ANTONÍN DVOŘÁK (1841 – 1904): Violin Concerto in A minor, Opus 53andARAM KHACHATURIAN (1903 – 1978): Violin Concerto in D minor– Rachel Barton Pine, violin; Royal Scottish National Orchestra; Teddy Abrams, conductor [Recorded at RSNO Centre, Glasgow, Scotland, UK, 21 – 22 August 2018; Avie RecordsAV2411; 1 CD, 73:11; Available from Avie Records, Naxos Direct, Amazon (USA), jpc (Germany), Presto Classical (UK), and major music retailers]

Chronicles of recording Classical Music and opera brim with laments for missed opportunities and celebrations of serendipitous happenstances. Regret that Jussi Björling did not sing the rôle of Riccardo on the earlier of Sir Georg Solti’s two studio recordings of Verdi’s Un ballo in maschera for Decca is mitigated by appreciation of the superb performance of the part by Carlo Bergonzi of which the set ultimately boasted. In a similar vein, there is the opera-worthy tale of American soprano Eleanor Steber, like Björling an elegant artist with an unfortunate penchant for overindulgent imbibing, arriving at a studio session at which she was scheduled to record Mozart arias, declaring that her mood was incompatible with Mozart, substituting the heroine’s aria ‘Depuis le jour’ from Gustave Charpentier’sLouise, and extemporaneously recording what many listeners continue to regard as the definitive account of the aria on disc. In the whirlwind, competitive world of Classical Music, collisions of the plethora of measurable and intangible effects of personalities and logistics are inevitable. It is rare that unforeseen circumstances yield results of the quality of Bergonzi’s Decca Riccardo and Steber’s ‘Depuis le jour,’ but occurrences such as these are rightly coveted by music lovers.

The fortuitous scheduling conflict that engendered this noteworthy Avie Records recording of Violin Concerti by Antonín Dvořák and Aram Khachaturian provides another compelling reason for gratitude to whichever cosmic forces govern such phenomena. Initially scheduled to record other works with a different conductor, violinist Rachel Barton Pine seized the opportunity presented by an eleventh-hour problem with the intended conductor’s availability to revisit music with which she has been acquainted since the dawn of her career. In her scholarly but engagingly personal essay accompanying this release, Barton Pine reminisces about learning the Dvořák and Khachaturian Concerti at the age of fifteen.

It is not difficult to imagine Mozart or Mendelssohn undertaking the study of such demanding music in adolescence, but this degree of conscientiousness is at odds with perceptions of modern youth. Barton Pine defies many of today’s trends in approaching a career as a violin soloist, however, honoring the legacies of violinists like Nathan Milstein and Arthur Grumiaux by allying comprehensive knowledge of the most popular concerti with explorations of a vast array of chamber music, lesser-known concert works, and new pieces. With an artist of Barton Pine’s adventurousness, the near-spontaneous decision to record the Dvořák and Khachaturian Concerti is perhaps a critical component of the immediacy of her playing of this music.

Recorded in a natural, resonant acoustic in which not even the violin’s highest tones are distorted, the 1742 Guarneri ‘del Gesù’ violin, Dominique Pecatte bow, and Thomastik-Infeld Vision Titanium Solo strings employed by Barton Pine are conduits for uncommon, often revelatory interpretive acuity. [Recently hearing her performance of music by Johann Sebastian Bach at the National Gallery of Art, where the program included a majestic but mesmerizingly intimate traversal of the fourth of Bach’s Partitas for solo violin alongside Sonatas partnering her with harpsichordist Jory Vinikour, confirmed that the violinist’s artistic perspicacity is limited by neither repertoire nor the instrument at her disposal, the Bach pieces having been played on a Nicolò Gagliano violin dating from 1770.] The expressivity of her playing is accentuated by the sympathetic conducting of Teddy Abrams, who receives from the Royal Scottish National Orchestra playing characterized by undeviating technical mastery, rhythmic precision, and well-blended ensemble.

His 2014 appointment as Music Director of The Louisville Orchestra making him America’s youngest principal conductor of a prominent symphonic ensemble, Abrams conducts these works by Dvořák and Khachaturian with convention-flouting pragmatism that complements Barton Pine’s genre-bending aesthetic. The latent Romanticism of Dvořák’s music and the idiosyncratic accents of Khachaturian’s artistic language are omnipresent in the orchestra’s playing, but these are not performances in which choices of tempo, dynamic contrasts, and subtleties of phrasing unimaginatively adhere to traditions.

Abrams’s decisions are commendably faithful to the composers’ scores, indicating an atypical trust in the music’s capacity to advance the best answers to interpretive questions. The rapport among conductor, soloist, and orchestra audible in their recorded efforts is evidence of a shared dedication neither to recreating established interpretations of these pieces nor to consciously creating new ones but to rediscovering the authentic, sometimes ignored or marginalized voices of the composers. It is regrettable that there is novelty in fidelity to the composers’ instructions in this repertoire, but these performances assert how strikingly original faithful service to the music can sound.

Composed in 1879, following an encounter with the celebrated violinist Joseph Joachim, who never performed the piece, and premièred in Prague in 1883 by František Ondřiček, a successful composer in his own right, Dvořák’s Opus 53 Violin Concerto had by the turn of the Twentieth Century claimed a permanent, prominent place in the violin concerto repertoire. Though the writing for the soloist recalls aspects of Brahms’s and Tchaikovsky’s violin concerti, both of which were completed in 1878, the music for the orchestra in the opening Allegro ma non troppo movement of the Dvořák Concerto discloses a stylistic pedigree with close ties to Beethoven’s Seventh, Eighth, and Ninth Symphonies. Virtuosity is demanded of and here achieved by the orchestra, not least in the movement’s most rhapsodic passages, but it is the deceptively extemporaneous character of Barton Pine’s playing that lifts the music off of the page. In her performances of both of the Concerti on this disc, the violinist’s execution of double stops is superb, her intonation accurate and the paired notes impeccably balanced.

Emerging without pause from an unexpected modification of the first movement’s thematic recapitulation, the central Adagio ma non troppo movement of the Dvořák Concerto evokes the rustic elegance of the Czech folk music that the composer so loved and endeavored to preserve. Her judicious use of vibrato fostering tonal production that emphasizes the warmth of the music and that of the timbre of the Guarneri ‘del Gesú’ violin, Barton Pine draws from the instrument sounds that impart Dvořák’s great affection for the humor and humility of the Czech people. A hallmark of the soloist’s part in the Concerto’s Allegro gracioso ma non troppo finale is the use of repetitive figurations that anticipate the prominence of ostinati in Twentieth-Century music. In Dvořák’s handling, this device functions much like a ground bass in Baroque music, providing the movement’s bustling momentum. Abrams and the RSNO respond to the vigor of Barton Pine’s playing with their own verve. This is an exuberant reading of the Concerto, but the bleaker moods that lurk within the music are not neglected. Above all, this is a superlatively-played performance that illuminates the composer’s ingenuity rather than the performers’ egos.

The Armenian-born Khachaturian’s Violin Concerto was a product of an idyllic sylvan retreat during which the composer’s creative impulses were fueled by the inspiration of nature. Written for and premièred in 1940 by famed violinist David Oistrakh, whose cadenza in the first movement Barton Pine plays—dazzlingly—in this performance [Khachaturian preferred it to his own cadenza, as well], the Concerto was honored in its own time but tainted in short-sighted Twenty-First-Century assessments by being awarded a Stalin Prize by the Soviet Union. Like Dvořák, Khachaturian was inevitably affected by the politics of his time, but he, too, felt profound love for the folk music of his homeland. The innovative rhythms and pungent harmonies that distinguish Khachaturian’s works from those of his contemporaries are integral components of his Violin Concerto, but, perhaps because of the tranquil surroundings of its genesis, this music also possesses episodes of spellbinding emotional sincerity.

In her introductory notes, Barton Pine relates that her fondness for the Khachaturian Concerto began with her recognition of the kinship between Khachaturian’s assertive style and the heavy metal music that she enjoys. Had Steppenwolf or Iron Maiden commissioned a concerto for metal band, they might have turned to Khachaturian, and the Allegro con fermezza movement of his Violin Concerto could have been adapted to accommodate guitar riffs and cacophonous percussion. Barton Pine imposes nothing upon the music, her playing revealing only what she finds in the score, but it is unlikely that any other violinist’s performance of the movement has ‘rocked’ as exhilaratingly as hers. This is overtly elaborate music, tailored to Oistrakh’s abilities, but the playing of Barton Pine and her colleagues is never ostentatious.

Listeners whose familiarity with Khachaturian’s music is limited to frequently-heard pieces like excerpts from his 1942 ballet score Gayane may be surprised by the sentimentality of the Violin Concerto’s Andante sostenuto movement. Abrams’s cogent pacing and the orchestra’s thoughtful playing heighten the impact of Barton Pine’s unpretentious lyricism. This violinist understands that saccharine over-emoting is contrary to the spirit and structure of Khachaturian’s music and phrases accordingly. Building upon this welcome restraint, she holds nothing back in her performance of the Concerto’s Allegro vivace conclusion. Undertaking a performance or recording of this music without certainty of one’s capacity to play it properly is unimaginable, but the exceptional caliber of Barton Pine’s technique is no less astounding for being expected. Fantastic merely as a performance of a fascinating piece, her traversal of the Khachaturian Concerto is invaluable as a delivery of the score from the confines of stodgy concepts of how and by whom ‘serious music’ should be composed, performed, and enjoyed.

For all of its much-promoted claims of increased diversity and accessibility, Classical Music is more exclusive now than ever before in its storied history. There are more performances of more works in more places, and the careers of composers and musicians are no longer sustained by aristocratic patronage. There is hunger for the comfort and unity that music can foster, but there are self-proclaimed guardians of the temple of art who would rather starve those who seek fulfillment rather than relinquish their fiercely-defended grip on standards that in some instances are no longer tenable.

Like Benny Goodman, Rachel Barton Pine is an artist for whom distinctions of musical genres are not insurmountable boundaries but points of departure for journeys that connect people in spite of the differences that divide them. The performances of Violin Concerti by Antonín Dvořák and Aram Khachaturian on this disc are invitations to listeners, whether they are most comfortable in concert halls or mosh pits, to experience music on their own terms. By any standard, Barton Pine here enriches the discography with perceptive, pulse-quickening performances of two of the great concerti for her instrument. Moreover, these are performances that dispel the myths that greatness expired with artists of the past and that the recognition of greatness among today’s artists somehow lessens that of their forebears.

GIUSEPPE VERDI (1813 – 1901): Macbeth— Mark Rucker (Macbeth), Othalie Graham (Lady Macbeth), Song Zaikuan (Banco), Gianluca Sciarpelletti (Macduff), Jonathan Kaufman (Malcolm), Nancy Unser (Una dama di Lady Macbeth), Robert Harrelson (Un domestico di Macbeth, Un sicario, Un medico), David Clark (Prima apparizione), Ashley West-David (Seconda apparizione), Margaret Tyler (Terza apparizione), Bryson Woodey (Fleance); Opera Carolina Chorus and Orchestra; James Meena, conductor [Ivan Stefanutti, Director and Designer; Atelier Nicolao, Costumes; Michael Baumgarten, Lighting Designer; Opera Carolina, Belk Theater, Blumenthal Performing Arts, Charlotte, North Carolina, USA; 7 November 2019]

It is not solely four centuries’ accumulation of thespians’ superstitions that haunts the pages of ‘the Scottish play,’ William Shakespeare’s The Tragedy of Macbeth. Published for the first time in the 1623 folio of Shakespeare’s works and based upon the fanciful account of Scottish history contained in the 1587 edition of Holinshed’s Chronicles of England, Scotland, and Ireland, Macbeth dramatizes events from the reign of Eleventh-Century King of Alba Mac Bethad mac Findlaích and his wife Gruoch ingen Boite, virtually all accounts of whose lives cannot be corroborated. What can be verified is that, despite its relative brevity in comparison with its Shakespearean brethren, Macbeth has long been problematic for theatrical troupes. Inexplicable staging mishaps, physical injuries, fires, and financial calamities are all part of Macbeth’s lore, but the play’s foremost danger to actors is perhaps a deceptive sense that performing one of the Western canon’s most iconic dramas guarantees success. Plentiful amongst Macbeth’s victims are acclaimed actors whose skills proved to be inferior to the play’s demands.

Apart from a spectator’s startling suicide during an interval in a 1988 performance at the Metropolitan Opera, mayhem is less prominent in the performance history of Giuseppe Verdi’s operatic setting of Macbeth than in that of the play that inspired it, but neither the opera’s creation nor its subsequent revision was without complications. After receiving a carte-blanche commission from Florence’s Teatro della Pergola, Verdi was reminded by the availability of eminent baritone Felice Varesi, who would later create the title rôle in Rigoletto and Giorgio Germont in La traviata, of poet Andrea Maffei’s suggestion of Macbeth as a suitable operatic subject. Maffei was already adapting Friedrich von Schiller’s play Die Räuber for Verdi as I masnadieri, the first performance of which was given in London four months after Macbeth premièred in Florence. The libretto of Macbeth, modeled on Carlo Rusconi’s 1838 Italian translation of the play, was ultimately written by Francesco Maria Piave, who authored texts for ten of Verdi’s operas. The composer fell ill in the summer of 1846, delaying his work on Macbeth, but the extended gestation engendered a score in which aspects of Verdi’s genius that were only glimpsed in his nine previous operas sprang into view.

Disordini in Scozia: the cast of Opera Carolina’s November 2019 production of Giuseppe Verdi’s Macbeth
[Photograph © by Bob Grand Lubell & Opera Carolina]

Eighteen years after its première at Teatro della Pergola, Verdi extensively revised Macbeth for a Paris production, making significant modifications to the music for Macbeth and Lady Macbeth and tailoring the piece to better suit the Parisian tastes influenced by Auber, Halévy, and Meyerbeer. Macbeth was not as successful in Paris in 1865 as it had been in Florence in 1847, but Verdi’s reworkings for the French production introduced new music that tightened the opera’s dramatic structure, bringing its narrative nearer to Shakespeare’s play. Though it was only after Maria Callas sang Lady Macbeth at Teatro alla Scala in December 1952 that the opera reclaimed a place in the international repertoire, a hybridization of components of the 1847 and 1865 versions of the enabled audiences to appreciate both the radical inventiveness of Macbeth’s earlier incarnation and the heightened psychological probity of Verdi’s maturity. Utilizing an edition that, aside from omitting the ballet music and including Macbeth’s ‘Mal per me’ in the final scene, largely adhered to the composite score published by Ricordi in the 1880s [a critical edition of Macbeth was not available until 2005, when David Lawton’s complete editions of the 1847 and 1865 versions were published], Opera Carolina recreated Macbeth’s Scotland in Charlotte with a decidedly modern approach to tradition.

In recent seasons, Opera Carolina productions have demonstrated how effectively projections can be used to minimize the costs of set construction and rentals without imperiling performances’ theatrical potential. The company’s 2011 and 2014 productions of Il trovatore and Nabucco affirmed the viability of scenic projections in Verdi repertoire, and Michael Baumgarten’s lighting designs combined with the projections, devised by Baumgarten and director Ivan Stefanutti, to create visual effects that evolved in tandem with the drama. Not all of the imagery was wholly successful: in particular, the gargantuan specters that appeared on the screen drew the viewer’s attention away from the apparitions who sang on the stage. Scotland’s stunning landscapes clearly inspired many of the tableaux, but, like their paranormal counterparts, depictions of tempest-tossed seas and an undulating forest sometimes overwhelmed the stage action. The opera’s penultimate and closing scenes transpired before an evocative solar eclipse that gave way to a blazing sun, limning Scotland’s delivery from Macbeth’s tyranny. Avoiding blatant anachronisms [there are sometimes objections to use of Scotland’s emblematic rampant lion in productions of Macbeth, but the Royal Banner is known to have been a symbol of the Kingdom of Alba as early as 1222 and may already have been familiar during the historical Macbeth’s life], the production provided a dazzlingly atmospheric backdrop for the opera’s engrossing drama.

Scenically, Stefanutti’s opulent costume designs, masterfully realized by Stefano Nicolao and Atelier Nicolao, were this production’s foremost triumph. Singers of all body types were flatteringly attired in garments that, though indubitably more cumbersome than street clothes, impeded neither movement nor singing. The earth tones donned by Macbeth and his courtiers contrasted tellingly with the gleaming white worn by Lady Macbeth, intimating that the queen was unmistakably a woman at odds with her subjects. Trailing beards and illuminated, antennae-like appendages gave the witches’ bizarre appearance a subtle hint of humor that was inappropriate to neither Shakespeare nor Verdi, Stefanutti’s concept having much in common with the sketches of the inaugural 1847 Florence production of Macbeth now found in the Ricordi archives. So unobtrusive was Martha Ruskai’s typically thoughtful management of wigs and makeup that a pair of patrons were overheard at the interval discussing how artfully the principals’ natural hair was arranged. The absence of reliable primary sources inhibits scholars’ efforts to determine precisely how the denizens of Macbeth’s Scotland adorned and carried themselves, but Opera Carolina’s Macbeth proposed plausible solutions for the opera’s scenic enigmas.

Il caudore e la sua regina: baritone Mark Rucker as Macbeth (left) and soprano Othalie Graham as Lady Macbeth (right) in Opera Carolina’s November 2019 production of Giuseppe Verdi’s Macbeth
[Photograph by Mitchell Kearney, © by Opera Carolina]

The visual appeal of this Macbeth complemented an unfailingly musical and unapologetically Italianate reading of the score by Opera Carolina’s Artistic Director, James Meena. An accomplished interpreter of an extensive repertoire, Meena has often displayed exceptional affinity for conducting Verdi’s operas, and his pacing of Macbeth was febrile but never frantic. The statement in the Preludio of the theme later heard in Lady Macbeth’s sleepwalking scene was phrased with cognizance of its bel canto origins, and tempi were chosen with care throughout the performance. Meena followed Verdi’s lead in progressing organically to rousing climaxes. The tension kindled by the sextet in Act One was palpable, as was the discharge of the accumulated electricity in the act’s finale. There were more mistakes in the Opera Carolina Orchestra’s playing of Macbeth than in previous Verdi performances by the company, the most noticeable of which was the unsettled resolution of the cor anglais’s final trill in the introduction to the sleepwalking scene, but the musicians’ concentration and preparedness yielded many passages of first-rate playing. Most importantly, Meena and the orchestra supported the singers with flexibility and finesse, fostering the creation of an environment in which the principals, certain that their endeavors were bolstered by the work of their colleagues in the pit, could immerse themselves in their rôles.

As has often been true of Opera Carolina productions, the singing of the company’s chorus in this Macbeth was a testament to the wealth of talent in the Charlotte metropolitan opera. As the coven of witches in the opening scene of Act One, the ladies of the chorus intoned ‘Che faceste? Dite su!’ eerily but without resorting to the silly, ‘witchy’ sounds sometimes deployed—often embarrassingly—in this music. Portraying Macbeth’s band of hired assassins in Act Two, the male choristers sang ‘Chi v’impose unirvi a noi?’ sinisterly. Called upon to continue their prophesying in Act Three, Opera Carolina’s ‘weird sisters’ chillingly imparted auguries of Scotland’s future and conjured spirit messengers with unexaggerated singing of ‘Ondine e silfidi, dall’ali candide.’ The sublime andante sostenuto chorus that launches Act Four, ‘Patria oppressa,’ equals the patriotic fervor and pathos of the famous ‘Va, pensiero’ in Nabucco and is perhaps even finer musically. The affecting performance that the piece received from Opera Carolina’s chorus was an ideal foil for the exuberant proclamation of victory with which the opera ended. It was indeed a victorious evening for the choristers.

Il trionfo di male: baritone Mark Rucker as Macbeth (left) and soprano Othalie Graham as Lady Macbeth (right) in Opera Carolina’s November 2019 production of Giuseppe Verdi’s Macbeth
[Photograph by Mitchell Kearney, © by Opera Carolina]

Without exception, Opera Carolina’s cast upheld and enhanced the production’s high musical and dramatic values. The mute rôle of Banco’s young son Fleance was expertly acted by Bryson Woodey, whose beyond-his-years stagecraft shone in his execution of Dale Girard’s choreography of his desperate, violent flight after Banco’s offstage murder. The ominous tidings of the three apparitions who confront Macbeth in Act Three were unnervingly but attractively delivered by David Clark, Ashley West-Davis, and Margaret Tyler. In many performances of Macbeth, it is easy to overlook the fact that Verdi asks Lady Macbeth’s lady-in-waiting to double her mistress’s fearsome top notes in ensembles, but, despite serving a powerhouse Lady, soprano Nancy Unser was an uncommonly vivid, always audible ‘dama,’ the character’s alarm and bewilderment in the sleepwalking scene insightfully communicated. She was partnered in that scene by the firm-voiced doctor of bass-baritone Robert Harrelson, whose confidently-projected tones and intrepid stage presence were equally advantageous in his portrayals of Macbeth’s servant and the assassin who slayed Banco.

In the proverbial operatic Utopia that today’s productions rarely visit, the rôle of Malcolm, the rightful heir to Duncan’s throne, should be assigned to a singer whose performance of his character’s music leaves the impression that he might also have proved to be an effective, capably-sung Macduff. Twenty-First-Century audiences are likely to encounter barely-adequate Malcolms sung by character tenors, but, continuing the trend of the Metropolitan Opera’s current revival, in which Macduff is sung by the renowned tenor Giuseppe Filianoti, Opera Carolina had in Jonathan Kaufman a Malcolm who was anything but a conventional secondo uomo. Kaufman’s lustrous timbre gave Malcolm’s lines in the Act One sextet and finale welcome muscle, and his vocalism in the scene with Macduff in Act Four was fittingly heroic. Ascents above the stave were handled with assurance that echoed the character’s rightful authority. Regaining the power usurped by Macbeth, Kaufman was a Malcolm whose singing was worthy of the crown won by his valor.

L’erede legittimo: tenor Jonathan Kaufman as Malcolm (center) in Opera Carolina’s November 2019 production of Giuseppe Verdi’s Macbeth
[Photograph © by Bob Grand Lubell & Opera Carolina]

Italian tenor Gianluca Sciarpelletti portrayed Macduff, the Thane of Fife, first as a flinty, fecund warrior and later as a man broken by Macbeth’s merciless slaughter of his family. Discovering the corpse of the slain Duncan in Act One, Macduff’s shock, horror, and grief resounded in Sciarpelletti’s singing in the sextet and finale, in which his navigation of the difficult tessitura of his music betrayed few signs of effort. Lamenting both the deaths of his children and his own feelings of helplessness and failure in his moving scene in Act Four, this Macduff declaimed the recitative ‘O figli, o figli miei!’ with wrenching emotion. The aria ‘Ah, la paterna mano’ is one of Verdi’s loveliest pieces for the tenor voice and the impetus for several famous singers who never sang Macduff on stage having recorded the rôle in studio. Sciarpelletti’s performance of the aria lacked bel canto eloquence, but his emphatic top A♭s and B♭♭ forcefully conveyed the despondent father’s anguish. In the battle scene, the tenor’s impassioned voicing of ‘Via le fronde, e mano all’armi!’ propelled Macduff’s quest for vengeance to its inexorable conclusion. Sciarpelletti’s singing was often reminiscent of that of Carlo Cossutta, who retained Macduff in his repertoire for four decades.

Historians conjecture that the character Banquo, Macbeth’s lieutenant and fellow recipient of fateful prognostications from the witches, is either a conflation of historical figures or an invention of Holinshed’s Chronicles who was reimagined by Shakespeare as a moral counterbalance for Macbeth. In duration, the music for Verdi’s Banco is not substantial, but the rôle is musically and dramatically substantive, a distinction that was accentuated by Chinese bass Song Zaikuan’s thunderous singing in Opera Carolina’s Macbeth. In the Act One duet with Macbeth that follows the witches’ declaration that his own sons will succeed Macbeth on Scotland’s throne, Song articulated Banco’s words with acuity, enabling the listener to differentiate Banco’s and Macbeth’s sentiments with unusual clarity. Like Kaufman and Sciarpelletti, Song ensured that his character’s lines in the sextet and Act One finale were not obscured. The bass sang his aria in Act Two, ‘Come dal ciel precipita,’ with evenly-produced, superbly-projected, and truly beautiful tone. In Shakespeare’s time, it was erroneously believed that the Scottish king James VI, who ascended to the English throne upon the death of Elizabeth I as James I, was descended from Banquo. History notwithstanding, Song’s innately noble Banco was a thoroughly convincing ancestor of kings.

Vittoria dei giusti: tenor Jonathan Kaufman as Malcolm (left), baritone Mark Rucker as Macbeth (center), and tenor Gianluca Sciapelletti as Macduff (right) in Opera Carolina’s November 2019 production of Giuseppe Verdi’s Macbeth
[Photograph by Mitchell Kearney, © by Opera Carolina]

Returning to Charlotte, where she has previously sung the demanding title rôles in Verdi’s Aida and Puccini’s Turandot, to portray Lady Macbeth, soprano Othalie Graham first assayed the part in the present production’s October 2019 première at Toledo Opera. This auspicious rôle début inducted her into the very exclusive sorority of singers who have sung Lady Macbeth, Aida, and Turandot. Arguably, the most renowned members of this illustrious society are Maria Callas, Birgit Nilsson, and Leonie Rysanek, but other gifted ladies including Amy Shuard, Pauline Tinsley, Dame Gwyneth Jones, Rita Hunter, Martina Arroyo, Marisa Galvany, and Ghena Dimitrova contributed to the legacy that Graham continued. The vehemence of Graham’s calculating Lady recalled Callas’s standard-setting interpretation, and the incredible might of her singing rivaled Jones’s legendary vocal amplitude. Graham relied upon her own theatrical instincts and vocal resources in forming her characterization, however, thereby restoring to the rôle the Shakespearean grandeur that has been missing from too many recent performances of Macbeth.

Bella regina: soprano Othalie Graham as Lady Macbeth in Opera Carolina’s November 2019 production of Giuseppe Verdi’s Macbeth
[Photograph © by Opera Carolina & Toledo Opera]

Lady Macbeth makes her initial entrance in Act One whilst reading a momentous letter from her husband, a spoken introduction that a number of Ladies have uttered with overwrought enunciation—and, in some cases, wretched Italian. In Graham’s performance, Lady seemed to actually be pondering a private communiqué rather than broadcasting a proclamation to the masses and did so with commendable diction. When she launched the recitative ‘Ambizioso spirto tu sei, Macbetto,’ the soprano began a journey that led the proud Lady from domestic discontent to treachery and destruction. The recitative’s top C was unruly, but the singer’s vocal control prevailed. The trills and bravura passages in the andantino cavatina ‘Vieni! t’affretta!’ and cabaletta ‘Or tutti sorgete’ are rarely comfortable for voices of the size of Graham’s, the former often ignored altogether by dramatic sopranos, but here, too, Graham’s dedication to fidelity to the score conquered the music’s difficulties. Her vocalism in the duet with Macbeth seethed with deadly cunning, her singing of ‘Regna il sonno su tutti’ at once cajoling and contemptuous. Feigning surprise, she credibly played the part of the unsuspecting beneficiary of misfortunate in the sextet and finale, though perceptive onlookers might have recognized her fortissimo top C♭ as an exultant celebration of the success of her scheming. Graham ended Act One with a magnificent D♭₆ that might have leveled Birnam Wood.

In Lady Macbeth’s scene at the start of Act Two, Graham traversed the two-octave range of the allegro moderato aria ‘La luce langue’ with abandon, unafraid of roaring as the leonine aspects of Lady Macbeth’s character pounced into action. The false jollity of the Brindisi, ‘Si coimi il calice di vino eletto,’ drew from Graham singing in which Lady’s unrelenting resolve was audible, and, as in her aria and cabaletta in Act One, no trill was neglected. The Act Three duet with Macbeth found Graham at the height of her powers as a singing actress, her depiction of Lady’s ferocity exemplified by her Herculean top C. Not surprisingly, there was no shortage of vocal strength in Graham’s traversal of the sleepwalking scene in Act Four, but the expressivity of her singing was no less prodigious. The scene’s kinship with Bellini’s and Donizetti’s mad scenes was apparent, but the disintegration of this Lady’s faculties was evinced not by manic actions but by an engrossing singularity of purpose devoted to ridding her hands of the ‘damnèd spot’ that only she could see. That such a large voice reached the written top D♭ quietly, as Verdi intended, was astonishing, but the ethereal beauty of Graham’s tone was captivating. Though undeniably unscrupulous and motivated by an unquenchable lust for power, Graham’s Lady Macbeth was no one-dimensional termagant: beyond the venom and vitriol, a vulnerable woman fighting to find lasting security in a hostile world could be discerned.

Teste incoronate: baritone Mark Rucker as Macbeth (left) and soprano Othalie Graham as Lady Macbeth (right) in Opera Carolina’s November 2019 production of Giuseppe Verdi’s Macbeth
[Photograph © by Opera Carolina & Toledo Opera]

In an acclaimed career that includes memorable performances of Rigoletto, Amonasro in Aida, and Don Carlo in La forza del destino at the Metropolitan Opera, Mark Rucker has garnered a position of honor among the preeminent Verdi baritones of his generation. With his performance in the title rôle in Opera Carolina’s Macbeth, he was a peer of Tito Gobbi and Giuseppe Taddei as an interpreter of Verdi’s music for the Thane of Cawdor. In his first scene, this Macbeth was noticeably amazed by the witches’ foretelling of his regal destiny, and the elation of his anticipated elevation in rank was tinged by uncertainty in his duet with Banco. It was a man who needed only a mild prodding to definitive action who sang ‘A me precorri’ in the duet with Lady Macbeth. Nevertheless, Rucker touchingly divulged the doubt and guilt that plagued Macbeth after Duncan’s assassination.

Some Macbeths make little of the brief scene with Lady Macbeth that opens Act Two, but Rucker deepened his psychological portrait of the tormented thane by singing with attention to Macbeth’s words and how they interact with those of his consort. There are many parallels between Macbeth’s agonized responses to the materialization of Banco’s spirit in the banquet scene and the ravings of the eponymous monarch in the latter half of Nabucco. Rucker voiced ‘Prenda ciascun l’orrevole’ with burgeoning dread, and he projected ‘Tu di sangue hai brutto il volto’ with terrifying vocal steel. His ‘Va! Spirto d’abisso’ was a command that not even the most audacious phantom could disobey. The baritone’s stalwart but unquestionably sincere voicing of ‘Oh! lieto augurio!’ in the gran scena delle apparizioni in Act Three effectuated an element of frailty in his portrayal. In the duet with Lady Macbeth, Rucker further refined his characterization, revealing the passivity at the core of Macbeth’s constitution that feeds his wife’s appetite for dominance.

Sensing the increasing feebleness of his grasp on the crown in Act Four, Macbeth contemplates his mortality in one of Verdi’s great baritone arias, ‘Pietà, rispetto, amore,’ sung by Rucker in this performance with the secure tone, aristocratic phrasing, and expressive elegance that are the hallmarks of important Verdi singing. Rightly rewarded with an enthusiastic ovation, this account of the aria bared Macbeth’s tortured heart to the audience. Including the final choral paean to Macbeth’s defeat and death after Rucker’s profoundly plaintive voicing of ‘Mal per me’ seemed cruel, Macbeth having earned pity with an acceptance of death that he had come to regard as retribution for his crimes. Every note of the rôle in the voice and a myriad of the complicated man’s emotions present in his introspective character study, Rucker offered the Charlotte audience a Macbeth of a caliber widely believed to no longer exist in opera. This is the essence of what Opera Carolina productions assert: opera endures in many of America’s great cities, but, with performances like this Macbeth, it thrives in Charlotte.

RICHARD WAGNER (1813 – 1883): Siegfried, WWV 86C – Act Three— Richard Cox (Siegfried), Alexandra LoBianco (Brünnhilde), Musa Ngqungwana (Der Wanderer), Nicole Piccolomini (Erda); North Carolina Opera Orchestra; Timothy Myers, conductor [North Carolina Opera, Meymandi Concert Hall, Duke Energy Center for the Performing Arts, Raleigh, North Carolina, USA; Sunday, 10 November 2019]

As Americans’ celebrations of the centennial of their declaration of independence helped to heal the still-fresh wounds of the Civil War during the summer of 1876, a new revolution was coming to fruition on the opposite side of the Atlantic. Artists from a plethora of nations and traditions, dignitaries, disciples, and naysayers gathered in the idyllic Bavarian town of Bayreuth, where Richard Wagner, by that time widely acknowledged as an artist with uncommon vision but still a divisive, controversial figure, brought to the stage of a purpose-built theater the first complete performance of his genre-transforming tetralogy Der Ring des Nibelungen. With this epic work, an extended parable imparted by a Teutonic view of Norse mythology, Wagner immortalized his singular concept of Gesamtkunstwerk, an idea borrowed from the German thinker Karl Friedrich Eusebius Trahndorff. The first Bayreuth Ring was arguably less consequential than the American colonists’ struggle for independence, but, with the inauguration of Der Ring des Nibelungen and the Bayreuther Festspiele, Wagner unquestionably celebrated truths that he held to be self-evident.

Premièred on 16 August 1876, the third of the Ring operas advances the cycle’s narrative from Wotan’s abandonment of his spirited daughter Brünnhilde, the eponymous valkyrie who in Act Three of Die Walküre is banished from Valhalla and left to slumber, protected by fire, until she is awakened by a hero who knows no fear, to the maturation of the man destined to be Brünnhilde’s champion. Following its title character’s journey from his untamed youth under the nefarious guidance of Mime to his discovery of Brünnhilde, Siegfried is unique among its companions in Wagner’s ‘Bühnenfestspiel’ in having a third act that is longer in duration than the acts that precede it. [Das Rheingold, Der Ring’s ‘Vorabend,’ is of course structured in a single act, without interval.] Moreover, there is in Siegfried an extraordinary wealth of thematic development, Wagner’s Leitmotivs weaving the dramatic threads of Das Rheingold and Die Walküre into a fabric that unfurls to reveal the cycle’s dénouement in Götterdämmerung. In North Carolina Opera’s concert performance of Act Three of Siegfried, Raleigh’s Meymandi Concert Hall resounded with an overwhelming account of one of opera’s most emotionally tumultuous sequences, as the old order represented by Erda and Wotan is supplanted by the purifying passion of Brünnhilde and Siegfried.

Productions of Wagner’s operas by the world’s best-funded opera companies are sometimes financially ruinous. The monetary benefits of performing a work like Siegfried in concert are obvious, but there can also be considerable artistic advantages not only to concert performances but also to performing single acts of Wagner’s operas. [It was by performing successive acts of the four operas in a period spanning October and November 1953 that Wilhelm Furtwängler recorded his much-discussed complete Ring for Italian radio.] Having already offered Triangle audiences memorable performances of Act One of Die Walküre (2013), Act Two of Tristan und Isolde (2014), and Das Rheingold (2016), North Carolina Opera assembled a group of artists who capitalized on every virtue of performing Act Three of Siegfried in concert. Without visual imagery to animate the opera’s drama, singers, instrumentalists, and conductor relied upon the music to exert its enchantment, aided by musicianship that brought the soul of Bayreuth to life in the heart of Raleigh.

