Opera Reviews

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Opera Reviews

Glimmerglass Opera

Shakespeare in Spirit if Not in Word

by Ed Cloos

In its 34th season, Glimmerglass Opera at Cooperstown in upstate New York applied its trademark youth-powered ensemble skills to the world of Shakespeare. The result was joy upon joy. The Shakespeare theme was emphasized in John Conklin’s set, a representation of his Globe Theater, that was used in all productions. Conklin, who includes Opera Theater St. Louis in his credits, retires from Glimmerglass after 18 seasons.

I was able to experience the entire season over three days, an opportunity that will be even more available next season when the season is condensed, beginning two weeks later (July 18) but still including 39 productions compared with 41 this year. It will conclude Aug. 25.

It would be impossible to single out one as the best, but I’ll do it. Every performance was rewarded with extremely enthusiastic audience response, but Vincenzo Bellini’s I Capuletti e I Montecchi brought the audience to its feet, shouting and cheering. Me too. It is the familiar story of Romeo and Juliet, but based on the sources Shakespeare used rather than the classic play itself.

The production was on the murky side. Costumes were of no particular period, lighting was dark, weapons used by the warring factions were symbolic in form: gray sticks rather than swords. Against this back-ground, the luminous doomed couple glowed in their music and in their persons: Giulietta, played by Sarah Coburn, and a career-boosting per-formance by cover Emily Righter, a member of the Young American Artists program. Her Romeo captured the physical aspects (he’s the warrior-leader of the Montecchi) and the warm sensuality of her singing stirred the audience. She was rewarded with a rave in The New York Times, and I second the view. She did about half of the performances in place of Sandra Piques Eddy who was indisposed. I didn’t hear Miss Eddy, but the favorable New Yorker review called her Romeo "ferocious."

The rich beauty of Miss Coburn (herself once one of the Young Artists) was stunning in voice and person as she sang her lovely first-act aria reclining on a bench and even lying on her back, filling the Alice Busch Theater where all voices are free of amplification.

Her following duet with Romeo, ending in a kiss, matched glowing beauty with warm and sensitive strength. The act ended with Romeo, who had come to meet the Capuletti in the guise of his own emissary, proposing peace to be sealed by the marriage of Romeo and Giuletta. In a complex and beautiful quintet, backed by the chorus, Romeo and Giulietta state their case, while the principal players on the Capuletti side express their implacable objection.

Act 2 has to work out all of the action so it isn’t such concentrated beauty as the first, but there is beauty aplenty.

Das Liebesverbot (The Ban on Love), by the young Richard Wagner, was in keeping with the Glimmerglass tradition of uncovering lesser-known works and making them bright and new. Wagner would have loved it as it’s first production, directed by Wagner himself in 1836 at age 23, was a fiasco and it wasn’t produced again in his lifetime—another 50 years.

It’s more or less based on Measure for Measure, the Bard’s tale of justice restored. He set it in Vienna, but Wagner put it back in Sicily where the original story first appeared. There it contrasts the stern temperament of the German deputy to the absent King of Sicily, with the easy-going warmth of the natives. There’s a connection with the Bellini opera in that Wagner had conducted it while working on his own. Bellini, 12 years older, was an accomplished composer at the time while Wagner was showing just intimations of his mature greatness. We don’t know what Bellini might have done when truly mature because he died in 1835 before his 34th birthday.

^{Wagner’s plot is complex, and there are too many fine performances to list, but it would be a crime not to recognize Claudia Waite as Isabella, who is summoned from the convent to save her brother Claudio who has been condemned to death. The new law bans Carnival, closes the clubs and outlaws love, especially that such as between Claudio and Julia who is pregnant out of wedlock. Miss Waite sang with power yet with a controlled and beautiful tone. She made it entirely believable that she could expose the hypocrisy of Friedrich, who promulgated the laws, save her brother and restore happy life in Palermo.

Giulio Cesare in Egitto is to me the incongruous blend of Italian opera with the very British Baroque music of Handel and the tradition of writing male roles for the castrato voice. It works amazingly well. Castrati had soon passed from the scene so there is a long tradition of women who can be convincing in men’s roles replacing them.

Such a singer is Laura Vlasak Nolen. She carried off the role of Julius Caesar with easy strength and her lovely mezzo-soprano tone. Caesar was invulnerable to all enemies, but not to affairs of the heart. Russian soprano Lyubov Petrova displayed such beauty of voice and person that it was easy to believe her Cleopatra could lead so mighty a man almost to his doom and then share his eventual triumph.

