PERFORMANCE REVIEW: Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart — COSÌ FAN TUTTE (M. Hansen, L. Chavez, K. Richardson, P. Suliandziga, S. Kim, D. Sedov; Opera in Williamsburg, 29 May 2022)

WOLFGANG AMADEUS MOZART (1756 – 1791): Così fan tutte, ossia La scuola degli amanti, K. 588 — Meredith Hansen (Fiordigili), Lisa Chavez (Dorabella), Kyaunnee Richardson (Despina), Pavel Suliandziga (Ferrando), Suchan Kim (Guglielmo), Denis Sedov (Don Alfonso); Opera in Williamsburg Chamber Orchestra; Paul Nadler, conductor [Isabel Milenski, stage director; Naama Zahavi-Ely, producer; Troy Martin-O’Shia, lighting designer; Eric Lamp, costume designer; Opera in Williamsburg, Kimball Theatre, Williamsburg, Virginia, USA; Sunday, 29 May 2022]

At the time of his death on 17 August 1838, the Italian poet and priest Lorenzo da Ponte dwelled not in an opulent Viennese abode befitting the foremost librettist in the Habsburg capital in the final quarter of the Eighteenth Century but in a relatively modest flat in New York City. Following the ends of his work with his most celebrated musical collaborator and his career at the imperial court, effected by the respective deaths of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Emperor Joseph II, da Ponte sought new opportunities, settling first in Britain and later in the United States, where he became a naturalized citizen in 1828. Like many immigrants to the USA, da Ponte overcame many setbacks during his three decades in the New World, but even successes like founding the precursor of today’s Metropolitan Opera did not eclipse the legacy of his association with Mozart.

First performed in Vienna’s Burgtheater on 26 January 1790, Così fan tutte was the final fruit of the partnership between da Ponte and Mozart that also yielded Le nozze di Figaro and Don Giovanni. Traditional notions of da Ponte’s work with Mozart have been upended in the past half-century by musicological discoveries of evidence suggesting that the libretto of Così fan tutte was originally intended not for Mozart but for the Salzburger’s superior at the court of Joseph II, Antonio Salieri. Why Salieri might have abandoned the project after having composed the recently-unearthed music for it has not yet been established. Whatever motivated the reassignment, Così landing in Mozart’s hands was one of the most fortuitous occurrences in opera’s history. In Così, Mozart and da Ponte further refined the art of creating nuanced characters through their interactions with one another that so distinguished Le nozze di Figaro and Don Giovanni, propelling opera’s transition from the Baroque focus on solo arias to increased emphasis on ensembles.

From a Twenty-First-Century perspective, Così fan tutte having long been revered as one of its creators’ greatest achievements, it is remarkable to recall that Nineteenth-Century observers, Ludwig van Beethoven among them, considered da Ponte’s libretto unworthy of Mozart’s score, the ‘immoral’ tale of a pair of lovers duplicitously putting their partners’ fidelity to the test disfiguring the noble music to which it was set. This attitude reflects the romanticization to which Mozart was subjected following his early death, as well as nonsensical proto-Victorian misogyny. Thankfully, these distortions and misinterpretations of Così have largely been supplanted by appreciation for the genius of Mozart’s handling of da Ponte’s words and dramatic situations, but some stagings of the opera continue to substitute awkward stereotypes for Mozart’s and da Ponte’s meticulously-wrought characterizations.

Fittingly presented in the historic Kimball Theatre, amidst the Eighteenth-Century surroundings of Colonial Williamsburg, Opera in Williamsburg’s production of Così fan tutte shrank from none of the opera’s complex gender politics, but producer Naama Zahavi-Ely and director Isabel Milenski brought refreshing lightness and sophistication to the work. Aided in no small part by the singers’ well-rehearsed diction, the production concentrated as pointedly on communicating da Ponte’s words as on performing Mozart’s music.

Roxane Revon’s clever visual and projection designs, Troy Martin-O’Shia’s thoughtful lighting, and Eric Lamp’s masterful costumes—luxurious Eighteenth-Century attire for the ‘proper’ Neapolitans, Summer of Love threads for the feigned Albanians, biker glam for the sisters’ Grease-like transformation, and a hilarious nods to Tim Conway and Stevie Wonder for Despina’s turns as the doctor and the notary—metamorphosed with the opera’s shifting moods. Abounding with wit and creative details like staging an ensemble in Act Two with Four Seasons-style choreography, the production was genuinely funny, never subjecting Mozart’s and da Ponte’s farce to overwrought foolishness.

Acclaimed for his work in a number of the world's important opera houses, including the Metropolitan Opera, for which company he has presided over sixty performances to date, conductor Paul Nadler marshaled the musical forces of Opera in Williamsburg’s Così fun tutte with unmistakable assurance. Utilizing an orchestral reduction by Jonathan Lyness, Nadler and the eleven members of the production’s chamber orchestra furnished a surprisingly robust account of the score, proving in the opera’s sparkling Overture that their collective virtuosity rendered their small number inconsequential.

Similarly, unaccustomed attention on the beauties of Mozart’s instrumental writing wholly compensated for the omission of the choral voices from ‘Bella vita militar!’ in Act One and Ferrando’s duettino with Guglielmo in Act Two. Like Nadler’s invigorating but sensitive conducting, Eric Sedgwick’s harpsichord continuo was propulsive without being over-assertive, and, complementing a splendid string quintet, flautist Jen Tobin, oboist George Corbett, clarinettist Shawn Buck, bassoonist Matt Lano, and horn player Cody Halquist executed their parts superbly.

I piaceri della cospirazione: soprano Kyaunnee Richardson as Despina (left) and bass Denis Sedov as Don Alfonso in Opera in Williamsburg’s 2022 production of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s Così fan tutte
[Photograph by Roxane Revon, © by Opera in Williamsburg]

A particular joy of Opera in Williamsburg’s staging of Così fan tutte was the casting of a young, vibrant Despina who both possesses and wields complete control over a fine voice​. From her first entrance, uttering ‘Che vita maledetta è il far la cameriera’ with bemused ennui, soprano Kyaunnee Richarson ignited the performance with her fiery singing and personality. Manifesting the production’s ethos, her account of the aria ‘In uomini, in soldati sperare fedeltà?’ was riotous without being exaggerated, the no-nonsense maid’s frustration with her stoic mistresses delightfully imparted. In both the rollicking sextet, one of Mozart’s most masterful ensembles, and the Act One finale, Richardson ensured that each of Despina’s words was audible, singing with consummate musicality and an engaging sense of fun.

Despina’s aria in Act Two, ‘Una donna a quindici anni,’ was a highlight of the performance, Richardson’s Despina relaying crucial life experience rather than lecturing. As in Act One, her vocal acting in Act Two’s quartet and final scene delighted. In some productions, Despina’s appearances in disguise, first as the doctor of questionable credentials who revives the Albanians and later as the pedantic notary, are embarrassingly silly, but Richardson enchanted in these scenes, too. Vocally and comedically, Richardson was an atypically endearing Despina who both earned her laughs and sang Mozart’s music with charm and technical flair.

The rôle of Don Alfonso, the cosmopolitan opportunist whose denunciation of the professed fidelity of his friends’ fiancées precipitates Così’s events, is very difficult to cast, and a few unsteady, uncertainly-tuned notes at the top of the range suggested that the music’s compass is not completely ideal for bass Denis Sedov. Despite these fleeting moments of vocal discomfort, Sedov’s performance of the part was magnificent. The voice resounded with tremendous power in Don Alfonso’s trios with Ferrando and Guglielmo in Act One, the bass declaiming ‘Ho i crini già grigi’ with expert timing. His voicing of the aria ‘Vorrei dir, e cor non ho’ was divertingly droll, but this Don Alfonso’s cunning shone most brightly in ensembles, particularly in the quintet and the exquisite terzettino ‘Soave via il vento.’

Sedov voiced ‘Non son cattivo comico’ forcefully and delivered Don Alfonso’s lines in the Act One finale gleefully. The quartet in Act Two was the vehicle for some of Sedov’s best singing of the afternoon, his smoky timbre amplifying the character’s sarcasm. Though brief, Don Alfonso’s aria ‘Tutti accusan le donne ed io le scuso’ encapsulates the wily man’s philosophy. In Sedov’s portrayal, the aria served as the fulcrum that vaulted the opera to its jovial resolution. That such an imposing voice darted through Mozart’s patter was incredible but only one satisfying surprise in a tour-de-force performance.