Under the baton of the company’s former Artistic Director Timothy Myers, the playing of the North Carolina Opera Orchestra, expanded for this performance to fulfill the requirements of Wagner’s scoring, was superlative. Siegfried’s vocal demands are so formidable that, especially in the context of staged productions, the difficulties of the orchestral writing do not always receive the attention that they deserve. Wagner’s taxing music for horns is heard throughout Der Ring des Nibelungen, but Act Three of Siegfried also contains some of the composer’s most intimidating but incredibly beautiful music for woodwinds and strings. In North Carolina Opera’s Siegfried, the woodwinds rose to every challenge of their parts, Kevin Streich’s, Brian French’s, and Tony Granados’s respective playing of the bass clarinet, bass trumpet, and contrabass tuba garnering particular admiration. In the passage depicting Siegfried’s ascent to the summit of Brünnhilde’s rock, the violins traverse virtually the entire compass of their instrument, from the open G₃ of the lowest string to harmonics at the tip of the fingerboard. The efforts of North Carolina Opera Orchestra’s violinists were laudably accurate in pitch and ensemble. Also noteworthy was the work of harpists Jacquelyn Bartlett and Grace Ludtke, their playing heightening the eroticism of Brünnhilde’s awakening and interaction with Siegfried.

Though his work on the score commenced two decades before the opera reached the stage, Wagner’s final revisions to Siegfried’s orchestrations were completed in 1871, when plans for the Festspielhaus’s recessed orchestra pit were also nearing completion. The positioning of the pit surely influenced the extremes of dynamics that provide much of the score’s momentum—and that make performing any of Siegfried’s three acts in concert, with the orchestra on stage with the singers, troublesome. In North Carolina Opera’s performance, Myers observed Wagner’s dynamic instructions with tremendous care, evading none of the score’s cacophonous climaxes, but silence was as significant as sound in the conductor’s reading. Myers’s emphasis on pauses magnified the emotional impact of the waning of Wotan’s power and Siegfried’s first pangs of fear. His pacing of orchestral passages, support for the singers, and intuitive handling of Leitmotivs revealed that Myers is a master of both the big moments that some conductors belabor and small details that are sometimes forsaken. In Myers’s handling, Wagner’s music was equally radical and accessible, the singularity of Wagner’s artistic vision omnipresent but never impeding enjoyment of what is, despite its countless subtexts, an uncomplicated story of social decay and renewal.

First heard in Das Rheingold, Erda returns in Act Three of Siegfried, her manifestation in response to the Wanderer’s summons anticipating Siegfried awakening her daughter Brünnhilde. The failure of her prescience also prefigures the opening scene of Götterdämmerung’s Prologue, in which the oracular faculties of the Norns of whom she sings are extinguished. In Raleigh, Erda’s sparring with the Wanderer was voiced with gravitas by mezzo-soprano Nicole Piccolomini. Her singing of ‘Stark ruft das Lied’ was a stern rebuke of the Wanderer’s intrusion into her repose, but there was also a seductive aloofness in her tones that persuasively portrayed Erda as a figure who once inflamed proud Wotan’s libidinous desire.

As sung by Piccolomini, Erda’s statement of ‘Mein Schlaf ist Träumen, mein Träumen Sinnen, mein Sinnen Walten des Wissens’ was not merely a metaphysical conceit: divining the fates of gods and men was for this Erda a profoundly personal burden. The mezzo-soprano voiced ‘Männerthaten umdämmern mir den Muth’ with bracing intensity, and her declamation of ‘Wirr wird mir, seit ich erwacht’ crested on a striking top A♭. The disdain with which this Erda hurled ‘Du bist nicht, was du dich nenn’st!’ at the Wanderer was crushing. The natural resonance of Piccolomini’s lower register lent Erda’s words seismic fortitude, and the unmistakable finality of the measured exit of Piccolomini’s beautifully statuesque Erda intimated that the twilight of the gods was imminent.

It is as the Wanderer in Act Three of Siegfried that Wotan is last seen in Der Ring des Nibelungen, though Leitmotivs associated with his actions recur in Götterdämmerung. In the guise of a nomadic Wanderer, he comes to rouse and question Erda, the earth spirit who bore him Brünnhilde, and South African bass-baritone Musa Ngqungwana assumed the tormented god’s mien with a powerful voicing of ‘Wache, Wala!’ From this entrance until the Wanderer’s ambivalent exit, the weary god both wounded by the demise of his authority and relieved to cede control over the fate of the world to a noble youth, Ngqungwana rose with galvanizing security to the top E♭s and Fs in the rôle’s music.

Asked by Erda why he disturbed her rather than posing his queries to their daughter Brünnhilde, Ngqungwana’s Wanderer replied with a voicing of ‘Die Walküre mein’st du, Brünnhild’, die Maid?’ in which the father’s pain was still raw. The bass-baritone sang ‘Dich Mutter lass’ ich nicht zieh’n, da des Zaubers mächtig ich bin’ with vehemence, the Wanderer’s frustration with Erda clearly a reflection of his own inner turmoil. Heralding the approach of Siegfried with a tense but good-humored ‘Dort seh’ ich Siegfried nah’n,’ this Wanderer interrogated his grandson with genuine interest, seeking in the young man’s words hallmarks of the heroism upon which the redemption of the world depended. Ngqungwana sang ‘Ich seh’, mein Sohn, wo du nichts weißt’ and ‘Kenntest du mich, kühner Sproß’ with dramatic potency that belied the fact that this was his first public performance of the Wanderer’s music. Neither ‘Es floh dir zu seinem Heil!’ nor ‘Fürchte des Felsens Hüter!’ over-extended the bass-baritone’s prodigious resources, and the zeal with which he delivered ‘Fürchtest das Feuer du nicht’ was tinged with resignation. There were moments in which Ngqungwana lost the Wanderer’s battle with the orchestra, a virtual inevitability in a concert performance with the orchestra at his back, but the superb quality of the voice was never eclipsed.

In the 143 years since Siegfried was first performed, there have been Brünnhildes who did not bring the character to life as vividly in fully-staged performances as soprano Alexandra LoBianco portrayed her in this concert presentation. As in her performance of the title rôle in North Carolina Opera’s April 2019 production of Puccini’s Tosca, none of her gestures was superfluous: even the simple action of the singer donning her glasses was dramatically involved, symbolically paralleling her surroundings gradually coming into focus as Brünnhilde viewed the world through a woman’s rather than a valkyrie’s eyes. When the soprano inhaled deeply in preparation for her first line, her smile shone as brightly as the sun she greeted with a luminous ‘Heil dir, Sonne! Heil dir, Licht!’ Unlike some Brünnhildes, LoBianco neglected none of the rôle’s trills, her innate musicality faithfully serving the composer and the character.

Extolling her liberator with an exclamation of ‘O Siegfried! Siegfried! seliger Held!’ that conveyed adoration and apprehension, this Brünnhilde was unusually communicative of the uncertainty that grips her as she, like Siegfried, experiences womanhood for the first time. Though her vocalism was aptly valiant, LoBianco did not eschew lyricism, voicing ‘O wüßtest du, Lust der Welt’ and ‘Dort seh’ ich Grane, mein selig Roß,’ Brünnhilde’s greeting to her beloved horse, with affecting restraint. This contrasted markedly with the stark wariness that emerged from her singing of ‘Kein Gott nahte mir je!’ and ‘Sonnenhell leuchtet der Tag meiner Schmach!’ In a concert performance, LoBianco might have trusted her voice to evince Brünnhilde’s evolving emotions, but, not least in her expansively-phrased ‘Ewig war ich, ewig bin ich,’ her singing was supplemented by unflagging concentration on the subtleties of the character’s feelings. The exultant top C on ‘Leuchtender Sproß!’ and the progression of top Bs that followed were exhilarating without being over-asserted. That the final pages of Siegfried build to the euphoric top C with which Brünnhilde ends the opera is undeniable, but the resulting expectation is often disappointed. LoBianco projected the note into the hall with exuberant ease, achieving the sort of concupiscent catharsis that Wagner surely wanted. Musically, LoBianco was a Brünnhilde who impressed by singing the part accurately and alluringly, but the greatest joy of her performance was the expressive sincerity with which she depicted this iconic character’s bittersweet embrace of femininity.

There are Wagner aficionados who might argue that, by performing only Act Three of Siegfried, the tenor to whom the title rôle was assigned avoided the part’s most punishing music, notably the forging song in Act One. It is true that Siegfried is a mammoth rôle: solely in Act Three, he sings nearly as much as several of Puccini’s tenor protagonists sing in their complete operas. It was no easy task that tenor Richard Cox faced in North Carolina Opera’s performance of Siegfried’s third act, but this gifted artist acquitted himself ably and often splendidly. Ignorant of the fact that the mysterious impediment on his path to locating Brünnhilde is his own grandfather, Siegfried replies to the Wanderer’s quizzing impetuously, and Cox sang ‘Mein Vöglein schwebte mir fort!’ and ‘Was lach’st du mich aus? Alter Frager!’ with the arrogance and annoyance of a scolded adolescent. There was as much satin as steel in his articulations of ‘Bleibst du mir stumm, störrischer Wicht?’ and ‘Zurück, du Prahler, mit dir,’ but the tenor’s bright top A emboldened his singing of ‘Meines Vaters Feind, find’ ich dich hier?’ Cox’s utterance of ‘Hoho! Hahei! Jetzt lock' ich ein liebes Gesell!’ disclosed no unkindness, instead focusing on the playfulness and insouciance of Siegfried’s banter.

Surveying the landscape from the vantage point of Brünnhilde’s rock, this Siegfried exclaimed ‘Selige Öde auf sonniger Höh’!’ with an aura of wonder, and his surprise upon perceiving Grane coursed through a dulcetly-phrased account of ‘Was ruht dort schlummernd im schattigen Tann?’ Siegfried’s transformative realization that the sleeping Brünnhilde is not a fatigued warrior but a spellbound maiden prompted an awestruck voicing of ‘Das ist kein Mann!’ that predictably received ill-timed laughter from the audience. The shyness in Cox’s voicing of ‘O Mutter! Mutter! Dein muthiges Kind!’ was endearingly boyish, and the tenor’s sensitivity to the emotional nuances of Siegfried’s music was apparent in his singing of ‘Süß erbebt mir ihr blühender Mund’ and ‘O Heil der Mutter, die mich gebar!’ Like his Brünnhilde, this Siegfried made an honorable attempt at executing their unison trill. The growing ardor of ‘Wie Wunder tönt, was wonnig du sing’st’ and ‘Durch brennendes Feuer fuhr ich zu dir’ smoldered in Cox’s vocalism, but it was in his singing of ‘Nacht umfängt gebund’ne Augen’ and ‘Dich lieb’ ich: o liebtest mich du!’ that he was at his best, his top As fired into the auditorium thrillingly. Cox was an atypically thoughtful Siegfried, the young man’s lack of fear here not equated with brutishness. There was ample force in Cox’s singing, but volume was but one of his Siegfried’s attributes. Most rewardingly, his was an appealingly-sung rather than a shouted Siegfried.

Sadly, earnest Twenty-First-Century Wagnerians learn quickly that enjoyment of many of today’s performances of Wagner’s operas necessitates tolerance of loud, wobbly singing, indifferent conducting, and bizarre stagings. It is easily forgotten that one of Wagner’s musical idols was Vincenzo Bellini, for whose bel canto masterpiece Norma he composed an alternate aria. North Carolina Opera’s concert performance of Act Three of Siegfried was not merely a rare performance of music from Der Ring des Nibelungen by a regional company: it was a still rarer event in which none of the defects of modern Wagner performances inhibited appreciation of the score’s staggering beauty.

RUGGERO LEONCAVALLO (1857 – 1919): Pagliacci— Brandon Scott Russell (Canio), Suzanne Kantorski (Nedda), Richard Zeller (Tonio), David Pershall (Silvio), Joel Sorensen (Beppe), Christian J. Blackburn (Un contadino), Sean Toso (Un contadino); Members of Burlington Boys Choir, Greensboro Opera Chorus and Orchestra; Steven White, conductor [David Holley, producer and stage director; James Bumgardner, chorus master; Bill Allred, children’s chorus master; Jeff Neubauer, lighting designer and technical director; Greensboro Opera, UNCG Auditorium, Greensboro, North Carolina, USA; 15 and 17 November 2019]

No year in the four centuries since the first performances of Jacopo Peri’s and Claudio Monteverdi’s pioneering favole in musica has been wholly uneventful, but 1892 was an especially momentous year in the history of opera. In addition to the world premières of Alfredo Catalani’s La Wally and Umberto Giordano’s Mala vita, Jules Massenet’s Werther belatedly received its first performance. The year witnessed the births of conductors Artur Rodziński and Victor de Sabata and singers Dame Eva Turner, Renato Zanelli, and Ezio Pinza. Amidst this sequence of musically-significant occurrences, the work upon which Ruggero Leoncavallo’s reputation as a composer of opera would ultimately depend, Pagliacci, premièred at Milan’s Teatro dal Verme on 21 May 1892. In this operatic ‘slice of life,’ Leoncavallo altered the course of opera’s evolution, reacting to the waning of one style by instituting a new one. Less than a year after Pagliacci’s première, the first performance of Giuseppe Verdi’s final opera, Falstaff, signaled the end of one of the most productive eras in Italian opera. With works like Pagliacci, the idealized passions of Romanticism gave way to the grittier vigor and violence of verismo.

Scenically, Pagliacci is a piece that can be—and in several infamously unconventional stagings has been—wholly effective despite directorial misadventure. Set by Leoncavallo, whose libretto for the opera was inspired by his father’s recollection of a criminal investigation over which he presided as a judge, in Calabria in the latter half of the 1860s, Pagliacci’s betrayal, marital infidelity, unrequited love, and class strife are, when approached with intelligence and respect, easily relocated to virtually any combination of place and time. In Greensboro Opera’s production, the company’s General and Artistic Director David Holley sagaciously looked to Leoncavallo for guidance in staging Pagliacci. Originally devised for Sarasota Opera, the sets evoked a rural Italian village, in which the AT Jones-designed costumes and Trent Pcenicni’s wig and makeup wizardry believably arrayed the choristers as hardworking folk gathered in their town’s piazza to celebrate the Feast of Assumption and enjoy an evening of revelry.

Aided by Jeff Neubauer’s logical lighting designs and technical direction and attentive work from stage manager John Lipe and assistant stage managers Alexandra Scott and Eliya Watson, Holley presented Pagliacci as an exceptionally intimate drama. More so than in many productions, the townspeople on stage—and, by extension, the audience—were intruders in a very private realm. The dichotomy of personal strife playing out in a public setting has broad implications in Italian culture, and Holley’s direction exploited this ambivalence by focusing on blocking that simultaneously drew the observer into the drama and heighened the sense of encroachment. This is what verismo should achieve: as in this Pagliacci, the audience’s experience should be as visceral as the events that transpire on stage.

La commedia futile: tenor Joel Sorensen as Beppe (left), baritone Richard Zeller as Tonio (center), and soprano Suzanne Kantorski as Nedda (right) in Greensboro Opera’s November 2019 production of Ruggero Leoncavallo’s Pagliacci
[Photograph by Becky VanderVeen, © by VanderVeen Photography & Greensboro Opera]

Like their counterparts who created the bel canto works of the first half of the Nineteenth Century, the masters of verismo are rarely praised for the inventiveness of their orchestrations, which are frequently dismissed as inferior to the scoring of Germanic composers influenced by Richard Wagner. In artfully adapting the full symphonic panoply of the late-Romantic orchestra to the opera house, Engelbert Humperdinck, Richard Strauss, and lesser-known exponents of Teutonic scoring had few peers originating south of the Alps, but Leoncavallo’s writing for the orchestra in Pagliacci exhibits deftness and imagination that sometimes eluded even Puccini.

Conductor Steven White led the Greensboro Opera Orchestra, here on excellent form, in a performance in which the composer’s creativity and ingenuity were fully apparent. In the orchestral introduction to the Prologo and the stirring Intermezzo, both beautifully played, Leoncavallo’s stimulating use of instrumental timbres and cleverly-wrought counterpoint were highlighted by White’s insightful reading of the score. Similarly, the choral writing was fantastically executed by the Greensboro Opera Chorus, trained by James Bumgardner and joined in this performance by members of the Burlington Boys Choir under the direction of Bill Allred. Brilliant throughout the performance, the choral singing in the tricky Chorus of the Bells was particularly laudable. White paced a taut, fast-moving account of the score but was also alert to the singers’ needs. Ensembles possessed clarity and energy, and the emotional impact of the opera’s conclusion was substantially increased by the subtlety with which White navigated the paths that lead to it.

Greensboro Opera productions typically feature talented singers in supporting rôles, and this  Pagliacci was enlivened by a cast without weakness. As the pair of villagers who interacted with Canio upon his troupe’s arrival, baritone Christian J. Blackburn and tenor Sean Toso sang handsomely, Blackburn voicing ‘Di’, con noi vuoi bevere un buon bicchiere sulla crocevia?’ with conviviality and Toso delivering ‘Bada, Pagliaccio, ci solo vuol restare per far la corte a Nedda!’ suggestively.

Having appeared in acclaimed productions in many prestigious opera houses throughout the world, tenor Joel Sorensen brought extensive experience to his portrayal of Beppe. In the opera’s opening scene, his acting was a masterclass in the art of vibrant but understated characterization. As Canio’s ire and suspicion threatened to upend his troupe’s rapport with the villagers, Sorensen’s Beppe sang ‘Padron! che fate! Per l’amor di Dio!’ incisively, as though only he was truly aware of the impending danger. In the Act Two play, the tenor sang  Arlecchino’s serenata delightfully, maintaining an ideal balance of comedy and musicality. He was a wonderfully wily Beppe, always present but never outstaying his welcome.

Gli amanti illeciti e la spia: soprano Suzanne Kantorski as Nedda (left), baritone David Pershall as Silvio (right), and tenor Brandon Scott Russell as Canio (right rear) in Greensboro Opera’s November 2019 production of Ruggero Leoncavallo’s Pagliacci
[Photograph by Becky VanderVeen, © by VanderVeen Photography & Greensboro Opera]

In recent Greensboro Opera seasons, baritone David Pershall has earned the adulation of Triad audiences with expertly-sung portrayals of Figaro in Rossini’s Il barbiere di Siviglia (the rôle in which he débuted at the Metropolitan Opera on 29 December 2015), Escamillo in Bizet’s Carmen, and Sharpless in Puccini’s Madama Butterfly. Silvio in Pagliacci is one of the rôles in which Pershall has found acclaim at San Francisco Opera, and his performance of the part in Greensboro Opera’s production of Leoncavallo’s opera was the work of a bonafide leading man in the tradition of the young Robert Merrill. In Silvio’s amorous rendezvous with Nedda, Pershall voiced ‘Sapea ch’io non rischiavo nulla’ with bravado, introducing his Silvio as an intrepid lover who wielded soaring high notes like sultry embraces.

Incensed by Nedda’s reluctance to surrender to his ardor, Pershall sang ‘Nedda, Nedda, rispondimi’ with wrenching immediacy, palpably evincing the young man’s yearning for his beloved. The erotic frenzy of his singing of ‘E allor perchè, di’, tu m’hai stregato’ was epitomized by a stunning top G. Watching Nedda’s performance in the Act Two play from the crowd, prepared to escape with her at the play’s conclusion, Pershall’s Silvio uttered ‘Io mi ritengo appena!’ and ‘Santo diavolo! Fa davvero’ with horror as he realized that Canio’s rage was no longer feigned. Rather than fleeing, this Silvio’s primary instinct was to protect Nedda—an act of chivalry that cost him his life. All of Pershall’s Greensboro Opera performances have been enjoyable, but his portrayal of Silvio, a rôle for which his vocal and dramatic gifts are ideal, reached a new height of artistic excellence.

In April 2019, renowned baritone Richard Zeller’s ingeniously comedic and touchingly human portrayal of Shakespeare’s mercurial Sir John was the heart of UNCG Opera Theatre’s production of Verdi’s Falstaff. The rôle of Falstaff was created in that opera’s 1893 première by Victor Maurel, who had also sung Tonio in the first performance of Pagliacci. Honoring Maurel’s legacy, Zeller followed his witty Falstaff with a menacing, melancholy Tonio. The baritone’s traversal of Pagliacci’s famous Prologo was majestic and multifaceted, his tonal colors metamorphosing with the changing moods of the text. The legato of his phrasing of ‘Un nido di memorie’ and ‘E voi, piuttosto che le nostre povere gabbane d’istrioni’ was a testament to Zeller’s Verdian credentials, as was his resonant top G. His transformation into the bitter, bating Tonio was an example of operatic acting of the highest order.

The loathing exuded by his breathless growl of ‘La pagherai! brigante!’ was terrifying, but it was in Tonio’s pivotal scene with Nedda that Zeller most compellingly demonstrated his consummate mastery of his rôle. His statement of ‘È colpa del tuo canto’ was touchingly sincere, and the pathos of his ‘Non rider, Nedda!’ affirmed that, for all his faults, this Tonio was a man, not a monster. The poignant beauty of tone with which Zeller voiced ‘So ben che diforme, contorto son io’ made the fury of ‘Per la Vergin pia di mezz’agosto, Nedda, io giuro’ and the venomous spite of ‘Cammina adagio e li sorprenderai!’ all the more shocking. Summoning the villagers to the play in Act Two, Zeller declaimed ‘Avanti, avanti, avanti!’ excitingly. In this performance, Taddeo lurked in the shadows, spying on Colombina’s assignation with Arlecchino like a panther ready to pounce. The opera’s ominous final line, ‘La commedia è finita,’ was here uttered by Tonio rather than Canio, and Zeller spoke the words unaffectedly, his Tonio pleased by his own treachery but also shattered by the brutality of Canio’s vengeance. In Zeller’s nuanced, strongly-sung performance, Tonio was unmistakably a descendent of Rigoletto, a decent man twisted by disability and rejection into a depraved but still pitiable figure who hates what he cannot love.

La moglie ed il mostro: soprano Suzanne Kantorski as Nedda (left) and baritone Richard Zeller as Tonio (right) in Greensboro Opera’s November 2019 production of Ruggero Leoncavallo’s Pagliacci
[Photograph by Becky VanderVeen, © by VanderVeen Photography & Greensboro Opera]

A prototypical verismo leading lady, Leoncavallo’s Nedda is, from a dramatic perspective, one of the most difficult rôles in the soprano repertoire. The prevalence of poorly-sung performances of the part divulges that the music is also far from easy, but a number of singers who conquered the rôle’s musical demands failed to create a plausible, sympathetic character. Greensboro Opera’s Nedda, soprano Suzanne Kantorski, crafted an engaging portrait of this complicated, sometimes confounding character. With her straightforward singing of ‘Confusa io son!’ after Canio’s outburst about the mercilessness with which he would punish infidelity, Kantorski displayed a trait that many characterizations of Nedda lack: though she does not truly love Canio, she has no desire to deliberately hurt him. [The question of whether Canio is physically abusive to Nedda, which seems likely, was unanswered in this production, as it is in the score.] Recalling her mother’s stories of nature’s freedom, this Nedda voiced ‘Qual fiamma avea nel guardo!’ and ‘O che bel sole di mezz’agosto!’ rhapsodically. The trills that launch the Ballatella, ‘Stridono lassù, liberamente lanciati a vol,’ were honorably attempted, and the soprano vaulted notes above the stave with pinging precision.

The scorn with which Kantorski infused Nedda’s response to Tonio’s wooing erupted in her singing of ‘Ah! ah! Quanta poesia!’ and ‘Hai tempo a ridirmelo stasera, se brami,’ the latter marked ‘con elegenza’ and ironically rendered accordingly in this performance. It was an altogether different woman who subsequently sought refuge in Silvio’s arms. Kantorski voiced ‘Non mi tentar!’ delicately, her top B♭ gleaming, and the churning emotions of ‘Nulla scordai sconvolta e turbata’ received from her a surge of expressivity. The soprano joined Pershall in a gorgeous account of ‘Tutto scordiam!’ in which their voices intertwined with obvious carnal symbolism. Their lovemaking interrupted by Canio’s approach, Kantorski sought divine protection for her paramour with a meaningful ‘Aitalo Signor!’ From the start of the play in Act Two, Kantorski’s Colombina was the personification of barely-concealed defiance, her desperate attempt to lure Canio back into their scripted farce seeming coy and half-hearted. Her febrile top B, more slashing than the whip that she turned on Tonio, was the exclamation of a woman who demanded immediate liberty or death. Perhaps representing Nedda’s shame and unhappiness, Kantorski’s back was often to the house, lessening her connection with the audience, but she proposed viable solutions to a number of Nedda’s dramatic riddles and sang the rôle exceptionally well.

I coniugi condanatti: soprano Suzanne Kantorski as Nedda (center left) and tenor Brandon Scott Russell as Canio (center right) in Greensboro Opera’s November 2019 production of Ruggero Leoncavallo’s Paglacci
[Photograph by Becky VanderVeen, © by VanderVeen Photography & Greensboro Opera]

Owing to his widely-known, often-parodied aria ‘Vesti la giubba,’ Canio is arguably verismo’s most recognizable protagonist. Perhaps only Wagner’s valkyries are as familiar beyond the ranks of opera aficionados as Leoncavallo’s weeping clown. [The commedia dell’arte figures in Pagliacci are of course not clowns in the strictest modern sense, but when has popular culture worried about distorting historical distinctions?] From Enrico Caruso and Beniamino Gigli to Mario del Monaco and Franco Corelli, the legacies of past interpreters of Canio still haunt the opera, but Greensboro Opera’s Canio, tenor Brandon Scott Russell, never emulated another singer’s performance. Every tenor naturally wants to replicate Caruso’s diction, Gigli’s emotional candor, del Monaco’s vocal brawn, and Corelli’s peerless upper register, but Russell brought his own qualities to the rôle, one of the most admirable of which was evenness of tonal production that granted his lower register atypical force. The top G♯ that he dispatched in his delivery of ‘Itene al diavolo!’ was equally impressive, and his voicing of ‘Un grande spettacolo a ventitrè ore’ was a proclamation of vocal grandeur that suited the text. Russell sang ‘Un tal gioco, credetemi’ sensitively, the top A emotive rather than ostentatiously demonstrative, and his unassuming enunciation of ‘Adoro la mia sposa!’ was movingly frank.

Canio is changed by Tonio’s report of having seen Nedda with another man, and Russell’s portrayal became more volatile as Canio pursued Silvio, the tenor singing ‘Derisione e scherno!’ with scorching intensity. Doubt clouded Canio’s mind in ‘E se in questo momento,’ plaintively sung by Russell. His was a performance of ‘Recitar! Mentre presso dal delirio’ that was despondent but not overwrought. The sorrow that pervades ‘Vesti la giubba e la faccia infarina’ did not tempt the singer to break or distort the melodic line, and, in this performance, there was no need to project ‘Ridi, Pagliaccio’ to the theater’s last row: Russell had drawn the audience into Canio’s innermost thoughts. In Act Two, the conflicting anger and sadness with which Russell voiced ‘Nome di Dio! quelle stesse parole!’ indicated the deterioration of Canio’s mental state. His singing of the cutting ‘No! Pagliaccio non son’ and the exquisite ‘Sperai, tanto il delirio accecato m’aveva’ recalled Richard Tucker’s unforgettable performances of this scene, Russell’s top B♭ effortlessly filling the auditorium with anguished but beautiful sound. There were isolated moments in which the tenor’s upper register was not projected as effectively as the voice’s lower reaches, but tonal quality was splendidly consistent. Russell’s was a young man’s Canio, sung with technical assurance that has become all too uncommon among singers of any age.

In opera, the term ‘warhorses’ is often used pejoratively, describing works that are performed so often as to have become disinteresting. Popularity can be damning, especially with would-be cognoscenti eager to prove their superiority by condemning scores that are loved by the masses. Pagliacci is undeniably a warhorse, and there are productions of it that merit disdain. Nevertheless, there are almost always legitimate reasons that explain a work’s popularity with the public and productions that remind audiences of why they love it. Performances of Pagliacci are plentiful, but performances of Pagliacci of the caliber exhibited by Greensboro Opera are exceedingly rare.

GIACOMO PUCCINI (1858 – 1924): Manon Lescaut— Lianna Haroutounian (Manon Lescaut), Brian Jagde (Chevalier Renato des Grieux), Anthony Clark Evans (Lescaut), Philip Skinner (Geronte), Christopher Oglesby (Edmondo), Ashley Dixon (Un musico), Zhengyi Bai (Il maestro di ballo, Un lampionaio), SeokJong Baek (Un oste, Il comandante di marina), Christian Pursell (Un sergente degli arceri), Angela Eden Moser (Madrigal singer), Jesslyn Thomas (madrigalista), Laurel Cameron Porter (Un madrigalista), Sally Mouzon (Un madrigalista); San Francisco Opera Chorus and Orchestra; Nicola Luisotti, conductor [Olivier Tambosi (Director), Frank Philipp Schlößmann (Production Designer), Duane Schuler (Lighting Designer), Dave Maier (Fight Director), Lawrence Pech (Choreographer), Ian Robertson (Chorus Director); San Francisco Opera, War Memorial Opera House, San Francisco, California, USA; Wednesday, 20 November 2019]

When the opera that solidified his reputation as the best-qualified successor to Giuseppe Verdi, his setting of Abbé Prévost’s 1731 novel L’histoire du chevalier des Grieux et de Manon Lescaut, was premièred at Torino’s Teatro Regio on 1 February 1893, Giacomo Puccini was thirty-four years old; hardly a child prodigy but still a young man by Twenty-First-Century standards. The son of a musical family, Puccini honed his craft via works in a variety of genres, but the early scores Le Willis and Edgar affirmed that the composer’s natural habitat was the opera house. Possessing an exceptional aptitude for theatricality that has prompted some observers to dismiss his operas as overly sentimental, Puccini wielded his talent for creating beguiling melodies—intermittently overused, admittedly—that characterized the music of Bellini and Verdi. Though his work exhibits many of the verismo aesthetics championed by his contemporaries, Puccini was an unabashed Romantic at heart. Manon Lescaut is a score in which the Twentieth Century is near on the musical horizon, but its defining qualities are neither radical nor pedantic. The essence of Manon Lescaut is a young composer’s passionately tuneful paean to a literary heroine who garnered his love.

The complicated gestation of Manon Lescaut suggests that, in this instance of Puccini’s pervasive affection for his opera’s heroine, Shakespeare’s well-known anecdote proved to be frustratingly apt: the course of true love indeed was not smooth. Though eager to capitalize on the enthusiasm that greeted Puccini’s first efforts in operatic form, the publisher Giulio Ricordi was openly hostile to the notion an operatic setting of Prévost’s L’histoire du chevalier des Grieux et de Manon Lescaut. Already familiar to European audiences when Puccini was falling victim to Manon’s charms were Daniel François Esprit Auber’s 1856 opéra comiqueManon Lescaut, its libretto written by the influential Eugène Scribe, and Jules Massenet’s 1884 treatment of the story, not as widely known or beloved in 1893 as it is today. Nevertheless, Puccini refused to be dissuaded. The hands of Marco Praga and Domenico Oliva were the first to touch the libretto of Manon Lescaut, which ultimately became a muddle to which Puccini’s frequent collaborators Giuseppe Giacosa and Luigi Illica, the composer Ruggero Leoncavallo, Giulio Ricordi, and Puccini himself contributed. Finally, Giuseppe Adami made minor alterations at Puccini’s request, engendering the edition of the work that is now familiar to Twenty-First-Century audiences. To Puccini’s credit, the sutures in the text are not apparent in the music: in a well-rehearsed, intelligently-staged production like the one mounted by San Francisco Opera, Manon Lescaut displays a captivating wealth of musical invention and homogeneity.

Una battaglia per amore: (from left to right) bass-baritone Christian Pursell as Il sergente degli arceri, tenor Brian Jagde as Chevalier des Grieux, and soprano Lianna Haroutounian as Manon Lescaut in San Francisco Opera’s November 2019 production of Giacomo Puccini’s Manon Lescaut
[Photograph by Cory Weaver, © by San Francisco Opera]

Introduced to the company on 28 September 1926, with the legendary Claudia Muzio in the title rôle, Manon Lescaut has amassed a performance history at San Francisco Opera that reflects the opera’s and its composer’s popularities. In 1927, the inaugural production was reprised, with Frances Peralta (née Phyllis Partington and therefore of no relation to the celebrated Mexican soprano Ángela Peralta) portraying the eponymous heroine and Giovanni Martinelli as des Grieux. Two performances in San Francisco and one in Los Angeles in October 1949 united Licia Albanese and Jussi Björling, the latter of whom later returned to San Francisco to sing des Grieux opposite the Manon of Dorothy Kirsten. Mario del Monaco sang des Grieux in San Francisco in 1950. The Manon of Pilar Lorengar graced War Memorial Opera House’s stage, and two of the most memorable Manons of recent decades sang their débuts in the rôle in San Francisco, Leontyne Price in 1974 and Mirella Freni in 1983. When the present staging, a co-production with Lyric Opera of Chicago, débuted in 2006, it was with Karita Mattila as Manon. Especially in the United States, San Francisco Opera’s advocacy of Manon Lescaut has advanced the opera’s fortunes as markedly as the score legitimized Puccini’s global standing as Verdi’s successor as Italy’s most successful composer of opera. That advocacy has also created exalted standards to which the current and future productions of Manon Lescaut will inevitably be compared.

Director Olivier Tambosi’s staging of Manon Lescaut is largely traditional but is not one in which adherence to tradition is substituted for interpretive insight. Rather than conjuring the kinds of vague, fairy-tale evocations of Eighteenth-Century France that please the eyes but leave the emotions unmoved, this production strives for temporal and locational specificity. Allied with Frank Philipp Schlößmann’s elegantly-proportioned set designs, the colorful but period-appropriate costumes, and Duane Schuler’s expertly-realized lighting, Tambosi’s direction largely concentrated the viewer’s attention according to the dictates of Puccini’s music, delivering the opulent visuals expected of a production by a company of San Francisco Opera’s renown but avoiding dwarfing the intimacies of the drama.

Aside from an overabundance of climbing on furniture that particularly victimized Edmondo, a noteworthy accomplishment of this production was the relative absence of conventional operatic mannerisms and affectation: owing to Tambosi’s vision, supported by Lawrence Pech’s choreography and Dave Maier’s fight direction, the performers on stage moved as people move rather than behaving like creatures that exist only in opera. There were critical moments, not least during Manon’s death scene in Act Four, in which characters were not where they logically ought to have been, however, and the emotional connection between stage and audience was diminished. Still, too many of today’s opera productions demonstrate various degrees of ignorance of the basic goals of staging opera, foremost among which is the fabrication of an environment in which singers can plausibly portray characters whilst singing music that demands constant immersion in the rhythms and the words. This Manon Lescaut was perceptibly guided by cognizance of the score and respect for the artists performing it.

Un principe tra gli studenti: tenor Christopher Oglesby as Edmondo (center) in San Francisco Opera’s November 2019 production of Giacomo Puccini’s Manon Lescaut
[Photograph by Cory Weaver, © by San Francisco Opera]

In the current revival, supervision of San Francisco Opera’s musical forces was entrusted to the company’s former Music Director, Italian conductor Nicola Luisotti. Luisotti’s tenure as Music Director was not without difficulties, but his leadership of this performance exerted many felicities that distinguish the conductor’s work. Particularly commendable was the reliable coordination between stage and pit during large ensembles. Not least in the public scenes of Acts One and Three, the singing of the San Francisco Opera Chorus was thrilling, Ian Robertson’s much-admired training begetting uncommon accuracy without impeding dramatic involvement. Likewise, the marvelous playing of the San Francisco Opera Orchestra musicians disclosed thorough preparation and acquaintance with the score. Assured of the capabilities of the musical personnel at his disposal, Luisotti focused on exploring nuances of Puccini’s scoring, drawing lithe, flexible playing from the strings.