The costuming was a strange blend of 1930s Italian military, vaguely Egyptian desert fighters from any period and gowns that could be from the time of Cleopatra. It didn’t matter. Tolomeo, the evil brother of Cleopatra, her rival for sole possession of the Egyptian throne, wore a sort of dress. Along with the soft appearance of countertenor Gerald Thompson, the brutal cruelty of his character was made all the more chilling. It’s a long, complex tale with excursions away from the main story for the sole purpose of including beautiful music, and who can argue with that?

Kiss Me, Kate rounded out the program. Musical comedy isn’t normally part of the Glimmerglass experience, but it was carried off with great energy and the audience loved it.

You’ll remember that the Cole Porter musical is about a travelling theater company that is producing Shakespeare’s Taming of the Shrew. It’s mostly about "off-stage" goings on but contains the only actual Shakespeare lines of the "Shakespeare" season. As staged, the troupe has arrived in Cooperstown and local references are added.
Brad Little was a handsome and commanding Fred Graham, the overbearing director, and Petruchio, the suitor of Kate in the play. Lisa Vroman was perfect as Lilli Vanessi, the prima donna who plays Kate. To me she resembles a young Julie Andrews only with a stronger, more operatic voice. Their characters have been divorced a year.
On the surface, it is hard to accept that the way to a woman’s heart is through repeated and rather brutal spanking, but the deeper story is the love that is revealed as the show progresses.
We know all the songs, but haven’t heard them much lately. It was a great chance to "Brush Up on Your Shakespeare" even when "It’s Too Darn Hot." And it’s "Wunderbar" to be "So In Love" even if the object of your affection may be "Always True to You in My Fashion." And so forth.
Important and entertaining supporting roles were contributed by Courtney Romano as Lois Lane/Bianca, and Michael Mott and Bradley Nact as gangsters, sent to collect a gambling debt, who practically stole the show with their "Brush Up on Your Shakespeare" which threatened never to leave the stage.
On the weekend I was there, Little and Miss Vroman, who are experienced Equity actors, returned to the stage on Sunday morning to read the appropriate Shakespeare text for Mendelssohn’s Incidental Music for A Midsummer Night’s Dream. This gem of a concert got the orchestra out of the pit and onto the stage. In addition to the spoken parts, there were lovely solos by soprano Caitlin Lynch and mezzo soprano Angela Brower, both members of the Young American Artists program which also supplied a fine chorus.
The orchestra is a solid and respected collection of professional union musicians that performed equally well with four different conductors.

Glimmerglass Opera, (607) 547-2255, glimmerglass.org.}
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Philip Glass: Orphée,

Screenplay set to music

by Ed Cloos

Glimmerglass Opera is a summer festival and school for advanced students in the beautiful setting of Otsego Lake in upstate New York. For 30 years it has been offering creative and unusual programs, and I was able to catch the Philip Glass opera based on the 1949 film Orphée by Jean Cocteau.

Actually, the 1993 opera, one of more than 20 by Glass, isn’t just based on the film; the libretto is the screenplay with few changes. So it is essentially a play set to music, a play in French with super-titles. Fully professional singers with long lists of performance credits are cast in all major roles, but they are called on to do little actual singing. Orphée is a famous poet in this version, but the poetry we hear is broadcast over a mysterious radio by another poet.

The set is the modern apartment of Orphée and his wife Eurydice. In the myth, Orpheus is a singer of amazing abilities--even his eventually-severed head is able to sing--who sings his way to the Underworld to win back his wife who had died soon after their marriage. He has the illusion of success, but the condition that he not look back at his wife until they are back among the living proves impossible. In the Cocteau/Glass version, he must not look at her at all ever again. So the certainty of failure is pretty well recognized right from the beginning.

The way to the Underworld is through a mirror (with an authorized guide, of course). To emphasize this, a glazier carries a mirror through the set from time to time and a full-mirror door is opened and closed. During travels between the two worlds, duplicate copies of La Princesse, the agent of death, and Eurydice appear simultaneously with the originals. When Orphée is led to “La Zone” he sees what looks like normal life and asks, “Are they living?” The answer is “they think they are.”

