PERFORMANCE REVIEW: Gregory Spears & Greg Pierce — FELLOW TRAVELERS (J. Lattanzi, A. Acosta, K. Pracht, K. Thurman, J. Jeremiah, J. Fulton, K. Riess, K. White, J. Harr; Virginia Opera, 12 February 2023)

GREGORY SPEARS (born 1977) and GREG PIERCE (born 1978): Fellow Travelers — Joseph Lattanzi (Hawkins Fuller), Andres Acosta (Timothy Laughlin), Katherine Pracht (Mary Johnson), Katrina Thurman (Miss Lightfoot), Joshua Jeremiah (Senator Joseph McCarthy, Estonian Frank, Interrogator), John Fulton (Senator Charles Potter, General Arlie, Bartender), Kaileigh Riess (Lucy), Kyle White (Tommy McIntyre), Jeremy Harr (Senator Potter’s Assistant, Bookseller, Technician, French Priest, Party Guest); Virginia Opera Chorus, Virginia Symphony Orchestra; Adam Turner, conductor [Kevin Newbury, Director; Victoria Tzykun, Scenic Designer; Paul Carey, Costume Designer; Thomas C. Hase, Lighting Designer; James P. McGough, Wig and Makeup Designer; Virginia Opera, Carpenter Theatre, Dominion Energy Center for the Arts, Richmond, Virginia, USA; Sunday. 12 February 2023]

When their opera Fellow Travelers premièred at Cincinnati Opera in June 2016, composer Gregory Spears and librettist Greg Pierce likely could not have envisioned that, six decades having passed since the Cold War-era ‘lavender scare’ persecuted gay and lesbian civil servants as alleged risks to national security, federal legislation would be required to safeguard Americans’ rights to wed according to the dictates of their hearts. In the contentious political climate and precarious fiscal battleground of this first quarter of the Twenty-First Century, the art form’s champions are continually challenged to reaffirm opera’s relevance. It can be argued that, from its modern inception in Sixteenth-Century Italy, opera has ever been more of a sublime diversion than a conduit for societal evolution, but is not uplifting souls relevant to the human condition of its own accord? In Fellow Travelers, though, composer and librettist intrepidly bared unhealed wounds through song, bringing to the operatic stage a harrowing parable of a love that in too many sectors of today’s America still dares not speak its name. The lamentable timeliness of the opera’s narrative notwithstanding, the concept of relevance is itself irrelevant in the context of Fellow Travelers. As a means of uniting diverse peoples, even if for no longer than the duration of a performance, and telling stories that might otherwise go unheard, opera is necessary.

Arrayed in sixteen scenes, Spears’s and Pierce’s opera is an adaptation of Thomas Mallon’s 2007 Lambda Literary Award-nominated novel of the same title, an absorbing book that traces the progression of a fictitious queer relationship in McCarthy-era Washington. Pierce’s libretto metamorphoses Mallon’s novel into a powerful text that is both intelligible when sung and faithful to the linguistic style of the 1950s. Eschewing easy integration of period-specific trends in popular and Classical idioms, Spears’s music creates an aural atmosphere that is in turn expansive and claustrophobic, heightening the tension of the drama as the protagonists’ romance progresses towards betrayal and disillusionment. The musical language is abidingly tonal but enriched by contrasting serialist and post-Romantic accents, at times fusing Pierre Boulez-like rhythmic structures with harmonic lushness reminiscent of Gian Carlo Menotti’s Last Savage. Whether intimating the burgeoning passion between the opera’s titular ‘fellow travelers,’ State Department official Hawkins Fuller and idealistic journalist Timothy Laughlin, or intensifying the torture of Hawk’s interrogation, the score viscerally amplifies the drama’s psychological shifts. Fellow Travelers is a daunting work, for orchestra and conductor as much as for singers, but the prevailing ethos of Spears’s music is clarity, his writing enabling words and feelings to engage performers and audiences.