The conductor’s handling of the Intermezzo was stirring, the wall of sound constructed by the orchestra never permitted to overwhelm Puccini’s carefully-wrought interplay of thematic threads, but, both in large ensembles and, to a lesser extent, in smaller-scaled passages, the orchestra often overwhelmed the singers. [Patrons seated in other locations reported that this was less obtrusive elsewhere in the house.] There were moments in which Luisotti’s tempi seemed at odds with the singers’ inclinations, but there was compensatory adaptability, his pacing free from the dictatorial insensitivity that can spoil a performance. Luisotti provided propulsion and poetry as needed. A conductor’s objective in opera should be to mold performances in which the music seems to emerge from the drama. This was often true of this Manon Lescaut, in which Luisotti’s comprehension of Puccini’s style was manifested in an idiomatic, emotive performance.

Long one of America’s most nurturing training centers for emerging artists, San Francisco Opera cultivates an environment in which young singers refine their techniques by performing alongside established artists. This performance of Manon Lescaut was enriched by the participation of some of the company’s gifted young artists, several of whom are current Adler Fellows. The madrigal singers in Act Two—sopranos Angela Eden Moser and Jesslyn Thomas and mezzo-sopranos Laurel Cameron Porter and Sally Mouzon—delivered their parts mellifluously, complementing the lovely voice of mezzo-soprano Ashley Dixon, who began the madrigale with an appealing account of ‘Sulla vetta tu del monte erri, o Clori.’ Bass-baritone Christian Pursell was an engaging presence, vocally and dramatically, as the Sergente degli arceri in Act Three, voicing ‘Il passo m’aprite’ forcefully. Similarly, baritone SeokJong Baek was engaging as both the Oste in Act One and the Comandante in Act Three, declaiming the latter’s ‘È pronta la nave’ with requisite authority. Tenor Zhengyi Bai deployed a bright timbre and sure-footed dramatic instincts, first in his singing of the Maestro di ballo’s ‘Vi prego, signorina’ in Act Two and later in the Lampionaio’s atmospheric ‘...e Kate rispose al Re’ in Act Three.

La signora balla: soprano Lianna Haroutounian as Manon Lescaut (center left) and tenor Zhengyi Bai as Il maestro di ballo (center right) in San Francisco Opera’s November 2019 production of Giacomo Puccini’s Manon Lescaut
[Photograph by Cory Weaver, © by San Francisco Opera]

Portraying the rabble-rousing student Edmondo, tenor Christopher Oglesby sang characterfully without making his depiction a caricature. As embarrassingly puerile performances of the part affirm, this distinction is not achieved without consummate artistry. Oglesby’s ribald but tasteful depiction left the impression that the tavern in Amiens visited in Act One is a far livelier place when Edmondo is imbibing its offerings. The tenor’s singing of ‘Ave, sera gentile’ rose to an easy top A, and the adventurousness with which he sang ‘La tua ventura ci rassicura’ made the projected translation of the words redundant. In Oglesby’s portrayal, Edmondo’s mocking of the out-witted Geronte, ‘Vecchietto amabile, incipriato Pluton, sei tu,’ was unquestionably mischievous but not genuinely mean-spirited. Youthful joie de vivre emanated from his voicing of ‘Il colpo è fatto.’ Stating that a singer’s performance exhibited great promise is now so clichéd as to be inconsequential, but Oglesby’s secure, charismatic singing of Edmondo’s music—music that, like Puccini’s later writing for Goro in Madama Butterfly, Nick in La fanciulla del West, and Prunier in La rondine, merits voices finer than those to which it is typically assigned—identified him as a singer whose endeavors are likely to brighten opera’s future.

Il finanziere dei sogni: bass-baritone Philip Skinner as Geronte in San Francisco Opera’s November 2019 production of Giacomo Puccini’s Manon Lescaut
[Photograph by Cory Weaver, © by San Francisco Opera]

Bass-baritone Philip Skinner was the sort of Geronte di Ravoir for which Puccini surely hoped, his acting bringing the doting—not confused with dotage, as is often the case—roué to life with complete credibility but without his vocalism being marred by the aural scars of long experience. Plotting Geronte’s abscondment with Manon in Act One, Skinner sang ‘Questa notte, amico, qui poserò’ with the nonchalance of a man who was certain of the brilliance of his scheme. The implicit irony that oozed from the bass-baritone’s articulation of ‘Dunque vostra sorella il velo cingerà?’ succinctly disclosed the codger’s lecherous intentions, and he voiced ‘Di sedur la sorellina è il momento’ with seriousness that heightened the ridiculousness of Geronte’s pursuit of Manon.

In the scene with the pampered Manon in Act Two, Skinner’s performance emphasized the kinship between this episode in Puccini’s opera and the lesson scene in Act Two of Rossini’s Il barbiere di Siviglia. Later returning to his paramour’s boudoir to discover Manon reunited with des Grieux, the ferocity of his voicing of ‘Affè, madamigella, or comprendo il perchè di nostr’attesa!’ was exhilarating. The impact of the climax of Act Two can be blunted if Geronte cannot summon vocal muscle with which to threaten Manon and des Grieux. In this performance, Skinner flexed that muscle menacingly, his firm, flinty singing lending Geronte a depth beyond that of the usual aging libertine. His Geronte turning the tables on Manon by compelling her to observe her desperate state in the mirror with which she haughtily ridiculed him, Skinner brought the curtain down on Act Two with an astounding coup de théâtre.

Signori con piani: bass-baritone Philip Skinner as Geronte (left) and baritone Anthony Clark Evans as Lescaut (right) in San Francisco Opera’s November 2019 production of Giacomo Puccini’s Manon Lescaut
[Photograph by Cory Weaver, © by San Francisco Opera]

Manon’s brother and guardian Lescaut received from baritone Anthony Clark Evans a depiction in which limning the character’s ambiguous motivations was secondary to imparting obvious fraternal affection and, above all, singing the part with élan. In Act One, the baritone was a source of dramatic momentum, his utterances taking a vital part in the events that put the opera on the path to its tragic conclusion. Evans sang ‘Malo consiglio della gente mia’ engrossingly but without exaggeration, his phrasing faithful to the cadences of Puccini’s word setting. Holding court with his sister, chez Geronte, in Act Two, Evans’s Lescaut partnered his Manon handsomely, voicing ‘Sei splendida e lucente!’ with fervor that peaked on his well-projected top Fs. A steely core emerged in the singer’s voice during the final moments of Act Two, Lescaut’s instinct to protect Manon—and his own interests—tested by Geronte’s actions.

His character accompanying des Grieux on the quest to rescue Manon from deportation at the beginning of Act Three, Evans’s vigorous vocalism plaintively expressed the gravitas of the situation. His singing of ‘Perduta è la partita!’ touchingly communicated Lescaut’s sense of helplessness and despair. Lescaut is one of opera’s most complicated and, in many performances of Manon Lescaut, unlikable characters, but Evans’s portrayal, though heeding all of Puccini’s and his librettists’ instructions, made Manon’s paradoxical sibling atypically endearing.

Un inno all’amore: tenors Brian Jagde as Chevalier des Grieux (center left) and Christopher Oglesby as Edmondo (center right) in San Francisco Opera’s November 2019 production of Giacomo Puccini’s Manon Lescaut
[Photograph by Cory Weaver, © by San Francisco Opera]

Richard Tucker cited Puccini’s Renato des Grieux as his favorite rôle. Hearing recordings of his performances of the part opposite Dorothy Kirsten, Renata Tebaldi, Licia Albanese, and Raina Kabaivabska at the Metropolitan Opera, Montserrat Caballé in Buenos Aires, Virginia Zeani in Rome, and the inimitable Magda Olivero in Caracas, it is easy to discern why the rôle appealed to Tucker. Perhaps des Grieux is not tenor Brian Jagde’s favorite rôle, but his inaugural interpretation of the part revealed a superlative affinity for the music. Upon his first entrance in Act One, Jagde suffused his des Grieux with youthful disenfranchisement that enhanced the believability of the character’s impulsiveness. The tenor sang ‘Tra voi, belle, brune e bionde’ with suitable ennui, fostering a significant contrast with his awestruck enunciations of ‘Dio, quanto è bella!’ and ‘Cortese damigella, il priego mio accettate’ after Manon’s arrival. ‘Donna non vidi mai simile a questa!’ is one of Puccini’s finest arias for the tenor voice and, melodically, can be argued to be more gratifying than several of its companions in the Puccini canon. Jagde sang the piece ardently, untroubled by the top B♭s. Enchanted by his Manon, this des Grieux voiced ‘Oh, come gravi le vostre parole!’ rapturously.

Finding Manon ensconced in the splendor of Geronte’s Parisian residence, des Grieux’s wounded pride and anger electrified Jagde’s voicing of ‘Sì, sciagurata, la mia vendetta.’ It was necessary for him and all of his colleagues to boost their volume in order to be heard over the orchestra, and rarely deviating from forte sometimes deprived Jagde’s vocalism of finesse. Still, the intensity of his singing of ‘Senti, di qui partiamo’ and ‘Con te portar dei solo il cor’ was exciting, the latter taking him to a magnificent top B. Des Grieux’s music undergoes a further metamorphosis in Act Three, and Jagde responded with a lyrical reading of ‘Manon, disperato è il mio prego!’ that, as in his transition from sangfroid to romantic zeal in Act One, facilitated a meaningful distinction between the sadness of the act’s first scene and the avidity of the subsequent scenes. Jagde’s galvanizing voicing of ‘No! no! pazzo son io!’ recalled Franco Bonisolli’s singing of this music, his traversal of the largo sostenuto ‘Guardate, pazzo son’ throbbing with emotion and cresting on another ringing top B.

Vocally, Jagde was on near-best form throughout the evening: dramatically, he was most effective in Act Four. The voice remained strong, but the tenor’s demeanor as he sang ‘Tutta su me ti posa’ exuded exhaustion and faltering determination. Jagde approached ‘Vedi, vedi, son lo che piango’ and ‘Tutto il mio sangue per la tua vita!’ without artifice, and the emotional directness of his singing of ‘Nulla rinvenni l’orizzonte nulla mi rivelò’ was touching. As Jagde’s experience in the rôle grows, he is likely to discover more subtleties in the music and his interpretation of it, but he was in this performance a forthright, clarion-toned des Grieux.

Sola, perduta, abbandonata: soprano Lianna Haroutounian as Manon Lescaut in San Francisco Opera’s November 2019 production of Giacomo Puccini’s Manon Lescaut
[Photograph by Cory Weaver, © by San Francisco Opera]

The title rôle in the present revival of Manon Lescaut is the third Puccini heroine that Armenian soprano Lianna Haroutounian has sung with San Francisco Opera. Like her des Grieux, Lescaut, Geronte, and Edmondo, Haroutounian made her rôle début in the first performance of this run, adding the part to her repertoire before an audience that has proved to be appreciative of her artistry. For a ruminative singer, taking on a new rôle in a house in which the part was sung by sopranos of the caliber of Claudia Muzio, Dorothy Kirsten, and Leontyne Price is surely intimidating and humbling, but Haroutounian coped admirably with Manon’s musical and dramatic demands and with the inescapable legacy of San Francisco Opera’s progression of illustrious exponents of the rôle.

Introducing Manon to des Grieux and the audience, Haroutounian sang ‘Manon Lescaut mi chiamo’ beautifully, but the irresistible magic that this passage can have was missing. She gracefully eschewed cloying silliness in ‘Il mio fato si chiama’ and ‘Vedete? Io son fedele alla parola mia,’ preferring a straightforward depiction of Manon as an ambitious young woman rather than a coquettish ingenue. The altered trajectory of Manon’s fate in Act Two was immediately palpable in the soprano’s voicing of ‘Dispettosetto questo riccio!’ The spoiled girl momentarily distracted from the luxury of her surroundings by thoughts of des Grieux, her ‘In quelle trine morbide’ was beautifully sung and crowned with lovely top B♭s. The top C in the scene with Lescaut was properly euphoric, but Manon’s trills were tentatively sketched. Haroutounian presented ‘L’ora, o Tirsi, è vaga e bella’ as a calculated performance that pandered to Geronte’s vanity. The lack of self-restraint that permeates ‘Ah! Manon te solo brama’ was underplayed, but the biting cruelty of ‘Amore? Amore! Mio buon signore, ecco!’ was in Haroutounian’s portrayal more injurious than physical violence.

Placing Manon in an elevated prison cell, stage right, with des Grieux and Lescaut behind a gate at the rear of the stage, reinforced the audience’s appreciation of the emotional toll of Manon’s separation from her lover and brother, but the physical distance caused the pathos of ‘Tu, amore!? amore? Nell’onta non m’abbandoni?’ to seem more self-indulgent than poignant. Nonetheless, Haroutounian voiced ‘Ah! una minaccia funebre io sento!’ movingly, and, though she, too, struggled to project above the orchestral din, her singing in the act’s closing scene was vivid. The sorrow of ‘Sei tu che piangi?’ in the opera’s final act was only partially realized, but Haroutounian transcended awkward acting to lavish inviolable musicality on ‘Sola, perduta, abbandonataIo t’amo tanto e muoio!’ There were few histrionics in this Manon’s death: instead of resorting to the raspy Sprechstimme with which some singers intone the character’s final lines, Haroutounian truly sang Puccini’s notes. Manon does not inspire the kind of empathy that Mimì can impel in a good performance of La bohème, but Haroutounian’s portrayal was an honorable beginning to what will hopefully become a long relationship with the rôle—and an enjoyable addition to San Francisco Opera’s gallery of storied portraits of the first of Puccini’s piccole donne.

DOMENICO FRESCHI (1634 – 1710): Ermelinda— Nikola Printz (Ermelinda), Sara Couden (Ormondo), Kindra Scharich (Rosaura), Justin Montigne (Aristeo), Deborah Rosengaus (Armidoro); Cynthia Black (violin I), Laura Rubinstein-Salzedo (violin II), Aaron Westman (viola), Gretchen Claassen (cello), Adam Cockerham (theorbo); Jory Vinikour, harpsichord and conducor [Céline Ricci, Stage Director; Entropy, Projections Designer; Matthew Nash, Costume Designer; Thomas Bowersox, Lighting Designer; Teaghan Rohan, Makeup; Nicole Spencer Carreira, Graphic Designer; Ars Minerva, ODC Theater, San Francisco, California, USA; Friday, 22 November 2019]

When a conclave of music-loving intellectuals and Classical scholars first devised the premise of opera as Twenty-First-Century audiences know it, their principal objective was to recreate the fusion of drama, music, and dance that was the foundation of Ancient Greek theater. Discarding ego with the aim of focusing on communicating emotions via stylized speech and movement that transcended the polyphonic complexities of Renaissance music, opera’s earliest composers were charged with allying emotions with melodic and harmonic interplay that illuminated their hidden facets. Rooted in the fertile traditions of Antiquity, it is not surprising that opera found source material in mythology. Rejuvenated in pioneering scores by opera’s early masters, figures like Daphne, Diana, and Orpheus leapt from the pages of Ovid and his contemporaries onto the stages of Italy, not least in Venice, where public theaters enabled composers like Claudio Monteverdi and Pier Francesco Cavalli to extend opera’s reach from aristocratic salons to La Serenissima’s canals, streets, and piazze—and, by the middle of the Seventeenth Century, throughout much of Europe.

In its native land, opera was rapidly established as an integral component of indigenous culture, its melodies embodying the Italian spirit in times of celebration and crisis. For Venetians, opera became by the time of Monteverdi’s death in 1643 a vital element of their city’s Carnevale, the boisterous period of indulging hedonistic impulses that preceded the austerity of Lent. The flamboyant masks of Carnevale, affirmed by history to have been as intriguing in the Seventeenth Century as they remain in 2019, disclose a communal theatricality that complements opera’s dramatic aesthetics. Dedicated to rediscovering neglected scores composed as entertainments for the Carnevale season, San Francisco-based Ars Minerva transports the marvels and mysteries of La Dominante to California’s Bay Area. Furthering the success of previous productions of Daniele da Castolari’s La Cleopatra, Carlo Pallavicino’s Le amazzoni nell’isole fortunate, Pietro Andrea Ziani’s La Circe, and Giovanni Porta’s Ifigenia in Aulide with the first known staging since the Seventeenth Century of Giovanni Domenico Freschi’s drama per musica Ermelinda, Ars Minerva recreated in San Francisco’s Mission District a fascinating, unjustly-forgotten chapter in opera’s and Venice’s vibrant histories.

Born in Vicenza in the Veneto on 26 March 1634, Freschi emerges from the pages of Ermelinda as a conservative but innovative artist. As in Brahms’s works, careful but creative adaptation of the styles and structures inherited from his forebears yields music that cleverly and compellingly transcends its conventionality. Premièred in 1680 in the Teatro delle Vergini in the Piazzola sul Brenta compound of the Contarini family, where Freschi’s opera Berenice vendicativa also received its first staging, Ermelinda inhabits the musical and dramatic realm populated by Cavalli’s La Calisto and Veremonda, l’amazzone di Aragona and Antonio Cesti’s Orontea and Il pomo d’oro, operas that predate Ermelinda by a quarter-century. [Some sources suggest that Ermelinda was first performed in 1682, but existing evidence makes a more convincing case for 1680.]

The composer having achieved biological and vocational longevity that was unusual for the time in which he lived, it is reasonable to hypothesize that much of Freschi’s music has been lost, undermining musicological assessment of the trajectory of his artistic development, but, its relative adherence to long-established traditions notwithstanding, passages in the score of Ermelinda prefigure later works, especially the operas of Agostino Steffani. There are also moments in Ermelinda that look forward to works from opposite ends of Georg Friedrich Händel’s career, the early Agrippina and the late Serse. Staged in the intimate space of ODC Theater, Ars Minerva’s Ermelinda irrefutably justified the company’s decision to resurrect the piece. Tastes change rapidly and inexplicably, but how can music of this quality have been forgotten?

La follia dell’amore: (from left to right) countertenor Justin Montigne as Aristeo, mezzo-soprano Kindra Scharich as Rosaura, and contralto Sara Couden as Ormindo in Ars Minerva’s November 2019 modern-world-première production of Domenico Freschi’s Ermelinda
[Photograph by Teresa Tam, © by Ars Minerva]

Logically, singers should be the most effective directors of opera productions. It is said, probably rightly, that doctors are the worst patients, however, and the applicability of this adage to singers directing opera has been demonstrated by the unsuccessful efforts of acclaimed singers. An uncommon singer whose extraordinary voice is partnered by artistry of equal caliber, Ars Minerva’s founder and Artistic Director Céline Ricci presented Ermelinda not as a ridiculous romp in antiquated sexual politics but as a grippingly modern examination of gender identities, individual ethics, and conflicts between duty and desire. In insensitive productions, operas of Ermelinda’s vintage can seem interminable, but Ricci’s concept, aided by the decision to present Freschi’s three acts in two parts with an interval following the fourth scene of the composer’s Act Two, limned the work’s convoluted narrative with cinematic efficiency and clarity. Meticulously maintaining an equilibrium between comedy and seriousness in all aspects of the production generated a performance in which humor heightened the emotional significance of the opera’s humanistic ethos. Building to a wrenchingly moving dénouement, Ricci’s pacing of the drama exhibited pervasive intelligence, her passion for giving new life to Freschi’s music apparent in every gesture, movement, and expression.

Perhaps the greatest accomplishment of Ricci’s leadership was the consistency of the dedication and ingenuity exhibited by the artists engaged to bring her vision to fruition. Matthew Nash’s costume designs are rightly revered in and beyond San Francisco, and his work for Ars Minerva’s production of Ermelinda was whimsical, intricate, and splendidly provocative. The swirling patterns of male characters’ waistcoats paid homage to the brilliant brocades of authentic Venetian dress of the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries, and the stylized hoops within which Ermelinda was bound artfully evoked both servitude and forced femininity. The rosettes with which Rosaura’s gown was festooned were astoundingly beautiful and appropriately indicative of the lady’s flirtatious, frivolous constitution. Inventively dressed by Nash and refined by Teaghan Rohan’s makeup mastery, the characters’ physical appearances embodied their functions within the drama.

Similarly, Entropy’s projection designs reflected the opera’s constantly-changing moods. Often gorgeous but never distracting, the projections forged alluring tableaux that lent spatial specificity to Ermelinda’s fanciful geographical setting. Tastefully illuminated by Thomas Bowersox’s lighting, the scenic incarnation of the agricultural prison to which the defiant Ermelinda was exiled was reminiscent of California’s verdant central valley, and the facility of transitions among times of day augmented the pliant continuity of Ricci’s direction. An indispensable participant in the production whose witty antics emerged from her surroundings, Elisabeth Flaherty added a delightful human dimension to the staging, the ebullience with which she alternated alliances—and genders—in the performance of her duties providing welcome levity in moments of calamity. Born of unmistakable regard for music and text, Ars Minerva’s production unearthed in Ermelinda a pertinent modernity that the centuries-old score wore with the ideal fit of one of Nash’s costumes.

L’amante usurpante: mezzo-soprano Deborah Rosengaus as Armidoro in Ars Minerva’s November 2019 modern-world-première production of Domenico Freschi’s Ermelinda
[Photograph by Teresa Tam, © by Ars Minerva]

The virtuosity displayed by the musicians assembled by Ars Minerva was no less awe-inspiring for being expected in a performance of this sort of music. Individually and in ensemble, violinists Cynthia Black and Laura Rubinstein-Salzedo and violist Aaron Westman played with intonational accuracy and rhythmic effervescence. Cellist Gretchen Claassen and theorbist Adam Cockerham propelled the continuo indefatigably, modulations from major to minor and transitions among scenes managed with dramatic cohesion. Like Ricci’s direction, the musical guidance of conductor and harpsichordist Jory Vinikour divulged obvious cognizance of and respect for singers and singing, as well as an innate affinity for Freschi’s style. Ritornelli did not merely preface individual numbers or accompany characters’ entrances and exits: under Vinikour’s supervision, these interludes intensified the emotions of the scenes they punctuated.

There are few places in the United States in which the joke of inserting a few bars of Cleopatra’s ‘Piangerò la sorte mia’ and Almirena’s ‘Lascia ch’io pianga’ from Händel’s Giulio Cesare and Rinaldo into the scene in which music is proposed as an effective treatment for amorous maladies could be expected to be appreciated, but the hilarity of this anachronism was not wasted on Ars Minerva’s audience. [So eloquent was the musicians’ playing of these fragments that Freschi would surely have forgiven Rosaura for succumbing to the temptation to sing the arias.] Vinikour collaborated with his orchestral colleagues with the camaraderie of a chamber musician, but his stewardship of the drama was the handiwork of a talented conductor not merely of specialized repertoire but of any music that he chooses to study. That this performance of Ermelinda was fastidiously prepared was palpable, but the energy and exuberance of the music making engendered an atmosphere of edge-of-the-seat spontaneity.

Hearing many recent performances of a variety of repertoire, the novice listener might understandably deduce that operatic duplicity is mandated to be depicted with unpleasant sounds. Endeavoring to seize power and love to which he is entitled by neither birth nor conquest, Armidoro in Ermelinda is indubitably a man of moral and ethical ambiguity, but mezzo-soprano Deborah Rosengaus’s performance substantiated that the most effective operatic antagonists are those who sing appealingly. Dispatching Gs at the top of the stave with inviolable poise, she sang ‘Amo e peno e pur sò che fortuna non ho’ confidently, effortlessly projecting her tones into the theater. The bravado with which she voiced ‘Ride il fior, e ride il prato’ was captivating, her excellent diction emphasizing the skill with which Freschi employed musical effects to spotlight textual nuances.

Rosengaus navigated the dramatic course traversed by Armidoro’s ‘Hor ch’il mal fatt’e palese al rimedio,’ ‘Oggi di sol giova fingere,’ and ‘S’havessi creduto Amor si crudel’ with theatrical savvy, her depictions of the character’s disillusionment, anger, and wounded pride animated by incisive vocalism. Rosengaus suffused her singing of ‘Belle e brutte, son così le donne tutte’ and ‘Voi piangete, e fatte piangere’ with bitterness rooted in the  scorned man’s vulnerability. Whether plotting with Aristeo, sparring with Ormondo, or lamenting his unrequited love for Ermelinda, Rosengaus’s Armidoro sang beguilingly.

Gli schemi in azione: countertenor Justin Montigne as Aristeo (left) and mezzo-soprano Kindra Scharich as Rosaura (right) in Ars Minerva’s November 2019 modern-world-première production of Domenico Freschi’s Ermelinda
[Photograph by Teresa Tam, © by Ars Minerva]

The rôle of Ermelinda’s closed-minded, self-serving father Aristeo was sung with uninhibited immersion in the character’s conniving, commendable technical acumen, and an uproarious nervous tic by countertenor Justin Montigne. In his account of ‘L’huom dotato al mondo fù di ragion e libertà,’ he set a high standard with his capable voicing of dizzying fiorature—a standard that he reliably met in subsequent scenes. The countertenor’s tone occasionally lacked ideal support at the lower extremity of the range, as in ‘D’una febre ch’e amorosa Arder sà la gioventù,’ but he largely avoided pushing the voice. The ironic sentiments of ‘Povera humanità,’ ‘Non sperar ch’io t’ami più,’ and ‘Vanno al pari honor, e vita’ received from him wonderfully uninhibited readings. At one point gleefully donning gloves of the type that a veterinarian might wear whilst delivering a breeched calf, Montigne exulted in the zany quirks of his rôle without compromising musical integrity. Aristeo is an unapologetic hypocrite and a reprehensible father, but Montigne’s strongly-sung performance exerted an eerie charisma.

La bellezza della vendetta: mezzo-soprano Kindra Scharich as Rosaura in Ars Minerva’s November 2019 modern-world-première production of Domenico Freschi’s Ermelinda
[Photograph by Teresa Tam, © by Ars Minerva]

Capriciousness of the operatic variety can be diverting but is seldom as endearing as it was in mezzo-soprano Kindra Scharich’s portrayal of Ermelinda’s inconstant companion and confidante Rosaura. An inveterate manipulator, this Rosaura enjoyed no pastime more than amorous intrigue. From the first notes of ‘Maledico Amor e sorte,’ Scharich fashioned a characterization of irresistible charm, deploying Rosaura’s femininity as a dazzling, disorienting weapon. Nonetheless, a tender heart could be discerned in her singing of ‘Non giova piangere,’ and her performances of ‘Altro non è l’Amor, ch’un pazzia’ and ‘Benedico Amore e sorte’ bewitchingly conveyed the amazement of a young woman who was as confused by her own feelings as by others’ actions.

Absolute domination of a lavender wig is not a guarantee of success as an opera singer, but Scharich’s integration of her wig as an extension of Rosaura’s persona was an art unto itself. Still, it was her vocalism that garnered admiration, particularly in the demanding ‘Non sperar t’ami più.’ Declaiming ‘Frà il timor e la speme confusa ancor rimango’ with emotional candor, she sang ‘Il timore col cieco Amore fan ch’io speri e sì e nò’ mesmerizingly, her sensual timbre flickering with indecision. Scharich found surprising expressive depths in ‘Mi dice il mio core che giova sperar’ and ‘Non mi perdo di speranza,’ voicing these numbers glamourously. Declaring war on the wiles of men with adroitly-executed flamenco steps, Scharich’s Rosaura bandaged her battle wounds with fresh stratagems. For this Rosaura, the thrill was perhaps in the chase rather than in the catch, but Scharich’s singing ensnared the audience’s affection.

Il vero principe: contralto Sara Couden as Ormindo in Ars Minerva’s November 2019 modern-world-première production of Domenico Freschi’s Ermelinda
[Photograph by Teresa Tam, © by Ars Minerva]

Rarer amongst today’s singers than a capable Brünnhilde and a fully-qualified Siegfried is a true contralto. Rarer still are productions in which contraltos are not compelled to portray mothers, witches, harlots, or crones. Ars Minerva had in Sara Couden a genuine contralto with a voice of superb quality, and she had in the rôle of the Phoenician prince Ormondo, disguised as the simple but sincere Clorindo in order to be near to his beloved Ermelinda, a part in which her artistry shone. Hurling herself into the drama, Couden voiced ‘Bella madre di pensieri’ and ‘Con grazie si cortesi’ powerfully, the resonance of her lower register evincing Ormondo’s nobility. Musically and emotionally, the contralto’s singing of ‘Pupillette s’io vi miro, mi sforzate ad adorar’ was arresting, her performance achieving a depth of feeling that transformed the opera’s plot from harmless farce to romance on the brink of tragedy. The comedic implications of the contrast with her singing of ‘T’adoro sì, ma nò, pensier cangiando io vò’ therefore could not have been more significant: in an environment in which honesty was folly, feigned madness was a convenient refuge for this cunning prince.

Couden’s technical prowess furnished a myriad of memorable passages, one of the most exhilarating of which was ‘Non bastava, o Ciel, così tormi al cor la libertà,’ but a potent feature of her interpretation of Ormondo’s music was her uncanny ability to reveal the psychological motivations of coloratura. With her shrewd acting, she differentiated the temperamental contours of ‘Fà quanto sai, Fortuna, nò, non lascierò d’amar’ and ‘Bella, la libertà che doni a questo piè,’ but it was again her voice that stunned in ‘Stelle, contro di me tanto rigor perche si fieri,’ her sumptuous tone enveloping the music in a cloak of vocal velvet. The sincerity of Couden’s statement of ‘Per tè vivo, e a me son morto’ was heartbreaking, and her poignant enunciation of ‘Che mai si può far’ was profoundly touching, Ormondo’s despair expressed with riveting simplicity. Significantly, it is not by Ermelinda but by Ormondo that the opera’s final aria is sung, and Couden voiced ‘Gioje care, volatemi in petto’ mirthfully, rejoicing in the triumph of the prince’s fidelity. Couden’s was an unforgettable performance in which the singer’s formidable gifts were wholly devoted to serving the composer.

La figlia ribelle: mezzo-soprano Nikola Printz as Ermelinda in Ars Minerva’s November 2019 modern-world-première production of Domenico Freschi’s Ermelinda
[Photograph by Teresa Tam, © by Ars Minerva]

The title rôle in Ermelinda is an ancestor of Händel’s Rodelinda, Beethoven’s Leonore, and Puccini’s Minnie, a woman unafraid of living, loving, and dying on her own terms. In mezzo-soprano Nikola Printz’s portrayal for Ars Minerva, Freschi’s heroine endured misfortune and abuse but was no wilting victim. Voicing ‘Mi vuoi viva’ ‘Le dirò che non ha core chi resiste a tua beltà’ commandingly, Printz validated Ermelinda’s place at the center of the drama, the other characters’ paths intersecting in their interactions with her. The polished-mahogany timbre of Printz’s voice gleamed in their singing of ‘L’Amar corrisposto, e un caro morire,’ and the expressivity with which they phrased ‘Nò, stelle rubelle, sperar più non vò’ and ‘Deh, stringetevi al mio piè, cari lacci’ accentuated the subtleties of Freschi’s word settings.

The anguish that emanated from Printz’s accounts of ‘Dolce Amor, pur ti stringo a questo sen’ and ‘Colli aperti, erme foreste vengo a voi per lagrimar’ bared Ermelinda’s dauntless but sensitive soul to the audience, securing empathy for the maltreated woman’s plight. The mezzo-soprano uttered ‘Ch’io adori quell volto possibil non è, nò’ with grim resolve, and, imparting Ermelinda’s anticipation of a blissful reunion with Ormondo in death, they sang ‘Nelle Elisio ove t’aggiri teco accogli i miei sospiri’ ethereally, the voice echoing the meaning of the words. Their ardent, assured vocalism coupled with unpretentious acting, Printz portrayed Ermelinda as a woman governed by no will but her own.

At the time of its first performance in 1680, Ermelinda was already archaic, and it is unlikely that, then or in the subsequent three decades before his death in 1710, Freschi imagined that his opera would return to the stage after an absence of 339 years. Virtually every piece that has been reawakened in recent years has advocates who extravagantly extol its virtues, but Ars Minerva’s production proved that Ermelinda’s long slumber was unwarranted. With this spectacular, stylish staging, Ars Minerva righted one of operatic history’s egregious wrongs.

GIAN CARLO MENOTTI (1911 – 2007): Amahl and the Night Visitors— Phillip Webb (Amahl), Stephanie Foley Davis (Mother), Jacob Ryan Wright (Kaspar), Robert Wells (Melchior), Donald Hartmann (Balthazar), Forrest Bunter (Page); Greensboro Opera Amahl Chorus and Orchestra; David Holley, Conductor, Producer, and Stage Director [Jeff Neubauer, Lighting Designer, Technical Director, and Stage Manager; Trent Pcenicni, Wigs and Makeup Designers; Michael Job, Choreographer; Greensboro Opera, Well•Spring, Greensboro, North Carolina, USA; Thursday, 19 December 2019]

It may have been the French who first aphorized that good things can emerge from small packages. Wherever this conceit originated, its validity is apparent in virtually all aspects of life and art. By operatic standards, a title rôle written for a juvenile singer, a score with a running time of less than an hour, and a libretto of conversational concision indisputably qualify Gian Carlo Menotti’s Amahl and the Night Visitors as a small package. Commissioned by America’s National Broadcasting Company, the first performance of Menotti’s small package of an opera inaugurated the long-running Hallmark Hall of Fame television series on 24 December 1951, broadcasting from NBC’s Studio 8H at 30 Rockefeller Plaza, the space from which Arturo Toscanini’s celebrated performances with the NBC Symphony Orchestra were transmitted and where Saturday Night Live continues to be staged.

The first new opera aired by NBC Opera Theatre, Amahl and the Night Visitors remains the most successful of the pieces that were written especially for NBC telecasts. Bringing Menotti’s tale of the intersection of the lives of an impoverished boy and his mother with the narrative of Christ’s nativity to both the lovely theater in Greensboro’s Well•Spring community and Lexington’s Edward C. Smith Civic Center, the revival of Greensboro Opera’s much-admired production of Amahl and the Night Visitors validated that this innovative opera is a small package that yields great things.

When discussing Amahl and the Night Visitors Menotti was candid about his struggle to choose a subject to fulfill NBC’s commission and the sources of inspiration that ultimately produced the piece. Citing a recollection of holiday traditions familiar from his childhood that was spurred by viewing an image of the Adoration of the Magi painted by Hieronymous Bosch in the last quarter of the Fifteenth Century [the long-disputed attribution of the single panel that Menotti saw in New York’s Metropolitan of Art, a work unrelated to the triptych in the collection of Madrid’s Museo del Prado, to Bosch was legitimized by scholars in 2016], the composer intimated that the work was an affectionate homage to the innocent wonderment of his youth.

