing under mezzo forte emerged from the orchestra to dampen the full-blooded enthusiasm of singers (who, in fairness, were never drowned out).
The production by Andrew Sinclair, with sets by Shaun Gurton and costumes by Victoria Rowell, strove to respect the spirit of both works, though setting them in post-World War II Sicily darkened already dark subjects even further. Moreover, the music hardly suggests a gritty townscape without even a tree or a church in sight where even the youngest women onstage are (war) widows, dressed in black. To make matters worse, there was no moment in either opera in which some carefully rehearsed piece of casual business did not distract attention from more important things. Both intermezzos told lengthy visual stories: Santuzza considered the use of a knife (whether for murder or suicide), and Nedda packed her bags to leave. In the Cavalleria overture, numerous women wandered around the square, in pre-dawn darkness, to listen to Turiddu's loud serenade.
Young American conductor Karen Kamensek has yet to learn to add feeling to her carefully controlled orchestra, and these works rely as much on mood as on drama. The big voices on the stage largely made up for what she lacked. Armenian Arax Mansourian is a natural Santuzza with real power in her somewhat steely projection; as Turiddu, Australian Gregory Tomlinson has grown immensely in vocal stature. Their duet was a fine example of "can belto." Michael Lewis sang a strong Alfio -- and was even better as Tonio -- but the musical references to Alfio's job (the whip-cracks and such in "Il cavallo scalpita") were hidden; this teamster could have been the local butcher. Roxane Hislop's ample voice made her Lola seem arrogant rather than flirty. The unfortunate chorus was burdened with thousands of individual movements and undermined by a total eclipse during the Easter hymn, when the only remaining light, a solo spot, turned all attention to Santuzza.
Pagliacci fared better. The opera was set in a wire enclosure, presumably elsewhere in the same town, with the same men, women and children as the audience. The pen was hardly beautiful, though certainly adequate for Canio's primitive traveling troupe, with next to no props. The director invented some reasonably funny new business for the play-within-the-play, but the staging also turned in unexpected directions. Canio killed himself after the death of Nedda and Silvio, leaving Tonio a proud victor alone onstage.
The singing was good, strong and more varied in texture in this second work. Paul Lyon (Canio) has enjoyed a respectable career in the U.S., but his voice is tight and metallic, and he found the going tough near the crucial end. Experienced Jennifer McGregor's Nedda offered well-balanced singing and a great asset in acting and looks. Best of all was New Zealander Teddy Tahu Rhodes (Silvio), the only singer to achieve a true piano all night, in his lengthy, pleading "E allor perché."
JOHN CARGHER
PARIS Weber's final opera, Oberon, one of the great postwar successes at the Paris Opéra, arrived at the Châtelet this spring in a semi-staged version, conducted and directed by John Eliot Gardiner (seen March 10). Following performances of Der Freischütz (in Berlioz's edition) earlier this season, Weber is enjoying something of a revival in the French capital. Oberon is a delightful work of flowering Romanticism in the singspiel tradition of Mozart's Die Entführung aus dem Serail; its magical, fairytale music frequently evokes Sullivan's Iolanthe or the orchestral music of Mendelssohn. Gardiner chose to present the work in its original English version, from 1826; he used a narrator to bypass some of the spoken dialogue and to provide a slightly tongue-in-cheek commentary on the action, a role in which the very actorish Roger Allam excelled, with almost taciturn delivery. The orchestra was onstage, and an apron thrust the singers forward into the theater, wreaking havoc with the fragile Châtelet acoustics but bringing the action vividly to life. Gardiner did as well as many a professional stage director might have done; his dry sense of humor was much in evidence, helped by simple, elegant costumes designed by Colin Window, Gardiner's stage assistant. Gardiner's pacing of the orchestra was ideal, but the string section of the Orchestre Révolutionaire et Romantique sounded rather undernourished for the climactic passages; some of the intimate moments were simply too featureless and internalized for their own good.