Dangerous passion: tenor Andres Acosta as Timothy Laughlin (left) and baritone Joseph Lattanzi as Hawkins Fuller (right) in Virginia Opera’s 2023 production of Gregory Spears’s and Greg Pierce’s Fellow Travelers
[Photograph by Dave Pearson Photography, © by Virginia Opera]

Recreating his world-première staging for Cincinnati Opera, stage director Kevin Newbury reinvigorated Fellow Travelers for its inaugural production by Virginia Opera, reclaiming the trailblazing spirit of the first performances and emphasizing with increased urgency the parallels between institutional oppression in the 1950s and today’s ongoing struggles against elitist and extremist movements. Framed and in some moments sharpened by Victoria Tzykun’s provocative but never distracting scenic designs and Thomas C. Hase’s lighting, exchanges anong characters were fraught but organic, their actions plausible within both the opera’s specific dramatic situations and its evocation of the Zeitgeist of 1950s Washington. Paul Carey’s costume designs and James P. McGough’s wigs and makeup augmented Newbury’s attention to manifesting the score’s musical transitions in its physical presentation. Accentuating not the aspects of the opera’s story that some observers may find objectionable but the intrinsic universality of the characters and their circumstances, Newbury’s vision yielded a performance of immense emotional impact.

During his tenure with Virginia Opera, the company’s Artistic Director Adam Turner has exhibited noteworthy versatility, conducting acclaimed performances of standard-repertory and lesser-known works ranging from the effervescence of Rossini to the starkness of Kurt Weill. The focus on facilitating character development and comprehensible storytelling apparent in Turner’s conducting of Virginia Opera’s 2016 production of Wagner’s Der fliegende Holländer was heard to even greater advantage in this performance of Fellow Travelers. The sequence of scenes advanced with cinematic efficiency, each thread of the plot carefully spun and woven into the fabric of the story via tempi that suited indivudual scenes and the work’s cumulative flow. The Virginia Symphony Orchestra musicians played wonderfully under Turner’s leadership, realizing the gravity that the conductor sought to achieve in passages like the pulsing ostinato at the opera’s start. Employed much like the continuo in Baroque opera, Spears’s writing for the piano received fleet handling from Associate Conductor Brandon Eldredge. Bringing Fellow Travelers to Virginia Opera was unquestionably an act of advocacy, both for the opera itself and for the LGBTQ+ community that it honors, but the zeal that guided Turner’s conducting was musical, not political. In this performance, the opera was simply the song of Tim and Hawk, two very different people who happen to meet on a park bench and fall in love.

Cogs in the bureaucratic wheel: (from left to right) tenor Andres Acosta as Timothy Laughlin, baritone Kyle White as Tommy McIntyre, baritone Joshua Jeremiah as Senator McCarthy, and baritone John Fulton as Senator Porter in Virginia Opera’s 2023 production of Gregory Spears’s and Greg Pierce’s Fellow Travelers
[Photograph by Dave Pearson Photography, © by Virginia Opera]

The caliber of the vocal ensemble engaged by Virginia Opera for Fellow Travelers reflected the meticulous attention to musical and theatrical values with which the production was planned. In the rôles of Senator Potter’s assistant, the bookseller, the technician, and the party guest, bass Jeremy Harr sang lustrously, but it was as the French priest to whom Tim confesses his inability to suppress his love for Hawk that he was most memorable, the cleric’s unyielding disapprobation quaking in Harr’s voice. The reporter Tommy McIntyre, a friend of Senator Potter who schools Tim on the ways of Washington, was portrayed with conspiratorial collegiality and vocal suavity by baritone Kyle White. As Lucy, the flirtatious partygoer who becomes Hawk’s suburban-dwelling wife, soprano Kaileigh Riess sang appealingly, and baritone John Fulton voiced Spears’s and Pierce’s lines for Michigan Senator Charles E. Potter, General Arlie, and the bartender incisively.

Lending gravity to each word of the parts entrusted to him, baritone Joshua Jeremiah keenly differentiated his depictions of Wisconsin Senator Joseph McCarthy, Estonian Frank, and the Interrogator, seeming to bring a unique, apt voice to each of them. The quintessential office gossip who makes all of her colleagues’ affairs her business, the secretary Miss Lightfoot was given unexpected depth by soprano Katrina Thurman, whose singing glistened even when the text that she sang was repulsive.