Prima amati, e poi soldati: baritone Suchan Kim as Guglielmo (left) and tenor Pavel Suliandziga as Ferrando (right) in Opera in Williamsburg’s 2022 production of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s Così fan tutte
[Photograph by Roxane Revon, © Opera in Williamsburg]

Following the path traveled in his lauded depictions of Silvio and Belcore in Opera in Williamsburg’s recent productions of Pagliacci and L’elisir d’amore, baritone Suchan Kim sang Guglielmo in Così fan tutte suavely, exhibiting command of the musical language in the Act One trios with Ferrando and Don Alfonso. There was no disputing his sincerity when this Guglielmo declared that ‘La mia Fiordiligi tradirmi non sa,’ and his parts in first the quintet and then the duettino with Ferrando were impeccably voiced. Kim’s traversal of the aria ‘Non siate ritrosi, occhetti vezzosi’ simmered with romantic zeal, a quality that also coursed through his singing in the terzetto and Act One finale.

Throughout Act Two, Kim’s vocalism convincingly limned Guglielmo’s conflicting feelings, each successive ensemble adding a further dimension to his portrayal. In the duet with Dorabella, he voiced ‘Il core vi dono’ seductively, his wooing overwhelming the lady’s defenses. Guglielmo’s anger upon learning of Fiodiligi’s eventual surrender to Ferrando’s advances was scorching, but Kim also emphasized the pain of the betrayal, thereby intensifying the cathartic reconciliation of the opera’s finale. The emotional complexity of his characterization notwithstanding, Kim’s singing elicited nothing but joy.

With his elegantly-sung, captivatingly-acted portrayal of Ferrando, tenor Pavel Suliandziga won the admiration of Opera in Willamsburg’s audience anew. The exchanges with Guglielmo and Don Alfonso in the early scenes of Act One introduced his Ferrando as a fun-loving but intrinsically serious young man, the tenor singing ‘La mia Dorabella capace non è’ and his lines in the quintet with conviction. He reacted with ever-changing vocal colors to the chameleonic sentiments of the duettino with Guglielmo, the terzetto, and the act’s madcap final. Still, the pinnacle of Act One was his performance of the exquisite aria ‘Un’ aura amorosa del nostro tesoro,’ hypnotically sung, the sweetness of his sound mitigating occasional stress above the stave.

Regrettably, both Ferrando’s bravura aria ‘Ah, lo veggio, quell’anima bella’ and the cavatina ‘Tradito, schernito dal perfido cor’ fell victim to cutting, but Suliandziga’s emotive singing in Act Two ensured that the character remained at the center of the comedy. Joining Kim in an alluring account of ‘Secondate, aurette amiche,’ he projected Ferrando’s commitment to his bargain with Don Alfonso and his absolute belief in Dorabella’s fidelity. The voice glowed in the quartet and the duet with Fiordiligi, in which he phrased ‘Ed intanto di dolore’ alluringly. Singing Mozart rôles exposes the flaws in some tenors’ techniques, but his portrayal of Ferrando disclosed the strengths of Suliandziga’s artistry.

Un addio in lacrime: (from left to right) soprano Meredith Hansen as Fiordiligi, bass Denis Sedov as Don Alfonso, and mezzo-soprano Lisa Chavez as Dorabella in Opera in Williamsburg’s 2022 production of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s Così fan tutte
[Photograph by Roxane Revon, © by Opera in Williamsburg]

Though Dorabella’s constancy is ultimately determined to be slightly less durable than her sister’s, there were no inferiorities in mezzo-soprano Lisa Chavez’s portrayal of the spirited young woman. Dueting with Fiordiligi in Act One, Chavez sang ‘Osserva tu un poco’ fetchingly before partnering her colleagues affectingly in the quintet and ‘Soave via il vento.’ Her scintillating performance of the aria ‘Smanie implacabili che m’agitate’ illustrated Dorabella’s individual character. Here and in the Act One finale, the singer’s potent upper register gave Dorabella’s words special vigor.

Dorabella’s adventurousness was evident in Chavez’s voicing of ‘Prenderò quel brunettino’ in the Act Two duet with Fiordiligi. Then, first in the quartet and later in the duet with Guglielmo, in which her passionate ‘Mei date, lo prendo’ was one of those indescribable moments in comedy in which true emotion bursts forth, the mezzo-soprano underscored the genius with which Mozart’s music supports da Ponte’s words. Text was the medium with which Chavez painted her portrait of Dorabella, but it was her earnest, effervescent singing that brought the images to life.

Soprano Meredith Hansen confronted the daunting trials of Fiordiligi’s music unflinchingly, intrepidly approaching a rôle that singers as accomplished as Eleanor Steber and Leontyne Price found perilous. Her singing of ‘Ah, guarda, sorella’ in the duet with Dorabella announced the soprano’s vocal prowess, the voice’s muscular energy giving this Fiordiligi visceral resolve. Her part in the quintet was dispatched ebulliently, and Hansen voiced the high line in ‘Soave via il sento’ radiantly. The sextet and the final ensemble of Act One benefited from the incisiveness of her vocalism, and her account of the aria ‘Come scoglio immoto resta,’ its top B♭s and C, trills, and triplets discharged defiantly, flickered with repressed sensuality.

Mozart delineated Fiordiligi’s evolution from unshakable loyalty to sexual liberation in Act Two with exactingly formidable music. This fueled Hansen’s artistic drive, spurring her to voicings of ‘Ed intanto io col biondino’ in the duet with Dorabella and her passages in the quartet that radiated voluptuous femininity. The expressivity of Hansen’s singing of the rondò ‘Per pietà, ben mio, perdona’ was arresting, every note representative of Fiordiligi’s emotional crisis. The duet with Ferrando finalized this awakening, the soprano singing ‘Fra gli amplessi in pochi istanti’ exultantly. In many performances of Così fan tutte, a Fiordiligi of Hansen’s caliber would claim the laurels. In Opera in Williamsburg’s blissful Così fan tutte, she was a paragon among equals.

PERFORMANCE REVIEW: Léo Delibes — LAKMÉ (E. Morley, F. Antoun, A. Walker, T. Hoffman, T. Raven, S. Huh, V. Filloux, L. Metzger, M.E. Grey; Washington Concert Opera, 22 May 2022)

CLÉMENT PHILIBERT LÉO DELIBES (1836 – 1891): Lakmé – Erin Morley (Lakmé), Frédéric Antoun (Gérald), Alfred Walker (Nilakantha), Theo Hoffman (Frédéric), Taylor Raven (Mallika), Sammy Huh (Hadji), Véronique Filloux (Ellen), Lindsay Metzger (Rose), Megan Esther Grey (Mistress Bentson); Washington Concert Opera Chorus and Orchestra; Antony Walker, conductor [Washington Concert Opera, Lisner Auditorium, The George Washington University, Washington, DC, USA; Sunday, 22 May 2022]

Many aspects of the world on and off the lyric stage have changed fundamentally since the world première of Léo Delibes’s best-remembered opera Lakmé at the Opéra-Comique on 14 April 1883. Familiar to Parisians in the final quarter of the Nineteenth Century, the social and cultural prejudices upon which Edmond Gondinet’s and Philippe Gille’s libretto for Lakmé, adapted from a story by Théodore Pavie, are centered are now denounced by civilized communities, yet they persist, gnawing at the fringes of progress. Perhaps this reminder of the ambiguities of societal evolution accounts in some part for the affection for Lakmé in her native France, where the opera continues to be performed, particularly at the Opéra-Comique, considerably more often than it is heard in other countries. Last heard at New York’s Metropolitan Opera in the 1946 - 1947 Season, when Lily Pons and Patrice Munsel alternated in the title rôle, Lakmé has been an infrequent visitor to North America. Is Lakmé’s juxtaposition of enticing exoticism and oppressive colonialism too uncomfortable a parallel to America’s troubled past?

Further expanding the company’s repertory beyond the bel canto and early-Nineteenth-Century works that serve as its cornerstones, Washington Concert Opera’s performance of Lakmé demonstrated that the piece is ideally suited to concert presentation, especially in today’s political climate, in which staging elements of the opera’s cultural stereotypes risks distracting audiences from the felicities of Delibes’s score. The popularity of Lakmé’s celebrated Duo des fleurs and Air des clochettes is warranted, but, by enabling the listener to focus in this performance primarily upon assessing the quality of Delibes’s writing, WCO’s musical forces affirmed that these familiar numbers exemplify rather than markedly exceeding the merits of the work as a whole. WCO’s home at Lisner Auditorium proved to be an exemplary venue for the opera, the size of the house spotlighting many subtle wonders of the composer’s orchestrations and permitting the cast to sing without pushing their voices. Admittedly, the unstaged format, combined with projected supertitles, prompted laughter in moments in which Delibes and his librettists likely would not have expected it, but even this validated the heightened connection between audience and music engendered by this performance.