La Princesse is an attractive woman. She wears a fur coat. The overall appearance, she says, is much more effective than the robed, hooded figure carrying a scythe that most people expect. It certainly is as she's the dominant character in the opera. Heurtebise, who is identified as her chauffeur (though he says at one point that he isn’t a real chauffeur), assists her.

The agents of death were sent to claim Cégeste, a young poet, who is carried into the scene by two men in motorcycle regalia with helmets and full face shields that render them anonymous. They are apparently the very ones who killed the poet in a supposed accident. But the agents of death way overstep their orders. La Princesse falls in love with Orphée and Heurtebise with Eurydice. And that love eventually is returned. As we should know, such love is doomed from the start.

There isn’t much to say about the singing in Orphée since there wasn’t much, but the music was stunning. Dramatic moments were overlaid on the repetitive themes characteristic of Glass. Conductor Anne Manson brought out all of the drama in the music, and, to me, infused some of her own personality. The audience was very responsive to the effects she drew. She told the Opera News correspondent that she feels strongly that the music should follow the action rather than control it. Glimmerglass' theater orchestra pit is shallow and the conductor is fully visible to the audience so she became almost a character in the play.

Ms. Manson was unknown to me, but certainly not to the St. Louis arts community as she was music director of the Kansas City Symphony from 1999 to 2003. She lives now in Washington, DC with her husband and two children and restricts her travel on their account.

Glimmerglass productions often have moved to other venues for the winter season, but so far only the Monteverdi, a co-production with Opera North of the UK and Norwegian Opera, has a definite schedule. It is moving to Norway. The press representative said discussions are going on about others. The Glass may find a home, especially since there is so much buzz about Appomattox, his Civil War opera with libretto by Christopher Hampton, which began its world-premiere run Oct. 5 with San Francisco Opera.

The 2008 Glimmerglass season will offer four operas on a single set by John Conklin, the company’s associate artistic director. He has designed 26 sets over the years for Glimmerglass (though not the one for the Glass opera) as well as sets for most of the leading opera stages in America, including Metropolitan Opera as well as Opera Theater of St. Louis. It will depict an Elizabethan theater because the operas are all based on Shakespeare plays.

The productions are: Wagner’s early comedy, Das Liebesverbot, (Forbidden Love), inspired by Measure for Measure, Handel’s Giulio Cesare in Egitto, Cole Porter’s Kiss Me, Kate, and Bellini’s I Capuleti e I Montecchi. They’ll run in repertory July 5 to August 24. All performances are in the lovely Alice Busch Opera Theater north of Cooperstown.

Glimmerglass schedules its repertory so that it is usually possible to see all four in a single weekend and at least three in two days when there are weekday matinees. The web site is www.Glimmerglass.org.

Otsego Lake is the heart of James Fenimore Cooper’s Leatherstocking Tales. He called it Glimmerglass. Cooperstown is known best as home of the Baseball Hall of Fame, but it also has Fenimore Art Museum which displays an astounding collection of items and history of Indians from all over America, not just Mohawks and Senecas of the area. Also, a wonderful collection of early American painting known as “Genre Art.” Across the road is the Farmers' Museum. I spent the afternoon at the art museum, but I still have vivid memories of the Farmers' Museum even though I last visited as a child.

About 90 minutes away is Saratoga Springs, summer home of New York City Ballet and the Philadelphia Orchestra as well as the horse racing that I love. Albany Airport is about 90 minutes from Cooperstown.

Washington National Opera (continued)

Bizet’s The Pearl Fishers: a Pleasant Surprise

by Ronald G. Precup

Georges Bizet’s The Pearl Fishers is anything but a first-rate opera, its Ceylon setting not particularly exotic, and its libretto shallow even by 19^th-century standards. The music, though, is a different story, having sweet melodies set well for voices and masterfully orchestrated. When sung by the accomplished and well-matched voices the Washington National Opera selected for its second Fall 2008 production, the result exceeded expectations.

French soprano Norah Amsellem led the cast as Leila, the virgin priestess whose prayers are expected to protect the village pearl fishers from the perils of the sea. Not only does she possess a heavenly voice and keen sense of musicianship, but her physical appearance requires no suspension of disbelief regarding why lifelong friends would fall out vying for her affections. Her bare-midriff costume, so comely on her, is something few sopranos could get away with wearing.

Baritone Trevor Scheunemann, a product of the Domingo-Cafritz Young Artist Program, was particularly well cast as Zurga, one of the rivals. He combined impeccable French – a difficult language to sing in all events – a rich, even, burnished voice, and an acting ability that brought life to this often cardboard character. His stature and natural stage presence only added luster to this most pleasing performance.