Ladies who listen: mezzo-soprano Katherine Pracht as Mary Johnson (left) and soprano Katrina Thurman as Miss Lightfoot (right) in Virginia Opera’s 2023 production of Gregory Spears’s and Greg Pierce’s Fellow Travelers
[Photograph by Dave Pearson Photography, © by Virginia Opera]

Hawkins Fuller’s assistant Mary Johnson is the opera’s steward of decency amidst conniving and opportunism, and in Virginia Opera’s Fellow Travelers mezzo-soprano Katherine Pracht crafted an exquisitely sympathetic portrayal of the pragmatic New Orleansian. From the start, this Mary’s genuine affection for Hawk was perceptible: it was no surprise that she once thought that he could be ‘the one’ for her. Equally unmistakable was the sincerity of Mary’s fondness and concern for Tim, communicated through tender, tenacious singing. The expressivity of Pracht’s account of ‘I worry—that’s all—about you, Timmy’ was wrenching, the glint of her upper register here and in the scene in which Mary reacts with horror to Hawk’s admission of denouncing Tim imparting the profundity of her feelings. The pain of her exit after Tim learned of Hawk’s betrayal was palpable, and the momentousness of Mary being the sole witness to Tim’s humiliation who did not turn away from him was poignantly conveyed. Wholly comfortable with the part’s difficult vocal writing, which sometimes recalls Gluck’s demanding music for heroines like Iphigénie and Alceste, Pracht melded unerring musicality with Classical poise, Mary’s self-reliance and compassion limned with incredible tonal beauty.

From the heart: tenor Andres Acosta as Timothy Laughlin in Virginia Opera’s 2023 production of Gregory Spears’s and Greg Pierce’s Fellow Travelers
[Photograph by Dave Pearson Photography, © by Virginia Opera]

In every scene in which he appeared, tenor Andres Acosta sang Spears’s music for the endearingly naïve writer Timothy Laughlin with youthful exuberance and technical fluency, his timbre sparkling throughout the rôle’s broad compass. Drinking milk and swinging his feet on the bench on which he first meets Hawk, Acosta’s Tim was sweetly boyish, his shy nervousness trembling in the voice. The contrast with the cascading passion of the Bermuda duet with Hawk and the resolve of his voicing of ‘Forgive me, Holy Father’ in the fifth scene was therefore all the more telling. Tim’s adoration of Hawk having supplanted his faith, his journey from infatuation to disenfranchisement and enlistment in the Army was gutting, Acosta’s unaffected singing of ‘I wasn’t enough’ in the rooftop scene devastating. The crying heard in the auditorium when Tim uttered ‘I feel like I never existed’ in the final scene was earned, the tenor’s voice colored by excruciating uncertainty. In truth, Acosta articulated Tim’s every word with clear emotional intent, though there were instances in which enunciation was sacrificed to emoting. Acosta’s performance was as much felt as it was sung and was felt as mesmerizingly as it was heard by the listener.

Benched desires: baritone Joseph Lattanzi as Hawkins Fuller (left) and tenor Andres Acosta as Timothy Laughlin (right) in Virginia Opera’s 2023 production of Gregory Spears’s and Greg Pierce’s Fellow Travelers
[Photograph by Dave Pearson Photography, © by Virginia Opera]

Reprising the rôle that he created in Cincinnati in 2016, baritone Joseph Lattanzi physically and vocally embodied the unignorable enchantment of Hawkins Fuller. No one-dimensional libertine, Hawk teased Tim with amiable cunning at their first meeting, his furtive glances at the quiet young man on the bench suggesting true interest mingled with carnal desire. His descriptions of the wonders of Bermuda also shimmered with feeling. Lattanzi persuasively depicted Hawk’s skill at playing the requisite part in every situation, whether manipulating his interrogator or courting Lucy. Only in his discourses with Mary were his emotions unguarded, touchingly revealing well-hidden vulnerability.