Writing his own libretto and completing the score mere days before the opera’s première, Menotti enlisted the aid of his partner, Samuel Barber, in orchestrating the music. His previous short operas Amelia Goes to the Ball, The Old Maid and the Thief (commissioned by NBC for radio broadcast), The Medium, and The Telephone identified Menotti as a master of opera in miniature, these pieces limning emotional and dramatic complexities with brevity. Contrasting the desperation and despair of Amahl and his mother with the vivid, sometimes comedic idiosyncrasies of the three kings, Menotti created in an opera that runs for only forty-five minutes a remarkably cogent work of art. Alongside other composers’ hours-long musical orations, Amahl and the Night Visitors is Menotti’s operatic Gettysburg Address.

Maternal devotion: mezzo-soprano Stephanie Foley Davis as Mother in Greensboro Opera’s December 2019 production of Gian Carlo Menotti’s Amahl and the Night Visitors
[Photograph by VanderVeen Photographers, © by Greensboro Opera]

Like Engelbert Humperdinck’s Hänsel und Gretel, another work conceived as an entertainment for youngsters that was handsomely staged at Well•Spring by Greensboro Opera [reviewed here], Amahl and the Night Visitors transcends the implicit limitations imposed by its target audience. Too many productions succumb to temptations either to bloat the opera with dogmatic evangelizing or to entomb Menotti’s endearing story behind a façade of family-friendly kitsch, but Amahl and the Night Visitors is neither Wagnerian drama nor childish frivolity. Principal amongst the virtues of Greensboro Opera’s General and Artistic Director David Holley’s production of Amahl was its dedication to presenting the piece on its own terms, avoiding the pitfalls of extrapolated political and religious subtexts. To his credit, Holley retained Amahl’s astonished declaration that one of the kings at the door is Black, which here was precisely what Menotti intended it to be—a child’s guileless observation and nothing more.

The audience’s attention focused by Robert Hansen’s simple but effective scenic design on the relationship between Amahl and his despondent mother, Holley’s direction employed understated motion to advance the plot. Deborah Bell’s costumes and Trent Pcenicni’s wigs and makeup, aptly rustic for the shepherds and magnificently opulent for the three kings, ensured that differentiations between poor and rich were unmistakable, yet there was no impression of condescension or class strife. Rather, Holley’s staging emphasized the common humanity shared by all of the characters. Executed with grace and athleticism by Chelsea Hilding and D. Jerome Wells, Michael Job’s choreography complemented the production’s aesthetic by offering the shepherds’ dance as an earnest entertainment for the weary visitors. Integral to the show’s success were Jeff Neubauer’s lighting designs and technical direction. The use of light is particularly important in an opera in which a star is virtually a member of the cast, and, elucidating the fidelity to Menotti’s vision that was the core of Holley’s direction, Neubauer’s work shone brightly, literally and figuratively.

From the first bar of the opera’s Andante sostenuto opening to the overwhelmed mother’s bittersweet vigil as she watched her son depart with the magi in search of Christ in the final scene, Holley’s conducting combined rhythmic tautness with affectionate lyricism. Having sung Amahl in his youth, Holley brought to this performance career-long acquaintance with the score. In this instance, familiarity engendered not contempt but commitment to continuing to deepen his comprehension of the piece. Not least in the superb quartet for Amahl’s mother and the kings, in which his pacing allowed the singers to fully explore the gravitas of the music, Holley’s tempi gave the performance a firm pulse. Paralleling his direction of the production, Holley’s conducting of the performance yielded engaging clarity, disseminating the score’s poignant messages of tolerance and compassion from page to stage to audience with unfeigned eloquence and unflagging musicality.

Menotti’s and Barber’s orchestrations provide some of Amahl’s greatest delights, but the incisive playing of an imaginative arrangement for an ensemble considerably smaller than the full symphony orchestra at Menotti’s disposal when the opera was written served the composer and his composition splendidly. Oboist Thomas Turanchik, harpist Gerry Porcaro, percussionist Erik Schmidt, and pianist Emily Russ performed their parts as though they, like the portentous star, were joining the cast on stage, their phrasing so synchronized with that of the singers that instruments and voices sometimes seemed to emerge from a single entity. The choristers, many of whose fine voices were familiar from UNCG Opera Theatre’s recent production of Die Fledermaus and Greensboro Opera’s November 2019 staging of Pagliacci, sang Menotti’s music for the shepherds rousingly, the elation of their depiction of the community’s collective awe never impeding the accuracy of their intonation. Though the rôle of the magi’s page offers few opportunities for vocal display, another talented member of UNCG’s operatic family, baritone Forrest Bunter, denounced Amahl’s mother for her attempted theft of Melchior’s gold with rousing immediacy.

Strangers at the door: (from left to right) treble Phillip Webb as Amahl, mezzo-soprano Stephanie Foley Davis as Mother, tenor Jacob Ryan Wright as Kaspar, bass-baritone Donald Hartmann as Balthazar, and baritone Robert Wells as Melchior in Greensboro Opera’s December 2019 production of Gian Carlo Menotti’s Amahl and the Night Visitors
[Photograph by VanderVeen Photographers, © by Greensboro Opera]

Entering through the house whilst resonantly intoning ‘From far away we come and farther we must go,’ Greensboro Opera’s Three Kings exhibited regal presence that made their night visit to Amahl and his mother an event that merited summoning the community of shepherds. Bass-baritone Donald Hartmann’s Balthazar was a benevolent presence with a voice that exuded august authority. There was humor in his singing of ‘I live in a black marble palace,’ however, and his utterance of ‘Thank you, good friends’ conveyed genuine gratitude. This Balthazar’s interactions with Amahl increasingly evinced paternal tenderness, the king perceptibly humbled by observing the boy’s hardships. Ever an artist whose characterizations are uncommonly nuanced, Hartmann characterized Balthazar as a man whose majesty transcended thrones and titles.

The quirky, hard-of-hearing Kaspar was endearingly portrayed by tenor Jacob Ryan Wright, whose ebullient singing of ‘This is my box’ imparted gentleness rather than obnoxious possessiveness, this good-hearted king regarding the prized item as an object of comfort and stability. Some singers’ depictions of Kaspar’s auditory challenges are distractingly overwrought, exaggeratedly played for laughs, but Wright avoided this sort of silliness, preferring a playful but dignified reading of the part.

Baritone Robert Wells completed the triumvirate of magi with a poised, prognosticatory performance as Melchior. The query that he posed to Amahl’s mother, ‘Have you seen a child the color of wheat,’ was voiced with pointed anticipation, and the prophetic consequence of the vivid imagery of ‘The child we seek holds the seas’ was heightened by the singer’s burnished vocalism. The sensitivity with which Wells sang ‘Oh woman, you may keep the gold’ lent the king’s magnanimity plausibility. Like his crown-bearing colleagues, Wells ignored stereotypes, devising a notably personal portrait of Melchior.

Family affair: mezzo-soprano Stephanie Foley Davis as Mother (left) and treble Phillip Webb as Amahl (right) in Greensboro Opera’s December 2019 production of Gian Carlo Menotti’s Amahl and the Night Visitors
[Photograph by VanderVeen Photographers, © by Greensboro Opera]

Greensboro Opera’s Amahl had in mezzo-soprano Stephanie Foley Davis a mother who sang Menotti’s music with remarkable ease and spontaneity, song seeming more natural for the character than speech. Whether portraying the cunning Rosina in Rossini’s Il barbiere di Siviglia, Humperdinck’s Hänsel, Cio-Cio San’s loyal companion Suzuki in Puccini’s Madama Butterfly, or Amahl’s mother, Foley Davis manifests an exceptionally broad spectrum of emotions via singing of beauty and technical expertise. The exasperation felt by Amahl’s mother coursed through the mezzo-soprano’s voicing of ‘All day long you wander about in a dream,’ but, here and in both ‘Dear God, what is a poor widow to do’ and ‘What shall I do with this boy,’ the musical line was never compromised for sentimental effect.

When Foley Davis sang ‘I am a poor widow,’ it was not as an artist singing about a character: in that moment, she was the poor widow of whom she sang, the mother’s fear for her son’s well-being suffusing the singer’s tone with maternal warmth. The expressivity with which she sang ‘Yes, I know a child the color of earth’ and ‘The child I know on his palm holds my heart’ revealed that, in nobility of spirit, this unfortunate young mother was a worthy peer of her visitors. Foley Davis’s subtle exclamation of ‘All that gold!’ affirmed that the mother’s theft of Melchior’s gold was only a momentary surrender to temptation. She voiced ‘For such a king I’ve waited all my life’ with affecting humility. The image of the mother silently watching the start of her son’s trek with the magi, delicately acted by Foley Davis, was incredibly moving. Enlivening performances with insightful portrayals of dynamic characters is one of the most commendable achievements of Foley Davis’s artistry, but her exquisite depiction of Amahl’s mother in this staging of Amahl and the Night Visitors was in a class of its own.

Menotti was adamant that, whether on television or on stage, Amahl must always be sung by a boy singer, a mandate that continues to give conductors and directors nightmares. Adages concerning the perils of working with children notwithstanding, casting an age-appropriate boy as Amahl is problematic. A high caliber of musical precocity can negatively impact an Amahl’s realization of the innocence and naïveté that pervade the rôle, but Amahl’s music is undeniably difficult. Greensboro Opera’s production effectuated a consistent balance between musicality and dramatic credibility by casting thirteen-year-old Phillip Webb as Amahl. Typical of a young man on the cusp of adolescence, Webb’s pure-toned voice was strongest and surest of intonation in its lower octave, but his highest notes were generally on pitch and unfailingly attractive. Traversing the stage with his crutch, pantomiming fervent bugle playing, nettling his mother, and later defending her from the page’s true but harsh accusation, Webb’s Amahl was charismatic, his performance reflecting the singer’s experience in Greensboro Opera’s Pagliacci. Still, the awkwardness of the character’s disability was not neglected. Webb valiantly held his own in a cast of consummate professionals, proving to be a captivating Amahl who earned his visitors’ esteem.

It has often been asked in the first decades of the Twenty-First Century whether, in a time of eroding cultural awareness and waning attention spans, opera remains relevant. It is far easier merely to state than to persuasively demonstrate that, yes, opera remains viable and valuable, both as a distraction from society’s fears and as a forum in which those fears can be productively analyzed and allayed. Composed in an era during which the world was plagued by the suspicions of the Cold War, Amahl and the Night Visitors embodies the ethos of hope that opera at its best can wield. There is no better answer to questions about the necessity of opera in the Twenty-First Century than this promise of hope, and Greensboro Opera’s production of Amahl and the Night Visitors was unquestionably opera at its best.

RUGGERO LEONCAVALLO (1857 – 1919): Pagliacci— Carl Tanner (Canio), Melinda Whittington (Nedda), Kidon Choi (Tonio), Takaoki Onishi (Silvio), Jason Karn (Beppe), Adam Dengler (Un contadino), Jerry Hurley (Un contadino); Kidznotes, North Carolina Opera Chorus and Orchestra; Keitaro Harada, conductor [Octavio Cardenas, stage director; Tláloc López-Watermann, lighting designer; Constantine Kritikos, set designer; Glenn Avery Breed, costume designer; Martha Ruskai, makeup and wig designer; North Carolina Opera, Memorial Auditorium, Duke Energy Center for the Performing Arts, Raleigh, North Carolina, USA; Friday, 24 January 2020]

Few people who have spent time in their midst have failed to observe outward manifestations of opera singers’ legendary superstitions. From avoiding certain situations to employing talismans, some singers perpetuate operatic lore, preferring the perceived safety of a curse thwarted to the uncertainty of a curse ignored. In the early years of sound recording, there was a fear among singers that, like withdrawals from a bank account, projecting their voices into gramophone horns irreparably eroded their vocal endowments. It is reported that not even Enrico Caruso, one of the most celebrated pioneers of recording, approached the acoustical preservation of his voice without apprehension, yet he recorded Canio’s familiar aria ‘Vesti la giubba’ from Ruggero Leoncavallo’s Pagliacci no fewer than three times in five years.

Canio was indisputably one of Caruso’s finest rôles, one that he sang 116 times for New York’s Metropolitan Opera, but what, aside from obvious commercial motivations [the 1902, 1904, and 1907 recordings collectively sold more than a million copies, still an impressive tally but a remarkable accomplishment in the first decade of the Twentieth Century], compelled him to record ‘Vesti la giubba’ repeatedly? [Interestingly, the first Canio, Parmesan tenor Fiorello Giraud, recorded excerpts from his Wagnerian repertoire, arias from Verdi’s Luisa Miller and Bizet’s Carmen, the popular Berceuse from Godard’s Jocelyn, and several Italian songs but none of Canio’s music.] A master of the music and an early beneficiary of global celebrity, Caruso clearly recognized aspects of Canio’s musical characterization that appealed to listeners. In the Twenty-First Century, Caruso‘s 1907 recording of ‘Vesti la giubba’ continues to be frequently downloaded and streamed, mirroring Pagliacci‘s indefatigable popularity with audiences. Perhaps Caruso was uncommonly prescient; or perhaps he merely knew good music when he encountered it.

The world première of Pagliacci in Milan’s Teatro Dal Verme on 21 May 1892, solidified Leoncavallo‘s reputation as one of Italy‘s preeminent composers and provided a cornerstone for the repertoire of the fledgling operatic genre of verismo. In its operatic context, the term ‘warhorse’ has developed a pejorative connotation, but, when used to describe Pagliacci, it can be interpreted as an affectionate moniker applied to a work deployed in battles against the disappearance of the passion that engendered Italian opera. Directed with commendable straightforwardness by Octavio Cardenas, North Carolina Opera’s staging of Pagliacci outfitted this warhorse with familiar but fresh vestments. Especially admirable was Cardenas’s blocking: principals and choristers moved convincingly, not in the manner of wooden figures on a carousel, predictably but aimlessly entering and exiting, but as denizens of a functioning community. There was a naturalness of movement that lent the drama a gripping aura of spontaneity. Cardenas’s Pagliacci epitomized the finest qualities of traditional productions. By faithfully but imaginatively observing the dictates of Leoncavallo’s libretto and score, this staging exuded an authenticity that productions that seek inspiration beyond the composer’s work often lack.

Illuminated by Tláloc López-Watermann’s typically effective lighting, Constantine Kritikos’s scenic designs, the appropriately middle-class costumes by Glenn Avery Breed, and Martha Ruskai’s attractive wigs and makeup vividly transformed the Raleigh stage into Leoncavallo’s Calabrian village. Both the grandeur of the public scenes and the intimacy of Nedda’s encounters with Tonio and Silvio were captivatingly realized, the former retaining clarity in moments of greatest tumult and the latter perceptively limning the complex relationships among the characters. Pagliacci can be interpreted as a variation on the oft-explored theme of artists’ isolation from society, but this production embodied the objective announced by Tonio in the Prologo. Their commedia dell’arte theatrics notwithstanding, the principals in this Pagliacci were ordinary people facing extraordinary but recognizably universal troubles, their lives neither glorified nor derided.

Coniugi condannati: soprano Melinda Whittington as Nedda (center left) and tenor Carl Tanner as Canio (center right) in North Carolina Opera’s January 2020 production of Ruggero Leoncavallo’s Pagliacci
[Photograph by Eric Waters, © by North Carolina Opera]

Under the baton of conductor Keitaro Harada, North Carolina Opera’s choral and orchestral forces distinguished themselves with superb performances. Virtually every instrument in the orchestra is subjected to writing that tests its player’s technique and preparedness, and, the instrumentalists skillfully cued by Harada, there were very few moments in which the orchestra’s intonational and rhythmic precision faltered. Scott MacLeod’s work with the North Carolina Opera Chorus, assisted in this production by Nick Malinowski’s training of the Kidznotes children’s chorus, yielded exhilarating but unerringly musical accounts of the difficult Chorus of the Bells and the opera’s final scene. Performances by larger companies with long-established acquaintances with Leoncavallo’s music can rarely boast of choral singing and orchestral playing superior to those heard in North Carolina Opera’s Pagliacci.

Returning to Raleigh, where he conducted North Carolina Opera’s 2019 production of Bizet’s Carmen, Maestro Harada displayed a thorough and uncommonly discerning understanding of the nuances of Leoncavallo’s score. The music‘s corpuscular verismo thundered from stage and pit, but Harada’s handling of lyrical passages revealed the bel canto that blossoms within the score. The Andante cantabile section of Tonio’s Prologo, the opening of Nedda’s Ballatella, Silvio’s outpouring of affection, and Canio’s ‘Sperai, tanto il delirio accecato m’aveva’ were shaped with poetic delicacy, the conductor encouraging the singers to communicate not just the literal meanings but also the emotional subtleties of the words via expansive, unhurried phrasing. These episodes of relative introspection intensified the shock of the opera’s violent climax, Canio’s ultimate acts of vengeance depicted as the primal response of a broken man to circumstances that he cannot alter. Even when haphazardly conducted, Pagliacci is invariably entertaining and often exciting. Harada’s exquisite conducted proved that, when paced with absolute cognizance of its structures, sentiments, and subtexts, Pagliacci can also be genuinely moving.

Heightening the carnival-like atmosphere of the commedia dell’arte players’ fateful visit to the unnamed town in which the drama transpires, acrobats Rachel Webberman and Matthew Berno brought off their gravity-defying feats with feline grace. Baritone Adam Dengler and tenor Jerry Hurley sang impressively as the pair of villagers who extended their community’s hospitality to Canio, evincing the townspeople‘s pride at hosting the venerable thespians. Tenor Jason Karn was a charismatic Beppe in Opera Carolina’s 2016 production of Pagliacci and was no less charming in Raleigh. That he sang the top As in Arlecchino’s serenata so effortlessly whilst perched on a worryingly unsteady utility pole was indicative of the musical and dramatic unflappability with which he portrayed the hardworking, level-headed Beppe.

The scene for Nedda and her paramour Silvio contains some of Leoncavallo’s most impassioned writing, the lovers’ illicit rendezvous inspiring the composer to create several of Italian opera’s most luridly erotic pages. In baritone Takaoki Onishi’s performance in Raleigh, the depth of Silvio’s love for Nedda and the magnetism that drew her to him were palpable. Declaiming ‘Nedda, Nedda, decidi il mio destin’ with ardor and handsomely virile tone, Onishi characterized Silvio as a man whose desire for Nedda was unquestionably carnal but also viscerally spiritual. There was a pervasive sense of yearning in this Silvio’s singing, as though he was as desperate to escape from his own struggles as Nedda was to gain her freedom, but the true hallmarks of Onishi’s vocalism were the evenness of registers, the youthful ease of his ascents above the stave, and the consistent beauty of his timbre. Aided by Harada, he sang ‘E allor perchè, di’, tu m’hai stregato’ arrestingly, caressing the line with ideally-supported mezza voce, and the hushed ending of the duet with Nedda was gorgeous. In Onishi’s performance, Silvio’s lunge at Canio in the opera’s final moments was more anguished than threatening: Nedda having been slain before his eyes, his life was already at its end. Vulnerability was at the core of Onishi’s characterization, and, unusually, Silvio’s death was as wrenching as Nedda’s.

Similarly, keen focus on all of the character’s psychological facets was the foundation of baritone Kidon Choi’s portrayal of the pernicious but pitiable Tonio. From the first words of the Prologo, it was apparent that Choi is a very gifted singing actor, but he surpassed his own standards with each successive phrase. At once bemused, flippant, scornful, and piercingly sincere, he sang the music with immediacy that recalled Giuseppe Taddei’s saturnine portrayal and soared without strain to the interpolated top A♭ and G. Throughout Canio’s banter with the townsfolk, Choi’s Tonio lurked on the periphery of the action, biding his time. Finally alone with Nedda, he declared his love with an outcast’s awkward earnestness, voicing ‘So ben che lo scemo contorto son io’ with touching tenderness. Wounded by the viciousness of Nedda’s rejection, he flung ‘Per la croce di Dio, bada che puoi pagarla cara!’ at her like lasso with which he intended to ensnare her. Choi played Taddeo’s part in the farsa with the self-congratulatory artifice of a man who feels his grip on revenge tightening. Tonio’s sadistic laughter as the curtain fell on the scene of Canio cradling Nedda’s lifeless body was chilling. Dramatically, Choi was an atypically expressive Tonio who repulsed all the more for having divulged the humanity of which he was capable. Vocally, he sang the rôle with the sort of inherent suitability that has been seldom heard in this music in the past quarter-century.

Pagliaccio non ride: tenor Carl Tanner as Canio in North Carolina Opera’s January 2020 production of Ruggero Leoncavallo’s Pagliacci
[Photograph by Eric Waters, © by North Carolina Opera]

In the course of Pagliacci’s nearly-thirteen-decade performance history, the opera’s leading lady has been sung by an array of voices that parallels the diversity of singers’ interpretations of the rôle. In many ways, soprano Melinda Whittington’s performance with North Carolina Opera was often reminiscent of the free-spirited Nedda of Maralin Niska. Emboldened by her longing for liberation from her failed marriage, this Nedda’s resolve was undermined by her fear for Silvio’s safety. Whittington’s ruminative utterance of ‘Confusa io son’ in the wake of Canio’s ‘Un tal gioco, credetemi’ echoed this ambiguity, the young woman’s trepidation visible beyond the façade of her fortitude. As Nedda sought refuge in memories of her childhood, Whittington sang ‘Qual fiamma avea nel guardo’ with abandon, imparting the wonderment that surges from the music. Leoncavallo sanctioned omission of the trills that launch the Ballatella, but Raleigh’s Nedda resorted to no amendments, valiantly attempting the trills and resolving her rousing ‘Stridono lassù’ with a radiant top A♯.

The contempt with which Whittington declaimed ‘Hai l’animo siccome il corpo tuo difforme, lurido!’ was more crippling than Tonio’s physiological challenges, Nedda’s disgust hurled at him with vehemence. In the subsequent duet with Silvio, however, the soprano’s performance manifested warmth and femininity. Her voicing of ‘Non mi tentar! Vuoi tu perder la mia vita?’ throbbed with anxiety. Whittington metamorphosed her Nedda into a comical Colombina without jeopardizing the caliber of her vocalism. The commedia dell’arte feigning shattered by Canio’s rage, this Nedda was visibly affected by her husband’s despair: she may never have loved him, but she seemed to at least regret hurting him. Crowning Nedda’s final defiance with a brilliant top B, Whittington depicted the character’s death with startling realism. Occasionally, the wide intervals in Leoncavallo’s writing compromised the soprano’s vocal support, focus on projecting the upper register diminishing the solidity of tones in the lower octave of the range, but Whittington both sang and acted intelligently and poignantly.

It was only six months after his professional début that Fiorello Giraud introduced Canio to the world. Though the last years of his career were largely devoted to singing Heldentenor repertoire, it was as Canio that Giraud made his most lasting contribution to operatic history. Continuing Giraud’s legacy, Canio was an iconic rôle for Italian tenors from Caruso, Beniamino Gigli, and Giovanni Martinelli to Mario del Monaco, Franco Corelli, and Carlo Bergonzi. It was not until 4 January 1908, fourteen years after Pagliacci’s company première on 11 December 1893, that an American tenor, the Kentucky-born Riccardo Martin, first donned Canio’s greasepaint at the Metropolitan Opera. Thereafter, American tenors of the caliber of James McCracken, Herman Malamood, and Richard Tucker have portrayed Canio to acclaim throughout the world.

A lauded exponent of parts as demanding but different as Radamès in Verdi’s Aida, Calàf in Puccini’s Turandot, and Saint-Saëns’s Samson, the last of which he sang in North Carolina Opera’s 2018 concert performance of Samson et Dalila, Carl Tanner brought to Raleigh’s production of Pagliacci a refined, powerful portrayal of Canio. Presenting himself to the audiences on stage and in the auditorium, Tanner voiced ‘Un grande spettacolo a ventitré ore’ electrifyingly, the metal in the voice shimmering. The villager’s quip about marital infidelity striking an aggravated nerve, menace blended with pain in his singing of ‘Un tal gioco, credetemi.’ The stunning top B with which Tanner’s Canio reminded the villagers of the hour of the evening’s performance befitted a consummate showman.

Lured by Tonio into interrupting Nedda’s assignation with Silvio, this Canio ruthlessly pursued first his wife’s fleeing lover and then her confession of the affair. Tanner sang ‘E se in questo momento qui scannata non t’ho’ as though Canio was barely able to articulate the words. Canio’s soliloquy is one of opera’s most familiar—and most parodied—scenes, but, prefaced by a forceful but unexaggerated traversal of ‘Recitar! Mentre preso dal delirio,’ Tanner’s performance achieved Shakespearean eloquence. He sang ‘Vesti la giubba e la faccia infarina’ gloriously, exclaiming ‘Ridi, Pagliaccio!’ vigorously but without overwrought histrionics.

Jettisoning pretense in the opera’s final scene, this Canio’s declaration of ‘No, Pagliaccio non son’ was terrifying, but it was with his singing of ‘Sperai, tanto il delirio accecato m’aveva’ that Tanner most tellingly bared Canio’s soul. Deprived of reason by blinding pride and fury, Canio fulfilled the rôle assigned to him by Tonio’s machinations. In Tanner’s portrayal, killing Nedda was both Canio’s crime and his punishment, and the conspicuous remorse in the tenor’s adoring embrace of Nedda’s corpse markedly intensified the opera’s tragic ending. At the center of a cast without weakness, Tanner was the pillar upon which North Carolina Opera built a spectacular Pagliacci.

Girl of the golden voice: soprano Amy Cofield, Minnie in Opera Orlando’s February 2020 Opera on the Town production of Giacomo Puccini’s La fanciulla del West
[Photograph by Javier Vladimir, © by Opera Orlando]

By any standard, many significant events are documented in the annals of the first quarter-century of performances at New York City’s Metropolitan Opera. Two years after the opera’s inaugural staging in Vienna, Jean de Reszke and Emma Eames introduced Massenet’s Werther to the United States at the MET. Similarly, Verdi’s Falstaff arrived in the United States in 1895, two years after its world première in Milan, via a Metropolitan Opera production that featured the creator of the title rôle, Victor Maurel. The first American production of Diana von Solange, a score composed by Ernst II, Duke of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, was presented by the MET in 1891, and the company presented its first piece composed by a woman with the North American première of Dame Ethel Smyth’s Der Wald in 1903.

The musical diversity of the scores that received their first performances in the United States at the MET is astonishing, especially considering that the company has often faced criticism in recent years for mostly avoiding contemporary and long-neglected music. The USA premières of Ponchielli’s La gioconda (1883, with Christine Nilsson in the title rôle), Wagner’s Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg (1886) and Das Rheingold (1889), Spontini’s Fernand Cortez (1888), Massenet’s La navarraise (1895), Giordano’s Fedora (1906), Richard Strauss’s Salome (1907), D’Albert’s Tiefland (1908), Catalani’s La Wally (1909), and Gluck’s Armide (1910) all occurred at the MET. Further increasing the MET’s prestige, the company later staged the first productions in the United States of Richard Strauss’s Der Rosenkavalier (1913) and Die Ägyptische Helena (1928) and Verdi’s Simon Boccanegra (1932).

It was also the MET that hosted the USA premières of a battery of works that were subsequently forgotten, including Viktor Ernst Nessler’s Der Trompeter von Säkkingen (1887), Alberto Franchetti’s Asrael (1890) and Germania (1910), Antonio Smareglia’s Il vassalo di Szigeth (1890), Herman Bemberg’s Elaine (1894, with a cast that included Dame Nellie Melba, Pol Plançon, and both Jean and Édouard de Reszke!), Luigi Mancinelli’s Ero e Leandro (1899), Isidore de Lara’s Messaline (1902), Ignacy Jan Panderewski’s Manru (1902), and Alfred Bruneau’s L’attaque du moulin (1910).

The rightly revered MET career of the great German soprano Lilli Lehmann, who respectively sang Isolde, Venus, and Brünnhilde in the company’s USA-première traversals of Tristan und Isolde (1886), the Paris edition of Tannhäuser (1889), Siegfried (1887), and Götterdämmerung (1888), encompassed not only these Wagnerian heroines but also the first performances in the USA of the title rôle in Carl Maria von Weber’s Euryanthe (1887) and Sulamith and Viviane in Carl Goldmark’s Die Königin von Saba (1885) and Merlin (1887).

This remarkable legacy notwithstanding, it was not until twenty-seven years after the company’s first performance that the MET staged a world première. On 10 December 1910, Emmy Destinn, Enrico Caruso, Pasquale Amato, and Arturo Toscanini transported the New York audience to the Polka Saloon in a rugged mining camp in California’s Sierra Nevada wilderness with the first performance of Giacomo Puccini’s La fanciulla del West. Based upon the 1905 play The Girl of the Golden West by David Belasco, whose theatrical adaptation of John Luther Long’s short story Madame Butterfly had earlier inspired Puccini’s Madama Butterfly, the Italian composer’s homage to the West was the first opera with an American subject seen at the MET. A native Californian whose life’s journey from San Francisco to Broadway led him throughout the West, including to Piper’s Opera House in Virginia City, Nevada, Belasco supervised Fanciulla’s world-première staging with the goal of ensuring the greatest possible degree of authenticity.

Puccini’s La bohème was first performed by Metropolitan Opera forces in Los Angeles on 9 November 1900, forging a relationship among Puccini, California, and the MET that would ultimately yield La fanciulla del West. [The first performance of La bohème in the MET’s New York City home followed on 26 December 1900.] 1901 saw the United States première of Tosca on the MET stage, the opera’s eponymous prima donna brought to life by Milka Ternina, who was also America’s first Kundry in Wagner’s Parsifal two years later. In 1907, MET stagings of Manon Lescaut and Madama Butterfly with Enrico Caruso’s des Grieux and Pinkerton and Antonio Scotti’s Lescaut and Sharpless partnering Lina Cavalieri’s Manon and Geraldine Farrar’s Cio-Cio San were supervised by the composer. The first performance of Puccini’s Le Villi in the USA followed in 1908. The successes of these productions prompted the MET’s management to commission Puccini to composer a new opera for the company. Globally, acclaim for Fanciulla did not equal appreciation of Puccini’s other operas, but the triumph of Fanciulla’s New York début was sufficient to secure for the company another Puccini world première, that of Il trittico in 1918.

Though the legacies of the rôle’s creator, the Prague-born Emmy Destinn, and notable Italian exponents of the part including Gilda dalla Razza, Gigliola Frazzoni, Magda Olivero, and Renata Tebaldi continue to exert great influence on assessments and performances of Puccini’s music for Fanciulla’s heroine Minnie, memorable portraits of this most American of operatic leading ladies have also been drawn by American sopranos. Eleanor Steber’s Minnie in the 1954 Maggio Musicale Fiorentino production of Fanciulla established a high standard for American interpreters of the part, a standard that was later upheld by Maralin Niska, Linda Roark-Strummer, Barbara Daniels, and, in performances still extolled by aficionados as peaks in Fanciulla’s performance history, Dorothy Kirsten and Carol Neblett. Joining this illustrious sisterhood with her first portrayal of the captivating woman to whom Puccini affectionately referred as ‘la Girl’ in Opera Orlando’s Opera on the Town production of La fanciulla del West, staged in downtown Orlando’s Cheyenne Saloon and Ceviche Ballroom, soprano Amy Cofield brings to Minnie’s daunting music experience in repertoire ranging from Händel and Mozart to Ravel, Orff, and Deborah Mason.

An imaginative artist whose performances exhibit musical and intellectual curiosity, Cofield is keenly aware of the formidable demands that Minnie makes on singers who portray her, but it is not the music that the soprano cites as the greatest test posed by the part. ‘I think the biggest challenge has been in preparing this rôle with this English translation,’ she recently shared, referring to the new translation by David Scott Marley that will be sung in Opera Orlando’s production of La fanciulla del West. ‘Unlike many opera singers,’ she continued, ‘I actually enjoy singing English translations and have performed several rôles in translations, as well as [rôles] originally composed in English. Since it is my native language, I feel I can communicate best in it.’

Proprietress of the Polka: soprano Amy Cofield, Minnie in Opera Orlando’s February 2020 Opera on the Town production of Giacomo Puccini’s La fanciulla del West
[Photograph © by Amy Cofield]

Using the text to communicate Minnie’s dramatic development is no less important than singing the music accurately, not least in Opera Orlando’s site-specific staging, Cofield feels. ‘In this production, we are performing in the Saloon, where supertitles would not be practical and where the intimacy of the space enhances the communication, so singing in the language of the audience is ideal,’ she reflected. ‘David Scott Marley’s libretto, which very closely follows Belasco’s story, is wonderful for this setting, and I think it will be very engaging for our audience.’ After a contemplative pause, Cofield added, ‘That said, singing Puccini’s music while portraying Minnie’s less-educated language has been a challenge for me; different than singing [Carlisle] Floyd’s Susannah, for example, which was composed in English with the dialect. As one who strives for my best diction, I find singing Minnie's lines with “ain’t” and “fer,” for example, while still maintaining Puccini’s beautiful legatos, a challenge. I am looking forward to working with Alan Bruun, our stage director, for input and guidance in that regard—and, though challenging, I am excited to put it all together and discover my most authentic portrayal of Minnie.’

For a singer who is often praised by audiences and critics for her dedication to bringing the characters she portrays to life with uncommon sincerity and specificity, meaningfully connecting with a rôle’s psychology is a crucial component of preparing for performances. This is particularly true of Cofield’s approach to portraying ‘la Girl.’ ‘Minnie has many qualities that endear her to me; most of all, her huge heart,’ the soprano confided. ‘She may not have had an education, but she loves fiercely, and she recognizes how important it is to give and receive that love.’ Minnie’s life is shaped by love, Cofield asserts. ‘When she reflects on her parents’ love for each other and tells Jack that she won’t marry a man “without a heap o’ love behind it,” we see her idealistic hopes and dreams. She is strong-willed but also very humble.’

It is this humility that inspires Cofield’s affection for Minnie. ‘My heart actually breaks for her when she says that she hasn’t had more than thirty dollars’ worth of an education and then says “I’ll never come to nothin’.” She is this incredible woman with a heart of gold—which Johnson sees, of course—and more emotional intelligence than most, yet she feels unworthy,’ the singer intimated. ‘I also find it interesting that, though she feels that she is not educated enough for a gentleman, she is the one who is teacher to the miners—perhaps because she has it in her heart to help and guide. She has the heart of a teacher, if not the education.’ Cofield also identifies Minnie’s humility as the catalyst for her transformation into the courageous heroine who risks her life to save the man who deceived her. ‘When she finds out that Johnson is Ramirez, she says, “I should have knowed it! Ain’t no gentleman would have me!” I am struck by that and also recognize how that conflict can exist within her,’ she mused. ‘I think [that] her inner strength, her pure heart, and her will to do right by all those she loves make her most endearing to me, and I hope to portray her many layers. I find that I really love Minnie and can relate to her in many ways, which makes this rôle all the more fulfilling for me to portray.’

As her acquaintance with the score has deepened, Cofield notes that she has grown ever more impressed by the musical and dramatic craftsmanship that produced Fanciulla. ‘From Minnie’s entrance to the final moments, I think Puccini’s music and the storyline fit so beautifully together to show how Minnie is beloved among the men, worthy of the respect and affection they show at her entrance and of the true love of friendship expressed at the end.’ Her admiration for Puccini’s theatrical astuteness heightens her commitment to limning Minnie’s emotional facets. ‘To me, [Minnie] is a maternal figure. She scolds the men and gives them the Bible lesson, and you can see they have a great deal of respect for her. But she is also kind and tender and possesses a rare innocence for one in her rôle as saloon owner. She is their trusted friend, sister, guide, and confidante. I will aim to bring forth each of her qualities that endear her [to them] as the story unfolds.’