Tenor Charles Castronovo, as the other rival for Leila’s affections, Nadir, took no back seat to Amsellem or Scheunemann either in vocal excellence or acting ability. He produced the highest notes equally well in head voice or full voice. And since Nadir ultimately gets the girl – the tenor always does, after all – his character is more sympathetic than that of the village’s leader, Zurga.

Far and away the best-known music in the opera is the Zurga-Nadir duet, “At the foot of the holy temple” (Au fond du temple saint). It can bring down any house even if done merely acceptably. In the hands of Scheunemann and Castronovo, however, the effect was electric. The lone weak voice among the four principals belonged to Russian bass Denis Sedov as the stern, unbending high priest Nourabad. His was a woofy, unfocused sound, often seeming tentative, that fell far below the high musical standard set by the others. His wooden acting did nothing to redeem the character.

Judging from this production, as well as the season opener, La Traviata, the WNO has put some effort into improving the quality of the company’s choreography. French audiences of the 19^th century demanded dance in their operas, and Bizet obliged with a great deal of it in The Pearl Fishers. Choreographer John Malashock and assistant Michael Mizerany gave much to do to the twelve-member dance team, who executed it beautifully.

British fashion designer Zandra Rhodes was responsible for both the colorful costumes and the imagin-ative sets of this production, which originated with the San Diego Opera and Michigan Opera Theatre. Her prominent billing was well deserved.

Australian Andrew Sinclair has directed this Pearl Fishers not only with the two companies just mentioned, but also with the San Francisco, Florida Grand, and New York City Operas, and will soon take it to Montreal. It is unusual for any production to be so well traveled, but Sinclair is fully justified by the fine result he has achieved with it.

Good control and a lively pace marked the conducting of Italian Giuseppe Grazioli. This is the first time this reviewer has heard him conduct. Most of his work has been in Europe. The WNO should ensure his early return.

The Steven Gathman-prepared chorus sounded even fuller and clearer than usual. The chorus is undoubtedly one of the WNO’s most valuable assets.

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Lucrezia Borgia:

Donizetti Betrayed

by Ronald G. Precup

Despite the presence of over-whelmingly popular American soprano Renée Fleming in the title role and seven sold-out perform-ances, the Washington National Opera’s new production of Donizetti’s Lucrezia Borgia distorted the historical opera, based on a play by Victor Hugo, beyond recognition. One would hope this one never again sees the light of day.

The fault lies entirely with director John Pascoe, whose “vision” of the work turned the relationship between Lucrezia’s unacknowledged son Gennaro and his comrade-in-arms Maffio Orsini explicitly and publicly homosexual. One need not have a doctorate in history to realize that in Renaissance Italy, where the story is set, let alone on the 19th-century Italian opera stage,one would never find male lovers kissing each other on the mouth or fondling each other’s behinds as one did in this travesty. Pascoe’s misapprehension of the history and the esthetic of the work did violence to it and relegated whatever remaining artistic value it might have had to the back burner. The Borgias and their contemporaries were no saints, but Pascoe’s mistaking the friendship of fellow combatants for homoerotic love is beyond the pale.

It was perhaps a blessing to those with traditional sensibilities in the audience that Orsini is a trouser role, sung by American mezzo soprano Kate Aldrich, so that the interplay between Orsini and Gennaro was less unsettling than it might have been. Aldrich, though, was not a very convincing boy, and although she handled the role acceptably well, she did not give a vocal performance that left one wanting to hear her again.

Tenor Vittorio Grigolo held forth as Gennaro, and though he sang well enough, he seemed to have a great deal of difficulty locating the center of gravity of the character fashioned by Pascoe. One can hardly blame him. He found no balance to his roles as warrior, a son devoted to a mother he never knew, and a loyal friend, proving an uncomfortable, uncertain, and entirely unsympathetic hero, even when spared by Donizetti – at the insistence of the censors – from the matricide of Hugo’s play.

Renée Fleming, as everyone knows, sings beautifully and is deserving in every way of her popularity and critical acclaim. That said, the bel canto repertoire is probably not her long suit. Yes, the rapid runs and turns, accuracy of pitch, and the treacherous and precipitous leaps from high range to low were all there every time. That extra vocal spark, though, that made sopranos like Joan Sutherland and Beverly Sills so successful in these coloratura roles, was just not there.