Reconciling with Tim after callously proposing that they supplement their liaison by engaging a third participant and reuniting after Tim’s military service in France, this Hawk was torn between love and fear, cruelly telling Tim of his honeymoon with Lucy in Bermuda. Heartbreakingly voiced by Lattanzi, the essence of Hawk’s emotional constitution was movingly manifested in the two small words with which he replied to Tim’s assertion of all-consuming love—‘same here.’ Truth finally penetrated the carefully-honed façade in Lattanzi’s stunning performance of the monologue ‘Our very own house, Skippy’ and, still more forcefully, when, responding to Tim’s feeling of never having existed, Lattanzi declaimed Hawk’s definitive ‘You did.’ The theater’s troublesome acoustic complicated projection of Hawk’s lowest notes, but the full range of the part was confidently traversed. Diligently following the map of Spears’s music, Lattanzi and his fellow travelers reached a devastating destination at which nothing was relevant except living and loving in the moment.

PERFORMANCE REVIEW: Franz Joseph Haydn — ORLANDO PALADINO (K. Alston, C. Orr, D. Maize, T. Bradford, G. Meinke, K. Spooner, D. Romano, E. Wood, J. Ray; A.J. Fletcher Opera Institute, 5 February 2023)

FRANZ JOSEPH HAYDN (1732 – 1809): Orlando paladino, Hob. XXVIII:11 – Kameron Alston (Orlando), Carolyn Orr (Angelica), David Maize (Medoro), Toby Bradford (Pasquale), Gabi Meinke (Eurilla), Kevin Spooner (Rodomonte), Danielle Romano (Alcina) Ethan Wood (Caronte), Jackson Ray (Licone); UNCSA School of Music Orchestra; James Allbritten, conductor [Steven LaCosse, Director; Gisela Estrada, Scenic Designer; Logan Benson, Costume Designer; Petko Novosad, Lighting Designer; Madi Pattillo, Wig and Makeup Designer; A.J. Fletcher Opera Institute, University of North Carolina School of the Arts, Stevens Center of the UNCSA, Winston-Salem, North Carolina, USA; Sunday, 5 February 2023]

Historians now theorize that the famous remark about the superlative quality of opera performances at Eszterháza, the country seat of the princes Esterházy, attributed for generations to Habsburg empress Maria Theresa, is apocryphal, but the long-accepted legitimacy of the sentiment is a testament to the artistic fecundity of Franz Joseph Haydn’s four-decade tenure in the Esterházy musical establishment. The theater built at Eszterháza by Prince Nikolaus Esterházy transformed the rural estate, located in modern Hungary and at a considerable distance from the social and artistic milieux of both Vienna and Schloss Esterházy in the Bergenland, into a center of operatic activity in central Europe. The effects of Eszterháza’s geographical and cultural isolation on the stylistic evolution of Haydn’s music is documented in the composer’s own words and audible in the many pieces that he wrote as the Esterházy Kapellmeister. His operas are among the Haydn works that are least familiar to Twenty-First-Century audiences: aside from Armida and Orfeo ed Euridice, occasionally programmed as curiosities, these innovative pieces dwell in libraries and musicological tomes rather than in opera houses and concert halls. Imperial acclaim for opera at Eszterháza may have been exaggerated or invented, but has hyperbole not proved to be a key that opens doors in this new millennium?

Maria Theresa had been dead for nearly two years when Haydn’s opera Orlando paladino was first performed at Eszterháza on 6 December 1782, six months after the respective Munich and Vienna premières of Salieri’s Semiramide and Mozart’s Die Entführung aus dem Serail, with which works Haydn’s score shares elements of genre hybridization and exoticism. Its libretto adapted by Nunziato Porta, himself a composer, from an earlier operatic text by Carlo Francesco Badini, Orlando paladino brought one of the most widely-traveled sources of operatic inspiration in the Eighteenth Century, Ludovico Ariosto’s Orlando furioso, to Eszterháza in a setting in which Haydn both celebrated and satirized the opera seria conventions of Baroque opera. In Orlando paladino, the lovesick madness of the Frankish knight Roland is depicted with wry humor, parodying the emotional melodrama found in many settings of the tale, yet Haydn’s opera abounds with genuine pathos. This dichotomy seemingly resonated with audiences at and beyond Eszterháza, not least in Prague, where Mozart conducted performances of Orlando paladino whilst supervising the inaugural production of his La clemenza di Tito in 1791. In the years between its 1782 première and the composer’s death in 1809, Orlando paladino became the most performed of Haydn’s operas.