In recent seasons, the playing of WCO’s orchestra has strengthened with each performance, achieving a high standard of musical integrity that was further elevated in this Lakmé. In his two-decade tenure as WCO’s Artistic Director, conductor Antony Walker has presided over performances of a broad spectrum of repertoire. The elegance of his pacing of bel canto works yielded a reading of Lakmé in which Delibes’s vibrant writing for the orchestra was the infrastructure that allowed the opera’s melodies to flow organically. Walker accentuated the score’s lyricism without shortchanging its surging intensity, Wagnerian grumblings propelling rather than overwhelming dulcet passages. Harpist Eric Sabatino, percussionists Joe McIntyre and John Kilkenny (stewards of the climactic cymbals and the tinkling chimes in the opera’s best-known aria), and the wind players thrilled, but not one of their fellow musicians was audibly daunted by the music’s challenges, not least in the atmospheric Prélude and Entr’actes. Manifested in deft transitions among scenes, Walker’s gift for adopting tempi that are both faithful to the score and supportive of the singers unerringly guided his handling of Lakmé.

Like their colleagues in the orchestra, WCO’s choristers refine their skills with each subsequent performance, building upon David Hanlon’s training to enrich this Lakmé with choral singing of an order comparable to the work of the world’s best opera-house choruses. In the opening scenes of Acts One and Two, the moods of reverence and revelry were compellingly contrasted, but the singers’ musicality was unchanging. Similarly, the sentiments of ‘Des siens séparant le coupable’ in Act Two and ‘Descendons la pente doucement’ in Act Three were differentiated, but both numbers were sung with power and near-perfect ensemble. Delibes’s choral writing plays an integral rôle in creating the hypnotic musical world into which Lakmé’s colonial interlopers trespass, and the WCO chorus performed that rôle stirringly.

La fille des dieux et son ami fidèle: (from left to right) soprano Erin Morley as Lakmé and tenor Sammy Huh as Hadji in Washington Concert Opera’s performance of Léo Delibes’s Lakmé, 22 May 2022
[Photograph by Caitlin Oldham, © by Washington Concert Opera]

The breadth of talent in the Washington metropolitan area is often evident in WCO performances, the company’s casting taking advantage of the region’s abundant musical resources. The minor rôles of the Marchand chinois, Domben, and Kouravar who appear in the opera’s ‘ scène du marché at the start of Act Two were omitted from this Lakmé, in which the ballet music was also truncated. Nilakantha’s servant Hadji is not a large part, but tenor Sammy Huh sang his music with secure intonation and dramatic instincts that were apparent even in this concert presentation. In Huh’s thoughtful performance, the brief scene in Act Two in which Hadji articulates the depth of his feelings for Lakmé, pledging to punish her enemies and aid her friends, was genuinely touching, the character’s devotion discernibly extending beyond mere loyalty.

Les intruses britanniques: (from left to right): contralto Megan Esther Grey as Mistress Bentson, mezzo-soprano Lindsay Metzger as Rose, and soprano Véronique Filloux as Ellen in Washington Concert Opera’s performance of Léo Delibes’s Lakmé, 22 May 2022
[Photograph by Caitlin Oldham, © by Washington Concert Opera]

In the quintette in Act One and the bazaar and final scenes of Act Two, Delibes’s music for the ladies of the opera’s British contingent—the soldier Gérald’s fiancée Ellen, her confidante Rose, and the governess Mistress Bentson—was sung with apt precision and decorum by soprano Véronique Filloux, mezzo-soprano Lindsay Metzger, and contralto Megan Esther Grey. Filloux voiced Ellen’s couplet, ‘Nous sommes conquises avec moins d’éclat,’ charmingly, her upper register glowing, and Metzger’s Rose sparred with the pragmatic Frédéric with wit and alluring tone. The exasperation with which Grey uttered Mistress Bentson’s objections to the volume of the Hindu celebration—devised solely as a deafening annoyance to the conquering British, she insists—provided a welcome comedic contrast to the drama’s tension.

Les dames aux jasmin: mezzo-soprano Taylor Raven as Mallika (left) and soprano Erin Morley as Lakmé (right) in Washington Concert Opera’s performance of Léo Delibes’s Lakmé, 22 May 2022
[Photograph by Caitlin Oldham, © Washington Concert Opera]

Aside from partnering her mistress in the famed Duo des fleurs, Lakmé’s servant Mallika has little to do as the opera progresses, but mezzo-soprano Taylor Raven made each of the character’s appearances on stage significant. She sang all of Mallika’s lines with sincerity and full, focused tone, but many listeners assess a singer’s success in the part based solely upon her singing of ‘Sous le dôme épais où le blanc jasmin.’ By this narrow measure, too, Raven’s performance was glorious. Even in moments during which she was not singing, Raven was wholly involved in the performance, visibly reacting to the developing drama, but it was her voice that lent her characterization of Mallika depth and humanity.

Les soldats dévoués: tenor Frédéric Antoun as Gérald (left) and baritone Theo Hoffman as Frédéric (right) in Washington Concert Opera’s performance of Léo Delibes’s Lakmé, 22 May 2022
[Photograph by Caitlin Oldham, © by Washington Concert Opera]

Baritone Theo Hoffman portrayed the savvy Frédéric with humor and sophistication, credibly projecting martial arrogance tempered by empathy whilst adhering to Delibes’s Francophone idiom. Endeavoring in the Act One quintette to offer a nuanced view of Hindu society to the unimpressed Britons, this Frédéric delivered his couplet ‘Leur vertu si bizarre manque d’apparat’ shrewdly, the smile in Hoffman’s voice equally amused and bemused. In the final scene of Act Two, Hoffman voiced ‘C’est pour admirer la déesse’ suavely, Frédéric’s noble spirit emerging from his trenchant banter. Concern for the peril in which Gérald is immersed suffused the baritone’s singing in Act Three, his Frédéric divining that an untroubled resolution of his brother-in-arms’s illicit liaison with Lakmé is impossible. Throughout the evening, Hoffman sang intelligently, employing his handsome timbre rather than pomposity to impart Frédéric’s intuitive sagacity.

Le père vengeur: bass-baritone Alfred Walker as Nilakantha (right) in Washington Concert Opera’s performance of Léo Délibes’s Lakmé, 22 May 2022
[Photograph by Caitlin Oldham, © by Washington Concert Opera]

Lakmé’s father, the implacable Brahman priest Nilakantha, was depicted with unstinting vocal and dramatic force by bass-baritone Alfred Walker, whose clangorous tones imparted the cleric’s warnings ferociously. Recognizing a kinship with Oroveso in Bellini’s Norma, Walker also emphasized the paternal warmth in Nilakantha’s music, voicing ‘Lakmé, c’est toi qui nous protèges’ in Act One affectionately. The portentous lines ‘Dans ma demeure! Un profane est entré chez moi!’ wer​e then declaimed with startling menace, Gérald’s violation of the sanctity of the Brahmans’ enclave awaking Nilakantha’s fury.

The adaptability of Walker’s artistry was exhibited by the affecting gentleness with which he sang Nilakantha’s stances in Act Two, ‘Lakmé, ton doux regard se voile,’ his cantabile singing no less memorable than his roaring admonitions. The impact of his detonation of ‘La rage me dévore’ was wrenching, the father’s indignation yielding to frightening fanaticism. Still, there were suggestions of benevolence in Walker’s account of ‘Au millieu des chants d’allégresse.’ Finding Gérald in Lakmé’s presence in Act Three, this Nilakantha’s declaration of ‘C’est lui!’ was a cry of both hatred and alarm. The priest’s disgust upon perceiving that Lakmé sacrified herself to allaying the dishonor of her forbidden love for Gérald blended with the father’s grief, Walker singing of Lakmé having joined the gods in heaven movingly. Without the aid of staging, Walker made Nilakantha a fascinating, fleetingly sympathetic character, rivaling Ezio Pinza’s portrayal of the rôle in the 1940 and 1941 Metropolitan Opera broadcasts.

L’amant en conflit: tenor Frédéric Antoun as Gérald in Washington Concert Opera’s performance of Léo Delibes’s Lakmé, 22 May 2022
[Photograph by Caitlin Oldham, © by Washington Concert Opera]

Like his countryman Raoul Jobin, Québécois tenor Frédéric Antoun brought to the rôle of Gérald the invaluable boons of native French and a voice possessing both the proper placement for Delibes’s musical style and heft sufficient to vault the ardent soldier’s most impassioned passages into the auditorium with little strain. From his first words in the Act One quintette, Antoun evinced Gérald’s fascination with his unfamiliar surroundings, his detachment from his British compatriots increasing as he succumbed to India’s enigmas. The frequent ascents to top A♭ in Gérald’s air ‘Fantaisie aux divins mensonges’ were approached fearlessly, only occasional moments of slight unsteadiness betraying the effort required to sustain the rôle’s high tessitura. The first of Gérald’s amorous duets with Lakmé inspired Antoun to vocalism of romantic zeal, his performance of ‘Oublier que je t’ai vue’ shimmering with burgeoning eroticism.