Defusing a brawl in the saloon with a gunshot and the force of her presence, Minnie makes one of the most exhilarating entrances in opera. Some singers struggle to sustain the energy of that entrance until the end of the opera. Unsurprisingly, Cofield derives her motivation from the score. ‘I think the music and the libretto maintain the dramatic momentum,’ she professed. ‘As the love story develops between Minnie and Johnson, we see Minnie’s innocence and faith; and her jealousy overcome by that faith and by genuine love.’ The pangs and pleasures of love are not the exclusive property of Minnie and Johnson, however. ‘Of course, I can’t leave out Jack Rance,’ this Minnie conceded. ‘He clearly loves Minnie, and it tortures him, yet even he relents. Does he know she cheated in their poker game? Perhaps.’

The fateful contest between Rance’s passion for Minnie and Minnie’s love for Johnson provides Fanciulla’s thrilling apotheosis, but Cofield proposes another love as the opera’s soul. ‘[Minnie] has won all of their hearts,’ she theorized, ‘but I think the truest love story is that between Minnie and the miners.’ Cognizance of this relationship will pervade Cofield’s portrayal of Minnie. ‘I will do my best to express each of those moments which lead to the heart-wrenching and heart-warming conclusion, as Minnie recalls the earlier times and they are moved to express their love and genuine desire for her happiness, even as they know they will lose her,’ she vowed.

Despite its happy ending, a vein of sadness circulates through Fanciulla. ‘I agree that this is perhaps the saddest of Puccini’s operas—and that is saying something as one who has sung both Mimì and Musetta in La bohème!’ Cofield said. ‘As I have been rehearsing the final act, it has taken me some time to be able to sing through it without getting too choked up to sing.’ This response is stimulated, Cofield suggests, by the cumulative sense of a community on the brink of dissolution. ‘There is the great loss they all experience, but there are also the great beauty and depth of friendship and love,’ she averred. ‘When Minnie reminds each of the men how they have been like brothers to her and recalls their specific acts of kindness, it touches me very deeply. They make the ultimate sacrifice to give her what she wants, to love her, and to let her go. It is both heartbreaking and beautiful—a powerful example of faith and redemption as taught by Minnie in Act One. She certainly shows herself to be deserving of their act of pure love.’ The earnestness of Minnie’s character appeals strongly to Cofield as both an artist and an individual. ‘Her deep faiths in God and in humanity, [her capacities] to love and forgive and strive for greatness, are perhaps what move me most about her. She is so pure and she loves so fiercely,’ the artist divulged.

Like many operas, Fanciulla leaves some questions unanswered. Does Rance return to his wife in New Orleans? Does Nick continue to operate the Polka after Minnie’s departure? Cofield has an optimistic but clear-sighted notion of Minnie’s future after the opera’s curtain falls. ‘I suspect [that] Minnie is one who would bloom where she is planted,’ she postulated. ‘I could imagine her having another saloon. The romantic view would be that she and Johnson are living happily together, maybe running a saloon together, as her parents did. I see Minnie as being very independent and capable, whether or not she and Johnson are together. Without a doubt, I see her as having many friends and admirers.’ There is no doubt that, like all of her operatic depictions, Amy Cofield’s Minnie will also earn many admirers.

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For more information about Amy Cofield’s career and future engagements, please visit her website.

Performances of Opera Orlando’s Opera on the Town production of La fanciulla del West, which also features tenor Ben Gulley as Dick Johnson and baritone Daniel Scofield as Jack Rance, are scheduled for Friday, 7 February, and Sunday, 9 February 2020. To learn more and to purchase tickets, please visit Opera Orlando’s website.

Sincerest thanks to Ms. Cofield for her time and the thoughtfulness and frankness with which she responded to questions for this profile.

GIACOMO PUCCINI (1858 – 1924): La bohème— Stefanna Kybalova (Mimì), Adam Smith (Rodolfo), Corey Raquel Lovelace (Musetta), Giovanni Guagliardo (Marcello), Peter Morgan (Colline), Keith Harris (Schaunard), Donald Hartmann (Benoît, Alcindoro), Darius Gillard (Parpignol); Opera Carolina Chorus and Orchestra; James Meena, conductor [Aldo Tarabella, director; Peter Dean Beck, scenic designer; Michael Baumgarten, lighting designer; Martha Ruskai, wig and makeup designer; Opera Carolina, Belk Theater, Blumenthal Performing Arts, Charlotte, North Carolina, USA; Thursday, 23 January 2020]

Amidst multitudes of mentions of Il barbiere di Siviglia and Carmen, polling opera aficionados about the works that provided their first experiences of the art form inevitably yields myriads of memories of La bohème. First performed at Teatro Regio di Torino on 1 February 1896, Giacomo Puccini’s adaptation of ideas taken from Henri Murger’s 1851 collection of stories Scènes de la vie de bohème was soon regarded as an embodiment of post-Verdi Italian opera, the score’s melodic abundance and unapologetic sentimentality—the quality for which it is now sometimes derided—appealing to listeners of all levels of musical sophistication, whether or not they admit it. Though its première in Venice, fifteen months after the first staging of Puccini’s La bohème, was warmly received, Ruggero Leoncavallo’s opera on the same subject was largely—and unjustly, as it is a score with many merits—forgotten within a quarter-century. Not even those listeners for whose refined palates the opera is too bittersweet a confection can deny the uninterrupted marketability of Puccini’s Bohème; and that, for those who respond to its emotional stimuli, a good performance of La bohème can be an affecting, memorable experience.

Opera companies that plan to perform La bohème should be required to adhere to an oath similar to Verdi’s mandate when asked to sanction the interpolation of top Cs in Manrico’s ‘Di quella pira’ in Il trovatore that, if ventured, they be good ones: if Bohème is to be staged, let the staging be good. With scenic designs by Peter Dean Beck that were often reminiscent of much-loved Covent Garden and Metropolitan Opera stagings by John Copley and Franco Zeffirelli, Opera Carolina’s Bohème was in some ways, not the least of which was its visual appeal, a tremendous success. Michael Baumgarten’s lighting designs followed the dictates of the score, entrances and exits, characters’ interactions, and dramatic momentum highlighted in accordance with cues in the music. Though a pale-hued suit in Act Four had Schaunard looking as though he wandered in from a cricket match in E. M. Forster’s England, the costumes by A.T. Jones and Sons were attractively appropriate, illustrating the social divisions that shape the opera’s narrative. Martha Ruskai’s wigs and makeup were unmistakably the work of an artist whose well-honed eye for attractive appearances is complemented by respect for the physical act of singing.

His staging avowed that director Aldo Tarabella’s affection for La bohème is genuine and profound. Much of the production heeded the composer’s and librettists’ instructions, engendering a traditional but never tired rendering of the piece, yet Tarabella’s good intentions were sometimes undermined by efforts to enliven the staging with idiosyncratic details. Any claim that Puccini’s bohemians are morally wholesome people is belied by the rapidity with which they fall in and out of love, but having a scantily-clad woman slinking out of Rodolfo’s bed whilst he contrived to hide her from Marcello in Act One damaged the drama’s emotional impact by reducing the plausibility of Rodolfo’s devotion to Mimì. Also problematic was Schaunard’s and Colline’s mockery during Rodolfo’s introduction of Mimì in Act Two: though undeniably amusing, this distorted a moment of tenderness in which the sincerity of Rodolfo’s burgeoning love for Mimì should receive the director’s—and, by extension, the audience’s—full attention. The transformation of the pantomimed swordplay in Act Four into a jousting match was clever, but why would men living in poverty, with no known connections to children, have hobby horses on hand in their sparsely-furnished flat? None of these deviations from the score was ruinous, and they may have brought the opera’s essence nearer to the spirit of Murger’s stories. The effectiveness of an otherwise pleasing production was nonetheless jeopardized.

Festaioli in città: the cast of Opera Carolina’s January 2020 production of Giacomo Puccini’s La bohème
[Photograph by Mitchell Kearney, © by Opera Carolina]

Opera Carolina’s Artistic Director and Principal Conductor James Meena solidified his standing as an interpreter of Puccini’s operas with his leadership of the company’s productions of Turandot (2015) and La fanciulla del West (2017). During his time in Charlotte, Meena has conducted music in vastly different styles, reliably identifying and focusing on the unique artistic atmosphere of each piece. There was much to enjoy in his pacing of this performance of La bohème, but there were also atypical lapses in coordination between stage and pit. On the whole, the Opera Carolina Orchestra played accurately and eloquently, their efforts affected by few glaring mistakes, but the orchestral excellence that often distinguishes Opera Carolina productions was missing from this performance. Intonation, rhythmic tautness, and precision of ensemble improved markedly after a conspicuously unsettled first act, but, like the orchestra’s playing, Meena’s conducting lacked its accustomed authority. This was an ingratiating, engaging Bohème, but it only intermittently benefited from Meena’s proven capacity for transcending conventional interpretations of Puccini’s music.

Vocally, this was also a thoroughly professional and emotionally effective but variable Bohème. Especially as the merry-making citizens of Paris in Act Two but also as the street sweepers and milkmaids who arrive at the city gate at the beginning of Act Three, Opera Carolina’s choristers of all ages sang splendidly, their training producing excellent balances among the voices. The gentlemen who portrayed the sentinels at the gate were not identified in the playbill, but they sang well. Tenor Darius Gillard coped courageously with being harangued by over-eager children as the toy vendor Parpignol, but his voice did not project as strongly as his stage presence.

Returning to the stage that has hosted some of his wittiest characterizations, bass-baritone Donald Hartmann again exhibited how meaningfully a performance can be enriched by featuring artists of stature in supporting rôles. There are instances in which singers’ performances of the part compel audiences to regret the bohemians’ decision to reluctantly grant their landlord Benoît an audience, but Hartmann’s vibrant, strongly-sung portrayal delighted despite being subjected to intrusively unnecessary stage business. His still-evolving stagecraft was no less effective in his vivid portrayal of Musetta’s deep-pocketed suitor Alcindoro. Bringing the curtain down on Act Two with a lithely hilarious depiction of Alcindoro’s fainting reaction to being gifted the bill for the bohemians’ feast, Hartmann upstaged even his glamorous Musetta.

Problemi alla porta: bass-baritone Donald Hartmann as Benoît (far right) intrudes upon the Bohemians’ festivities in Opera Carolina’s January 2020 production of Giacomo Puccini’s La bohème
[Photograph by Mitchell Kearney, © by Opera Carolina]

Baritone Keith Harris was an exuberant but serious Schaunard who seemed elated by his own cleverness whilst recounting his successful conspiracy to assassinate a noisy parrot and truly exasperated when he observed that his friends were ignoring his tale. Harris’s firm, even-toned vocalism was always audible in Act Two, but his finest work came in Act Four, when his open-hearted but subtle depiction of Schaunard’s love for Mimì and his friends conveyed absolute sincerity. Bass-baritone Peter Morgan’s Colline was also a man whose affection for his fellow bohemians was apparent, and his good-natured philosophizing was determined but never dull. Morgan’s voice had greater impact at the top of the range than below the stave, but he was a rare Colline who sang his much-maligned ‘farewell to a coat’ in Act Four, ‘Vecchia zimarra,’ handsomely and unaffectedly. Both Harris and Morgan intensified the sadness of the opera’s final moments. From her labored final entrance, Mimì’s impending death looms in the music, yet, returning to the garret after leaving Mimì and Rodolfo alone, Harris’s Schaunard was wrenchingly shocked to find Mimì already dead, and the reaction of Morgan’s Colline to the grim discovery shared this heartbreaking emotional candor.

Previous appearances in the Queen City have garnered particular appreciation amongst Charlotte audiences for soprano Corey Raquel Lovelace, and her sultry but honorable Musetta in Opera Carolina’s Bohème validated that esteem. Musetta makes one of opera’s most high-spirited entrances: Lovelace’s Musetta seized the opportunity to dazzle those around her, not least the humble Mimì. Alongside Mimì’s and Rodolfo’s arias in Act One, Musetta’s ‘Quando m’en vo’ soletta’ is one of the pieces that Bohème audiences anxiously await. Lovelace’s performance justified and fulfilled expectation, but the number was only a small component of her characterization. Musetta’s reconciliation with Marcello at the ensemble’s end was unusually endearing, and the joviality with which the bill for the evening’s celebrating was left for Alcindoro disclosed no hostility.

There was no shortage of vitriol in the exchanges with Marcello in Act Three, but Lovelace evinced that this viper of a Musettta was non-venomous. Leading the dying Mimì back to the scene of her former happiness in Act Four, this Musetta was solely a kind friend. The futile prayer for Mimì’s recovery, ‘Madonna benedetta,’ was urgently and beautifully sung, Lovelace’s timbre shimmering. It is not often that a Musetta piques curiosity about her future, but Lovelace’s Musetta earned hope for her prosperity. She portrayed Musetta as the kind of woman who, whether gracing the arm of a duke or dancing with peasants in a rowdy tavern, might also be found quietly laying flowers in Mimì’s memory.

La donna in rosso: soprano Corey Raquel Lovelace as Musetta (center left) and bass-baritone Donald Hartmann as Alcindoro (center right) in Opera Carolina’s January 2020 production of Giacomo Puccini’s La bohème
[Photograph by Mitchell Kearney, © by Opera Carolina]

The Marcello of baritone Giovanni Guagliardo was a pensive, at times almost avuncular figure whose artistic frustration was a symptom of his restless passion for Musetta. His jocular conversations with his friends in Act One betrayed a persistent distraction, and there was no doubt from the moment of Musetta’s arrival at Café Momus in Act Two that she was the cause of his discontent. The lovers’ reunion was therefore all the more believable. Guagliardo sang elegantly in the scene with Mimì at the beginning of Act Three, the voice growing darker and stronger as the severity of the girl’s illness was disclosed. His compassion for Mimì fueled the empathetic but stern reproaches in the subsequent dialogue with Rodolfo. The baritone rousingly sparred with his Musetta as Mimì and Rodolfo sang of the dissolution of their relationship, and he comforted Musetta tenderly in Act Four. The zenith of Guagliardo’s performance was his depiction of Marcello’s despair in the duet with Rodolfo: attempting to disguise his anguish, he was suddenly overwhelmed, surrendering not to Gigli-esque sobs but to silence. Guagliardo was not on his best form, vocally, but his shortcomings plausibly and often touchingly mirrored those of the character.

The youthfully athletic Rodolfo of British tenor Adam Smith revealed this gifted singer as a well-qualified successor to the legacy of his too-little-remembered countryman Charles Craig. Possessing a rich, masculine timbre and an upper register with exciting, well-managed squillo, Smith promises to join Craig in the sparse ranks of British tenors with special affinity for Italian repertoire. In Act One of Opera Carolina’s La bohème, he was the ebullient, libidinous poet to the life, feeding his manuscript to the flames with sham solemnity. With Mimì came new maturity, and Smith voiced ‘Che gelida manina’ with burgeoning wonder. He valiantly sang the aria in Puccini’s original key: a catch in the voice on the ascent compromised the security of his top C, but this was but a brief blemish in a fine account of the music. The soaring lines of ‘O soave fanciulla’ suited him perfectly, and Smith delivered them with panache.

Smith overcame Schaunard’s and Colline‘s silliness in Act Two to sensitively praise Mimì as the embodiment of poetry, and the tenor’s dusky timbre lent gravity to Rodolfo’s warning about his jealousy. Smith met the fearsome requirements of Act Three with unflappable technical acumen, producing the feared diminuendo on top A♭ on ‘alla stagion dei fior’ superbly and ably partnering first Marcello and then Mimì in their duets. Complementing Guagliardo‘s tasteful singing, Smith exercised vocal and dramatic restraint in the Act Four duet. His portrayal of Rodolfo in the opera’s final scene was not without lacrimose passages, but there was subtlety here, too. It was not a perfect evening for Smith, but his was the sort of performance that reminds the listener of how uninteresting and unsatisfying perfection can be.

Insieme fino alla primavera: soprano Stefanna Kybalova as Mimì (left) and tenor Adam Smith as Rodolfo (right) in Opera Carolina’s January 2020 production of Giacomo Puccini’s La bohème
[Photograph by Mitchell Kearney, © by Opera Carolina]

When the frail, introspective Mimì of Bulgarian soprano Stefanna Kybalova knocked at her neighbors’ door in Act One, the prevailing mood of this Bohème was instantaneously altered, as Puccini’s music indicates that it should be, from one of puerile ribaldry to delicate intimacy. Playful but unmistakably unwell, her Mimì shyly acclimated herself to Rodolfo’s environment, imparting the joy of simply being noticed. Kybalova phrased ‘Sì, mi chiamano Mimì’ with innate comprehension of the conversational flow of the music. Projection of the soprano’s upper register was sometimes effortful, but her intonation remained true. Her smile as she took Rodolfo’s arm in their duet shone more brightly than all the lights of Paris.

The business with the bonnet in Act Two can be cloying, but Kybalova’s acting eschewed artifice. Her Mimì was genuinely awed by Musetta, though she recognized immediately that the frost between Musetta and Marcello was rapidly thawing. Seeking Marcello at the tavern by the city gate in Act Three, Mimì’s infirmity was advancing mercilessly, but, listening as Rodolfo told Marcello of his guilt and angst at his poverty hastening the deterioration of Mimì’s health, the frankness with which Kybalova uttered ‘Ahimè morir!’ was devastating. This Mimì’s voicing of ‘Donde lieta uscì al tuo grido d’amore’ expressed the meaning of the text with astonishing clarity: devoid of bitterness, her singing was suffused with exhausted acceptance of the inevitable. The girlish sweetness of Mimì’s greetings to her friends in Act Four softened the blow of a perceptible finality. Kybalova’s singing throughout the final scene was exquisite, her portrayal of the young woman who was so often alone in life transfigured by Mimì meeting death surrounded by love. Her final act of love for Rodolfo was dying whilst he was turned away, sparing him the trauma of witnessing her last breath. Her characterization always guided by the text, Kybalova’s Mimì recalled portrayals by Raina Kabaivanska, Renata Scotto, and Diana Soviero, but this was, above all, an uncommonly faithful incarnation of Puccini’s Mimì.

Audiences sometimes seem surprised to learn that ticket sales constitute a small fraction of opera companies’ budgets. Nevertheless, as governmental funding for the Performing Arts becomes ever more imperiled, selling tickets is an integral component of opera’s continued survival. Opera’s cognoscenti groan at the prospect of a production of La bohème, lamenting the lack of attention granted to lesser-known, infrequently-performed works and contemporary music. A Twenty-First-Century concertgoer rarely purchases a ticket for a Rolling Stones concert with the hope of hearing overlooked B-sides and new material, however. In opera, adventurous programming deservedly earns plaudits, but performing beloved operas like La bohème enables the exploration of other repertoire. Opera Carolina’s 2016 production of Sergei Rachmaninoff’s Aleko, the opera’s first fully-staged presentation by a professional company in the United States, established Charlotte as a welcoming, supportive home for bold repertory choices. Staging La bohème is almost always a safe choice for opera companies, but Opera Carolina’s production of Puccini’s perennially-popular paean to ill-fated love affirmed that safe choices can be wonderfully rewarding.

GIACOMO PUCCINI (1858 – 1924): La fanciulla del West [sung in a new English translation by David Scott Marley] — Amy Cofield (Minnie), Ben Gulley (Dick Johnson), Daniel Scofield (Jack Rance), Wesley Morgan (Nick), Tyler Putnam (Ashby), Gloria Palermo (Wowkle), Torlef Borsting (Sonora), Chevalier Lovett (Bello), Brent Doucette (Trin), E Mani Cadet (Harry), Benjamin Ludwig (Joe), Jacob Pence (Sid), Matthew Fackler (Un postiglione), José Manuel-López (José Castro, Billy Jackrabbit); Ross Monroe Winter (violin), Adam Fimbres (double bass); Robin Jensen, piano and conductor [Grant Preisser, Technical Director; Alison Reid, Costume Designer; Michelle Engleman, Production and Stage Manager; Amber Rae Sandora, Hair and Makeup Designer; Alan Bruun, Stage Director; Opera Orlando, Cheyenne Saloon and Opera House and Ceviche Ballroom, Orlando, Florida, USA; Friday, 7 February 2020]

Few physical settings are as important to an opera’s drama than California’s Sierra Nevada range and the miners’ camp nestled amidst the peaks are to Giacomo Puccini’s La fanciulla del West. It is significant that, when giving the opera its title, Puccini retained the word ‘West’ from the story’s source, David Belasco’s 1905 play The Girl of the Golden West, there being no word in as nuanced a language as Italian that could relay the essence of the American West. Born in San Francisco in 1853, Belasco was a product of the inimitable, untranslatable West, his literary and theatrical careers shaped by formative exposure to the unspoiled landscapes and sometimes turbulent communities of the American frontier. The opera’s three acts respectively set in the Polka Saloon, Minnie’s mountainside abode, and a grove of California’s emblematic redwoods, Fanciulla occupies a realm that is as much a state of mind as it is a geographical location. Though engendering site-specific challenges to counterbalance the advantages of the setting, Opera Orlando’s Opera on the Town production of La fanciulla del West brought Belasco’s and Puccini’s California to downtown Orlando’s Cheyenne Saloon and Opera House and Ceviche Ballroom with the kind of engrossing atmosphere that even the most picturesque traditional stagings can only approximate.

Written for New York City’s Metropolitan Opera, La fanciulla del West received its first performance on 10 December 1910. Conducted by Arturo Toscanini and featuting Emmy Destinn as Minnie, Enrico Caruso as Johnson, and Pasquale Amato as Rance, Fanciulla was both the MET’s first world première and the first opera with an American subject staged by the company. Such was the dedication to scenic and histrionic verisimilitude that the inaugural production was painstakingly overseen by Belasco, who by the time of Fanciulla’s première was established as one of Broadway’s most savvy theatrical writers and directors. The composer spoke virtually no English, but it was Belasco’s adaptation of a short story by John Luther Long that inspired Puccini to transform the tragic liaison between Cio-Cio San and Lieutenant Pinkerton into Madama Butterfly. Puccini recognized in the betrayal felt by Minnie, the pure-hearted but practical proprietress of the Polka Saloon, when she learns that the man she knows as Dick Johnson of Sacramento is the fugitive outlaw Ramerrez the same emotional potency that captivated audiences who heard Madama Butterfly.

Aside from its snigger-inducing Americanisms, which likely seemed markedly less ridiculous 110 years ago, the Italian libretto created by Guelfo Civinini and Carlo Zangarini maintained an unusually high degree of fidelity to its source. Complementing the innovative choice of locations for the production, Opera Orlando’s Fanciulla utilized a new English translation by David Scott Marley, the goal of which was to minimize the divide between the opera’s text and Belasco’s play. Vital to the success of this commendable ambition was the consistent clarity of the singers’ diction, not least in passages of dialect. [In this review, the Italian texts of principal numbers are used for the benefit of readers who do not yet know Marley’s English translation.] Ramerrez’s hacienda-society upbringing was manifested, as it is in Belasco’s work, in a more formal, Romanticized style of utterance. [It was interesting to hear Johnson address Sonora in Act Three as ‘Soñora,’ subtly closing the chasm between Ramerrez’s and the miners’ cultures.] For reasons of time and logistics necessitated by physically relocating the audience during the intervals, the Act One sequence of Jake Wallace’s ballad and the homesick Jim Larkens’s departure from Cloudy Mountain was omitted. His fellow miners’ collection of funds to finance Larkens’s homeward journey is a crucial display of the compassion that facilitates the opera’s non-fatal conclusion, but Opera Orlando’s miners nonetheless palpably conveyed their affection for Minnie, rendering their change of heart towards Johnson in the opera’s final scene wholly convincing.

The West, down South: the cast of Opera Orlando’s February 2020 Opera on the Town production of Giacomo Puccini’s La fanciulla del West
[Photograph by Brion Price Photography, © by Opera Orlando]

Scenically, this production of Fanciulla was as engrossing as any that an aficionado who loves this score could hope to encounter. The grandeur of the stunningly beautiful Cheyenne Saloon and Opera House, in which Acts One and Three were staged, contrasted pointedly with the intimate setting for Act Two in Ceviche Ballroom, the latter evocatively illuminated by oil lamps. The aptness of the location for Act One was undeniable, but the glimmering wood of the saloon’s interior was also appropriate for the sylvan backdrop to Act Three. In Act Two, the seating arrangement situated the audience on all sides of the interior of Minnie’s cabin, begetting an immediacy that productions in opera houses cannot achieve. Feeling rather than merely seeing and hearing the awful thud when Johnson fainted after being shot made the audience participants in the drama. So, too, did the clever, brilliantly-executed theatrics of steampunk performance troupe Phantasmagoria, their eerily seductive motions making them seem like ghosts who benevolently haunted the Polka.

Stage director Alan Bruun infused this production with a naturalness that pervaded both movement and music. Interruptions of the organic flow of everyday life in Cloudy Mountain—events like Sid’s cheating at cards, the arrivals of Ashby and the post rider, and the capture of Ramerrez’s associate José Castro—were thus all the more jarring. Bruun’s concept emphasized Minnie’s innate goodness without attempting to canonize her. The girl’s manipulation of the outcome of the poker game in Act Two was unmistakably out of character, but this Minnie knew that survival in a mining camp sometimes requires more than perfume and Psalms. Alison Reid’s costumes and Amber Rae Sandora’s hair and makeup were ideal, evoking California during the Gold Rush without inhibiting comfort, range of motion, or the mechanics of singing. In both of this production’s venues, technical director Grant Preisser, lighting designer Jon Whiteley, stage manager Michelle Engleman, and assistant stage manager Emily DeNardo faced unique challenges, particularly those created by the spaces’ sight lines and the proximity of the audience, but every problem was solved with intelligence and imagination.

Presiding from the piano, Opera Orlando’s Music and Education Director Robin Jensen both paced the performance and played marvelously—and, delightfully, she received a hearty ‘Hello, Robin!’ from the miners upon their first entrance  Her expert handling of Puccini’s Italianate but often strikingly Twentieth-Century writing was matched by the impeccable musicianship of violinist Ross Monroe Winter and bassist Adam Fimbres. Fanciulla, Il tabarro, and Turandot are arguably Puccini’s most modern and adventurously-orchestrated scores, and approaching an episode like the poker game that ends Act Two without a full orchestra, Puccini’s writing for which heightens the tension and makes audible the frantic beating of Minnie’s heart, was worrying. Perfectly suited to this Fanciulla’s setting, the playing of the instrumental ensemble alternated robustness with serenity, satisfying all of the score’s musical demands. Like the staging, Jensen’s musical direction exhibited sensitivity and sensibility that reflected total understanding of the story, the score, and the setting.

Saloon sentinels: bass Tyler Putnam as Ashby (left) and baritone Daniel Scofield as Jack Rance (right) in Opera Orlando’s February 2020 Opera on the Town production of Giacomo Puccini’s La fanciulla del West
[Photograph by Brion Price Photography, © by Opera Orlando]

The cast assembled by Opera Orlando to portray the inhabitants of Cloudy Mountains provided an impressive survey of Florida’s native and adopted talent. Hailing from Winter Park, tenor E Mani Cadet sang strongly and sweetly as Harry, following the dictates of the score, and baritone Benjamin Ludwig represented his hometown of Orlando with an ably-sung, touching portrayal of Joe, whose interactions with Minnie were those of an adoring brother. Baritone and Opera Orlando Board of Directors member-at-large Chevalier Lovett was a Bello whose vocalism warranted the character’s name. Opera Orlando Studio Artists mezzo-soprano Gloria Palermo and tenor Brent Doucette sang splendidly as Wowkle and Trin, the former offering a genuinely pious and beautiful account of her prayer at the start of Act Two, and a pair of Kentucky gentlemen, Jacob Pence as Sid and Happy and baritone Matthew Fackler as the post rider, acted and sang their parts charismatically.

The production’s lone native Californian, baritone José Manuel-López, depicted José Castro and Billy Jackrabbit with none of the silly and potentially offensive mannerisms that were once traditional in these rôles, and his voice is a fine instrument. Maine may never have been visited by the Wells Fargo stagecoaches that traversed the West, but bass Tyler Putnam lacked none of Ashby’s requisite vocal and histrionic swagger. [Another felicitous detail of Marley’s translation was Ashby’s tongue-in-cheek entreaty for Minnie to bank with Wells Fargo more often, sung by Putnam with deadpan seriousness.] The burnished timbre and flinty tones wielded by Hawaii-born baritone Torlef Borsting made Sonora an atypically well-matched foil for Jack Rance. [Unsurprisingly, the brooding Sheriff is also in Borsting’s repertoire.] The high standard of Borsting’s Sonora was perpetuated by Floridian tenor Wesley Morgan, whose handsomely-sung Nick—a rôle that needs but too seldom receives handsome singing—recalled portrayals by Piero de Palma and Paul Franke.

By pinning Jack Rance’s tin star to his waistcoat, baritone Daniel Scofield joined the brigade of memorable Sheriffs including Pasquale Amato, Tito Gobbi, Giangiacomo Guelfi, Anselmo Colzani, and Silvano Carroli. That Scofield is worthy of this illustrious company was evident from his first notes. Proposing a non-violent punishment for Sid’s cheating, conversing with Ashby about the search for the highwayman Ramerrez, or boldly declaring that Minnie would soon be Mrs. Rance, Scofield filled Cheyenne Saloon with rousing, virile tone, the character’s authority in this case not merely derived from his badge. This Rance was a conqueror, not a cajoler, but the baritone voiced ‘Ti voglio bene, Minnie’ with competing passion and refinement. Rance’s awkward wooing of Minnie upended by Johnson’s arrival at the Polka and the posse’s errant pursuit of Ramerrez, Scofield projected the Sheriff’s frustration into every crevice of the saloon.

Minnie’s rejection having wounded his pride, the cruelty with which Scofield’s Rance tracked Ramerrez to Minnie’s cabin and tormented her with proof of Johnson’s deception was terrifying. Though repugnantly chauvinistic, Rance’s articulation of his desire for Minnie was discernibly sincere, and the desperation of his search for a glass with which to give Minnie a steadying drink of water when she feigned distress whilst extracting the winning hand from her bodice divulged that, in this consequential moment, he was concerned for her well-being. Accustomed to getting what he wants as a lawman, a gambler, and a lover, this Rance rushed out of Minnie’s cabin with the pulverizing energy of an avalanche after losing the fateful poker game.

The Rance who demanded Johnson’s immediate hanging in Act Three was a broken man. Scofield’s vocalism resounded with the raw pain of thwarted love. When Minnie appeared, insisting that Johnson’s life be spared, Rance’s scorn of the collective inability to defy a woman was aimed as much at himself as at the miners. In Scofield’s performance, Rance was reminiscent of the Wanderer in Act Three of Wagner’s Siegfried: his power overwhelmed, he sank into the shadows. Scofield’s voice shone brightly throughout the evening, however, and the depth of the baritone’s artistry was apparent in his nuanced, sympathetic portrayal of a character who too frequently becomes a caricature.

A waltz at the Polka: soprano Amy Cofield as Minnie (left) and tenor Ben Gulley as Johnson (right) in Opera Orlando’s February 2020 Opera on the Town production of Giacomo Puccini’s La fanciulla del West
[Photograph by Brion Price Photography, © by Opera Orlando]

Like his soprano and baritone colleagues in a performance of La fanciulla del West, the tenor who sings the rôle of the fugitive bandito Ramerrez, alias Dick Johnson of Sacramento, not only faces the considerable demands of Puccini’s music but also contends with the reputations of acclaimed interpreters of past generations, most prominent amongst whom are Caruso, Giacomo Lauri-Volpi, Mario del Monaco, Franco Corelli, Richard Tucker, and Plácido Domingo. The singing of Opera Orlando’s Johnson, Ben Gulley, occasionally brought to mind the work of another expert Johnson, Gianfranco Cecchele, but Gulley’s portrayal of the reforming bandito relied upon no one’s instincts but his own.

Bounding into the Polka, asking to be introduced to the rascal who promised to ‘curl his hair’ for requesting water with his whiskey, Gulley’s Johnson reacted to seeing Minnie as though he had come face to face with the barrel of a six-shooter. An accomplished actor whose psychological transformations shown on his face, Gulley insightfully limned the evolution of Johnson’s emotions. The tenor ascended to the B₅ at the beginning of the duet that ends Act One with freedom that few Johnsons past or present could equal. Gulley’s upper register was reliably exhilarating, having been blessed with much-coveted ping.

Observing Minnie in her lonely cabin instigated a new deluge of feeling in Johnson, depicted by Gulley with vocalism that at once gleamed with romantic ardor and shuddered with shame and doubt, and his correction of Minnie’s mispronunciation of Dante was affectionate rather than condescending. His true identity spitefully revealed by Rance, Johnson’s recounting of the circumstances of his criminal past was sung with anguish that only increased the focus of Gulley’s vocal emission. This Johnson’s flight from Minnie’s cabin was so abrupt that many people in the audience were visibly startled when the shot that felled him rang out.

Nursed back to health by Minnie, Johnson is captured by the Cloudy Mountain posse in Act Three, and his captors’ preparations to hang him give him the opportunity to sing the aria ‘Ch’ella mi creda libero e lontano.’ Jensen set a slow tempo for the number, and Gulley’s broad phrasing and galvanizing top B♭s justified the choice. The tenor’s singing in the opera’s final scene, as Minnie persuaded the miners to show mercy and reunited with Johnson, evinced an aura of wonder, his voicing of the liberated man’s thanks to his ‘brothers’ candidly articulating relief and gratitude. Confidently confronting the rôle’s many difficulties, Gulley was a Johnson who earned his pardon.

Winchester for the win: soprano Amy Cofield as Minnie in Opera Orlando’s February 2020 Opera on the Town production of Giacomo Puccini’s La fanciulla del West
[Photograph by Brion Price Photography, © by Opera Orlando]

That soprano Amy Cofield was an exceptionally well-qualified Violetta in Opera Roanoke’s 2016 production of Verdi’s La traviata might suggest that Puccini’s strenuous music for Minnie is not ideal for her voice. Significantly, however, Gilda dalla Rizza (Puccini’s favorite Minnie and his first Magda in La rondine), Maria Caniglia, Eleanor Steber, Dorothy Kirsten, Renata Tebaldi, Antonietta Stella, Maralin Niska, and Carol Neblett were all acclaimed as both Violetta and Minnie, and, difficult as it may be for listeners who are acquainted solely with her verismo performances to believe, even the inimitable Magda Olivero, a Minnie of almost frightening intensity, also included Violetta in her repertoire. In Opera Orlando’s Fanciulla, Cofield sang her first Minnie with meticulous adherence to Puccini’s instructions, never overextending her vocal resources. Disrupting a fight in the Polka with a shot from her rifle, this Minnie introduced herself with good-natured sternness that quickly gave way to poignant tenderness in her exchanges with the miners. It is only in their brief moments with Minnie that the miners’ individual personalities emerge, and Cofield differentiated her responses to the miners accordingly.