Italian bass Ruggero Raimondi sang Lucrezia’s consort – one of several the historical figure has during her lifetime – Duke Alfonso. His voice may have seen better days, but his stage presence and his complete grasp of the evil the Duke represents made his a most satisfying performance.

Of the several secondary roles, two stood out. Chinese tenor Yingxi Zhang, a former Domingo-Cafritz Young Artist, was impressive, if somewhat small-voiced, as Rustighello. Bass-baritone Robert Cantrell, a frequent visitor to the WNO stage, exhibited a rich, well-focused voice and a powerful bearing as Gubetta.

The remaining roles included bass Grigory Soloviov as Apostolo Gazella, baritone Oleksandr Pushniak as Ascanio Petrucci, tenors Jésus Daniel Hernandez as Jeppo Liverotto and Jose Ortega as Oloferno Vitellozo, and bass David B. Morris as Astolfo.

WNO’s general director Placido Domingo conducted with a sure hand, without any annoying idiosyncrasies, though the WNO orchestra did not particularly distinguish itself. Pascoe’s sets were generally quite good, and the trapdoor setting for the prison entrance in the last act was particularly impressive. His costum-ing was good for most characters, but the shiny-fabric outfits of Gennaro and Maffio were out of place.

One expects better.

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This Carmen Ages Like Fine Wine

by Ronald G. Precup

Like La Boheme and Madama Butterfly, Bizet’s Carmen is far too frequently performed, this Washington National Opera revival being the second major local production in the last four months. But thanks to a superb cast, good stage direction, and the incomparable Denyce Graves in the title role, there was nothing shopworn about the lively and powerful offering.

Productions of Carmen rise or fall on the strength of the mezzo soprano who portrays her. Washington audiences were blessed in November by the return of Graves, who first sang the role here fourteen years ago. Although that earlier performance was first-rate, Graves, as the world’s reigning Carmen, has nearly perfected her treatment of the steamy character, giving her a depth and complexity surpassing any that one is likely to experience in our generation.

The sweet, rich voice seems undiminished, and Graves’s familiarity with the role she has sung so often brings a naturalness to her portrayal that contrasts strongly with the stereotypical Carmens too frequently heard. The rest of the singers, chorus included, seemed to sense they were part of something special, and they lived up to the occasion.

Italian-Brazilian tenor Thiago Arancam gave an intense, stirring performance as Don José. He developed his character’s fall from model soldier to despairing deserter with subtlety and consistency over the opera’s long three-plus hours. His powerful voice never seemed to tire, and his frequent high notes had a ring reminiscent of a young Placido Domingo.

Escamillo, the Toreador, was in the capable hands of a newcomer to Washington, Russian bass-baritone Alexander Vinogradov, who has the slim, athletic physique one can easily see dodging the horns of an enraged bull. Vinogradov’s acting was secure and his stage presence credible. Most remarkable, though, was the large, clean, full sound of his voice, utterly lacking in woofiness and absolutely even from bottom to top. This is a singer we should encourage to return to Washington early and often.

Slovenian soprano Sabina Cvilak gave us a traditional, purely acted and well sung Micaela, avoiding the sappy sweetness to which the part is sometimes subject. Only a slight stridency in the top register detracted a little from her performance.

Local bass John Marcus Bindel reprised his 2002 role as Zuniga, bringing better stage presence this time and giving substance to the character lesser singers often lack.

Baritone James Shaffran also returned as Dancairo, repeating his delightful comic duet with the character Remendado, finely sung in this production by tenor Peter Burroughs.

The roles of Carmen’s companions Frasquita and Mercedes, who have quite a bit of singing to do over the course of the four acts, were ably filled by soprano Emily Albrink and mezzo Cynthia Hanna, who shared the roles with others during the run.

Steven Gathman, the company’s long-time chorus master, wielded the baton in place of Julius Rudel for the reviewed performance. His firm hand and straightforward conducting kept the large forces well coordinated, in welcome contrast to the tense competition between singers and maestro reported for the opening night performance.

The most significant shortcoming of the production was Allen Charles Klein’s single set, which failed in its futile attempt to represent, in successive acts, the outside of a cigarette factory, the inside of a tavern, a gypsy camp, and the exterior of a bullring. The lack of imagination in design was a major disappointment.

Appropriate costuming by Lennart Mark and first-rate stage direction by David Gately helped overcome the dreariness of the set.