As Gérald was seized by love for Lakmé in Act Two, the fervor of Antoun’s voicing intensified. His ecstatic enunciation of ‘C’est Lakmé, c’est elle!’ gleamed, and his secure top B♭s and B were rousing but unexaggerated pinnacles of his singing in the duet with Lakmé. Both ‘C’est un rêve, une folie’ in the final scene of Act Two and the cantilène ‘Ah! Viens dans la forêt profonde’ in Act Three were articulated with riveting immediacy, and the tenor intoned ‘Quel est ce chant plein de tendresse’ elegantly. In Antoun’s portrayal, the uncertainty in Gérald’s scene with Frédéric gave way to devastating anguish in the subsequent duet with Lakmé. In the opera’s final scene, Antoun aimed Gérald’s ‘Grand Dieu! Elle meurt pour moi!’ at the audience’s collective heart and squarely hit his target. In truth, Antoun captured the audience’s adulation in his first moments on stage. In the minutes that followed, he earned admiration for his dazzling singing of Delibes’ music.

La voix de la légende: soprano Erin Morley as Lakmé in Washington Concert Opera’s performance of Léo Delibes’s Lakmé, 22 May 2022
[Photograph by Caitlin Oldham, © by Washington Concert Opera]

Delibes composed the title rôle in Lakmé for American soprano Marie van Zandt, whose career in Paris garnered both high-society patronage and intrigue. Van Zandt’s début rôle at the Metropolitan Opera was Amina in Bellini’s La sonnambula, but it is difficult to imagine that she elucidated the parallels between Bellini’s and Delibes’s heroines as persuasively as Erin Morley did in her first portrayal of Lakmé. In WCO’s Lakmé, the prière at the beginning of Act One, ‘Blanche Dourga, pâle Siva,’ was pure bel canto, the soprano’s syncopation and trills on top B♭ recalling Norma’s ‘Casta diva.’ Morley dominated these early hazards, technical acuity seconded by often exquisite tonal beauty, and she joined Raven in a bewitching traversal of ‘Sous le dôme épais où le blanc jasmin.’ The simplicity of her rendering of ‘Pourquoi dans les grands bois aimé-je à m’égarer pour y pleurer?’ perfectly suited the poignancy of the music, the girl’s melancholy limned by delicate phrasing. Morley’s vocalism underwent a transformation in the duo with Gérald, the initial trepidation of her ‘D’où viens-tu?’ blossoming into emotional confidence.

Aptly rewarded with a standing ovation, Morley’s performance of ‘Où va la jeune Indoue’ in Act Two, the Légende de la fille du Paria more often identified as the Air des clochettes, was sensational, the sole signal of the music’s difficulty being a floated top B that faltered very briefly. The intonation of the pealing staccati was utterly accurate, and the top Es were effortless. The Légende is the zenith of many Lakmés’ performances, but it was only one peak in the expansive range charted by Morley. Her voicing of ‘Mon ciel n’est pas le tien’ in the duet with Gérald was achingly expressive and complemented by a sublime account of ‘Dans la forêt, près de nous.’ Yet another facet of her characterization sparkled in her conflicted singing of ‘Ils croient leur vengeance assouvie!’ in the act’s final scene.

Another peak in Morley’s performance was the berceuse in Act Three, ‘Sous le ciel tout étoilé,’ resplendently sung and crowned by an especially lovely top C. In this performance, Lakmé’s ‘Quand ils ont effleuré de leurs lèvres brûlantes’ was unmistakably a cousin of Amina’s ‘Ah! non credea mirarti’ in La sonnambula, and Morley voiced Delibes’s music with the poise demanded by bel canto. The last of her duets with Gérald received musical emoting of great poise from this Lakmé, who then voiced ‘Tu m’as donné le plus doux rêve’ and the haunting ‘S’il faut à nos dieux’ with unaffected grace. Beyond the walls of Lisner Auditorium, it was a stormy evening in Washington, and a burst of thunder shook the hall at the moment at which Morley lowered her head to mark Lakmé’s death. Uplifted by an ensemble of artists who liberated Lakmé from the stigma of cultural insensitivity, hers was a performance that literally rose to the heavens.

PERFORMANCE REVIEW: Mark Lanz Weiser & Amy S. Punt — GALAXIES IN HER EYES (D. Thompson-Brewer, L. Kesselman, A. L. Bottoms, S. Nordin; High Point University, 3 April 2022)

MARK LANZ WEISER (born 1968) and AMY S. PUNT (born 1987): Galaxies in Her Eyes [WORLD PREMIÈRE] – Diana Thompson-Brewer (Eden), Lindsay Kesselman (Ada Lovelace), Amanda Lynn Bottoms (Katherine Johnson), Sarah Nordin (Annie Jump Cannon); Fabrice Dharamraj (violin 1), Emilia Sharpe (violin 2), Simon Ertz (viola), Laura Shirley (cello), PG Hazard (piano); Karen Ní Bhroin, conductor [Scott MacLeod, producer; Kristine McIntyre, director; Kathy Maxwell, graphics and lighting designer; Jason Estrada, costume and makeup designer; High Point University Department of Music, Culp Planetarium, High Point, North Carolina, USA; Sunday, 3 April 2022]

Many of the earliest human endeavors known to history were attempts to understand or connect with the cosmos. From the inception of cognition, man has sought inspiration and solace in the stars, marveling at the unfathomable expanse of space and contemplating the possibility that, somewhere among distant realms, other beings exist and turn their eyes towards Earth. Ancient mythologies gave constellations terrestrial identities. Mesoamerican cultures found in the motions of the heavens harbingers of the future. The lives of aboriginal peoples were guided by celestial signs. Having harnessed the navigational power of the stars to explore all corners of this planet, humanity looked upward, daring to dream of ascending into the entrancing void.

Just as the call of the sea resounds in Ralph Vaughan Williams’s Riders to the Sea and Benjamin Britten’s Peter Grimes and Billy Budd, the spellbinding voice of space sings in every moment of composer Mark Lanz Weiser’s and librettist Amy S. Punt’s opera Galaxies in Her Eyes. Frequent collaborators, composer and librettist melded their melodies and poetry into a single, indivisible entity that made of an enterprising girl’s fascination with space an engrossing theatrical experience. Punt’s libretto communicated the heroine’s youthful zeal with welcome concision and straightforwardness, curiosity emerging from the character’s thoughts rather than from poetic conceits. Crucially, the words were credible as those of a witty young lady and the historical figures with whom she engages, and Weiser’s musical treatment of them effectuated textual clarity.

Code talkers: (from left to right) mezzo-soprano Amanda Lynn Bottoms as Katherine Johnson, soprano Diana Thompson-Brewer as Eden, and soprano Lindsay Kesselman as Ada Lovelace in High Point University’s world-première production of Mark Lanz Weiser’s and Amy S. Punt’s Galaxies in Her Eyes, April 2022
[Photograph by Lee Adams, © by High Point University]

Weiser’s score takes the listener on a riveting, intensely moving journey through the galaxies that the opera’s heroine longs to visit. In both musical structure and subject matter, there are parallels between Galaxies in Her Eyes and Philip Glass’s Galileo Galilei. Momentum is provided by an elastic use of ostinati, over which vocal lines take flight as harmonies intertwine with tonal ambiguity that harkens back to Richard Strauss’s Die Frau ohne Schatten. Weiser’s writing for string quartet follows the model of Schoenberg’s Verklärte Nacht in integrating bewitching lyricism with bracing dissonances. Influences past and present are absorbed into Weiser’s unique musical language, which in Galaxies in Her Eyes metamorphoses complex code and equations into sounds of simple beauty.

Presenting the professional world première of Galaxies in Her Eyes in High Point University's 125-seat Culp Planetarium was a fortuitous union of work and venue with few equals in operatic history, one made possible by the espousal of the planetarium’s director, astrophysicist Dr. Brad Barlow. Produced with a singer’s instincts and insightfulness by HPU Associate Professor of Music Dr. Scott MacLeod, the staging lifted Punt’s words and Weiser’s music from the page with a level of immediacy rare in any art form. Bringing her concept for the opera to fruition, director Kristine McIntyre resourcefully transformed every spatial limitation into a strength, capitalizing on the visual splendors of Kathy Maxwell’s stunning projections and lighting designs, Dr. Barlow’s inventive graphic and programming schematics, and Jason Estrada’s elegant costume and makeup creations to fashion an atmosphere that was both seemingly infinite and palpably intimate. The ingenuity with which the setting was incorporated into the opera’s narrative was incredible, the visual stimuli of celestial bodies and pioneering titans of mathematics, physics, and astronomy assimilating the audience’s collective dreams of space into the opera’s context.