Minnie was indisputably unsettled by Rance’s declaration of love, but Cofield’s performance intimated that the girl's reaction is prompted as much by embarrassment as by annoyance. The soprano’s account of ‘Laggiù nel Soledad’ was beautiful of tone and phrasing, building to a sublime top C. Minnie’s assurance faltered when Johnson strode into the Polka, her memories of their meeting on the road from Monterrey reawakening unfamiliar feelings. Perhaps no other character in opera delineates the distinction between Platonic and romantic loves more meaningfully than Minnie, and the fervor of a sensitive young woman falling in love permeated Cofield’s vocalism in the scene with Johnson that ends Act One.

Anxiously anticipating Johnson’s visit to her humble cabin in Act Two, Cofield’s Minnie embodied the nervous exuberance of new love. The guileless delicacy of her singing in reply to Johnson’s impassioned proclamations yielded to the euphoric top C with which Minnie welcomed her first kiss. Their bliss disturbed by the miners’ pursuit of Ramerrez, the shock of learning that the man hidden in her home is the loathed outlaw exploded in Minnie’s denunciation of her lover, Cofield’s vocalism seething with crestfallen fury. Her guilt at sending Johnson out into the night to face Rance’s wrath was obvious in this Minnie’s despondent refusal to abandon her wounded paramour.

The soprano’s fearless singing during the poker game allied with incisive acting to effect a riveting performance of the scene. Here and in Act Three, Cofield’s portrayal accentuated Minnie’s inner conflict between her devotion to Cloudy Mountain and her duty to herself. She did not harangue when reminding the miners of the lessons of forgiveness and forbearance learned in their Bible studies, but her vocal fortitude avowed that her Minnie would not hesitate to win Johnson’s freedom with her pistol. Her voice utterly secure from the bottom of the stave to her radiant top Bs and Cs, Cofield sang Minnie’s music valiantly and attractively, but the cornerstone of her performance was making Minnie’s soul as beguiling as her song.

Before entrepreneurs arrived with citrus saplings, resort blueprints, and dreams of theme parks, Orlando was a quiet settlement in colonial Florida’s cattle country. Never a rowdy cowtown like Fort Worth and Wichita or a boomtown like Virginia City, Orlando overcame the decline of the cattle industry and fabricated its own gold mines. Orlando’s prosperity in the Twenty-First Century is conspicuous in the vitality of the city’s Arts community, in which Opera Orlando’s rôle continues to grow more preeminent. Staging La fanciulla del West tests any company’s artistic resources, and audiences’ responses to a taxing work like Fanciulla appraise the viability of opera. Both as a worthwhile performance of Puccini’s magnificent score and as a gauge of Orlando’s thriving Arts scene, Opera Orlando’s sensational Fanciulla struck gold.

At present, we all are conquering extraordinary challenges in our individual lives, our families’ and friends’ lives, our respective municipalities, and our global Arts community.

Freelance artists—and, in my case, freelance writers who write about their work—have been vastly and devastatingly affected by the financial implications of the necessary response to COVID-19.

I regret that the biannual renewal of the Voix des Arts domain registration comes during this season of deprivation. As this is the reality, however, I have reached the very difficult decision to suspend the renewal.

Owing to the unprecedented circumstances, I successfully negotiated with the domain registrar to keep the Voix des Arts site content online for two years. No new content will be permitted unless the domain is renewed within those two years, but all current content, as well as content published before 30 April 2020, will remain online and accessible, both via direct link and by search engine query.

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Please know that I remain committed to supporting, promoting, and tirelessly advocating for art and artists.

Thank you for reading and sharing Voix des Arts during the past twelve years. I hope that this will prove to be ‘À bientôt’ rather than ‘Adieu.’

Above all, keep well.

- Joseph Newsome
Author of Voix des Arts
Click here to contact me via email

COVID-19 and the global response thereto have given artists in all genres and those who enjoy, support, and celebrate their work countless reasons to despair. Postponements, cancellations, and transitions from in-theater to virtual performances have decimated both the quintessence of the Arts community and individual artists’ abilities to maintain their livelihoods amidst unprecedented financial hardships.

Despite obstacles that sometimes seem insurmountable, Art and artists have devised myriad new, innovative ways of exercising their collective determination and fostering hope for a future that, though vastly different from anyone’s expectations, promises renewal, rejuvenation, and previously-unimagined avenues of collaboration, cooperation, and growth.

In the weeks since publicly announcing that circumstances exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic imperiled the continuation of Voix des Arts, I have been humbled by the messages of encouragement and pledges of support that I have received from readers and fellow Arts enthusiasts. I am overjoyed to now share the news that, owing to your selfless kindness, the short-term survival of Voix des Arts has been secured. Moreover, significant strides have been made towards long-term solutions to problems that are increasingly likely to persist well beyond the eagerly-awaited mitigation of COVID-19. In all senses, the work continues.

The past month in American history has catapulted so many of us who had grown complacent with efforts at diversifying the Arts to a harrowing realization that this is the area in which the work must continue most robustly and differently. The marginalization of minorities in the Performing Arts may seem inconsequential in comparison with the systemic racism and devaluation of life that degrade our society, but failing to address this inequality in a meaningful way restricts the extent to which our culture can be altered.

I have been privileged since my first experience with professional opera, a 1997 Metropolitan Opera performance of Bizet’s Carmen with Denyce Graves in the title rôle, to enjoy superb performances by artists of color in a tremendous variety of parts, some of the most thrilling of which include Lawrence Brownlee as Ilo in Rossini’s Zelmira; Nicole Cabell as Giulietta in Bellini’s I Capuleti ed i Montecchi and Medora in Verdi’s Il corsaro; Steven Cole as Don Buscone in Cavalli’s Veremonda; Lisa Daltirus as Leonora in Il trovatore; Jacqueline Echols as Violetta in Verdi’s La traviata; Nmon Ford as Verdi’s Iago; Othalie Graham as Verdi’s Lady Macbeth and Puccini’s Turandot; Denyce Graves as Carmen and Azucena in Il trovatore; Gordon Hawkins as Verdi’s Nabucco and Amonasro in Aida and Alberich in Wagner’s Götterdämmerung; Musa Ngqungwana as Der Wanderer in Wagner’s Siegfried; Sidney Outlaw as Dandini in Rossini’s La Cenerentola; Mark Rucker as Verdi’s Macbeth; Russell Thomas as Verdi’s Otello and the Prince in Dvořák’s Rusalka; Talise Trevigne as Cio-Cio San in Puccini’s Madama Butterfly and Pip in Jake Heggie’s Moby-Dick; and Mary Elizabeth Williams as Verdi’s Desdemona. These performances were memorable because they featured artists of substance whose unique personal journeys contributed to thoughtful interpretations of composers’ music and librettists’ words. That many of those journeys were often thwarted by stereotypes, ignorance, and hatred is an atrocity that should disgust and dismay every Arts lover.

As I express my heartfelt gratitude for your ongoing and galvanizing support of Voix des Arts, I also beseech you to dedicate yourselves—as I dedicate myself—to fomenting improvement in our Arts community, not only in our interactions with one another but also in the manners in which we examine and share our own perspectives. Let our actions embody the words of Friedrich von Schiller, set by Beethoven in the final movement of his Ninth Symphony: ‘Alle Menschen werden Brüder, wo dein sanfter Flügel weilt.’ May our gentle wings soon hover together again, unencumbered by afflictions of body or mind.

Gratefully,
Joseph Newsome
Author of Voix des Arts
Click here to contact me via email.

WOLFGANG AMADEUS MOZART (1756 – 1791): La clemenza di Tito, K. 621— Logan Webber (Tito), Virginia Sheffield (Vitellia), Mason Taylor (Sesto), Margaret Ann Zentner (Servillia), Brennan Martinez (Annio), André Dewan Peele (Publio); UNCSA Chorus and Symphony Orchestra; Steven White, conductor [Steven LaCosse, director; Nadir Bey, scenic designer; Bee Gable, costume designer; Jill Sawyer, wig and makeup designer; Ethan Saiewitz, lighting designer; Alex Jarus, properties director; James Scotland, technical director; A.J. Fletcher Opera Institute, University of North Carolina School of the Arts, Stevens Center, Winston-Salem, North Carolina, USA; Tuesday, 11 February 2020]

Few of the pièces d’occasion in opera’s history are of the quality of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s La clemenza di Tito. Commissioned to celebrate Holy Roman Emperor Leopold II’s enthronement as King of Bohemia, neither Mozart nor La clemenza di Tito, a libretto by Pietro Metastasio that by the last decade of the Eighteenth Century had traveled widely throughout Europe in settings by a number of composers, was impresario Domenico Guardasoni’s first choice for the commission. A new text not having been procured, and the Habsburg court’s Kapellmeister Antonio Salieri having already been juggling too many projects, revision of Metastasio’s libretto was assigned to Caterino Mazzolà and composition of the score to Mozart, whose Don Giovanni won immense acclaim in Prague. Aside from a Nineteenth-Century assertion, now widely deemed to be apocryphal, that Leopold II’s Spanish consort dismissed the score as a Teutonic muddle, there is sadly little record of the impression made by La clemenza di Tito’s world première on 6 September 1791. Though Die Zauberflöte, premièred in Vienna twenty-four days after Clemenza’s first performance in Prague, and his settings of libretti by Lorenzo da Ponte continue to enjoy greater prominence in the international repertory, La clemenza di Tito has recently reclaimed at least some measure of the appreciation that the score deserves.

Performances of La clemenza di Tito are thankfully far more plentiful now than in previous generations, but the opera has not wholly expunged the stigma of its origins. It is often noted that Metastasian opera seria was already outdated in 1791, propounding that Clemenza was a step back from the compositional advancement embodied by Mozart’s da Ponte operas. Presented in Winston-Salem’s Stevens Center, University of North Carolina School of the Arts Fletcher Opera Institute’s production of La clemenza di Tito trusted the audience to discern the piece’s musical and theatrical merits. Compared with the domestic dramas and amorous intrigues of Le nozze di Figaro, Don Giovanni, and Così fan tutte, Clemenza’s political wrangling is undeniably stilted, but Mozart’s music gloriously transcends the doldrums of a hastily-completed work designed to panegyrize a monarch’s ego. Fletcher Opera Institute’s production also attained this distinction, accentuating both the timelessness of the opera’s emotional conflicts and the presence of Mozart’s genius on every page of the score.

Roman art provides many glimpses of the daily lives of plebeians, patricians, and imperial courtiers, but it is nonetheless impossible for Twenty-First-Century observers to determine precisely how Romans dressed and moved during Titus Vespasianus’s First-Century reign. In Fletcher Opera Institute’s staging of La clemenza di Tito, acclaimed director (and Fletcher Institute’s recently-appointed Artistic Director) Steven LaCosse and a team of talented, imaginative artists offered the audience an exuberantly cinematic realization of Metastasio’s, Mazzolà’s, and Mozart’s setting for Tito’s trials. Evocative but economical in the sense that they could easily be employed in productions of many operas, Nadir Bey’s scenic designs recreated tableaux of Imperial Rome with clear sight lines and bold colors. Especially engaging was the manner in which architectural elements of the Capitol appeared in Act Two to have been melted by the conflagration that raged in the prior act’s finale. Vivid hues also characterized Bee Gable’s costumes, which complemented Jill Sawyer’s wig and makeup designs and Ethan Saiewitz lighting designs to aid the singers in portraying credibly historical but three-dimensional figures. The production’s effectiveness was further enriched by the efforts of properties director Alex Jarus and technical director James Scotland, whose work ensured that UNCSA’s recreation of Titus Vespasianus’s Rome functioned with precision that provided a stimulating visual setting for the opera’s political and emotional machinations.

Teneri amanti: mezzo-soprano Brennan Martinez as Annio (left) and soprano Margaret Ann Zentner as Servillia (right) in UNCSA Fletcher Opera Institute’s February 2020 production of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s La clemenza di Tito
[Photograph © by André Dewan Peele]

Conductor Steven White’s credentials encompass performances of diverse repertoire with an array of musical institutions, including New York’s Metropolitan Opera, with which company his pacing of performances of Verdi’s La traviata with very different interpreters of the iconic principal rôles—Angela Gheorghiu, James Valenti, and Thomas Hampson in 2010; Natalie Dessay, Matthew Polenzani, and Dmitri Hvorostovsky in 2012—demonstrated a notable affinity for extracting purest ores of bel canto from dissimilar vocal terrains. In UNCSA’s Clemenza di Tito, White’s conducting established and maintained musical and dramatic momentum, his tempi uniting passion with Classical poise. This equilibrium illuminated the score’s musical variety, accentuating the fluidity with which passages that recall Händel, Hasse, and Johann Christian Bach are balanced by others that anticipate Beethoven, Weber, and even Verdi, whose Abigaille and Odabella are spiritual descendants of Mozart’s Vitellia.

Under White’s direction, the UNCSA Symphony Orchestra perceptibly exulted in the difficulties of Mozart’s part writing. Of particular note was the superb playing of principal clarinetist Ramiro Soto, not least in Sesto’s ‘Parto, parto, ma tu ben mio,’ but his colleagues routinely equaled his work, enlivening the performance with rich but fleet playing. White’s choices of tempo were guided both by Mozart’s indications and by the unique capabilities of the singers. Musicologists and music lovers alike are tempted to speculate about how Mozart’s career as a composer of opera might have developed beyond La clemenza di Tito and Die Zauberflöte, the latter score often being cited as the more progressive. Without distorting Mozart’s idiom or obscuring the audible stamp of Clemenza’s late-Eighteenth-Century context, White and his colleagues in the pit affirmed that, when Clemenza was first performed, the Roman milieux of Wagner’s Rienzi and Berlioz’s Les Troyens were not so distant on the operatic horizon.

Musicologists continue to devise and debate theories of by whom Clemenza di Tito’s passages of recitativo secco were written, the most prevalent assertions being that, in accordance with common practice in the Eighteenth Century, they were likely produced not by the master composer responsible for the arias and ensembles but by an assistant or a student. The most plausible creator of Clemenza di Tito’s recitatives is Mozart’s pupil Franz Xaver Süssmayr, to whom Mozart’s widow Constanze would later entrust completion of her husband’s Requiem. There are likely far more instances than are known or acknowledged in which recitativi secchi in Seventeenth- and Eighteenth-Century operas were not written by the composers whose names appear on the scores’ covers. More deserving of scrutiny than their origins are performances in which the recitatives in Clemenza di Tito are accompanied in the same jaunty manner in which their counterparts in Cimarosa’s Il matrimonio segreto or Rossini’s Il barbiere di Siviglia might be handled. In UNCSA s Clemenza di Tito, Angela Vanstory Ward proved to be a maestra di cembalo whose continuo playing was informed by awareness of the singers’ enunciations and sensitivity to dramatic situations and textual subtleties. In this performance, passages of recitative led organically from the end of one aria or ensemble to the beginning of the next, and Ward’s realization of the continuo never kindled, as is sometimes the case, an expectation that Mozart’s (or Rossini’s) jovial Figaro would infiltrate the Campidoglio. The stylistic integrity of Ward’s playing was an invaluable boon to the performers and the performance.

Ecco l’imperatore: tenor Logan Webber in the title rôle of UNCSA Fletcher Opera Institute's February 2020 production of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's La clemenza di Tito
[Photograph © by André Dewan Peele]

Mozart’s writing for the chorus in La clemenza di Tito often exemplifies the Salzburger’s perpetuation of Gluck’s and Salieri’s initiatives to recreate in opera the rôle of choruses in Ancient Greek drama. UNCSA’s choristers convincingly portrayed the denizens of Tito’s Rome, singing ‘Serbate, o Dei custodi’ in Act One with suitably imperial majesty and exhilaratingly imparting the confusion and terror of the populace as flames consumed the Campidoglio. In Act Two, the young voices blended beautifully in an affecting account of ‘Ah, grazie si rendano al sommo fattor,’ and the grandeur with which ‘Che del ciel, che degli Dei’ was sung lent both the opera’s drama and the performance a palpable immediacy. In the tradition of the opera’s first performance, this Clemenza exuded a sense of occasion, intensified by the strength of the choral singing.

With a conductor of White’s caliber on the podium, sagaciously supporting the singers, it was easy to forget that this Clemenza di Tito featured UNCSA students just beginning their careers rather than long-established artists with considerable experience in Mozart repertoire. As Publio, the dutiful captain of Tito’s Prætorian Guard, baritone André Dewan Peele sang and acted energetically, his vocalism and motions exuding martial bravado in the mercurial Act One trio with Vitellia and Annio. Peele voiced Publio’s aria in Act Two, ‘Tardi s’avvede d’un tradimento,’ appealingly, and the dramatic involvement of his delivery of his lines in the trio with Sesto and Tito disclosed impressive theatricality. Peele found greater depth in Publio’s character than some interpreters of the rôle have done and explored them with inviolable musicality.

Soprano Margaret Ann Zentner’s portrayal of Servilia was similarly characterized by dramatic sensitivity allied with musical prowess. Distinguished by consistent tonal beauty, her vibrant singing in the Act One duet with Annio, ‘Ah, perdona al primo affetto,’ compellingly embodied the character’s anguish at learning from the man she loves that Tito has chosen her to be his empress. Zentner sang Servilia’s Act Two aria ‘S’altro che lagrime per lui non tenti’ with judicious vehemence, communicating the meaning of the text with unmistakable cognizance of its importance to the opera’s dénouement. Also to the young soprano’s credit was her unfailing fluency in Mozart’s musical language. The quality of Zentner’s performance reminded listeners accustomed to hearing lesser voices in the rôle that Servilia was sung in years past by artists of the ilk of Giulietta Simionato, Lucia Popp, Catherine Malfitano, Edith Mathis, Helen Donath, and Barbara Bonney.

Convincingly, even impishly masculine, the Annio of mezzo-soprano Brennan Martinez ignited UNCSA’s Clemenza di Tito with febrile stage presence and incendiary singing. In both the duettino with Sesto and the duet with Servilia in Act One, Martinez immersed herself in the drama without neglecting musical values, and she joined her colleagues in a pulse-quickening performance of the electrifying trio with Vitellia and Publio. The respective tessiture of Annio’s arias in Act Two, ‘Torna di Tito al lato’ and ‘Tu fosti tradito,’ occasionally seemed uncomfortable for Martinez, particularly at the upper end of her range, but her top notes were assured and certain of intonation. She overcame the obstacle of an unbecoming wig more suggestive of the Duchessa di Mantova’s page than of a Roman patrician with imperturbable savvy, and her singing exhibited admirably mature artistry.

La signora vuole vendetta: soprano Virginia Sheffield as Vitellia in UNCSA Fletcher Opera Institute’s February 2020 production of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s La clemenza di Tito
[Photograph © by André Dewan Peele]

Owing in no small part to a single high note that often proves to be troublesome for larger voices, the rôle of the vengeful Vitellia is now often entrusted to singers with relatively modest vocal means. Epitomized by the fearsomely demanding arias sung by the titular heroine of Luigi Cherubini’s Ifigenia in Aulide, premièred in Torino in 1788, music composed for the first Vitellia, Maria Marchetti Fantozzi, suggests that her vocal capabilities were anything but modest. UNCSA honored Fantozzi’s legacy with a Vitellia with formidable vocal resources and the technical wherewithal to deploy them effectively. SopranoVirginia Sheffield brought visual and vocal glamor to her depiction of Vitellia, declaiming every word of the character’s recitatives with Shakespearean immediacy.

The historical Vitellia was both the daughter of an emperor, the short-reigned Aulus Vitellius Germanicus, and the wife of a Senator, and the fusion of emotion and aristocratic pride evident in Sheffield’s singing in the Act One duet with Sesto, ‘Come ti piace, imponi,’ revealed the singer’s intuitive identification with the proud woman she portrayed. She voiced the aria ‘Deh, se piacer mi vuoi’ with grace that belied her youth, her mastery of Mozart’s vocal writing surpassing that heard from singers with far more experience. Sheffield‘s valiant attempt at the harrowing top D in the trio with Annio and Publio, ‘Vengo, aspettate,’ missed the mark, but the dramatic potency of her singing propelled the ensemble excitingly. This was also true of her performance in the Act Two trio with Sesto and Publio, ‘Se al volto mai ti senti,’ in which she conveyed the full panoply of Vitellia’s complex feelings. The pinnacle of Sheffield’s characterization was the rondo ‘Non più di fiori.’ The soprano conquered the music’s challenges with apparent ease, freeing her to focus on expressing the sentiments of the text. Rather than the whining shrew sketched by some singers, the Vitellia who sprang to life in Sheffield’s portrait was a sympathetic figure, a wronged woman whose quests for retribution and romantic fulfillment were born of deep wounds.

Amico leale: countertenor Mason Taylor as Sesto (left) in UNSCA Fletcher Opera Institute’s February 2020 production of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s La clemenza di Tito
[Photograph © by André Dewan Peele]

Even in this age of celebrity countertenors with extensive operatic repertoires, it remains unusual to hear a countertenor sing Mozart’s music for Sesto, who finds himself in the unenviable straits of loving a woman who detests the emperor to whom he is loyal. The rôle was originated by soprano castrato Domenico Bedini, about whose career beyond his participation in Clemenza’s première and subsequent retirement from performing staged opera a year later virtually no credible information survives. Domenico Guardasoni’s correspondence leaves no uncertainty about the engagement of a very accomplished castrato being integral to the coronation opera’s success, and Mozart’s music for Sesto suggests that Bedini indeed possessed a superb bravura technique, an extensive range, and well-honed dramatic instincts. His performance in this Clemenza di Tito affirmed that these qualities are also crucial components of countertenor Mason Taylor’s artistry.

Like Sheffield’s Vitellia, Taylor’s Sesto communicated profound inner turmoil in their duet in Act One, ‘Come ti piace, imponi,’ and the intelligence and attractiveness of his singing were no less conspicuous in the subsequent duettino with Annio, ‘Deh, prendi un dolce amplesso.’ Beloved by singers capable of negotiating its changes of tempo and temperament and the rightly-feared salvos of triplets, the aria ‘Parto, parto, ma tu ben mio’ is the most familiar vocal piece in Clemenza di Tito, and its renown has fortunately proved to be immune to countless poor performances. Taylor’s singing not only justified the aria’s continuing popularity but, more critically, affirmed Mozart’s genius for astute character development through music. Taylor met this music’s bravura demands with equanimous aplomb and unflinchingly traversed the broad range, extending to secure top B♭s.

In Act Two, the countertenor voiced Sesto’s lines in first the trio with Vitellia and Publio, ‘Se al volto mai ti senti,’ and later the trio with Tito and Publio, ‘Quello di Tito è il volto,’ with unaffected theatrical shrewdness. Sesto is an exhausting sing, and the aria ‘Deh, per questo istante solo’ falls just beyond the boundaries of some singers’ stamina: though understandably tiring, Taylor sang ‘Deh, per questo istante solo’ energetically and expressively, immersing himself in the psychological upheaval of Sesto’s predicament. The torment of this Sesto’s disquiet and remorse was palpable, bared to the audience by Taylor’s sensitive but incisive singing of some of Mozart’s most daunting music.

Ecco l’imperatore: tenor Logan Webber as the titular Emperor, Tito Vespasiano, in UNCSA Fletcher Opera Institute’s February 2020 production of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s La clemenza di Tito
[Photograph © by André Dewan Peele]

If the writings of historian Gaius Suetonius Tranquillus can be believed, the two-year imperial reign of Titus Flavius Cæsar Vespasianus Augustus was a time of peace, prosperity, and level-headed administration, sharply contrasted with the tumultuous tenures of Caligula, Nero, and the four emperors who ruled during the year following Nero’s suicide, the fourth of whom was Titus’s father. Notable amongst Titus’s magnanimous acts were his tireless efforts to provide tangible, lasting aid to victims of the cataclysmic eruption of Vesuvius in 79 AD. Created by Italian tenor Antonio Baglioni, who was the first Don Ottavio in Don Giovanni four years before the première of La clemenza di Tito, Mozart’s Tito is a figure whose magnanimity, whilst unmistakably intended to flatter the noble personage whose coronation the opera celebrated, has broader, humanistic implications. This universality was the core of UNCSA’s production, in which Logan Webber touchingly explored the vulnerabilities of a man whose throne exacerbated his struggles to balance matters of state and affairs of the heart.

Though he is the opera’s title character, Tito did not receive from Metastasio and Mazzolà the acuity of characterization that was lavished upon Vitellia and Sesto, but, from his first entrance in this performance, Webber found in Mozart’s music opportunities to vitalize Tito as both man and emperor. The vastly different moods of the pair of arias in Act One, ‘Del più sublime soglio’ and ‘Ah, se fosse intorno al trono,’ were adroitly contrasted, the tenor’s attention to text revealing often-ignored facets of the emperor’s constitution. Whether intoning conversational recitative or careening fiorature, Webber allied handsome tones with unflagging commitment to animating Tito’s tribulations. The dramatic thrust of the Act Two trio with Sesto and Publio, ‘Quello di Tito è il volto,’ drew from him vocal acting of tremendous impact. The intimidating bravura passages in Tito’s ‘Se all’impero, amici Dei’ tested as accomplished an exponent of Mozart’s tenor rôles as Nicolai Gedda, but Webber’s confident voicing of the aria divulged the care with which the young singer prepared the part. Remembered as one of the Habsburg line’s most enlightened scions, Leopold II would surely have been pleased by Webber’s thoughtful but commanding portrayal of the figure intended to gratify the royal vanity.

Long disparaged as an inconsequential work unworthy of comparison with Le nozze di Figaro, Don Giovanni, Così fan tutte, and Die Zauberflöte, La clemenza di Tito was confirmed by Fletcher Opera Institute’s production to be a score pervaded by the brilliance of Mozart’s artistic maturity. That a piece regarded as archaic at the time of its première in 1791 can seem grippingly modern in 2020 is an irrefutable testament to its creators’ ingenuity. That a performance of that piece wholly capitalizes on its potential is a testament to the artists involved with its staging. Mozart’s Clemenza di Tito is a significant work: Fletcher Opera Institute’s Clemenza di Tito was a significant achievement.

Bass-baritone Donald Hartmann, faculty recitalist at UNCG on 22 September 2020, as Il sagrestano in North Carolina Opera’s April 2019 production of Giacomo Puccini’s Tosca
[Photograph by Eric Waters, © by North Carolina Opera]

WOLFGANG AMADEUS MOZART (1756 – 1791), HUGO WOLF (1860 – 1903), ANGE FLÉGIER (1846 – 1927), POLDOWSKI (1879 – 1932), CAMILLE SAINT-SAËNS (1835 – 1921), GAETANO DONIZETTI (1797 – 1848), HENRY MANCINI (1924 – 1994), KURT WEILL (1900 – 1950), HAROLD ARLEN (1905 – 1986), and JEROME KERN (1885 – 1945): Faculty Recital— Donald Hartmann, bass-baritone; Robert Wells, baritone; Alexander Ezerman, cello; Nancy Davis, piano [Tew Recital Hall, University of North Carolina at Greensboro College of Visual and Performing Arts, Greensboro, North Carolina, USA; Tuesday, 22 September 2020]

In the course of 2020, few words and conceits have become more loathsome to artists than ‘new normal,’ ‘challenging times,’ and ‘altered realities.’ A year upended by efforts to contain a global pandemic indeed constitutes a challenging time in which realities are altered and semblances of normalcy are attainable only in novel ways. Throughout history, Art and artists have endured calamities both natural and human, changed but undefeated by cataclysms of disaster and disease, but the catastrophic effects of COVID-19 on the Arts community continue to redefine and reshape artists’ rôles in society. More than at any time since the most turbulent days of World War Two, artists’ oft-repeated mantra is now a rallying cry: the show must go on!

With an engagingly eclectic recital by bass-baritone Donald Hartmann, the show went on—or, more accurately, resumed—at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro with tenacity and exuberance that reminded the socially-distanced audience in a week during which the cancellation of the entirety of the Metropolitan Opera’s 2020 – 2021 Season was confirmed that, though muted by the necessity of battling a pernicious virus, Song cannot be silenced. Alongside pianist Nancy Davis, whose performance was at once thrillingly virtuosic and enchantingly intimate, Hartmann reawakened the too-long-dormant performance space with vocalism of extraordinary immediacy. Listeners familiar with Hartmann’s artistry, whether experienced in the opera house or the recital hall, are accustomed to vibrant, impeccably musical characterizations, but his singing in this recital exuded not only thorough preparedness but also an abiding, deeply affecting sense of an artist’s fundamental need to perform. Voices are meant to be heard, and this was a recital in which far more than notes and words were voiced.

Beginning the performance with a selection that honored both his affinity for the stage and his passion for song, Hartmann enlisted cellist Alexander Ezerman for the grueling contest between strings and vocal cords in Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s concert aria ‘Per questa bella mano’ (K. 612). Composed during the final year of Mozart’s life, the unusual scoring of ‘Per questa bella mano,’ originally conceived for bass voice, orchestra, and double bass obbligato, has inspired conjecture that the piece was intended for insertion into performances of a forgotten comic opera, in which it would have been sung by Franz Xaver Gerl, the bass who, four months after Mozart documented his completion of ‘Per questa bella mano’ in May 1791, created the rôle of Sarastro in Die Zauberflöte. Ezerman’s bravura playing matched Hartmann’s flexible vocalism note for note and trill for trill, but the romantic delicacy of the text was never obscured by the vocal and instrumental pyrotechnics. Unperturbed by the fearsome intervals, Hartmann heroically maintained intonational accuracy throughout the compass of the music.

Settings of Walter Heinrich Robert-Tornow’s translations of texts by the eponymous Renaissance artist, Hugo Wolf’s Drei Lieder nach Gedichten von Michelangelo were written in March 1897, when, though aged only thirty-seven, the composer was already suffering from the mental and physiological maladies that would end his life in 1903. Grimly fatalistic in their examinations of man’s progressive physical and emotional disintegration, these Lieder are often compared to Schubert’s Winterreise, Brahms’s Vier ernste Gesänge, and Richard Strauss’s Vier letzte Lieder. In Hartmann’s performance, the dark sentiments of the first of the three songs, ‘Wohl denk’ ich oft an mein vergang’nes Leben,’ seemed to emerge from the narrator’s psyche in medias res, like a contentious discourse upon which the listener was intruding. Articulated with a native speaker’s fluency, the German text was inherently melodious, not least in the Lied’s final phrases, interpreted by Hartmann and Davis with cathartic resignation.

Wolf esteemed the second of the Michelangelo-Lieder, ‘Alles endet, was entstehet,’ as the finest of his more than two hundred songs, of which these were the last that he wrote, but this was an assessment that he also applied to a number of its brethren. ‘Alles endet, was entstehet’ is unquestionably a superbly-crafted song in which voice and piano interact in a disquieting dialogue about the transcience of humanity. In this selection and in fleeting moments in the songs that followed, there were occasional lapses in the precision of Davis’s playing in the most animated passages, but the reliable responsiveness of her collaboration expertly supported Hartmann’s phrasing. He voiced the lines ‘und nun sind wir leblos hier, sind nur Erde, wir ihr sehet’ with directness that was almost accusatory: in truth, he seemed to ask, does anyone see?

Reminiscent in spirit of Strauss’s ‘Im Abendrot,’ ‘Fühlt meine Seele das ersehnte Licht’ can be regarded as Wolf’s valedictory explication of what Dylan Thomas termed ‘the dying of the light.’ Articulating the text with special attention to the aural finality of the consonants, Hartmann presented the Lied as the culmination of an unmistakably personal journey, his singing of ‘Ich weiß es nicht’ imparting the frustration of an artist who has found the answers to too many of life’s questions to be elusive. The vocal demands of Wolf’s music were resiliently met, but it was Hartmann’s musical storytelling that was most riveting.

Hartmann demonstrated his mastery of French chansons with accounts of three varied pieces, to each of which he brought clear diction and interpretive nuances inspired by the words. First published in 1881, Ange Flégier’s poème pittoresque pour voix et piano‘Le cor’ utilizes a text by Alfred de Vigny, to which the composer responded with imagination and wry humor. The vocal assurance of Hartmann’s traversal of ‘Le cor’ was allied with his own humor, accentuating the cleverness with which Flégier employed dramatic changes of tempo and mood to create a compelling dramatic trajectory. Here and in all of the French songs, the bass-baritone’s careful handling of language, epitomized by his confident shaping of nasalized vowels, was complemented by Davis’s sensitive pianism, her playing alternating gossamer lyricism with hall-filling power in accordance with the words.

The prevalence of Paul Verlaine’s ‘L‘heure exquise’ in the French chanson repertoire rivals that of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s work in German Lieder, but the setting of Verlaine’s familiar text by the Belgian composer Poldowski (née Régine Wieniawski) is a pinnacle both amongst her own contributions to the genre and in French Art Song as a whole. Hartmann’s innate theatricality was especially beneficial in this music, not least in the unaffected manner in which he spurred the listener’s anticipation of the final, ecstatic statement of ‘l’heure exquise.’ The rhythmic elasticity of Davis’s playing closely paralleled her colleague’s singing of the vocal line, enhancing the rhapsodic atmosphere conjured by Hartmann’s traversal of the song.

Its popularity with audiences continuing into the Twenty-First Century, Camille Saint-Saëns’s 1874 tone poem Danse macabre overshadows the 1872 chanson with words by Henri Cazalis via which the raucous tune was first heard. Setting a reasonable tempo that avoided the careening disasters into which some performances quickly dissolve, Davis drew the din of rattling bones from the Steinway, providing Hartmann with the musical threads with which to weave a gothic tale worthy of Edgar Allan Poe. The mercurial brilliance and chromatic litheness of its principal and secondary subjects belie the song’s difficulties for both vocalist and pianist, and the performance that it received in this recital gave an impression of authentically French insouciance, exemplified by the near-sadistic glee of Hartmann’s declamation of ‘Et vive la mort et l’égalité!’ in the song’s exultant coda.

Hartmann was joined in a diverting jaunt through music from Gaetano Donizetti’s Don Pasquale by baritone and fellow UNCG Voice faculty member Robert Wells, who offered a suave, suggestive account of Dottore Malatesta’s Act One romanza ‘Bella siccome un angelo.’ Hartmann replied with his first public performance of Pasquale’s Act One cavatina ‘Ah! un foco insolito mi sento addosso,’ justifiably cited by the bass-baritone as two of the most demanding minutes in opera buffa and sung with the comedic panache and musical bravado that make his Rossini portrayals so memorable. As they addressed one another in the number’s rollicking stretta, Donaldo and Roberto—e Nancy!—then demonstrated their considerable gifts for musical camaraderie in an electrifying account of Pasquale’s and Malatesta’s Act Three duet ‘Cheti, cheti, immantinente.’ Impressive in their respective navigations of the infamous patter, Hartmann and Wells excelled in unison, celebrating their jovial partnership with an ebullient top F.

For the final segment of the recital, Hartmann traded the opera singer’s tuxedo for the Broadway crooner’s dinner jacket in performances of musical theater and cinema standards. A cornerstone of Audrey Hepburn’s critically-acclaimed performance in Blake Edwards’s 1961 film Breakfast at Tiffany’s was her performance of Henry Mancini’s and Johnny Mercer’s Academy Award-winning song ‘Moon River.’ Further popularized a few months after the film’s release by Andy Williams’s recording, the piece as performed by Hartmann and Davis might have been a forgotten aria by Puccini. Wholly rejecting opera-singer-singing-standards pomposity, the bass-baritone brought to the song his own incarnation of the simplicity that ennobled Hepburn’s performance.