Boldly venturing where professional opera companies fear to tread, A.J. Fletcher Opera Institute of the University of North Carolina School of the Arts furthered a legacy of staging demanding works like Händel’s Rodelinda and Donizetti’s Linda di Chamounix by bringing Haydn’s Orlando paladino to Winston-Salem’s Stevens Center. With brilliantly creative scenic designs by Gisela Estrada, their visual depth enhanced by Petko Novosad’s lighting, Haydn’s captivating musical adventure was launched into the realm of science fiction. The action playing out in settings that might have been borrowed from the imagination of Gene Roddenberry, Fletcher Opera Institute’s Artistic Director Steven LaCosse explored the psychological subtleties of Haydn’s music, Porta’s words, and Ariosto’s story with Twenty-First-Century sensibilities allied with respect for the opera’s historical context.

Like many of his stagings in Winston-Salem, LaCosse’s Orlando paladino was centered upon meaningful interactions among characters, their motivations elucidated by their gestures and postures. Logan Benson’s costume designs and Madi Pattillo’s wigs and makeup heightened the visual appeal of the concept, their whimsy accentuating the vividness of the opera’s dramatic confrontations. In LaCosse’s realization, the comedic episodes were often uproarious, and the silence that enveloped the theater in moments of fear and sorrow affirmed the immediacy with which the opera’s touches of tragedy were presented.

Lo scudiero musicale: tenor Toby Bradford as Pasquale in A.J. Fletcher Opera Institute’s February 2023 production of Franz Joseph Haydn’s Orlando paladino
[Photograph by Allison Lee Isley, © by A.J. Fletcher Opera Institute/University of North Carolina School of the Arts]

Encompassing Baroque bravura, the Classicism that was his hallmark, and precursors of bel canto, Haydn’s writing for voices and orchestra in Orlando paladino is remarkably varied. Perhaps accounting for the opera’s wide appeal to Eighteenth-Century audiences, the stylistic heterogeneity of the music makes leading performances of Orlando paladino difficult for modern conductors, no matter how diverse their experience may be. An insightful interpreter of an uncommon breadth of repertoire, Fletcher Opera Institute’s Music Director James Allbritten conducted this performance of Orlando paladino with flair and finesse. The musical structure of each number was emphasized in a manner that at once revealed its originality and occupied a finite place within the opera’s dramatic progression.

The organic pacing of recitatives, aided by Lucas Wong’s expert playing of the harpsichord continuo, complemented judicious tempi in arias and ensembles. The musicians of the UNCSA School of Music Orchestra demonstrated that any notions of Haydn’s music being easy are ridiculous, their work in this performance occasionally flawed but consistently spirited. Rather than approaching Orlando paladino as a piece that needs conductorial intervention in order to succeed with modern audiences, Allbritten conducted with the same confidence in the quality of the music that guides his performances of Verdi repertoire. It was Haydn’s music, not a conductor’s ego, that made this performance so engrossing.

Haydn did not write an aria for the shepherd Licone, who begins the opera with a frantic scene with his daughter Eurilla and the blustering knight Rodomonte, but baritone Jackson Ray sang each of the character’s lines resiliently. Licone’s alarm trembled in Ray’s vocalism in the terzetto, and the meaning of each word of recitative was apparent, needing no projected translation.

His brief scene at the start of Act Three enacted before an eerily gorgeous backdrop that evoked Utah’s otherworldly Landscape Arch, the mythical ferryman Caronte is a stylistic kinsman of the Commendatore in Mozart’s Don Giovanni, though Haydn’s character is the instrument of deliverance from doom rather than the harbinger of damnation. Lower voices often mature later and more slowly than their higher counterparts, and bass Ethan Wood did not yet possess the sepulchral resonance that Caronte’s music ideally requires. Still, his voicing of the hauntingly lovely aria ‘Ombre insepolte, di qua partite’ was stirring, and he declaimed Caronte’s lines, strangely menacing and benevolent, in the accompagnato ‘L’irremeabil onda’ with gravitas, capitalizing on the ingenuity of Haydn’s writing and the part’s significance in the drama.