Out of this world: soprano Lindsay Kesselman as Ada Lovelace in High Point University’s world-première production of Mark Lanz Weiser’s and Amy S. Punt’s Galaxies in Her Eyes, April 2022
[Photograph by Lee Adams, © by High Point University]

Concealed behind the planetarium’s dome, the string quartet drawn from the ranks of the Winston-Salem Symphony—violinists Fabrice Dharamraj and Emilia Sharpe, violist Simon Ertz, and cellist Laura Shirley—and pianist PG Hazard played superbly under the direction of conductor Karen Ní Bhroin. Even with technological assistance and modest musical forces, piloting a performance in such a non-traditional venue generated uncommon challenges. Ní Bhroin’s experience as Assistant Conductor of the Winston-Salem Symphony was invaluable, her knowledge of diverse repertoire begetting a reading of Galaxies in Her Eyes in which the facets of Weiser’s music coruscated. Serving as the nucleus around which the string players’ sounds whizzed and whispered, Hazard managed the keyboard’s transitions from piano to celesta virtuosically, her technical expertise supporting interpretive sagacity. Conductor and instrumentalists ensured that very wonder of the opera’s visual staging was matched by a musical detail of equal brilliance.

Across the spectrum: (from left to right) mezzo-soprano Sarah Nordin as Annie Jump Cannon, soprano Diana Thompson-Brewer as Eden, and soprano Lindsay Kesselman as Ada Lovelace in High Point University’s world-première production of Mark Lanz Weiser’s and Amy S. Punt’s Galaxies in Her Eyes, April 2022
[Photograph by Lee Adams, © by High Point University]

Separated from her mother during a stargazing excursion, the adolescent Eden awakens in the company of Augusta Ada Byron King, Countess Lovelace, the significance of whose contributions to Charles Babbage’s long-celebrated mathematical work has only been fully recognized in the past half-century. Vibrantly portrayed in this production of Galaxies in Her Eyes by soprano Lindsay Kesselman, Weiser’s and Punt’s Lady Lovelace rejoices in her eccentricity, taking no notice of the differences between them as she affectionately befriends the dazed Eden. Kesselman sang intrepidly, mastering the part’s angular writing and wide intervals with unflinching commitment and finessing melodic lines as though she were interpreting a Schubert Lied. Paralleling Eden’s odyssey, Kesselman limned the pathos of Lady Lovelace’s desire to find her own mother, but there was also humor in moments like her rejoinder when accused by Eden of being bossy that ‘it is pronounced busy.’ The soprano’s vocalism reveled in the pure joy of singing, heightening a characterization that exuded the gratifying fulfillment of mathematical computation.

Sisters in science: (from left to right) soprano Diana Thompson-Brewer as Eden, mezzo-soprano Sarah Nordin as Annie Jump Cannon, and mezzo-soprano Amanda Lynn Bottoms as Katherine Johnson in High Point University’s world-première production of Mark Lanz Weiser’s and Amy S. Punt’s Galaxies in Her Eyes, April 2022
[Photograph by Lee Adams, © by High Point University]

Vocally and dramatically, mezzo-soprano Amanda Lynn Bottoms’s depiction of Katherine Coleman Johnson, one of the first women of color employed in scientific work by NASA and a central focus of the book and feature film Hidden Figures, was captivating, the character’s sisterly protectiveness towards Eden allied with irrepressible pride in her work. The sequence in which Johnson describes the development of NASA’s earliest computer coding was the performance’s most thrilling scene, Bottoms’s singing and acting bringing the too-long-unheralded genius to life with extraordinary specificity, as though archival footage of Johnson herself were set to music. Her understated utterance of ‘One day, it hit me’ imparted the innate humility of her portrayal. Suffused with benevolent warmth when interacting with Eden, Bottoms’s voice blazed excitingly when Johnson recounted her work with fifty thousand equations. Bottoms’s garnet-hued timbre was easily distinguished in ensembles, in which she delivered Johnson’s lines fervently, and, even when she was obscured by darkness, her presence was unmistakable.

The third of the trailblazing ladies who aid the adolescent Eden in finding her own path to the stars, Annie Jump Cannon, collaborated with colleagues at Harvard University on a system of categorizing stars that enabled all future space exploration by expanding scientists’ understanding of intergalactic evolution. The importance of Cannon’s accomplishments was honored by the powerful singing of mezzo-soprano Sarah Nordin. The historical Cannon was surely a formidable woman, a noted suffragist in addition to her scientific work, and Nordin brought her to the operatic stage with cyclonic intensity, the columnar firmness of the voice effortlessly projecting the lady’s indomitable spirit into the planetarium. On some levels, Eden’s three historical forebears represent aspects of a single personality, Ada Lovelace personifying playful precocity and Katherine Johnson embodying studious sobriety. As sung by Nordin, Cannon was the voice of advocacy and self-reliance. A voice such as hers cannot be ignored, and the singer’s performance cogently communicated the gravitas of both the character and the opera’s message of progress through self-improvement and esteem for innovators of the past.

At the controls: soprano Diana Thompson-Brewer as Eden in High Point University’s world-première production of Mark Lanz Weiser’s and Amy S. Punt’s Galaxies in Her Eyes, April 2022
[Photograph by Lee Adams, © by High Point University]

Eden, the youngster whose misadventure precipitates the time-defying events of Galaxies in Her Eyes, is a cousin of the eponymous protagonists of Menotti’s Amahl and the Night Visitors and Rachel Portman’s The Little Prince, but soprano Diana Thompson-Brewer made Eden a unique character, a girl recognizably like and absolutely unlike any other. From the start of Eden’s expedition, Thompson-Brewer sang Weiser’s music and Punt’s words with disarming sincerity. Eden’s reactions to each of her exchanges with her mathematical ancestors were astutely differentiated, but her yearning for her mother was omnipresent in the soprano’s performance.

Eden is no ordinary operatic heroine, but Thompson-Brewer approached her music with the same concentration that she devotes to rôles like Mozart’s Königin der Nacht, Donizetti’s Lucia, and Strauss’s Zerbinetta. Eden’s vocal lines make relatively modest demands by comparison, but Thompson-Brewer left nothing to chance, her singing demonstrating the confidence of preparedness. She managed in the opera’s brief duration to forge a richly-detailed depiction of Eden, culminating in an uplifting realization of the girl’s dream to land on the surface of Mars. The revelation in the opera’s final scene that Eden’s mother had died, the loving daughter singing that her father had done his best but could not fill her mother’s absence, was all the more devastating for being fleeting. Eden’s trek began as a girl’s physical quest and ended as a gloriously independent woman’s mission to reconnect to the mother who nurtured her dreams. Along the way, Thompson-Brewer’s singing shone as radiantly as the constellations Eden revered.

There is no chorus in Galaxies in Her Eyes, but some of the most stirring music in Sunday’s performance was the chorus of expressions of amazement from the many children in the capacity audienc​e. Their adult companions responded to the opera no less exultantly, succumbing to music’s faculty for marginalizing the differences that separate people. In only fifty minutes, the galaxies that glimmered in Eden’s eyes colonized the audience’s hearts.

PERFORMANCE REVIEW: Bedřich Smetana — PRODANÁ NEVĚSTA (C. Griffin, W. Edwards, R. Powell, Z. Taylor, R. A. Garcia, D. L. Dorsett, D. Grimm, P. Wheeler, M. Adams, C. McCrea, K. Whitton; UNCG Opera Theatre, 31 March 2022)

BEDŘRICH SMETANA (1824 – 1884): Prodaná nevěsta – Claire Griffin (Mařenka), William Edwards (Jeník), Reginald Powell (Kecal), Zachary Taylor (Vašek), Rafael Alejandro Garcia (Krušina), Danielle Lee Dorsett (Ludmila), Douglas Grimm (Mícha), Peyton Wheeler (Háta), Michael Adams (Esmeralda), Collin McCrea (Principal), Kyle Whitton (Indian); UNCG Opera Theatre Chorus and Orchestra; Peter Perret, conductor [David Holley, Producer and Stage Director; Michael Job, Choreographer; Jeff Neubauer, Lighting Designer and Technical Director; Feyden Jones, Wig and Makeup Designer; UNCG Opera Theatre, UNCG Auditorium, University of North Carolina at Greensboro, Greensboro, North Carolina, USA; Thursday, 31 March 2022]

Born near the boundary between Bohemia and Moravia during an era in which his native land was ruled by Habsburg Austria, Bedřich Smetana was an early champion of Czech nationalism in music, a figure whose endeavors to liberate his people from foreign domination paralleled those of the titular hero of his 1868 opera Dalibor. Fascinatingly, the circumstances of his time dictated that Smetana was seldom exposed to Czech language and traditions in his youth, the necessity of coexisting with Bohemia’s Austrian lords yielding a prevalence of Teutonic culture throughout the Habsburg realms. This early suppression of the cultural heritage of his homeland perhaps intensified Smetana’s commitment to developing a singular Czech identity in his music.