Sung by Charles Coburn in the 1944 cinematic adaptation of Kurt Weill’s and Maxwell Anderson’s musical Knickerbocker Holiday, ‘September Song’ was later recorded by artists as diverse as Bing Crosby, Frank Sinatra, Burl Ives, Willie Nelson, and Lou Reed. As in his performance of ‘Moon River,’ Hartmann’s concentration on the ways in which the melodic line elucidates the sentiments of the words yielded a touchingly bittersweet reading of the song, the well-rehearsed interplay between voice and piano propelling expressive spontaneity. Guileless earnestness was also the foundation upon which Hartmann’s voicing of Harold Arlen’s ‘Over the Rainbow’ from The Wizard of Oz was constructed. Singing with aptly iridescent tonal beauty, he transformed the familiar melody and words into a unnervingly timely quest for delivery from today’s crushing tribulations.

‘Ol’ Man River’ from Jerome Kern’s Show Boat was the song most associated by listeners throughout the world with bass-baritone Paul Robeson, a principled man of action whose meticulously-honed artistry was deployed in the battle for Civil Rights. Forty-four years after Robeson’s death in 1976, the war against oppression and dehumanization of the underprivileged still rages. Though he is a very different artist, working in a vastly different time, Hartmann’s performance of ‘Ol’ Man River’ lacked none of the visionary force of Robeson’s recordings of the song. In the last minutes of an evening of bold singing, the song’s tessitura, as daunting as that of Mozart’s ‘Per questa bella mano,’ tested Hartmann, but his resources remained equal to the music. The obvious symbolism of his interpretation was haunting: represented by her mighty river, it is America herself who, in a time in which the essence of her democracy is imperiled, must know something but says nothing.

By ending the recital with the stirring spiritual ‘Let Us Break Bread Together,’ Hartmann honored the legacies of Robeson and Marian Anderson, who frequently included the piece in their recitals. The song’s pleas for unity and humility soared in his impassioned singing, and the heartfelt ‘Amen’ with which the audience reacted to the song echoed the overwhelming expressive potency of Hartmann’s performance. Musically stimulating and emotionally uplifting, this recital affirmed that, whether in times of security or strife, voices like Donald Hartmann’s truly must be heard.

Alfin son tua: Australian soprano Dame Joan Sutherland (1926 – 2010) in the title rôle of Gaetano Donizetti’s Lucia di Lammermoor at The Metropolitan Opera, 1961
[Photograph by Louis Mélançon, © by The Metropolitan Opera]

Virtually every parent, educator, and caregiver would likely agree that, in certain situations, there is no more fearsome a word in the English language than Why. A child’s inquisitive ‘Why?’ can be as unnerving as the most intimidating interrogation, those three letters often conveying not only infinite curiosity but implicit challenges to conventional knowledge and perspectives. Scarcely less flustering in the context of interviews with artists are ubiquitous explorations of motivations: beyond the obvious impetus of natural ability, why was pursuing a career in the Arts deemed to be the correct path? Like a child’s deceptively simple query, however, such questions often impart a more consequential probe. Why do the Arts matter?

Prevalent in singers’ reflections on their formative experiences are mentions of fellow singers by whose work they were influenced and inspired. As a dedicated but little-talented student of piano, violin, and voice who for a brief time pondered seeking a career in opera, there are many musicians whose artistry contributed to my passion for the Performing Arts. An aspiring singer might be expected to cite as his foremost operatic idols exponents of his own Fach, but no singer spurred my budding enthusiasm for opera more than Australian soprano Dame Joan Sutherland.

By the time that I started my vocal studies, Sutherland’s final performance was six years in the past, but her 1962 studio recording of Verdi’s La traviata was one of the first opera recordings that I owned and the first to confirm to me that opera is not only an exhilarating, engaging entertainment but also an art form that matters so much that I contemplated dedicating my life to advancing it. I never had the privilege of hearing Sutherland’s voice ‘live,’ but, in the years that followed my first hearing of her recorded portrayal of Violetta Valéry, I have heard and studied recordings of dozens of her performances.

A stage persona is but one facet of an artist’s personality, but the immutable sincerity of her interpretations enables one to ‘meet’ both Dame Joan Sutherland the diva and Joan the affable colleague and humble servant of music. For some listeners, the simplicity of her portrayals demonstrates a frustrating lack of imagination: for this listener, the meticulous preparedness of her singing exhibits commitments to craft and audiences that more performers should emulate. Knowing her through the characters she portrayed and the manner in which she brought them to life, Sutherland’s passing a decade ago, on 10 October 2010, was for me the loss of a beloved friend.

Born in Sydney on 7 November 1926, Sutherland began her vocal studies under the tutelage of her mother, a fine mezzo-soprano. As she entered adulthood, a scholarship enabled her to further her studies with the renowned pedagogues Aida and John Dickens, who quickly deemed that their gifted pupil was not a mezzo-soprano but a dramatic soprano destined for success in Wagner repertoire. It was with a focus on training her voice to assume the mantle of Dame Eva Turner and Kirsten Flagstad that Sutherland arrived in London to study at the Royal College of Music. Her début at London’s Royal Opera was as the Erste Dame in Mozart’s Die Zauberflöte on 28 October 1952. Two months later, her Verdian credentials were established with her portrayal of Amelia in Un ballo in maschera, the first portrait in a gallery gradually enlarged by performances of Verdi’s heroines ranging from Amalia in I masnadieri to Desdemona in Otello.

It is rightly her extraordinary vocal virtuosity that is most celebrated, but versatility was also a remarkable component of Sutherland’s career—and of my appreciation for her. She introduced herself to the discerning Viennese as Donna Anna in Josef Witt’s Wiener Staatsoper production of Mozart’s Don Giovanni on 14 September 1959, returning two months later as Verdi’s Desdemona. It was her singing of the title rôle in Georg Friedrich Händel’s Alcina, not Violetta or Donizetti’s Lucia di Lammermoor, that prompted the Venetians to grant her the epithet La Stupenda, and it was also as Alcina that she made her USA début in Dallas.

Sutherland’s triumphant Metropolitan Opera début on 26 November 1961, was as Lucia, but, in addition to an array of bel canto parts, she also offered MET audiences depictions of the heroines in Offenbach Les contes d Hoffmann and Massenet’s Esclarmonde, the latter rôle, also performed in San Francisco and London, having been cited by Sutherland as the achievement of which she was most proud. Her Marguerite de Valois in Meyerbeer’s Les Huguenots dazzled the Milanese and remained a credible characterization when the part was chosen for her farewell to the stage in Sydney in 1990.

Vancouver hosted Sutherland’s first  portrayals of Bellini’s Norma and Donizetti’s Lucrezia Borgia, and Seattle was charmed by her singing of Delibes’s Lakmé. Her Sitâ in Massenet’s Le roi de Lahore won praise in Vancouver and San Francisco. In London, her successes in Italian opera were supplemented by acclaimed portrayals of Lady Penelope Rich in Britten’s Gloriana, Jenifer in the world première of Tippett’s The Midsummer Marriage, and Madame Lidoine in the British première of Poulenc’s Dialogues des Carmélites, a rôle that she movingly reprised in Sydney in 1984. Late in her career, the comedic timing evident in her spirited Marie in Donizetti’s La fille du régiment found a delightful new outlet in Rosalinde in Johann Strauss II’s Die Fledermaus. Applauded in Barcelona, Boston, Buenos Aires, Chicago, Detroit, Houston, New Orleans, Palermo, Paris, Philadelphia, Tokyo, and Toronto, Sutherland traversed the globe, amassing a repertoire encompassing music from three centuries.

Sempre uniti in una speme: Australian soprano Dame Joan Sutherland (1926 – 2010) as Amina (right) and tenor Nicolai Gedda (1925 – 2017) as Elvino (left) in Vincenzo Bellini’s La sonnambula at The Metropolitan Opera, 1963
[Photograph by Louis Mélançon, © by The Metropolitan Opera]

In the company of both devotees and detractors, discussions of singers’ most memorable portrayals are as safe to navigate as active minefields. Though it is universally acknowledged that Sutherland met the musical demands of three of opera’s most daunting rôles—Norma, Lucia, and Violetta—with uncommon vocal faculty, her portrayals are frequently compared unfavorably with those of other singers, most notably Maria Callas and Renata Scotto. That Sutherland wielded neither Callas’s profound sense of character development nor Scotto’s poetic handling of text is undeniable, but hearing the Australian soprano’s colossal voice accurately execute difficult fiorature and confidently ascend above the stave provides visceral thrills unique to Sutherland.

However their dramatic merits contrast with other singers’ performances, Sutherland’s unfailing musicality lends her portrayals of Lucia, Norma, and Violetta compelling presence, her trust in the music allowing the listener to enjoy these rôles according to composers’ intentions. Moreover, it should be noted when assessing her musicality that, her formidable bravura capabilities and the ornamental excesses encouraged by her husband, conductor Richard Bonynge, in some of the studio recordings notwithstanding, Sutherland exercised a laudable degree of fidelity to composers’ scores. Recordings of her live performances of Händel’s Alcina, Cleopatra, and Rodelinda are especially revelatory: here, her embellishments are often far more tasteful than those ventured by some of today’s ostensibly more-historically-informed singers. In both her core repertoire and the rarities that she revived, Sutherland complemented fellow artists’ more theatrical characterizations with performances distinguished by uncompromising musical values.

For this listener, the best of Sutherland’s artistry can be found in her performances of Mozart’s Idomeneo, Donizetti’s Maria Stuarda and Anna Bolena, and Verdi’s Rigoletto. Her appearances as Elettra in Australian Opera’s July 1979 production of Idomeneo surprised even some of her most ardent admirers, not least because the rôle is not as prominent as many of the parts that she assayed, but the character’s wounded pride and vengeful exasperation, culminating in an electrifying account of ‘D’Oreste, d’Ajace,’ resolved with a gigantic interpolated top C, roused unexpected dramatic vitality. The majesty of her depictions of the wronged Mary Stuart and Anne Boleyn impresses, but she also brought great intimacy to her recreations of these historical figures’ plights, achieving movingly tragic grandeur in Maria Stuarda’s confession scene.

Sutherland’s voice was larger than that of almost any other Gilda heard in the past century, but even at the end of her career—she last sang the rôle in a complete Rigoletto in Sydney in 1986, at the age of fifty-nine—she possessed the requisite limpidity of tone for ‘Caro nome,’ ‘Tutte le feste al tempio,’ and the quartet. Discreet downward transpositions were employed in some of her rôles as the voice matured, a reality of aging that Sutherland never denied. Nevertheless, the voice’s greatest assets—the immediately-recognizable timbre, the reserves of power, and the sensational trill—were as apparent in her 1990 Sydney Marguerite de Valois as in her 1959 Covent Garden Lucia.

Ten years after her passing and thirty years after her final performance, voice lovers now must rely upon recordings to appraise Sutherland’s artistry. Despite her long and fruitful association with the label, it can be argued that Decca’s engineers never perfected the art of recording Sutherland with an acoustical perspective that permits full appreciation of the voice’s amplitude and technical consistency. Though mostly free from distortion and peaking, especially in remastered editions, early recordings often deprived Sutherland’s timbre of clarity and lessened the impact of notes above top A.

The close microphone placement of later recordings accentuated a loosening of vibrato and increased laboriousness of vocal production that in-house recordings confirm to have been markedly less apparent in theater acoustics. Amongst Sutherland’s many complete opera recordings for Decca, perhaps only the controversial Turandot and Il trovatore opposite Luciano Pavarotti, in both instances singing rôles in which he was capable but hardly ideal, offer today’s listeners a sonic representation of the voice that can be better experienced on non-commercial recordings.

Sutherland was understandably revered by many of her operatically-inclined Australian countrymen, and, even when her international career was largely centered in Europe and the Americas, her native Sydney remained her artistic home. Consequently, she sang much of her repertoire in Australia, including rôles like Mozart’s Elettra and Puccini’s Suor Angelica that she did not perform elsewhere. One of the finest sources for skillfully-remastered, attractively-packaged recordings of some of Sutherland’s most memorable performances, particularly those from Sydney, is Western Australia-based retailer Celestial Audio.

Of the Sutherland titles available from Celestial Audio, two that I find indispensable are in-house recordings of a May 1973 Covent Garden Lucia di Lammermoor (catalogue number CA1911) and a 1977 Australian Opera Suor Angelica (catalogue number CA1061). As in the second Decca studio recording, Sutherland’s Edgardo in the Covent Garden Lucia is Pavarotti, on superb form in one of his best rôles, but the other parts are taken by Royal Opera stalwarts who did not record these rôles commercially: Louis Quilico as Enrico, Gwynne Howell as Raimondo, Kenneth Collins as Arturo, and Dame Heather Begg as Alisa. Sutherland’s Zia principessa in the Decca Suor Angelica was Christa Ludwig, vocally stunning but unidiomatic. In Sydney, the pitiless aunt was sung by Australian mezzo-soprano Rosina Raisbeck, a fervent singing actress whose intensity heightened the pathos of Sutherland’s delicate but determined Angelica.

Gioie di casto amor: Australian soprano Dame Joan Sutherland (1926 – 2010) as Leonora (right) and tenor Luciano Pavarotti (1935 – 2007) as Manrico (left) in Giuseppe Verdi’s Il trovatore at The Metropolitan Opera, 1987
[Photograph by Winnie Klotz, © by The Metropolitan Opera]

Sutherland was indisputably an important singer, but no less significant to her legacy is the warmth and cordiality of her interactions with colleagues. She first sang Leonora in Verdi’s Il trovatore in a staging by Wolfram Skalicki and Davis L. West at San Francisco Opera in September 1976. One of her colleagues in that production, celebrated American dramatic soprano Linda Roark-Strummer, vividly recalls the experience of partnering Sutherland in that still-discussed Trovatore. ‘Ah, dear Joan! Of course, I didn’t call her Joan,’ Roark-Strummer shared. ‘I was just starting out and didn’t feel like I had the right to address her by anything other than Ms. Sutherland. I had been with Western Opera Theater [for a year] when I was invited, by Kurt Herbert Adler, to sing Inez in Trovatore with Dame Joan, Pavarotti, [Elena] Obraztsova, [and Ingvar] Wixel, with Bonynge conducting. It was exciting to be working with such fabulous, not to mention famous, singers, just out of the starting gate.’

A young artist’s anxiety at sharing the stage with a singer of Sutherland’s renown is unfathomable. ‘Yeah, I was nervous,’ Roark-Strummer conceded, but her apprehension was short-lived. ‘It didn’t take me long to get comfortable,’ she continued. ‘Dame Joan may have been put on a pedestal by the world, but she was a real person; I mean, a mensch! When she wasn’t on stage, she would sit and do needlepoint. At one of the early stage rehearsals [for Il trovatore], we were sitting on the steps that went up the back of the set, waiting for our entrance; in the second act, I think. She was working on her needlepoint and explaining to me that she was making chair seat covers for Richard [Bonynge]’s “gaming room.” I remember wondering if I would ever have a gaming room, living, as I was at the time, in a two-room apartment!’ This unpretentious domesticity was an integral aspect of Sutherland’s temperament, but her calm demeanor concealed a ribald sense of humor.

‘The funniest moment [of the Trovatore production] came during one of the performances,’ Roark-Strummer confided. ‘The stage set was on a huge rake. The floor on the rake was made up to look like flagstones, and the fronts of the “stones” were made out of foam rubber—mostly, I think, to keep us from falling off the stage! They were interesting to walk on. One rather bounced across the stage. Joan had brought her own costume, which was beautiful, pale blue, with big puffy sleeves and miles of full skirts and a low-cut neckline. And she looked fabulous in it! Judging from the costume they gave me, I don’t think her dress was completely correct to period.’ The contrast with her own costume was glaring, Roark-Strummer recalled. ‘They put me in a forest-green dress that was your basic A-line number with a small train and, over that, a somewhat lighter-colored, open-tunic-type of thing with gold trim. At the time, I was 5’10” tall and weighed 120 pounds. Someone remarked at the time that, on stage, we looked like Mutt and Jeff. The light blue of her dress made her look bigger than life—she was the leading lady, after all! The darkness of mine and the gold trim made me look even thinner than I was. I have a cherished picture of us.’

Roark-Strummer discovered that, beyond the glamorous façade, not even the illustrious then-not-yet-Dame Joan Sutherland was infallible. ‘The aria was “Tacea la notte placida”—and those were the last words any of us understood. Anything after that was anybody’s guess,’ she laughed. ‘The prompter, Phillip Eisenberg, was trying to get [Joan] back on track, to the point [that] I thought he would crawl right out of the box. I was trying to remember what I was supposed to be reacting to but not having much luck. Note to self: Lesson number one—Learn everybody’s part! [I was] worried that Eisenberg was going to have a heart attack. We finished—finally!—and headed off stage, bouncing all the way, and [Joan] looked at me and said, “Oh! I fucked that up, didn’t I?” I thought I wasn’t going to make it off stage and back to my dressing room without loudly laughing myself to death!’

An indirect reunion thirteen years after the San Francisco Trovatore reinforced Roark-Strummer’s fond memories of Sutherland. ‘I never expected Dame Joan to remember me, and I never saw her again after that [Trovatore], but my husband worked with her in Dallas when she was doing her farewell performance in the United States. During a lull sometime in a rehearsal, he approached her and mentioned that she had worked with his wife during her first Trovatore in San Francisco. He told her that I was her Inez. Without hesitation, her face lit up, and she said in her wonderful Aussie accent, “Oh! Linda Long Legs!” They both had a good laugh.’

For Roark-Strummer’s husband, esteemed bass-baritone Peter Strummer, portraying Baron Zeta in the 1989 Dallas production of Franz Lehár’s Die Lustige Witwe with which Sutherland bade farewell to performing in the USA was an unforgettable joy. ‘[We had] a wonderful rehearsal period and performances in Dallas,’ Strummer intimated, ‘and it was fascinating to watch and hear [Sutherland] sing Hanna Glawari because I couldn’t follow Bonynge to save my soul. It was like stirring soup!’ Strummer eventually recognized that, during the course of the spouses’ long collaboration, Sutherland had cultivated unique ways of reacting to Bonynge’s conducting. ‘I wondered how she was able to do it. After a while, I realized she never looked at him!’ Strummer mused.

In the final year of her career, Sutherland remained a conscientious artist, still attentive to making each performance a momentous occasion for the audience, Strummer opined, but she never took herself too seriously. ‘We had a great time, and she was constantly cracking up at my faux Russian accent.’ Not even by the time of her final production in the USA had singing become tedious for Sutherland. ‘One day, we were doing a musical rehearsal, and Dame Joan was sitting behind us. Every once in a while, Ricky [Bonynge] would stop and mention to her that some phrase was one he wanted her to insert into the Fledermaus in her final performance at Covent Garden. He said it several times to her, and finally she leaned forward to me and, with a low, mocking voice, said, “That’s what he thinks! What he doesn’t know is that I am not going to do it at all!”’

When the new production of Il trovatore by Fabrizio Melano in which Sutherland sang her final opera performances at the Metropolitan Opera opened in November 1987, critic Martin Mayer wrote in his review for Opera, ‘Everyone I know who knows her likes Dame Joan; one of her friends must tell her that the time comes when an artist whose stock-in-trade has been voice rather than musicianship or expression or dramatic force must hang it up.’ The prevailing tone of his uniformly negative review is decidedly undiplomatic, but Mayer’s point was and will always be valid. Artists’ reputations are easily tarnished by careers that carry on beyond voices’ abilities to master the music they are charged with singing.

I did not hear the specific performance that spawned Mayer’s withering estimation, but I know and love the broadcast of 19 December 1987, the performance in which Sutherland made her penultimate appearance at the MET. The assured coloratura, the impeccable trills, the grand line, and the written top D in ‘D’amor sull’ali rosee,’ omitted by much younger singers, were astonishingly intact. In truth, such enduring technical prowess would be astonishing in most singers, but it was the hallmark of Dame Joan Sutherland’s career. Have not the years since La Stupenda’s retirement taught us that inviolable vocal reliability is itself a dramatic force?

Echoes from Carolina— CARLISLE FLOYD (born 1926): Slow Dusk and KENNETH FRAZELLE (born 1955): From Appalachia[WORLD PREMIÈRE]— Charli Mills (Sadie), Phyllis Pancella (Aunt Sue), Logan Webber (Micah), André Dewan Peele (Jess); Jodi Burns (soprano – From Appalachia), James Allbritten (tenor – From Appalachia); Winston-Salem Festival Ballet; Gary Taylor (choreographer – From Appalachia); Nancy Johnston, piano (Slow Dusk); PG Hazard, piano (From Appalachia) [Ann-Louise Wolf, stage director; Norman Coates, lighting director; Annie Bruskiewitz, costume designer; Piedmont Opera, live-streamed from the Stevens Center of the University of North Carolina School of the Arts, Winston-Salem, North Carolina, USA; Friday, 16 October 2020]

It is sometimes in humanity’s most difficult hours that ingenuity and innovation prosper, the need for hope engendering inspiration for it. As Performing Arts institutions and venues throughout the world face difficulties heretofore unprecedented during times of peace, the will to survive spurs creative initiatives that will continue to alter artists’ and audiences’ experiences long after COVID-19 is eradicated. Whether circumstances permit them to gather in physical proximity or necessitate the use of technology to close the gap of separation, Art thrives when audiences hungry for rejuvenation connect with artists striving to utilize their individual talents as catalysts for universal comfort and perseverance.

A spirit of indomitable tenacity permeated every moment of Echoes from Carolina, the virtual production that inaugurated Piedmont Opera’s reimagined 2020 – 2021 Season. Live-streamed from Winston-Salem’s Stevens Center of the University of North Carolina School of the Arts, Echoes from Carolina offered at-home audiences in and beyond the Triad a musical homage to the Carolinas, pairing a rare staging of South Carolina-born Carlisle Floyd’s early opera Slow Dusk with the world première of North Carolinian Kenneth Frazelle’s theatre piece From Appalachia. Guided by General and Artistic Director James Allbritten, Piedmont Opera assembled a company of North Carolina-based artists who brought global perspectives to their realizations of these works.

Evoking Walker Evans’s still-haunting photographs of the Great Depression-era South, Annie Bruskiewitz’s costumes and Norman Coates’s lighting anchored both Slow Dusk and From Appalachia in an idealized but recognizable representation of rural Appalachia, the tableaux created by their designs often prompting memories of familiar historical images and weathered pictures in family albums. Maintaining clean sight lines and natural but camera-friendly blocking, production and stage directors Bill Volz and Ann-Louise Wolf piloted a performance that capitalized on the advantages and marginalized the pitfalls of the streaming medium. The small-scaled but consistently effective production values suited the music and these performances of it.

Born in the small town of Latta in Dillon County, near South Carolina’s Atlantic Coast, Carlisle Floyd built upon the modest foundation of his upbringing as a Methodist preacher’s son a career as one of America’s most successful and widely-acclaimed composers of opera. In Echoes from Carolina, Allbritten’s propulsive pacing and Nancy Johnston’s poetic playing of a piano reduction of Floyd’s orchestrations of Slow Dusk accentuated the embryonic concepts of social conflict and ostracization, religious division, and cultural evolution that would gestate more fully in Floyd’s later operas Susannah, The Passion of Jonathan Wade, Of Mice and Men, Willie Stark, and Cold Sassy Tree.

Voice of authority: mezzo-soprano Phyllis Pancella as Aunt Sue in Carlisle Floyd’s Slow Dusk in Piedmont Opera’s October 2020 production Echoes from Carolina
[Photograph © by André Dewan Peele]

A compact tale of the love of two youths from different religious sects in the Sandhills region of North Carolina, Slow Dusk, Floyd’s first opera, was written during 1948 and 1949, whilst the composer was pursuing his Master’s Degree at Syracuse University. Premièred in Syracuse under the direction of Ruth Ives on 2 May 1949, Slow Dusk inaugurated Floyd’s quest to follow Richard Wagner’s example by writing both music and words. For Slow Dusk, he adapted his short story ‘A Lengthening Shadow’ into a fast-moving ‘musical play in one act’ in which there is no time for wallowing in the sentimentality that pervades much Southern drama. Rather, the male protagonist’s unseen death after only a few minutes on stage seems perfunctory but, in this performance, was all the more powerful for being unexpected. That Slow Dusk is the uneven but by no means amateurish first operatic effort of a composer in his early twenties is unmistakable, but Piedmont Opera’s staging rightly celebrated the piece as the touching first song of an original compositional voice.

Bass-baritone André Dewan Peele depicted Jess, the brother of Slow Dusk’s heroine Sadie, as an uncomplicated, good-natured young man whose affection and concern for his sister were apparent. Perhaps as a means of centralizing the drama’s focus on the significance of Sadie’s relationship with the man she loves, Floyd gave Jess no opportunities to meaningfully interact with his sister, but Peele demonstrated, first in the character’s discussion in the opera’s opening scene of Sadie’s personality and marriage prospects and later in his contemplation of how the news of her lover’s death will affect Sadie, that his relationship with his sibling is a cornerstone of Jess’s life. Peele’s intonation occasionally faltered in his first lines, but his musicality prevailed, lending emotional depth to a shallow part.

Ill-fated lovers: soprano Charli Mills as Sadie (left) and tenor Logan Webber as Micah (right) in Carlisle Floyd’s Slow Dusk in Piedmont Opera’s October 2020 production Echoes from Carolina
[Photograph © by André Dewan Peele]

In the rôle of Micah Hatfield, the son of a Truelights family who has fallen in love with the Disciples-raised Sadie, tenor Logan Webber was musically and dramatically ideal. Said to have ‘never got beyond the eighth grade in school,’ Micah was here an unsophisticated but intuitive young man, humble but unafraid of communicating his emotions. Crucially, Webber never confused naïveté with immaturity. The innocent optimism of his singing of  ‘Well, I don’t know, it might be diff’rent this year’ and ‘Sadie, reckon we cain’t git married?’ disclosed the earnestness of Micah’s trust in love’s power to overcome hardships. Webber voiced ‘God knows I love you’ movingly and bade Sadie farewell with an ardent lover’s dueling reluctance and excitement at the prospect of their next rendezvous. As in his portrayal of the title rôle in Fletcher Opera Institute’s February 2020 production of Mozart’s La clemenza di Tito, Webber’s singing recalled that of Anthony Rolfe Johnson, the young tenor sharing his late counterpart’s faculty for projecting a warm, lyrical timbre with reserves of strength. Micah’s time on stage is brief, but Webber’s impact on this performance of Slow Dusk was lasting.

A recent—and most welcome—addition to the University of North Carolina School of the Arts voice faculty, mezzo-soprano Phyllis Pancella characterized Sadie’s Aunt Sue not as an unfeeling authoritarian figure akin to the Zia principessa in Puccini’s Suor Angelica but as a hardworking woman whose cynicism is born of the cruelties of poverty. In the scenes with Jess and Sadie, Aunt Sue’s opposition to Sadie’s relationship with Micah was practical rather than personal: she was wary of his situation rather than of the boy himself. This distinction proved to be integral to Pancella’s performance, making her regret for her harshness credible. She spoke ‘Sadie, Micah’s dead’ with as much tenderness as the aunt’s guilt allowed, and her singing of ‘I guess we might as well turn in’ exuded weariness. The symbolic gesture of closing the curtains, a ritualistic banishment of the day’s troubles, was acted with apt dignity. Vocally, too, Pancella’s portrayal of Aunt Sue was shaped by musical integrity, the part wholly in the voice.

Pining amongst the pines: soprano Charli Mills as Sadie in Carlisle Floyd’s Slow Dusk in Piedmont Opera’s October 2020 production Echoes from Carolina
[Photograph © by André Dewan Peele]

Described by her lovingly pragmatic aunt as ‘a mite peculiar,’ Sadie is an independent young woman whose defiance of convention consigns her to tragedy in the confines of her repressive community. Radiantly sung in Piedmont Opera’s production by soprano Charli Mills, Sadie was liberated by her love for Micah rather than being defined by it. The soprano’s singing of ‘Look at your hands, Micah’ imparted an affecting sense of awe, and the guilelessness of her utterance of ‘I ain’t used to much’ exhibited a burgeoning romanticism that heightened the expressivity of her vocalism. Mills voiced the aria in which Sadie rapturously muses on the ways in which Micah affects her life, ‘Ev’ry time you leave me somethin’ comes across my spirit,’ with effervescent tone and imaginative phrasing. Sadie’s lament for her fallen betrothed, ‘Micah, why have you left me,’ anticipates the ‘Leadville Liebestod’ in Douglas Moore’s The Ballad of Baby Doe, and Mills’s incandescent singing brought to mind the work of one of the first portrayers of Baby Doe Tabor, Leyna Gabriele. To state that Sadie is the most multi-dimensional character in Slow Dusk is not to suggest that the singer who assays the rôle enjoys a wealth of substance with which to create her portrayal, but, quickly quelling initial reticence in approaching notes above the stave, Mills endowed her interpretation of Sadie with psychological immediacy and stirringly real grief.

The artistic path traversed by composer Kenneth Frazelle, a native of Jacksonville, North Carolina, led him from early studies at North Carolina’s School of the Arts to the avant-garde scene at the Juilliard School and ultimately back to the folk music traditions of Appalachia. As outlined in the composer’s conversation with Allbritten that aired during Echoes from Carolina’s interval, Frazelle’s journey into the backwoods of Carolina folk song has transformed him into a peer not only of his Juilliard teacher, noted American composer Roger Sessions, but also of pivotal advocates for the preservation of folk music like Maybelle Carter. Initially attracted by the harmonic possibilities of Appalachian roots music, Frazelle was motivated by his own increasingly encyclopedic knowledge and contact with fellow artists to devote more attention to the plaintive, playful melodies that emerged from the fields, forests, meadows, and swamps of Appalachia.

An invaluable product of this concentration on the melodic fecundity of Appalachian music is Frazelle’s Appalachian Songbook project, excerpts from which appealed to Allbritten as a partner for Slow Dusk in Piedmont Opera’s Echoes from Carolina. Structured in nine episodes, each drawing its subject matter from a folk song, From Appalachia allied Frazelle’s musical treatments of the songs with choreography by Winston-Salem Festival Ballet founder and artistic director Gary Taylor. Responding instinctively to the rhythms of the music, Taylor devised patterns of movement that gave each dance its own atmosphere, to which Festival Ballet’s dancers—Emily Apple, Alexandra Cooney, Elizabeth Fowle, Nicholas Franco, India Green, Ryan Taylor, and Rohima Ward—effortlessly adapted their motions. Taylor’s choreography elucidated the songs’ subtexts, limning the vestiges of melancholy perceptible in even the most whimsical songs.

Carolina on their minds: soprano Jodi Burns (left) and dancer Ryan Taylor (right) in rehearsal for the world première of Kenneth Frazelle’s From Appalachia in Piedmont Opera’s October 2020 production Echoes from Carolina
[Photograph © by André Dewan Peele]

Wielding his robust tenor voice in From Appalachia, Allbritten was joined by pianist PG Hazard and soprano Jodi Burns, beloved by Piedmont Opera audiences for her portrayals of Anna Sørensen in Kevin Puts’s Silent Night and Donizetti’s Adina in L’elisir d’amore and Maria Stuarda. Like Taylor’s choreography, Hazard’s pianism reverberated with the unique pulse of each song, beginning with an account of ‘In East Virginny’ in which she supplied singers and dancers with a tonal stage upon which to animate the vibrant musical portrait of life in Appalachia. The contrasting moods of ‘Charmin’ Birdy’ and ‘Fly Around, My Pretty Little Miss’ were subtly differentiated by the dancers, whose steps coincided with the cadences of the words.

The pensiveness of Allbritten’s singing of ‘Bonnie Blue Eyes’ was also manifested in the choreography, which conjured a mesmerizing aura of wounded desolation. Burns and the female dancers expelled the gloom with a frolicsome performance of ‘Single Again.’ A murder ballad of the type that was popular during the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries in both Appalachia and the British Isles, ‘Naomi Wise’ was choreographed by Taylor as a volatile pas de deux, danced with passion that magnified the potency of Burns’s and Allbritten’s singing. The dialogue between tenor as drunkard husband and soprano as exasperated wife in ‘Our Good Man’ was hilariously duplicated in the choregraphy, executed with particular brilliance by Ryan Taylor.

Musically, the pinnacle of From Appalachia was Frazelle’s setting of ‘The Cuckoo,’ a worthy companion to the most artful folksong arrangements by Haydn, Beethoven, and Britten that was sublimely sung by Burns and eloquently danced by her terpsichorean colleague. The jubilant ‘Sally Ann’ provided a fittingly festive finale, singers, dancers, and pianist exuberantly raising the voice of Appalachia in praise of her unshakeable culture.

Opera staged for small screens is not new to North America. Gian Carlo Menotti’s Amahl and the Night Visitors was composed for television. Leontyne Price was first introduced to a nationwide audience by her 1955 portrayal of Puccini’s Tosca for NBC Television Opera Theatre. A 1973 CBC television production of Verdi’s Macbeth with Louis Quilico and Marisa Galvany remains one of the most exhilarating performances of that opera. Streamed to viewers throughout the United States and around the world, Piedmont Opera’s stagings of Carlisle Floyd’s Slow Dusk and Kenneth Frazelle’s From Appalachia rekindled the magic of enjoying world-class musical performances in the safety of patrons’ homes. In the midst of dismaying uncertainty and suffering, Piedmont Opera disseminated hope via poignant echoes from Carolina.

BENJAMIN BRITTEN (1913 – 1976), IVOR GURNEY (1890 – 1937), JOHN IRELAND (1879 – 1962), ROGER QUILTER (1877 – 1953), IAN VENABLES (born 1955), and PETER WARLOCK (1894 – 1930): a lad’s love— Brian Giebler, tenor; Steven McGhee, piano; Reginald Mobley, countertenor; Katie Hyun and Ben Russell, violin; Jessica Meyer, viola; Michael Katz, cello [Recorded in Drew University Concert Hall, Madison, New Jersey, USA, 27 – 29 June 2019; Bridge Records 9542; 1 CD, 70:43; Available from Bridge Records and major music retailers]

Artists’ philosophical and psychological connections with the music that they perform is an integral component of the creative process; perhaps more integral to Art Song than to any other genre of Classical Music. A singer can become immersed in the pageantry of opera and the tumult of the concert hall, but an Art Song recital offers few distractions from a singer’s relationships with the music being performed. A song does not wear a jersey displaying its name and number: the singer must communicate to the audience which position a song plays and how it functions within its team. It is suggested that the essence of a composer’s artistry is most clearly and meaningfully perceived in chamber music, in which the interactions among small ensembles of instruments sometimes reflect a composer’s perspectives on artists’ bonds with one another and humanity. Art Song is a singer’s chamber music, the domain in which the voice can find no shelter in lavish orchestrations and complex stage business. It is in a performance of Art Song that a perceptive listener can discern a singer from an artist.

The prevailing ethos of a lad’s love, tenor Brian Giebler’s and pianist Steven McGhee’s entrancing Bridge Records recording of British Art Songs composed since 1900, is the abandonment of platitudes and polite mannerisms in evaluating the passions, joys, and disappointments of youth. The first moments of a lad’s love demonstrate that Giebler possesses a beautiful, evenly-produced voice capable of communicating an expansive array of emotions, but each subsequent phrase further immerses the listener in the perceptibly personal narrative created by the young tenor’s singing. His vocalism enjoys in McGhee’s playing true musical synergy, the instruments’ sounds seeming to emerge from a single artistic personality. Neither singer nor pianist leads or follows: there is in the seventy minutes of a lad’s love a laudable unity of purpose, the artists’ serendipitous collaboration effecting performances guided not by musicians’ egos but by the temperaments of the music itself.