All in all, this Carmen is one of the better productions of the warhorse one is likely to encounter.

Washington National Opera

May 2010

Le Nozze di Figaro: The Voice is the Thing

Reviewed by Ronald G. Precup

There are so many facets to opera that it is easy to overlook what matters most: great singing. How fortunate for us that the Washington National Opera did not overlook it in mounting a memorable, lively production of Mozart’s Le Nozze di Figaro that never let down, from the opening notes of the overture through the concluding ensemble. Brisk tempi and a single intermission for this four-act opera resulted in a three-hour, six-minute evening that seemed even shorter.

Though none of the singers is – at least yet – a marquee name, one would be hard put to cast better voices, more attractive actors, or a better fit among principals than in this sparkling production.

As with most grand operas, an instrumental overture preceded the singing, and it was the first clue that this was anything but humdrum. Conductor Patrick Fournillier, mak-ing his company debut, set an uncommonly swift, exciting, but entirely controlled pace. The WNO orchestra never missed a beat.

The tempo proved less than ideal for the opening duet between Russian bass Ildar Abdrazakov’s Figaro and Argentinian soprano Veronica Cangemi’s Susanna, leaving them working too hard to produce a lyrical sound. After that “warm up,” though, the pair hit their stride and provided nothing but the most pleasing, idiomatic singing.

Abdrazakov, a spry, engaging Figaro, held forth with just the right balance of wit, cunning, and slapstick to command the center of attention without going overboard. Cangemi seemed the very embodiment of Susanna, flirtatious, strong-willed, tender, inhabiting the set with easy grace, all the while singing impeccably.

New Zealand baritone Teddy Tahu Rhodes was ideally suited to the role of Count Almaviva. Standing tall, feet apart, arms akimbo, with shoulder-length hair and a sometimes open shirt, he portrayed the most Don Giovanni-like Almaviva imagin-able. His bold, resonant voice perfectly matched his swashbuckling manner, and his hold on the women in the audience seemed as powerful as his hold on the Countess, Barbarina, and even Susanna on stage.

Argentinian soprano Virginia Tola brought a youthful, yet noble and dignified mien to the Countess. Though the tempo for her aria “Porgi amor,” unlike the pacing of the rest of the opera, was too slow to carry the musical line, “Dove sono” floated poignantly and beautifully through the opera house, holding the audience in thrall. Tola and Cangemi together struck the ideal balance of mistress and chambermaid, fully realizing the complexity of their relationship, equal in intelligence and character, if disparate in station.

Mezzo soprano Michèle Losier as Cherubino sang well, with a straight-forward reading of the sometimes exaggerated role. Like the opening duet, her “Non so più” was rushed to the detriment of its lyricism, but that must fall to the conductor, not Losier.

Victoria Livengood simply sang and acted the spots off the role of Marcellina, her huge voice filling the hall and her comedic sense adding immeasurably to the success of the production. Bass Valeriano Lanchas was an uninspired Bartolo, not quite up to the excellence of the rest of the cast. Tenor Robert Baker’s Basilio was the quirky, silly characterization Baker does so well, and soprano Emily Albrink delighted as a sweet, endearing Barbarina.

Harry Silverstein’s stage direction was classic, never imposing out-of-time or out-of-place idiosyncrasies for their own sake, but laying out the Mozart masterpiece with the greatest respect for its art. As a result, the inherent humor and the brilliant and beautiful music shone through in the best of operatic tradition.

November 2009

Falstaff: Verdi’s Last Opera No Laughing Matter

by Ronald G. Precup

An excellent supporting cast barely managed to survive baritone Alan Opie’s lackluster title character in the Washington National Opera’s dis-appointing production of Giuseppe Verdi’s final and perhaps greatest masterpiece, Falstaff. The operatic comedy, fashioned from parts of Shakespeare’s Henry plays and The Merry Wives of Windsor, is a delightful panoply of musical forms and parodies, but it demands a larger-than-life Falstaff, and Opie did not provide it.

Vocally, Opie was certainly adequate for the role, earning high passing marks for tone quality, pitch, and precision. His acting, though, was far too restrained to convey the breadth – physically and dramatically – of his complex character. Better suited to the introspective aria “Va, vecchio John,” Opie’s characterization was reserved when it needed to be expansive, straitened when it needed to be broad, constrained when it needed to be free. That simply left too much for the rest of the cast to do.