Grateful as any artist is for a work to receive widespread acclaim, Smetana would likely have been disappointed to observe that, in the quarter-century following his death in 1884, it was in German translation as Die verkaufte Braut that his second opera, Prodaná nevěsta, captivated audiences throughout Europe and North America. [More than a century after Prodaná nevěsta’s 1909 Metropolitan Opera première, in which Emmy Destinn portrayed Mařenka auf Deutsch, the opera has never been performed by the company in librettist Karel Sabina’s original Czech.] Nuances of Czech linguistics and culture are integral components of Prodaná nevěsta’s structure and ethos, but the opera’s success in other languages is indicative of the quality of Smetana’s music.

Sung in Marian Farquhar’s English translation, UNCG Opera Theatre’s staging of Prodaná nevěsta convincingly transformed the Gate City into a vibrant Czech village. Taking advantage of every visual stimulus of the Grosh Backdrops and Tobias Lake Studio scenic designs, as redolent of the Cotswolds as of Bohemia, and Eastern Costume Company’s costumes, producer and stage director David Holley extracted the plentiful charm from Smetana’s score without perpetuating the uncomfortable, unnecessary, and unwarranted stereotypes that have afflicted some productions of the opera. His own career as a singer always guiding his direction, Holley achieved a commendable balance between the opera’s humor and humanity, the comedy realized rousingly but sensitively.

Jeff Neubauer’s finely-judged lighting designs and technical direction ensured that the observer was always mindful, even in moments of greatest hilarity, that the future happiness of simple, good-natured people was imperiled. Rustic sophistication suffused Michael Job’s rejuvenation of choreography first devised for UNCG’s 2009 production of Prodaná nevěsta, depicting common folk at leisure whose lack of formal training is reflected in clever handling of the opera’s celebrated dances. Too many of today’s opera productions are undermined by staging elements that are contradictory rather than complementary, but this Bartered Bride was distinguished by a discernible unity of vision that focused on drawing the audience into the heart of Smetana’s lovingly-crafted paean to Bohemian life.

Village at play: the cast of UNCG Opera Theatre’s 2022 production of Bedřich Smetana’s Prodaná nevěsta
[Photograph © by UNCG Opera Theatre]

Music Director of the Winston-Salem Symphony from 1978 until 2004, renowned conductor Peter Perret returned to UNCG Auditorium three years after pacing UNCG Opera Theatre’s enchanting production of Verdi’s Falstaff to preside over this staging of Prodaná nevěsta. The artful command of orchestral detail, no less impressive in the orchestral reduction employed for this production than in Smetana’s full orchestrations, and coordination of comedic timing between podium and stage that served Verdi so well were also engendered an energetic, effervescent reading of Smetana’s score.

Under Perret’s leadership, the opera’s sparkling Overture, virtually a symphonic scherzo with much in common with Mozart’s Overture to Le nozze di Figaro, was brilliantly played by the production’s orchestra, and each subsequent instrumental number—the Act One Polka and the comedians’ March (a piece that must have been in Leoncavallo’s mind as he composed his music for the theatrical troupe’s entrance in Pagliacci) and Skočná in Act Three [the popular Furiant in Act Two was omitted]—benefited from the musicians’ dedication and increasing mastery of Smetana’s musical language. Surely responding both to Perret’s guidance and to the beauty of the composer’s music, each instrument was played with eloquence and virtuosity. Perret shaped the opera’s lyrical passages with suavity, engrossingly contrasting bucolic naïvety with dramatic tension.

Smetana entrusted much of the pageantry and authentic Bohemian spirit of Prodaná nevěsta to the chorus. Under the direction of conductor Garrett Saake, UNCG Opera Theatre’s choristers sang both their set pieces and the villagers’ lines in crowd scenes with irrepressible exuberance and musicality. Despite being outnumbered by the ladies, the gentlemen of the chorus provided a sturdy foundation in ensembles. Impeccably trained by Saake, all of the young singers immersed themselves in the story, persuasively portraying the villagers’ joy, distress, and curiosity. The considerable demands of Smetana’s writing for the chorus were blithesomely met, each voice credibly embodying an individual within the community.

Bearing with rejection: (from left to right) tenor Collin McCrea as Principál, tenor Zachary Taylor as Vašek, and soprano Michael Adams as Esmeralda in UNCG Opera Theatre’s 2022 production of Bedřich Smetana’s Prodaná nevěsta
[Photograph © by UNCG Opera Theatre]

Some of the evening’s finest singing was heard in Act Three, when, accompanying a traveling circus, soprano Michael Adams’s ebullient Esmeralda arrived in the village square. Adams’s voice was as radiant as her smile, her tones beautiful and effortlessly projected throughout the range. She was joined in the brief duet ‘Milostné zvířátko’ by the Principál, the ringmaster of the circus, sung by tenor Collin McCrea. Not wholly comfortable with his music’s tessitura, McCrea nonetheless delivered the part with brio. Baritone Kyle Witton depicted the third of the circus performers, sensibly identified in this production as a daredevil instead of Smetana’s and Sabina’s potentially offensive Indian, with physical and vocal athleticism.

As Micha, the father of the brothers who unwittingly become rivals for Mařenka’s hand in marriage, and his domineering second wife Háta, baritone Douglas Grimm and mezzo-soprano Peyton Wheeler sang and acted capably. Wheeler’s Háta was shrewish but not truly malevolent, her actions and strongly-voiced blandishments motivated by concern for her son Vašek—until his behavior prompted embarrassment, at any rate. Grimm’s handsome voice lent Micha’s utterances welcome immediacy. In his performance, the father’s blessing of both of his sons and their chosen partners was unexpectedly moving.

Mezzo-soprano Danielle Lee Dorsett and bass Rafael Alejando Garcia enlivened the performance in their every appearance on stage as Mařenka’s doting but crafty parents, Ludmila and Krušina. Both singers surrendered themselves to their rôles, imparting the shifting emotions of their subsequent scenes with Kecal and Mařenka.with subtlety and sincerity. Dorsett’s appealing vocalism alternated forceful tones at the top of the stave with soft-grained navigations of Ludmila’s lines in ensembles. His cane virtually a participant in the drama in its own right, Garcia’s Krušina was undeniably opportunistic but endearingly paternal, his words declaimed with an aura of a long-toiling father’s weariness.

Family matter: (from left to right) bass Rafael Alejando Garcia as Krušuna, soprano Claire Griffin as Mařenka, bass-baritone Reginald Powell as Kecal, and mezzo-soprano Danielle Lee Dorsett as Ludmila in UNCG Opera Theatre’s 2022 production of Bedřich Smetana’s Prodaná nevěsta
[Photograph © by UNCG Opera Theatre]

In tenor Zachary Taylor’s portrayal, Micha’s stuttering younger son Vašek was uncommonly sympathetic, the timid youth’s fears of rejection and alienation made all the more affecting by the focused, firm tones by which they were communicated. Taylor voiced Vašek’s Act Two aria ‘Má ma-ma Matička’ with boyish innocence, the stutter neatly articulated without being over-exaggerated. Encountering Mařenka without recognizing her as his contracted betrothed, this Vašek conversed with her sweetly in their animated duet, her warnings about his future bride’s inconstancy unnerving and exhilarating him in equal measures. The dulcet aria ‘To-to mi v hlavě le-leži’ in Act Three received from Taylor a reading of imagination and emotional directness. For this Vašek, meeting the exotic Esmeralda was like a thunderbolt: even when disguised as the circus bear, Taylor conveyed the lad’s infatuation uproariously. Taylor’s fantastic singing propelled Vašek to the center of the drama. Mařenka and Jeník are destined to be together, but this Vašek inspired the hope that he will enjoy a true love of his own.

His uniquely Bohemian musical identity notwithstanding, the marriage broker Kecal is a relation of operatic personages ranging from comic figures in the operas of Monteverdi and Cavalli to the meddlesome Goro in Puccini’s Madama Butterfly. Performing Kecal’s music in English can bring him disconcertingly near to seeming like an escapee from the Savoy operettas of Gilbert and Sullivan, but bass-baritone Reginald Powell accentuated the echoes of Mozart that reverberate in Kecal’s music. In the trio with Ludmila and Krušina in Act One, Powell voiced ‘Jak vám pravím, pane kmotře’ commandingly, deftly disclosing the character’s smug self-satisfaction. Both ‘Mladík slušný’ and Kecal’s lines in the quartet were dispatched with sure intonation and fleet patter.