With the notable exception of Henry Purcell, whose work is as inclusively European as that of any of his domestic or foreign contemporaries, many composers whose lives and careers were centered in the British Isles have endured the allegation that their music is ‘too British’ to achieve lasting success and popularity beyond the United Kingdom’s borders. This charge is made even of a work as universal in scope as Sir Edward Elgar’s The Dream of Gerontius, which, moreover, has sometimes been deemed too inherently Catholic to appeal to its creators’ own countrymen. Perhaps there are aspects of British cultures, histories, and landscapes that cannot be fully understood or appreciated by outsiders, but does ignorance of the county’s customs and geography lessen the beauty of a work like Ivor Gurney’s Gloucestershire Rhapsody?

Born in Gloucester in 1890 and laid to rest in a small borough of his native city only forty-seven years later, Ivor Gurney was, alongside Siegfried Sassoon and Wilfred Owen, amongst England’s foremost poetic chroniclers of the Great War, during the course of which Gurney was twice wounded. Troubled throughout his too-brief life by recurrent mental illness, almost certainly exacerbated by his wartime experiences, Gurney often contended with pervasive melancholia that manifested in both his poetry and his music. The rare composer of Art Song who turned as frequently to his own texts as to words by other writers, Gurney brought to the creation of songs a singular sensibility for recognizing the musical potential of words.

In his singing of Gurney’s music, Giebler exhibits similar propensity, his vocalism distinguished by impeccable musicianship and reliably secure intonation. North American singers’ performances of British songs sometimes sound frustratingly pompous, as though there is a need to imitate a grandeur of utterance not found in the American personality, but Giebler approaches Gurney’s and all of the songs on a lad’s love with stylistic cogency, his interpretations kaleidoscopically expressive but never exaggerated.

Written in 1919, after the composer returned from the front, recovered from his battle injuries, and began studying with Ralph Vaughan Williams at the Royal College of Music, Gurney’s song cycle Ludlow and Teme was inspired not by his own verses but by those of Alfred Edward Housman (1859 – 1936), whose collection of poems entitled A Shropshire Lad is as significant to British Art Song as the poetry of Goethe and Heine are to German Lieder. The texts used in Ludlow and Teme are quintessentially Housmanesque, juxtaposing conflicting human emotions with deceptively serene evocations of the English countryside. Scored for tenor, piano, and string quartet, the cycle’s seven songs disclose a fellow poet’s insightful handling of words’ intrinsic tunefulness.

In the performance of Ludlow and Teme on this disc, the string players—violinists Katie Hyun and Ben Russell, violist Jessica Meyer, and cellist Michael Katz—execute their parts with consistent technical acumen and a permeating sense of true participation in interpreting the songs, their sounds allying with the tenor’s voice and the pianist’s playing to establish in the opening song, ‘When smoke stood up from Ludlow,’ an environment of emotional sincerity. This sentimental directness persists in ‘Far in a western brookland,’ sung with expertly-managed breath control that facilitates artful phrasing. The pensiveness of Giebler’s reading of ‘’Tis time, I think, by Wenlock town’ ably partners his realization of the beguiling potential of ‘Ludlow fair.’ The gossamer beauty of his voicing of ‘On the idle hill of summer’ lends the imagery of the text picturesque potency, creating for the listener a tableau of the idyllic Shropshire countryside. Into that Acadian setting comes a vulnerable youth via Giebler’s engaging, energetic ‘When I was one-and-twenty.’ The subtleties of Housman’s words and Gurney’s music in ‘The Lent Lily’ find in Giebler and his colleagues interpreters whose artistic camaraderie is uniquely suited to elucidating their shadows and smiles.

It was during his wartime service that Gurney composed ‘In Flanders,’ a setting of a haunting text by Frederick William Harvey. Here performed in an arrangement incorporating the string quartet, the song euphoniously presents a harrowing but harmonious assessment of the costs of war. The horrors of the Great War are now tempered by the passing of a century, but the emotional toll of Gurney’s experiences is felt in Giebler’s performance. His becomes the voice of lost innocence, intoning an elegy for the innumerable lives destroyed by conflict.

Giebler is joined in his performance of Benjamin Britten’s Opus 51 Canticle II by countertenor Reginald Mobley. Composed in 1952 for Britten’s partner, tenor Sir Peter Pears, and the eminent English contralto Kathleen Ferrier, the second of the composer’s five Canticles recounts Fifteenth-Century Chester mystery plays’ depiction of the Old Testament narrative of the patriarch Abraham’s willingness to obey a divine command to slay his son Isaac, a command now argued by rabbinical scholars to have been understood by Abraham as a test, Providential doctrine of the sanctity of life effectively prohibiting human sacrifice.

Giebler and Mobley prove to be worthy successors of Pears and Ferrier, the younger tenor’s timbre more ingratiating than Pears’s and both he and Mobley excelling as interpreters of Britten’s complex music. Aided by McGhee’s complete fluency in the composer’s musical language, the voices intertwine mesmerizingly when imparting God’s instructions to Abraham, the unaffected directness of their articulation of ‘That thou lovest the best of all’ lending the cruelty of the mandate profoundly personal poignancy. The youthfulness of Giebler’s tones emphasize Abraham’s humanity, lifting the biblical figure out of antiquity with a touching suggestion of a still-young father grappling with the momentousness of the task assigned to him. Nevertheless, there is an aptly Brittensian flicker of irony in Giebler’s delivery of ‘Make Thee ready, my dear darling, / For we must do a little thing.’

Mobley is but one of a number of gifted countertenors who have sung Isaac’s lines in the decades since Canticle II was first performed, but his singing in this performance demonstrates that he is one of the best. The naturalness of his singing is conspicuous: he resorts to none of the technical trickery that some of his fellow countertenors employ in their vocal production. There is little resemblance between Mobley’s and Ferrier’s voices, but the wrenching immediacy with which the countertenor sings ‘Would God that my mother were here with me!’ qualifies him as Ferrier’s peer as an intuitive musical storyteller. Throughout this account of Canticle II, paced by McGhee with unerring sensitivity to Britten’s markings and the emotional flow of the text, Mobley probes the words’ subtleties, expressing the son’s fear, disbelief, and sense of betrayal with unpretentious pathos. He, Giebler, and McGhee circumvent the pitfalls of Canticle II’s centuries-old parlance, effectuating a plaintive, superbly musical account that is never twee or didactic.

Composed during four turbulent years that witnessed the eruption of World War Two but not published as a collection until 1997, Britten’s Six Settings of W.H. Auden offer an intriguing glimpse of the artists’ working relationship. Britten’s collaboration with Auden produced works as seminal in the composer’s œuvre and in British music in general as Our Hunting Fathers and Hymn to St. Cecilia and markedly influenced other projects, notably the post-Albert Herring operas. In the performances of these Auden songs on a lad’s love, Giebler and McGhee fashion a cohesive narrative that capitalizes on the characteristic metaphysical complexities of the writer’s texts. The gentle anticipation that suffuses Giebler’s voicing of ‘To lie flat on the back’ gives way to stoic acquiescence in ‘Night covers up the rigid land.’ Nature surges through McGhee’s playing in ‘Fish in the unruffled lakes’ and ‘The sun shines down,’ complementing Giebler’s concentration on the specificity of Britten’s tone painting. Voice and piano parallel the discourse between the physical and emotional realms that enlivens ‘What’s in your mind’ and ‘Underneath the abject willow.’ The intricacies of Britten’s handling of Auden’s words are devotedly observed in their performances of this music, but Giebler and McGhee broaden the songs’ interpretive contexts by projecting rousing spontaneity.

The words of Peter Warlock’s 1922 song ‘In an Arbour Green’ were taken from a modernization of a Sixteenth-Century text by Robert (or Richard) Wever. The composer’s adaptation of the text lends the poet’s conceits contexts as relevant in 2020 as in 1922. Born Philip Arnold Heseltine, Warlock enjoyed little tranquility in the thirty-six years of his life. Like many of his songs, ‘In an Arbour Green’ was composed during the most productive period of Warlock’s career, when his creativity was spurred by time spent with Béla Bartók in Wales. The prevailing ambience of ‘In an Arbour Green’ is decidedly English, but Giebler and McGhee survey the Continental accents in Warlock’s musical idiom, especially those influenced by Gabriel Fauré. Giebler’s singing of Warlock’s compact song rivals the work of noted masters of chanson like Hugues Cuénod, the liaisons of words and music rendered with finesse.

The earliest piece on a lad’s love, Roger Quilter’s ‘Love’s Philosophy’ (Opus 3, No. 1), dates from 1905 and utilizes an oft-quoted text by Percy Bysshe Shelley. Like Gurney, Quilter possessed a gift for writing music that amplifies the meanings of words rather than merely accompanying their sounds. With this performance, Giebler and McGhee argue persuasively that Quilter achieved the summit of his artistry as a composer of songs with ‘Love’s Philosophy,’ the rhythmic pulse of the pianist’s playing echoing the cadences of the text. Singing in English sometimes elicits from vocalists open tones and over-enunciation more appropriate to musical theater than to Art Song, but the evenness of Giebler’s transitions through the passaggio facilitates wholly organic clarity of diction. His singing of ‘Love’s Philosophy’ is shaped not by artifice but by genuine affinity for Quilter’s writing.

Both John Ireland’s ‘Ladslove,’ excerpted from his 1920 – ’21 collection of songs pointedly entitled The Land of Lost Content, and his 1927 cycle We’ll to the Woods no More are also settings of verses from Housman’s A Shropshire Lad. Giebler and McGhee traverse ‘Ladslove’ with eloquence typical of their work on this disc, the artistic propinquity between voice and piano revealing fascinating details of Ireland’s thoughtful interpretations of words. ‘We’ll to the Woods no More’ is sung with palpable feeling, voice and piano creating a sense of solace. Tenor and pianist offer a strikingly intimate account of ‘In Boyhood,’ seeming to share memories of their own lives. Interestingly, Ireland treated the third of the texts comprising We’ll to the Woods no More, ‘Spring will not wait’ (the second and third stanzas of ‘We’ll to the Woods no More,’ the thirty-ninth poem in A Shropshire Lad), as a piece for piano that explores the moods of the text rather than as a conventional song with voice. Nonetheless, McGhee traces the melodic line with a singer’s attention to textual inflections: ‘the gold that I never see’ of which Housman wrote shimmers in McGhee’s playing.

The sole living composer whose music is sampled on a lad’s love, Ian Venables is represented by the affecting ‘Because I liked you better’ from his 2004 cycle Songs of Eternity and Sorrow (Opus 36a), performed here in its original form for voice, piano, and string quartet. Like so many of his musical ancestors, Venables found musical stimulus in Housman’s poetry. His setting of the lines ‘And say the lad that loved you / Was one that kept his word’ epitomizes Venables’s emotionally pragmatic style, advancing the legacy of Ivor Gurney, of whose estate the younger composer is a trustee, into the Twenty-First Century. His voice combining mellifluously with the pianist’s and quartet’s tones, Giebler sings ‘Because I liked you better’ with the candid warmth of a lad’s love.

Especially in an age in which funding for the Performing Arts is critically imperiled, it must never be forgotten that many proposed recording projects never come to fruition, burdening those that do with a heightened responsibility to justify their existence. The disheartening events of 2020 impose an even greater duty upon new recordings, that of providing listeners with elusive comfort, hope, and joy. Suffused with alluring, graceful singing, a lad’s love is a recital that earns the opportunity to be heard, but this is a disc that succeeds and satisfies in diverse ways. None of a lad’s love’s successes is more consequential than its declaration that song, when performed with love, can be a refuge from humanity’s horrors.

GUSTAV MAHLER (1860 – 1911): Das Lied von der Erde— Clay Hilley (tenor), Stephen Powell (baritone); Amici Musicorum; Steven White, conductor [Streamed performance by Opera Roanoke, Jefferson Center, Roanoke, Virginia, USA; 13 December 2020 (recorded on 20 November 2020)]

The work of Gustav Mahler is one of Western music’s most consequential crossroads. Regarded by some musicologists and music lovers as a prophet whose scores inaugurated modernity in Classical Music and by others as a talented but over-esteemed creator of cacophonous musical behemoths, Mahler was both a man and an artist of contradictions. To the traditions of Palestrina, Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, and Brahms he brought Jewish and Bohemian sensibilities, his singular, ever-evolving notion of an artist’s relationships with past, present, and future shaped by his own interactions with the cultures that nourished his creative impulses. In his music, Mahler fused Renaissance polyphony, Baroque counterpoint, the symmetry of Viennese Classicism, and Romantic temperament with innovative thematic development and bold instrumentation that translated the idioms of previous generations into the musical languages of the Twentieth and Twenty-First Centuries. All roads do not lead to Rome, but it can be argued that, particularly in his Symphonies, all music meets in Mahler.

His characteristic pragmatism did not lessen Mahler’s superstitious wariness of the precedent of no major composer since Beethoven having survived beyond the completion of a ninth symphony. Keen to circumvent the effects of the seeming curse on composers’ ninth endeavors in symphonic form, Mahler styled his ‘Symphonie für eine Tenor- und eine Alt- (oder Bariton-) Stimme und Orchester’ not as a conventional numbered symphony but as Das Lied von der Erde, a colossal musical essay in six movements that at once harkened back to Robert Schumann’s Szenen aus Goethes Faust and prefigured Schönberg’s contemporaneous Erwartung, composed in 1909 but not performed until 1924.

The ruse failed: following his completion of the symphony that he acknowledged as his ninth, Mahler died before finishing its successor. The 1907 publication of Die chinesische Flöte, Hans Bethge’s collection of German translations of poetry from China’s Tang dynasty, influenced Teutonic artistic circles much as Goethe’s writing had done a century earlier, and Mahler found in words written in the Eighth Century echoes of his life’s sorrows, doubts, and fleeting joys. Returned from his acclaimed début season on the podium of New York’s Metropolitan Opera, Mahler spent the summer of 1907 in the Tyrolean countryside, where the vivid imagery of Die chinesische Flöte inspired the aural tableaux of Das Lied von der Erde.

The composition of Das Lied von der Erde was to some degree a means of confronting adversities that plagued Mahler in the months prior to his departure for New York in late 1907. The deteriorating political climate of the final years of the Austro-Hungarian empire ended his directorship of the Wiener Hofoper, his beloved daughter Maria was lost to illness, and his own mortality was manifested in the diagnosis of the heart condition that ended his life in May 1911, six months before Das Lied von der Erde’s world première in Munich’s Tonhalle, a structure that, as seems sadly portended by its association with this product of Mahler’s anguish, was destroyed during the 1944 Allied bombing of the Bavarian capital. Bethge’s translations of texts by Li Bai, Zhang Ji, Meng Haoran, and Wang Wei spurred the composer’s musical response to his contrasting suffering and success.

Filmed in Roanoke’s Jefferson Center on 20 November 2020, Opera Roanoke’s performance of Das Lied von der Erde adapted the power of Mahler’s score to the physical limitations and emotional implications of the COVID-19 pandemic, movingly enacting the timely conflict between hope and resignation that permeates the piece. Under the baton of Opera Roanoke’s Artistic Director Steven White, the fifteen musicians of the recently-formed chamber ensemble Amici Musicorum—Akemi Takayama (violin and concertmaster), Matvey Lapin (violin), Bernard DiGregorio (viola), Kelley Mikkelsen (cello), John P. Smith IV (double bass), Julee Hickcox (flute and piccolo), William P. Parrish, Jr. (oboe and English horn), Carmen Eby (clarinet, E♭ clarinet, and bass clarinet), Scott Bartlett (bassoon), Abigail Pack (horn), William Ray (percussion), Al Wojtera (percussion), Scott Watkins (piano), Erica Sipes (harmonium and celesta), and Jeff Midkiff (mandolin)—transformed the subtleties of Arnold Schönberg’s and Rainer Riehn’s arrangement of Mahler’s opulently-orchestrated score, to which White rightly restored the crucial writing for mandolin, into expressive details that melded like stones in a mosaic to create vibrant soundscapes.

Mahler’s music demands technical prowess of the sort demonstrated by Amici Musicorum in this performance, but the musicians’ playing achieved mastery of considerably more than notes and rhythms. Even when Mahler’s original orchestrations are employed, the prevailing atmosphere of Das Lied von der Erde is often reservedly contemplative, the surging swells of sound accentuating passages of introspective intimacy. Though unfailingly effective from a musical perspective, Mahler’s complex instrumental writing sometimes emphasizes awkward phrasing in his word settings, but White ensured that Amici Musicorum’s sonic textures supported the singers’ efforts at elucidating text. Indeed, the instruments frequently seemed to communicate the words as naturally and impactfully as the voices. Midkiff’s spirited playing validated the sagacity of White’s reinstatement of the mandolin in ‘Von der Schönheit’ and ‘Der Abschied,’ and Sipes adroitly exhibited how integral the distinctive timbres of the harmonium and celesta are to Das Lied von der Erde’s sound world. The many challenges for strings, winds, and percussion were exultantly and gracefully conquered.

White’s affection and respect for the music were apparent in his discerning but unaffected handling of the score. The first and many subsequent performances of Das Lied von der Erde were conducted by Mahler’s friend and champion Bruno Walter, whose interpretation of the score is extensively documented on recordings. White’s conducting of Opera Roanoke’s Das Lied von der Erde integrated a sense of enraptured solemnity reminiscent of Walter’s performances with elements of Hans Rosbaud’s stylistic acuity and Jascha Horenstein’s fervor. His tempi were drawn from rather than imposed upon the score, his pacing closely aligned with the cadences of the text. As in all of Mahler’s symphonies, evincing the emotional gravity of the transitions of tempo and dynamics that drive Das Lied von der Erde is arguably a conductor’s paramount duty. White wholly fulfilled this responsibility, his reading of the score ennobled by selfless service to the music.

Der Liedermacher: caricature of Gustav Mahler by tenor Enrico Caruso for The Musical Courier, 1908

Throughout the performance, tenor Clay Hilley sang strongly, only a few instances of compromised intonation and avoidance of Mahler’s quieter dynamic markings betraying the exertion expended in his voicing of the music. He vanquished the assault on the voice’s passaggio in ‘Das Trinklied vom Jammer der Erde,’ confidently projecting both the profusion of Fs, F♯s, and Gs at the top of the stave and the euphoric top B♭. Hilley articulated ‘Ein voller Becher Weins zur rechten Zeit ist mehr wert’ heartily, and his assured singing of ‘Das Firmament blaut ewig’ heightened the psychological reverberations of the text, underscoring the kinship between Mahler’s vocal lines and Wagner’s music for his Tristan. Hilley delivered the repetitions of ‘Dunkel ist das Leben, ist der Tod’ pointedly, giving each statement unique inflections.

Baritone Stephen Powell was also tasked with overcoming difficult tessitura, and his poised singing of the pianissimo opening of ‘Der Einsame im Herbst’ epitomized the uniformly high quality of his work. The shimmering colorations of Powell’s voice were tailored to the nuances of the words, not least in his insightful enunciation of ‘Der süße Duft der Blumen ist verflogen.’ The baritone’s clear diction allowed the listener to appreciate Mahler’s visceral tone painting with uncommon immediacy, the poet’s symbolism illuminated by the singer’s vocal acting. Aided by White’s eloquent sculpting of the instrumental substratum, the sincerity of Powell’s voicing of ‘Ich weine viel in meinen Einsamkeiten’ fostered a poignant aura of desolation that intensified the music’s intrinsic quest for hope.

The virility of Hilley’s singing of ‘Von der Jugend’ was exhilarating, his top As secure and sonorous. In ‘Auf des kleinen, kleinen Teiches stiller,’ a passage in which Mahler expressed his desire for tranquility with a specification of ‘Ruhiger,’ the tenor lightened his voice to disclose the narrator’s vulnerability. Hilley’s vocalism grew more resilient as he sang ‘Alles auf dem Kopfe stehend,’ the bronzed patina of his tones imparting the primal wildness that lurks in the music. Wagner’s influence on Mahler’s vocal writing was again unusually perceptible, Hilley’s singing prompting thoughts of Act Two of Tannhäuser.

The descents below the stave in ‘Von der Schönheit’ rarely troubled Powell, his voice retaining resonance and focus to the bottom of the range. Particular care was devoted to his voicing of ‘Gold’ne Sonne webt um die Gestalten,’ and Mahler’s marking ‘Immer fließend’ was meticulously observed by singer and conductor in their exquisite rendering of ‘Das Roß des einen wiehert fröhlich auf und scheut und saust dahin.’ Blending beauty of tone with unwavering concentration on communicating the words, never more effectively than in this movement, Powell’s singing recalled the Lieder performances of Herbert Janssen.

Hilley’s finest singing of the performance was heard in ‘Der Trunkene im Frühling,’ in which he deployed boundless energy and imagination. Here, too, his top As were produced with elan, White’s tempo—or, rather, Mahler’s tempo, precisely realized by White—facilitating congenial placement of the tenor’s upper register. The cry of ‘Horch!’ was uttered with surprising but understated spontaneity, Hilley approaching the passage with touchingly inward reflection. The song’s climactic top B♭, vigorously sung, rousingly asserted the intoxicating credo of the text and brought the journey of Hilley’s performance to a memorable destination.

Powell’s singing of ‘Der Abschied’ displayed tremendous breath control, his phrasing of the meandering lines guided by cognizance of each word’s function in the music’s cumulative narrative trajectory. An attitude of discovery suffused his account of ‘O sieh! Wie eine Silberbarke schwebt,’ metamorphosing into weariness in ‘Alle Sehnsucht will nun träumen.’ Powell’s intoning of ‘Er sprach, seine Stimme war umflort’ was tinged with cynicism, exploring an undercurrent of disquieting doubt that courses through the text and is amplified by the chromatic ambiguity of the music. Powell’s voicing of ‘Ich suche Ruhe für mein einsam Herz’ resounded with pained yearning for inner peace, and his hushed singing of the statements of ‘Ewig’ with which the song ends evoked surrender to the inevitable cycle of life, death, and rebirth.

In too many performances of Das Lied von der Erde, overabundances of reverence for Mahler’s legacy as a progressive, sometimes inscrutable musical trailblazer beget pomposity that undermines the piece’s capacity to lure listeners into an exotic world in which words and music tell stories that are both familiar and always new. Mahler’s genius should be revered and his music studied and respected, but of what real value is genius if it can only be experienced from a respectful distance? Despite the physical separation necessitated by the battle against COVID-19, Opera Roanoke’s superbly cathartic performance of Das Lied von der Erde breached the barriers that often prevent audiences from connecting with Mahler’s music on a personal level. The words are of another millennium, the music from a time not so distant but inestimably different from today, but this was unmistakably a song of our earth.

Opera Roanoke’s performance of Das Lied von der Erde can be viewed below or by clicking here.

CHRISTOPH WILLIBALD GLUCK (1714 – 1787): Orfeo ed Euridice, Wq.30 (1762 Vienna version) — Nicholas Tamagna (Orfeo), Kearstin Piper Brown (Euridice), Laura León (Amore), Kinneret Ely (ensemble soprano), Alison Taylor Cheeseman (ensemble mezzo-soprano), Pavel Suliandziga (ensemble tenor), Suchan Kim (ensemble baritone); Opera in Williamsburg Orchestra; Jorge Parodi, harpsichord continuo and conductor [Benjamin Spierman, stage director; Naama Zahavi-Ely, visual designer, video editor, and producer; Eric Lamp, costume designer; Deborah Jo Knopik-Barrett, production/stage manager; Streamed performance by Opera in Williamsburg, Williamsburg, Virginia, USA; 15 December 2020]

Integral to the human condition is the pursuit of understanding, observing phenomena in nature and humanity and striving to discover or devise rationalizations for the inexplicable. From this impulse arose ancient civilizations’ mythologies, via which cultures analyzed the world around them in scenarios that resonated with their unique circumstances. Astronomical, geological, and climatic events beyond the scope of scientific evaluation thus became physical manifestations of interactions among gods, men, and the legions of beings neither wholly divine nor mortal; beings like Orpheus, the prophetic figure, celebrated by Pindar but ignored by Hesiod, whose mastery of song transcended human abilities. Esteemed by Horace as a tamer of savages, celebrated by Aristophanes and Euripides as the prince of poets, and dismissed by Aristotle as a figure of metaphor rather than history, Orpheus was one of Antiquity’s most influential entities.

From Jacopo Peri’s Euridice in 1600 to Philip Glass’s Orphée nearly four centuries later, opera has often turned to Orpheus as a source of inspiration. The son of the Muse Calliope and either the Thracian king Oeagrus or the god Apollo, Orpheus was reputed to have perfected the art of song and Hermes’s lyre to such an extent that even Hades and its guardians could be bewitched by his artistry. The allure of Orphic myths to composers endeavoring to charm audiences with their own arts is obvious. The symbolism of the saga of a musician utilizing his own gifts to subvert conventions must have appealed irresistibly to Christoph Willibald Gluck. Having won acclaim for his contributions to the Late-Baroque bravura style, he resolved to refashion his work for the stage to resurrect the purer aesthetics of Ancient Greek theater, preferring emotional directness to ornate vocal display. Continuing the legacy of pioneering settings of the Orpheus myth by Peri, Claudio Monteverdi, and Luigi Rossi, the Hellenic world’s most hailed musician provided Gluck with an ideal vehicle for his operatic reformation.

Gluck had lived and worked in Vienna for nearly a decade when, in 1761, he was joined in the Habsburg seat by a fellow artist who shared his vision of minimizing the excesses of Italianate virtuosity in opera, the poet Ranieri de’ Calzabigi. Exposed during an extended residency in Paris to the tragédies lyriques of Lully, Marais, and Rameau, Calzabigi regarded the opportunities for displays of vocal prowess demanded by fêted singers as perversions of poets’ and composers’ service to their Muses. In the mythological tale of Orpheus’s refusal to accept the loss of his beloved Eurydice, Gluck and Calzabigi found an aptly non-conformist subject for the azione teatrale with which they launched their ambitious collaboration. The première of their Orfeo ed Euridice in Vienna’s Burgtheater on 5 October 1762, received the imperial sanction of Empress Maria Theresa’s attendance. Two-and-a-half millennia after his first known appearances in literature, Orpheus sang anew, expanding his mythology with an opera that continues to epitomize music’s capacities for evolution and rebellion.

Gli amanti riuniti: soprano Kearstin Piper Brown as Euridice (left) and countertenor Nicholas Tamagna as Orfeo (right) in Opera in Williamsburg’s virtual production of Christoph Willibald Gluck’s Orfeo ed Euridice, 15 December 2020
[Image © by Opera in Williamsburg]

Producing opera is ever a Herculean task: producing opera during a global pandemic is the stuff of Homerian epics. The myriad challenges of bringing artistic initiatives of any breadth to fruition in 2020 notwithstanding, Opera in Williamsburg allied an insurmountable will to perform with innovative use of technology to create a satisfying, thought-provoking virtual production of Gluck’s Orfeo ed Euridice. Piloted by the company’s founder Naama Zahavi-Ely, disparate components were recorded, assembled, and edited to construct a digital staging, still undergoing revision in advance of wider release in early 2021, that brought Gluck’s and Calzabigi’s drama to life more convincingly than some fully-staged productions manage to do.

Placing the opera’s action in settings evoked by her own and Tirtza Zahavi’s nature photography and elements of Hieronymus Bosch’s triptych in oil known as The Garden of Earthly Delights, Zahavi-Ely’s direction and video editing lent the production admirable Classical eloquence, renouncing the sorts of senseless melodrama, so contrary to the composer’s and librettist’s intentions, that mar some stagings. The work of stage director Benjamin Spierman and production/stage manager Deborah Jo Knopik-Barrett yielded natural but discernibly expressive movement, complemented by Eric Lamp’s attractive modern-dress costume designs. The conditions under which this production was planned and curated are temporary, but the implications of the shrewd use of resources that it exhibited are lasting.

Conducting from the harpsichord, Opera in Williamsburg’s Music Director Jorge Parodi replicated the production’s urbane ethos in the musical performance. The Maestro’s accompaniment of secco recitatives was sensibly paced, maintaining momentum without rushing, and his tempi in instrumental and vocal numbers, particularly the Overture and dances, limned the gravitas of the music whilst wholly avoiding plodding sentimentality. Orchestral playing was reliably polished, the wind parts executed with unerring panache. The precision of ensemble achieved by the musicians would be commendable in the context of any performance, but it was in this virtual reading truly remarkable. Ensuring that the listener’s attention was always focused on the marvels of Gluck’s score, not on the technological wizardry of their recording of it, Parodi’s and the orchestra’s work was worthy of myth.

Consisting of the splendid quartet of soprano Kinneret Ely, mezzo-soprano Alison Cheeseman, tenor Pavel Suliandziga, and baritone Suchan Kim, the chorus sang with extraordinary balance and clarity. They began Act One with an account of ‘Ah! se intorno a quest’urna funesta’ that established an atmosphere of despair. Vividly contrasted, their forceful singing of ‘Chi mai dell’Erebo’ in Act Two was therefore all the more exciting. In subsequent scenes, the young voices intoned ‘Vieni a’ regni del riposo’ and ‘Torna, o bella, al tuo consorte’ dulcetly, projecting involvement in rather than mere comment on the drama. It is Gluck’s writing for the chorus that lends Orfeo ed Euridice much of its emotional potency, as well as its Classical authenticity, and Opera in Williamsburg’s performance offered choral singing of the necessary but hardly ubiquitous majesty.

Amore ed il sposo doloroso: soprano Laura León as Amore (left) and countertenor Nicholas Tamagna as Orfeo (right) in Opera in Williamsburg’s virtual production of Christoph Willibald Gluck’s Orfeo ed Euridice, 15 December 2020
[Image © by Opera in Williamsburg]

With the well-meaning but too frequently ill-executed intention of bringing mythological accuracy to the part, modern productions of Orfeo ed Euridice sometimes assign the rôle of Amore to boy singers. Edith Hamilton would perhaps have approved of this trend, but the male Amore was written for and first sung by a female soprano, Marianna Bianchini, a noted exponent of bravura rôles in operas by Hasse, Jommelli, and Sacchini. Opera in Williamsburg followed Gluck’s example by engaging soprano Laura León to depict Amore, here presented as female. There was an appropriate suggestion of deus-ex-machina intervention in León’s delivery of ‘T’assiste Amore!’ in Act One, and she sang the aria ‘Gli sguardi trattieni’ with bright tone and easy command of the range. In Amore’s scene with Orfeo in Act Three, León imparted the deity’s sincere concern for the parted lovers, and the soprano’s voicing of ‘Talor dispera’ in the opera’s final scene sparkled. The I Dream of Jeannie mannerisms with which Amore’s conjurings were enacted seemed out of character even for the impish young god, but León sang and acted charismatically, lacking only a genuine trill.

La sposa perduta: soprano Kearstin Piper Brown as Euridice in Opera in Williamsburg’s virtual production of Christoph Willibald Gluck’s Orfeo ed Euridice, 15 December 2020
[Image © by Opera in Williamsburg]

Dressed by Lamp in gowns that would not have seemed out of place in Jacqueline Kennedy’s closet, soprano Kearstin Piper Brown’s Euridice exuded physical and vocal opulence. Euridice is in some performances a bloodless cipher but in this staging was a commanding presence in the drama, a woman who merited Orfeo’s death-defying devotion. In her first scene with Orfeo, Piper Brown’s Euridice blossomed with renewed life and feminity, but the joy of the lovers’ reunion was brief. Wrenchingly conveying Euridice’s dismay at her beloved’s seeming indifference, Piper Brown phrased ‘No, più cara è a me la morte’ with anguished pathos. Euridice’s aria ‘Che fiero momento!’ is one of Gluck’s most progressive pieces, anticipating Beethoven’s Fidelio and Weber’s Der Freischütz and Euryanthe, and Piper Brown possessed every quality required to sing the music superbly, rising to gleaming top A♭s. Her enunciation of ‘La gelosia strugge e divora’ in the final scene radiated jubilation. Gluck unquestionably wrote music of greater consequence for Orfeo than for Euridice, but Piper Brown’s vocalism elevated Euridice’s status both in this Orfeo ed Euridice and in comparisons with Gluck’s later heroines.

Una canzonetta di speranza: countertenor Nicholas Tamagna as Orfeo in Opera in Williamsburg’s virtual production of Christoph Willibald Gluck’s Orfeo ed Euridice, 15 December 2020
[Image © by Opera in Williamsburg]

Created in the opera’s 1762 première by renowned castrato Gaetano Guadagni, Orfeo is one of Eighteenth-Century opera’s most enduring characterizations. Opera in Williamsburg’s production was distinguished by a dazzling portrayal of the rôle by countertenor Nicholas Tamagna. Wielding total stylistic acumen that encompassed effortless tones at the top of the stave and an impeccable trill, he paid homage to Guadagni by performing Orfeo’s music artfully but without artifice, the voice confidently meeting every demand of the music. His despondent cries of ‘Euridice!’ in the opening scene penetrated both the choral lamentations and the listener’s heart, palpably evincing the profundity of the despair at the core of his voicing of the aria ‘Chiamo il mio ben così.’ The scene with Amore reawakened Orfeo’s hope, and ‘Che disse! Che ascoltai!’ throbbed with astonishment and renewed energy.

The representation of the artist in conflict with the establishment in Orfeo’s journey to the underworld in Act Two spurred Tamagna to sing passages like ‘Deh! plactevi con me’ with poignant intensity, his voice assuming the enchanting mellifluence of Orfeo’s lyre. He sang the aria with chorus ‘Mille pene, ombre moleste’ and ‘Men tiranne, ah! voi sareste’ with disarming simplicity. The expressivity of Tamagna’s performance of the arioso ‘Che puro ciel, che chiaro sol’ was arresting, the beauty of his timbre rivaling Elysium’s wonders.

In the Act Three duetto with Euridice, Tamagna sang ‘Vieni, appaga il tuo consorte!’ with perceptible determination, Orfeo’s commitment to recovering Euridice from death’s clutches infusing the voice with a vein of steel. Following the breaking of the divine covenant and the second loss of Euridice, the steel was swept away by a deluge of dismay in ‘Ahimè! Dove trascorsi.’ Tamagna’s riveting singing of the widely-known ‘Che farò senza Euridice?’ justified the aria’s familiarity, but he was no less moving in Orfeo’s subsequent scene with Amore and the final reunion with Euridice. In the unlikely setting of a virtual production, Tamagna joined the ranks of history’s preeminent interpreters of Gluck’s and Calzabigi’s Orfeo.

The 1693 issuance of letters patent chartering the College of William and Mary in the colony of Virginia and John D. Rockefeller Jr.’s investment in the restoration and long-term preservation of Colonial Williamsburg in the 1920s were bold experiments. Perpetuating the Old Dominion’s venturesome spirit, Opera in Williamsburg’s decision to create opera during this season of worldwide hardship and heartbreak was also a courageous experiment. Like its fellow institutions in Virginia’s colonial capital, Opera in Williamsburg forged success with ingenuity, uniting artists and audiences via technology and a drive to seek refuge in music. Enjoyable and uplifting in its own right, this virtual production of Gluck’s Orfeo ed Euridice offered an invigorating reminder that, through calamities of earth and men, opera endures.