The opera’s inherent brilliance got little help from the play-within-a-play conceit director Christian Räth imposed on a work that didn’t need it. The conceit did nothing to deepen the audience’s understanding of the characters, the plot, or the music. It seemed to be little more than a difference for difference’s sake, seldom a good reason to “improve” a proven work of art.

Other directorial failings robbed the opera of some of its funniest moments. In the final scene, with the townspeople, costumed like various spirits of the forest to taunt and frighten Falstaff down from his throne of self-importance, singing “pizzica, stuzzica” (“poke him, stick him”), there was no poking or sticking. That left flat and meaning-less Verdi’s hilarious musical parody that Falstaff sings on the Latin hymn “Salva me, Domine” (“Save me, Lord”): “Ma salvagli addomine” (“But save my belly”).

The stalwart supporting cast did much to salvage the production. Tenor Robert Leggate, fondly remembered for his sensitive portrayal of Starry Vere in WNO’s Billy Budd of 2004, sang a subtler, deeper Dr. Caius than is usually heard. Chinese tenor Yingxi Zhang used his youthful, lovely voice to project a lithe and handsome Fenton, perfectly matched by the sweet soprano voice of the comely German-born Micaela Oeste.

Baritone Timothy Mix sang and acted a multifaceted Ford, strongly into the plot and interacting fully with the other characters. Aided by a powerful stage presence, he proved more a personage than the title character. Mezzo-soprano Nancy Maultsby pleased as Mistress Quickly. Her clear voice, agile bear-ing, and wonderful sense of the comic contributed to a memorable performance. Elizabeth Bishop’s Mrs. Page, Tamara Wilson’s Alice Ford, David Cangelosi’s Bardolfo, and Grigory Soloviov’s Pistola were all well-cast and helped salvage what was otherwise a humdrum pro-duction.

Hayden Griffin’s sets did a lot with little, and the giant oak that forms the backdrop for the final scene was particularly well done. Sebastian Lang-Lessing’s conducting was tradi-tional, exacting competent but uninspired sounds from the company’s orchestra.

The large chorus, superbly prepared by chorus master Steven Gathman, was unerring in its diction, timing, precision, and stage movement. Like the supporting cast, it did a lot to save the production from mediocrity.

Falstaff is a large work requiring a dramatically large title character and a large directorial vision to be successful. Both elements were lacking here, and the result was sadly predictable.

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A Disappointing Turandot Concludes the Season

by Ronald G. Precup

Although perhaps not Puccini’s most popular opera, Turandot, incomplete at the composer’s death, is generally recognized as his best. Beginning with an exotic fable from a faraway land, Puccini weaves some of his most haunting, potent, compelling music to portray the melting of the ice princess of ancient China.

This review takes in the final performance, the only one conducted by WNO general director Placido Domingo. Unfortunately, the second cast sang, and the combination was not a happy one.

Any assessment of a Turandot production must start with the title character, a role so powerful that it took Wagnerian sopranos like Inge Borkh and Birgit Nilsson to do it justice. No Mimis need apply. Based on her earlier fine performances a Salome and Tosca, French soprano Sylvie Valerie has a strong and lovely voice and more than a little acting ability. As Turandot, she sang her notes on time and on pitch, but with little else. Nothing in her singing or acting brought any magic to the stage. The audience never had a chance to experience the high drama and tension of the signature aria, “In questa reggia,” because Valerie never provided it.

Tenor Franco Farina fared far worse, though, as Calaf, Turandot’s success-ful suitor. He barked and strained his way through the opera with a most unpleasant voice, doing almost no acting and seeming careless of the role he was paid to sing. His rendition of the overwhelmingly popular “Nessun dorma” lacked fire, intensity, and any other quality that might have raised it above the purely mundane.

Domingo’s conducting suffered from what appeared to be a lack of rehearsal time, and the tempos, dynamics, and entrances the cast had gotten used to under the baton of Keri-Lynn Wilson, who led the other seven performances, were different enough under Domingo to lead to a raggedness and lack of precision that were all too amateurish for this city and company. Never did Domingo seem to have a clear idea of where the work was going.

Latvian soprano Maija Kovalevska was as infected with ennui as the rest of the cast as Liu, especially in the first act’s “Signore, ascolta”. By the time of her torture and death scene in Act Three, the intensity of her acting and the warmth of her voice had markedly improved.