Kecal’s vocal line frequently plunges below the stave as his stratagems begin to unravel in Act Two. Powell’s voice was markedly more steady in the upper octave than in the music’s lower reaches, but he courageously confronted every descent into the depths. In his traversal of ‘Nuže, milý chasníku, znám jednu dívku’ in the duet with Jeník, the kinship between Smetana’s scene and the duets for Nemorino and Dulcamara in Donizetti’s L’elisir d’amore was especially apparent. Kecal’s music in the bustling ensembles of Act Three teems with vocal obstacles, each of which Powell approached intrepidly. His singing in the final act’s wonderful quartet, sextet, and trio, numbers in which Smetana rivaled Verdi’s ability to simultaneously characterize multiple people by interweaving their vocal lines, elucidated Kecal’s growing awareness of having been outwitted by Jeník. Each of Powell’s Greensboro performances demonstrates heightened vocal confidence. His Kecal was emboldened by new musical and theatrical maturity.

Young and in love: tenor William Edwards as Jeník (left) and soprano Claire Griffin as Mařenka (right) in UNCG Opera Theatre’s 2022 production of Bedřich Smetana’s Prodaná nevěsta
[Photograph © by UNCG Opera Theatre]

Recently transitioned from baritone to tenor, William Edwards conquered Jeník’s difficult tessitura with galvanizing élan. The Romantic ardor of the young singer’s portrayal was manifested in his first phrases in the duet with Mařenka in Act One, his placement of the upper register gaining assurance as the performance progressed. Rarely for a tenor of his age, Edwards possesses an exquisite mezza voce, which he used to mesmerizingly express the depth of Jeník’s love for Mařenka. His voicing of the aria ‘Jak možna věřit’ in Act Two boiled with passion enunciated with gossamer tones. In the large ensembles of Acts Two and Three, Edwards ensured that Jeník’s words were audible without pushing the voice.

The scene in Act Three in which Jeník attempts to explain to Mařenka that his betrayal of her is subterfuge aimed at undermining Kecal’s scheming to bind her to Vašek was the apex of Edwards’s performance, the character’s love and determination arrestingly coloring the voice. Declaring his triumph over the plan to unite his beloved with his half-brother by revealing his own true identity, Edwards’s Jeník not only blissfully reunited with Mařenka but also initiated a tender reconciliation with his estranged father. Occasional stress as he ascended through the passaggio divulged Edwards’s ongoing adaptation of his technique to tenor repertoire, but the panache with which he sang Jeník’s strenuous music intimated that his voice’s technical foundation is admirably resilient.

The rôle of Mařenka was created in Prodaná nevěsta’s 1866 première by soprano Eleonore Ehrenbergů, a versatile singer whose three-decade career was inaugurated with portrayals of bel canto heroines and eventually encompassed performances of slightly heavier parts, including Jitka in Smetana’s nationalistic epic Dalibor. Ehrenbergů retired from the stage before the advent of recording technology, but Smetana’s music for Mařenka and Jitka suggests that, in range and flexibility, her voice may have been much like that of UNCG Opera Theatre’s Mařenka, soprano Claire Griffin. The poise with which Griffin sang Mařenka’s Act One aria, ‘Kdybych se co takového,’ established a high standard from she did not deviate. Her top A♭s in the aria and B♭s in the duet with Jeník were fully in the voice and integrated into the line, and her singing in the quartet shimmered with youthful fervor.

The capriciousness of Mařenka’s deception of Vašek in their scene in Act Two was playful rather than injurious, Griffin singing ‘Známť já jednu dívčinu’ with unmistakable purpose but no ill intent towards her bewildered suitor. Like her colleagues, she devoted welcome attention to voicing Mařenka’s lines in ensembles, not least those in which she learns of Jeník’s seeming perfidy, intelligibly. Her vocalism in the Act Three sextet affectingly limned the character’s disbelief, and the doubt and pain that permeated her suavely-phrased account of the aria ‘Ten lásky sen’ were genuinely touching. Equally effective was the anger that exploded in the duet with Jeník, the voice slapping him countless times before her hand completed the task. Prodaná nevěsta has the sort of lieto fine that modern audiences find ridiculous, but Griffin’s performance avoided contrivance, the allure of her singing silencing any qualms about Mařenka’s happily-ever-after reunion with Jeník.

Though the opera is now rightly hailed as the cornerstone upon which Antonín Dvořák and Leoš Janáček later built the Cxech operatic tradition, performances of Prodaná nevěsta are rare beyond the Czech Republic and Slovakia. Could the world’s opera houses not barter tired stagings of Carmen and La bohème for a good Prodaná nevěsta? As UNCG Opera Theatre’s production affirmed, Mařenka can beguile as memorably as Micaëla and Mimì, and a polka is as diverting as a seguidilla or a waltz.

PERFORMANCE REVIEW: Paul Moravec & Mark Campbell — SANCTUARY ROAD (B. Taylor, L. Lain, T. Raven, N. Shankle, M. Merriweather; North Carolina Opera, 4 March 2022)

PAUL MORAVEC (born 1957) and MARK CAMPBELL (born 1953): Sanctuary Road [WORLD STAGE PREMIÈRE] – Benjamin Taylor (William Still), LaToya Lain (Clarissa Davis, Harriet Eglan), Taylor Raven (Ellen Craft, Charlotte Giles), Norman Shankle (Wesley Harris), Malcolm J. Merriweather (Henry “Box” Brown, Peter Still); North Carolina Opera Chorus and Orchestra; William Henry Curry, conductor [Dennis Whitehead Darling, Director; Brian Ruggaber, Set Designer; Driscoll Otto, Lighting and Projections Designer; Denise Schumaker, Costume Designer; Martha Ruskai, Wig and Makeup Designer; North Carolina Opera, A.J. Fletcher Opera Theater, Duke Energy Center for the Performing Arts, Raleigh, North Carolina, USA; Friday, 4 Match 2022]

From the Roman emperor Nero’s ruthless repudiation of his lawful wife in Monteverdi’s L’incoronazione di Poppea to the brutal murder of Leon Klinghoffer in John Adams’s The Death of Klinghoffer, opera abounds with accounts of the cruelties perpetrated by humanity upon man and nature. The horrors of man’s indefatigable quest for dominion over his fellow man are manifested in opera’s many enslaved characters, the barbarity of their servitude sometimes assuaged by comedy that frequently engenders the poetic justice of slaves outwitting their masters. Laughter is a potent therapy, but, n opera as in history, the pain inflicted upon the victims of societies’ prejudices must never be ignored.

The impulse to use only past tense when referring to the enslavement of people of color in the United States of America is understandable, but racial, political, and economic divisions continue to subject some Americans to conditions that are little better than the physical slavery of previous centuries. This disturbing reality makes preserving and retelling stories from the past a critical component of safeguarding freedom in America’s present and future. Similarly, it seems impossible that stories as integral to the nation’s heritage as those of the Underground Railroad, the network of clandestine travel routes and safe havens via which Americans fled from enslavement, could ever cease to be told, but uncomfortable conversations are too often silenced.

Published in 1872, William Still’s The Underground Railroad Records, documented first-hand recollections of its author’s momentous endeavors in advancing abolitionism and aiding enslaved people in their quests for freedom. Still was born in 1821, the youngest son of former slaves. His father purchased emancipation, but his mother escaped, was captured and returned to bondage after giving birth to four of Still’s siblings. Upon her second escape, Still’s mother was able to take only two of her children with her. The sons that she was compelled to leave behind remained enslaved despite having been born in New Jersey, where slavery was forbidden by law, and the elder brother died at the hand of an abusive slave owner in Alabama. Still’s battle to end slavery in the United States merits a lauded place in history—and in opera—alongside the courageous actions of Rodrigo Díaz de Vivar, Joan of Arc, and Sophie and Hans Scholl.

Cultural depictions of people and themes like those found in The Underground Railroad Records are tasked with the formidable responsibility of telling their stories accurately but engagingly. Even after 150 years, the emotions that pervade Still’s writing remain disquietingly visceral. Premièred in concert at Carnegie Hall in May 2018, Pulitzer Prize-winning composer Paul Moravec’s and librettist Mark Campbell’s musical adaptation of Still’s records, Sanctuary Road, brings figures from the Underground Railroad to the stage compellingly but without sensationalizing their circumstances.

First conceived as an installment in its creators’ series of oratorios on American subjects, Sanctuary Road assumed a new rôle in North Carolina Opera’s fully-staged production. Like the biblical narrative of Saint-Saëns’s Samson et Dalila, the solemnity of Sanctuary Road’s subject is well suited to oratorio, in which the relative absence of visual distractions can heighten the audience’s ability to connect with music and words, but this performance, presented in Raleigh’s 600-seat A.J. Fletcher Opera Theater, affirmed that Moravec’s and Campbell’s Sanctuary Road leads to the opera house.