A figure familiar from operas by Caccini, Vivaldi, and Händel, the sorceress Alcina is the moral force who safeguards true love in Orlando paladino, protecting the imperiled Angelica and Medoro and ultimately curing Orlando of the madness of his infatuation with Angelica. Only in Act One did Haydn grant his Alcina an aria, the bracing ‘Ad un guardo, ad un ceddo solo,’ but, after singing the aria electrifyingly, mezzo-soprano Danielle Romano lorded over the performance with unforced sovereignty, acting with Sophia Loren-like glamor and declaiming each of the sorceress’s pronouncements with irrefutable authority. Her glowing-amber timbre shone in Haydn’s music, the voice shimmering from guttural low notes to a gleaming top.

Wielding a flinty timbre and a fabulous maniacal laugh, baritone Kevin Spooner enlivened the Barbarian king Rodomonte with forceful singing and stage savvy worthy of a blockbuster action film. Rushing onto the stage in Act One as though he were ejected from a neighboring galaxy, this Rodomonte terrorized Eurilla and Licone amusingly, his words slashing as threateningly as his sword. Spooner sang the aria ‘Temerario! Senti e trema’ commandingly, only the lowest notes lacking impact. ‘Dove si cela mai’ in the Act One finale was delivered with boundless energy, and Rodomonte’s aria in Act Two, ‘Mille lampi d’accese faville,’ was delivered with swaggering bravado. Setting a standard for his colleagues, Spooner enunciated every line in recitatives and ensembles incisively, the vigor of his performance enhancing the comedy of the contrast between Rodomonte’s bombast and the other characters’ plights.

A temperamental ancestress of Richard Strauss’s Zerbinetta in Ariadne auf Naxos, Haydn’s flirtatious shepherdess Eurilla serves as a foil for the regal, melancholy Angelica. Soprano Gabi Meinke limned Eurilla’s capricious playfulness with great charm, evident at her first entrance with Licone in Act One. She sang the aria ‘Ah, se dice io vi potessi’ delightfully and voiced Eurilla’s lines in ensembles brightly and clearly. Meinke’s best singing came in the scenes with Pasquale, particularly the Act Two duetto, in which her account of ‘Quel tuo vinetto amabile’ beguiled. Occasional shrillness in the upper register in the first act was largely absent after the interval, the voice sounding more focused in the opera’s final scenes. Meinke’s theatrical instincts were unerring throughout the afternoon, making each of Eurilla’s appearances in the opera a joy.

A product of the tradition of Sancho Panza-esque servant figures in Baroque opera that also yielded Leporello in Mozart’s Don Giovanni, Orlando’s witty but none-too-valiant squire Pasquale was spectacularly portrayed by tenor Toby Bradford. Haydn wrote music of extraordinary difficulty for Pasquale, subjecting the singer to virtually every virtuosic feat that could have been expected of a tenor in the last quarter of the Eighteenth Century. Bradford not only coped but fully conquered, meeting every challenge of the part with astonishing sangfroid. Introducing the character in Act One with the cavatina ‘La mia bella m’ha detto di nò,’ Bradford sang fetchingly, his crisp phrasing imparting Pasquale’s irrepressible exuberance.

The cracking patter aria ‘Ho viaggiato in Francia, in Spagna’ and Act Two cavatina ‘Vittoria, vittoria’ were jubilantly dispatched, and Bradford voiced ‘Il cavallo ed il padrone’ in the duetto with Eurilla fetchingly. Relocated in this production from Act Two to Act Three, the celebrated aria ‘Ecco spiano, ecco il mio trillo’ was sung with dazzling techical aplomb, the long-sustained tone at the start of the aria, the ornaments, and the ascents into the vocal stratosphere adroitly handled. A depiction of Pasquale as accomplished as Bradford’s would be notable in any of the world’s great opera houses: in this university production, it was nothing short of sensational.