Hillevi Martinpelto's Reiza led the cast with plush soprano tones, striding magnificently through the famous aria, "Ocean! thou mighty monster," with effortless ease, although she lacked an edge of excitement. Her sorely tested beloved, the noble Sir Huon de Bordeaux, was a mysterious piece of casting. Surely the role was written for a heroic tenor, with trumpeting tones that are completely alien to the vocal makeup of poor Charles Workman. He was consistently musical, but where there should have been thrills there were timid, ill-tuned vapor trails of sound. Greater pleasure was to be had from another tenor, Steve Davislim (the fairy king Oberon), singing with graceful, unforced tone. The secondary couple, Sherasmin and Fatima, were performed with great comic conviction by the polished William Dazeley and the charming Marina Comparato, whose willfully obscure English diction was presumably one of Gardiner's little jokes.
Jérôme Savary's season at the Opéra Comique has been limited by a scandalous lack of funding, and he has been forced for the most part into long runs of his own popularized versions of Offenbach, rather than building on the challengingly diverse repertoire he championed last year. An exception was Monteverdi's Il Ritorno d'Ulisse in Patria, in a production from last year's Aix-en-Provence festival. The first night (March 12) played inexplicably to a less than capacity audience: obviously the notoriously snobbish Parisian public had written off the season without studying the program. William Christie's realization of the score is as discreet as his conducting (from the harpsichord), concentrating the listeners' ears on the composer's masterfully vivid setting of the Italian language. The chamber orchestra worked as an organic part of the performance, listening and responding to the singers rather than being shoehorned into a traditional "conducted" performance. Onstage, the same team spirit was present among the young singers, who studied this work together at the Académie de Musique in Aix-en-Provence. Anthony Ward's set, with its omnipresent urns and simple stage effects, was economical in every sense of the word; Adrian Noble's direction of the singers was outstanding. Relationships and physicality were minutely explored and expressed, bringing a universal humanity to the work.
Vocally there were a few technically challenged performances among the smaller roles, but Marijana Mijanovic as Penelope and Kresimir Spicer as Ulisse were outstanding. Mijanovic's contralto voice is of an ink-black color with a straight, androgynous tone, lending her an unusually strong dramatic impact, seconded by her tall, elegant stage presence. Spicer has a tenor voice of complex colors, with a power and projection that suggest that many other roles and repertoires will be coming his way. Good support came from Olga Pitarch as an accurate, sprightly Minerva and countertenor Rachid Ben Abdeslam, who began the show with a dulcet-voiced interpretation of Human Frailty, also proving that nudity can still raise a gasp of disbelief from a twenty-first-century audience.
STEPHEN MUDGE
VENICE On March 26, Swiss-born Italian conductor Marcello Viotti made his debut as music director of the Teatro La Fenice, conducting Otello at the Palafenice (the temporary home of the opera company whose rebuilding seems finally to have gotten under way). Despite the indifferent acoustics, Viotti immediately won over the Venetian audience. His conducting combined close attention to detail, flexibility in accompaniment, spontaneity in transition and, above all, strong emotional participation from the first note to the last. And the orchestra, which has improved considerably of late, responded wholeheartedly to his leadership.
The production was a good one, too. Mauro Carosi's sets, borrowed from the Teatro San Carlo in Naples, stressed the rough-and-ready atmosphere of the fifteenth-century garrison: a man's world, in which Desdemona would inevitably feel ill-at-ease. The richly colored period costumes by Odette Nicoletti were brilliantly set off by the gray stone walls, and although director Alberto Fassini's handling of the chorus in the opening scene proved ineffective, the interaction among the principal characters was consistently well thought-out, although it was sometimes undermined by Vladimir Galouzine's overacting in the title role.
The Russian tenor, who already has sung Otello in Paris, Vienna and Milan (and is scheduled to perform the role at the Met in 2003), made the common mistake of altering his vocal production to achieve the dark colors he obviously feels are necessary for the role. As a result, the voice seemed throaty, insecure and much less brilliant than usual (except on the highest notes, where he was compelled to resort to a more orthodox emission), and his diction -- although more or less comprehensible -- sounded q