Intuitively discerning and amplifying Moravec’s and Campbell’s focus on the prevailing spirit of William Still’s writing, director Dennis Whitehead Darling intensified the gravitas of the characters’ situations by accentuating the uniqueness of each individual’s struggles. Framed by Brian Ruggaber’s clean-lined set designs and Driscoll Otto’s and Jessica Drayton’s finely-judged projections and lighting, the opera’s characters were differentiated effectively, with Still himself as a patriarchal central figure. Visually, the costumes and wig and makeup designs, respectively devised by Denise Schumaker and Martha Ruskai, facilitated the creation of both proper historical context and specific characterizations. Complemented by every element of the staging, the nuances of Darling’s direction mirrored the opera’s psychological progression, Still’s vision of an America in which slavery no longer existed motivating every gesture and image.

Voices of resilience: the Chorus in North Carolina Opera’s March 2022 world-stage-première production of Paul Moravec’s Sanctuary Road
[Photograph by Eric Waters, © by North Carolina Opera]

Music Director of the Durham Symphony Orchestra since 2009, conductor and composer William Henry Curry led North Carolina Opera’s orchestra in an account of Moravec’s score that balanced rhythmic firmness with overwhelming emotional immediacy. Every instrument was played as though it had its own story of oppression to share, the musicians executing their parts with unassailable musicality and expressivity. The unerring coordination between stage and pit was bolstered by Curry’s mastery of the art of providing cues. Sanctuary Road is an episodic piece, and Curry demonstrated complete understanding of its basic structure, propelling each scene to its climax whilst also concentrating on the music’s cumulative impact. Curry never allowed the weight of the opera’s subject to adversely affect moments of humor and dance-like lightness, his conducting emphasizing the truth, elucidated by the uplifting tonalities and harmonic transitions in Moravec’s music, that hope brings joy even in times of despair.

From plantations’ sun-scorched fields to today’s churches and Historically Black Colleges and Universities, singing has been a cornerstone of the African-American experience since the first slave ships landed on North America’s shores. Moravec’s writing for chorus in Sanctuary Road honors this tradition powerfully and always with the composer’s own musical language. A particular glory of North Carolina Opera’s staging of Sanctuary Road was its celebration of the diversity of its chorus, the singers, wearing modern dress, representing both the many ethnicities that have endured subjugation throughout America’s history and the diaspora of today’s descendants of enslaved peoples.

Under Scott MacLeod’s expert direction, the choristers sang ‘Our testimony, our stories cannot be forgotten’ forcefully, the words enunciated with stunning clarity. Their declamation of ‘Reward will be paid’ wielded galvanizing energy that revealed the music’s kinship with the ‘turbæ’ in Bach’s Passions. In this performance, Moravec’s setting of lines from Psalm 40, ‘I waited patiently for the Lord,’ offered a sense of transfigurjng catharsis, the voices soaring, but the wordless choral interlude that acts as a sort of prelude to the opera’s final scene was no less stirring. Taken from Deuteronomy 23, the lines ‘Thou shalt not deliver unto his master the servant who has escaped his master unto thee’ succintly epitomize the ethos of the Underground Railroad and Sanctuary Road, and North Carolina Opera’s chorus sang the passage fervently. As sung by these choristers, the closing pages of Sanctuary Road achieved a level of exultation reminiscent of the final scene of Beethoven’s Fidelio, the ensemble bringing down the curtain with a majestic paean to liberty.

Contained: baritone Malcolm J. Merriweather as Henry “Box” Brown in North Carolina Opera’s March 2022 world-stage-première production of Paul Moravec’s Sanctuary Road
[Photograph by Eric Waters, © by North Carolina Opera]

Using only a pair of chairs and the vigor of his voice, baritone and conductor Malcolm J. Merriweather cunningly evinced the exhaustion of Henry “Box” Brown’s journey to Philadelphia in a shipping crate. The exasperation with which he voiced ‘They can’t seem to read,’ detailing his rough handling during twenty-six hours on train and at sea, transported the audience into the claustrophobic space in which this daring man escaped from slavery. Merriweather subsequently portrayed William Still’s older brother Peter, one of the siblings from whom the author was separated by his mother’s plight, with touching simplicity, the sentiments of his unexpected encounter with his brother after four decades understated but unmistakably transformation. The tenderness of Merriweather’s voicing of Peter’s inquiries about his mother’s wellbeing movingly imparted the agony of slaves being denied knowledge of their families’ health and locations. The joy and relief of Peter’s learning that his mother, though walking with a cane and heating with a horn, was alive softened the steel in Merriweather’s tones into shimmering satin.

Flight to freedom: tenor Norman Shankle as Wesley Harris in North Carolina Opera’s March 2022 world-stage-première production of Paul Moravec’s Sanctuary Road
[Photograph by Eric Waters, © by North Carolina Opera]

As Wesley Harris, whose harrowing exodus from bondage was plagued by real and perceived perils, tenor Norman Shankle sang Moravec’s demanding music unflinchingly, effortlessly traversing the rôle’s range and ascending above the stave with assurance born of his experience with bel canto repertoire. Charging onto the stage as though his character were pursued by Satan himself, Shankle sang ‘Run, run, run through the woods’ excitingly, breathlessly conveying Wesley’s desperation but maintaining superlative breath control. His voicings of ‘Run, go, run, quicker than the wind’ and a reprise of ‘Run, run, run through the woods’ palpably recreated the unsettling fear of discovery felt by the Underground Railroad’s travelers. The brilliant patina of Shankle’s timbre shone in ensembles, in which his voice resounded with crystalline presence, and the tenor’s acting was as vibrant and affecting as his singing.

Bound for Philadelphia: mezzo-soprano Taylor Raven as Ellen Craft in North Carolina Opera’s March 2022 world-stage-première production of Paul Moravec’s Sanctuary Road
[Photograph by Eric Waters, © by North Carolina Opera]

Disconcerted by finding  herself on the same train as the brother of the master from whom she is fleeing, Ellen Craft sings one of Sanctuary Road’s most enthralling scenes. Vocally and dramatically, mezzo-soprano Taylor Raven’s performance of ‘He doesn’t know’ was riveting, the words delivered with spontaneity that communicated Ellen’s consternation and fierce determination. A superb instrument with imperturbable security in the lower register and an alluring gleam at the top, Raven’s voice also gave Charlotte Giles a well-defined musical identity, the mercurial wit of the mezzo-soprano’s vocal acting in ‘Oh, oh, oh, poor, poor Aunt Abigail’ elucidating the slyness of the ruse that Charlotte and her companion employed along their road to freedom. Like her colleagues, Raven sang with poise ans eloquence in ensembles, her immersion in the opera’s drama always visible and audible.

Singing in the rain: soprano LaToya Lain as Clarissa Davis in North Carolina Opera’s March 2022 world-stage-première production of Paul Moravec’s Sanctuary Road
[Photograph by Eric Waters, © by North Carolina Opera]

Harriet Eglan, Ellen’s fellow traveler and partner in mourning the untimely demise of the fictitious ‘poor, poor Aunt Abigail,’ was portrayed by soprano LaToya Lain, whose feigned grief brought welcome levity to a scene of latent anxiety. By contrast, Clarissa Davis’s ‘Come down, rain, come down hard’ is a scene of euphoric beauty, and Lain sang it with mesmerizing serenity. Her vocalism was marvelous throughout the evening but was especially, unforgettably sublime in this scene. The soprano’s voice was the ideal conduit for the electricity of Moravec’s music, her singing igniting the performance with dramatic fire that not even the deluge evoked by the staging’s beguiling projections could have extinguished.

Writing it down: baritone Benjamin Taylor as William Still in North Carolina Opera’s March 2022 world-stage-première production of Paul Moravec’s Sanctuary Road
[Photograph by Eric Waters, © by North Carolina Opera]

Baritone Benjamin Taylor’s portrayal intimated that, though William Still is unquestionably the work’s focal point and receives some of Moravec’s finest vocal writing, freedom itself is the protagonist of Sanctuary Road. Nobly intoning ‘Write it down’ in the opera’s opening scene, Taylor established Still as a heroic but humble man who was cognizant of the prominence of Providence in his work. In each of the opera’s successive interviews, Taylor’s Still initiated benevolent rapport with the people benefiting from his assistance, culminating in the meeting with the brother he had known only by name. Still’s vocal line occasionally descended beyond the lower extremity of Taylor’s vocal comfort zone, but every note was sung with appreciation of its importance in telling the stories of The Underground Railroad Records.

Taylor’s voicing of ‘Five years since I hid these records’ projected a sense of fulfillment, the objective of not only saving the lives of enslaved people but also of preserving their stories realized. As Taylor’s depiction suggested, the rigors of his work required that sternness and stoicism be aspects of Still’s character, but compassion was the core of his constitution. Both Taylor’s rousing, charismatic singing and this poignant staging of Sanctuary Road proclaimed that the work of protecting freedom cannot be done by only one man or one generation. The work continues, differently but diligently, intangible roads still guiding marginalized souls to sanctuary.