I teneri amanti: soprano Carolyn Orr as Angelica (left) and tenor David Maize as Medoro (right) in A.J. Fletcher Opera Institute’s February 2023 production of Franz Joseph Haydn’s Orlando paladino
[Photograph by Allison Lee Isley, © by A.J. Fletcher Opera Institute/University of North Carolina School of the Arts]

As in many of Händel’s operas, it is not the title character but the secondo uomo who is the romantic lead in Orlando paladino. In tenor David Maize’s performance of the rôle, the conflicted but faithful Medoro merited his Angelica’s devotion, his every doubt and pang of regret expressed with vocalism of incredible beauty. The Act One aria ‘Parto. Ma, oh dio, non posso’ was hauntingly sung, the character’s inner turmoil conveyed through the interplay of anguish and repose in the vocal line. Similar qualities permeated Maize’s traversal of Medoro’s aria in Act Two, ‘Dille che un infelice,’ the vocal shading paralleling the moods of the text. The duetto with Angelica, ‘Qual contento io provo in seno,’ displayed the depth of the tenor’s artistry, his mastery of florid writing equal to the music’s most demanding moments. So endearing was Maize’s portrayal that the barbarians’ unforeseen wounding of Medoro drew agonized gasps from the audience. Alcina’s deus ex machina healing of his injury resuscitated the heart of the performance, which beat most palpably when Maize was singing.

The tormented Queen of Cathay Angelica, madly in love with Medoro but relentlessly pursued by Orlando, was brought to life with passion and poise by soprano Carolyn Orr. In her entrancing cavatina in Act One, ‘Palpita ad ogni istante,’ Orr’s Angelica created an aura of noble suffering that persisted until the opera’s dénouement, when the queen’s suffering at last ended. The aria ‘Non partir, mia bella face’ disclosed the effort expended in singing Haydn’s music, the fiorature sounding labored but never dodged or simplified. Orr phrased the adagio in the Act One finale, ‘Sento nel seno, oh dio,’ gracefully, communicating the panoply of emotions by which Angelica is plagued. Her account of the aria ‘Aure chete, verdi allori’ throbbed with raw feeling, and yearning simmered in her voicing of the accompagnato ‘Fra queste selve invan.’

Orr sang ‘Non fia mai, che venga meno’ in the duetto with Medoro mesmerizingly, Angelica’s love soaring in the music, and her reading of the accompagnato ‘Implacabili numi!’ in Act Three was the work of a talented singing actress. Some sopranos would justly complain that it was cruel of Haydn to place an aria as difficult as ‘Dell’estreme sue voci dolenti’ so late in the opera, but Orr was inspired by the music’s obstacles, singing with abandon. In all of Angelica’s scenes, Orr sang intrepidly, the flickers of vocal strain integrated into a laudably thoughtful portrait of the beleaguered queen.

Tenor Kameron Alston, who will return to Stevens Center in March 2023 as Ernesto in Piedmont Opera’s production of Donizetti’s Don Pasquale, enriched his portrayal of the unhinged Orlando with vocal sheen and psychological introspection, eschewing excessive caricature. The excellent Carlo in Fletcher Opera Institute’s February 2022 staging of Linda di Chamounix, Alston found nothing in Haydn’s music that overwhelmed his technical resources. As in Händel’s Orlando, much of the eponymous paladin’s madness transpires in mercurial accompagnati rather than in arias. In Act One, Alston articulated the accompagnato ‘Angelica, mio ben’ urgently, the character’s mental instability obvious in his words but never undermining the tenor’s vocal security.

Alston voiced the aria ‘D’Angelica il nome!’ with angst befitting Orlando’s affliction, and the accompagnato ‘Oimè, qual tetro oggetto!’ and aria ‘Cosa vedo! Cosa sento!’ in Act Two were sculpted with the delicacy of a gifted bel canto singer, only a pair of piano notes above the stave that threatened to crack betraying the toil involved in singing this daunting music. In the scene with Caronte at the beginning of Act Three, Alston’s vocalism was shaded with tragic overtones. His singing of the accompagnato ‘Sogno? Veglio? Cos’è?’ was riveting, and the aria ‘Miei pensieri, dove siete?’ was sublime. The preternatural restoration of Orlando’s reason can perhaps never be believable for modern audiences, but Alston’s amusing depiction of the knight’s loss of any memory of his love for Angelica was cunningly credible. Alston was the keystone of a phenomenal ensemble of artists, musical and technical, who rousingly reincarnated Haydn’s score. Maria Theresa may not have actually said that it was to Eszterháza that she went to hear opera of the highest quality, but Fletcher Opera Institute’s performance of Orlando paladino would unquestionably have earned the royal approbation for Winston-Salem.