Ping, Pang, and Pong, ably and delightfully sung by baritone Nathan Herfindahl, tenor Norman Shankle, and tenor Yingxi Zhang, easily proved to be the high point of the production. They were lively, en-gaged, enthusiastic and most enter-taining. More importantly, they performed so superbly in ensemble that they might have been perform-ing their roles together for years.

Bass Morris Robinson gave an affecting, tender performance as Calaf’s blind, deposed father. Tenor Robert Baker was his usual, accomp-lished self as the Emperor Altuom. Ukranian baritone Oleksandr Pushniak did not measure up, delivering the stentorian announce-ment of the Mandarin with poor Italian pronunciation and a lackluster voice.

The chorus, except for the conducting problems already men-tioned that were not the singers’ fault, was a massive, focused mount-ain of sound, filling the important role with force and decisiveness.

The production, that of the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, is now 25 years old. Its one-time inno-vations are no longer new, and they add little to either the story or the staging’s entertainment value. The chorus was sometimes used as an audience to the unfolding events and sometimes as a participant. The conceit seemed superfluous at best.

The first cast, conductor included, provided an acceptable level of performance to this great opera. Washington audiences deserve much more than the poor facsimile of this second cast.

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Verdi’s La Traviata: Third Time Charmed

by Ronald G. Precup

First heard in 1997 and repeated in 2004, the current production of Washington National Opera’s season opener, Verdi’s beloved La Traviata, might be expected to show fraying edges. On the contrary, to Washington’s good fortune, brilliant casting and an exceptionally well-executed performance made the show outshine its predecessors by a wide and happy margin.

Soprano Elizabeth Futral, who, by the way, did a great job singing the National Anthem at a Nationals Park baseball game just before the opera season opened, was a com-plete Violetta. She was by turns flighty, sympathetic, and ultimately tragic, enduing the role with depth of character and gracing it with the highest level of intelligent and sensitive musicianship. The part lends itself to melodrama, but Futral avoided excess and at the same time brought out all its heartbreak honestly and credibly.

Mexican tenor Arturo Chacón-Cruz, heard the last two seasons in Mariusz Trelinski’s bizarre productions of Puccini operas that clearly hampered his style, sounded and acted more at ease in this traditional Marta Domingo staging than in those earlier works. Clarity of tone and strong, easy high notes marked his able and satisfying performance.

Georgian baritone Lado Ataneli sang a rather stiff elder Germont, maintaining his formal, icy bearing throughout the dramatic second-act duet with Violetta. One could detect little change in his feelings toward her even after she demonstrated how much she was sacrificing in order to protect his good name. Ataneli’s was a valid if unorthodox treatment of the character, and it stood him in good stead in the final scene, where he could show a genuine conversion of heart toward the young couple. He did tend, though, to have minor pitch problems all evening.

Mezzo-soprano Margaret Thompson, a memorable Suzuki in Trelinski’s 2006 Madama Butterfly, sang a suitable, pleasing Flora. Of the smaller roles, soprano Micaela Oeste, a new member of the Domingo-Cafritz Young Artist Program, stood out as convincing, stalwart Annina. Tenors Yingxi Zhang as Gastone and J. Austin Bitner as Guiseppe, baritones Nathan Herfindahl as Baron Douphol and Oleksander Pushniak as Dr. Grenvil, and bass Grigory Soloviov as Marquis D’Obigny filled out a top-quality cast.

Marta Domingo’s stage direction varied only slightly from the 1997 and 2004 presentations, classical, solid, and wholly appropriate to the heart of the opera. Giovanni Agostinucci’s sets and costumes, despite the overt treatment of Flora’s place as a house of ill repute decorated in prostitution red, were generally fitting. Setting Violetta’s first-act party in a garden was done imaginatively and beautifully.

The choreography of Sara Erde was much more effective than that of prior years, largely because of solo dancer Eric Rivera, who made the gypsy and toreador entertainment at Flora’s party truly engaging.

The chorus, many of whom had appeared in this production before, sang in their usual clear and forceful manner. Strangely, the program gave no credit to a chorusmaster.

Israeli conductor Dan Ettinger, making his company debut, used the occasion to stamp his mark on the production, introducing tempi and dynamic contrasts not usually heard in this staple of the operatic repertoire. He generally held the large on-stage forces together with the orchestra, no mean feat. Ettinger kept a fast but not frenetic pace going throughout the evening, and its effect was salutary, leaving one with the sense that a wonderful opera had gone by all too soon.