PERFORMANCE REVIEW: Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart — DON GIOVANNI (T. Murray, Z. Nelson, M. Dunleavy, S. D’Eramo, A. McKissick, H. Huang, C. Blackburn, O. Gradus; North Carolina Opera, 29 January 2023)

WOLFGANG AMADEUS MOZART (1756 – 1791): Il dissoluto punito, ossia il Don Giovanni, K. 527 – Timothy Murray (Don Giovanni), Zachary Nelson (Leporello), Mary Dunleavy (Donna Anna), Sylvia D’Eramo (Donna Elvira), Alex McKissick (Don Ottavio), Helen Zhibing Huang (Zerlina), Christian J. Blackburn (Masetto), Oren Gradus (Il Commendatore); North Carolina Opera Chorus and Orchestra; Joseph Mechavich, conductor [Brenna Corner, Director; Erhard Rom, Scenic Designer; Howard Tsvi Kaplan, Costume Designer; Ross Kolman, Lighting Designer; Brittany Rapise and Martha Ruskai, Wig and Makeup Designers; North Carolina Opera, Raleigh Memorial Auditorium, Duke Energy Center for the Performing Arts, Raleigh, North Carolina, USA; Sunday, 29 January 2023]

Politically and artistically, Prague was often overshadowed in the latter half of the Eighteenth Century by the imperial capital, Vienna, but, perhaps unknowingly, the sophisticated seat of Habsburg rule in Bohemia was indisputably the center of the operatic universe on 29 October 1787. On that auspicious day, the city’s Stavovské divadlo resounded with the sounds of the first performance of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s and Lorenzo da Ponte’s Don Giovanni. The success of the Prague première of their previous opera, Le nozze di Figaro, having outshone that of its inaugural Vienna production, an invitation to write a new opera for Prague doubtlessly appealed strongly to composer and librettist, offering a rare opportunity to create a work specifically for a sympathetic audience, without the intrigues and meddling to which producing opera in Vienna was subject. Capitalizing on the popularity with Pražané of artistic incarnations of the libidinous Don Juan, Mozart and da Ponte crafted a work in which the opera seria model refined by Händel and Hasse was ingeniously propelled into the Nineteenth Century, forging a path for the operas of Beethoven, Weber, and Marschner.

When composition of Don Giovanni commenced, Mozart was the father of a young son. The all’s-well-that-ends-well ebullience that permeates Mozart’s early operas remains present, but, as in Le nozze di Figaro, the joviality that sparkles in Don Giovanni is tempered by pervasive senses of personal responsibility and retribution. These qualities were often obscured in director Brenna Corner’s staging for North Carolina Opera, which differed markedly from the company’s April 2015 production of Don Giovanni. Whereas the earlier production was housed in the intimate A.J. Fletcher Opera Theater, Corner’s concept was realized in the grander space of Raleigh Memorial Auditorium. Emphasizing the opera’s giacosa elements at the expense of its life-altering drama, the production’s broad comedy was greatly enjoyed by the audience but marginalized too much of Mozart’s music and too many of da Ponte’s words, crucial exchanges among characters undermined by audience laughter. Donna Elvira and Leporello often seemed foolish rather than reactive to difficult situations, their actions at odds with the music that they were singing. Humor is a vital aspect of Don Giovanni, but, the prevalence of sight gags and exploitation of dated gender stereotypes distorting the balance of mirth and seriousness, this production too often strayed into farce. It was unquestionably an enjoyable show that delighted patrons, but it sometimes felt as though a Rossini opera buffa had been adapted to Mozart’s score.

Gli amanti ingannati: (from left to right) soprano Helen Zhibing Huang as Zerlina, baritone Christian J. Blackburn as Masetto, and baritone Timothy Murray as Don Giovanni in North Carolina Opera’s January 2023 production of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s Don Giovanni
[Photograph by Eric Waters Photography, © by North Carolina Opera]

Visually, the staging was appealing despite lighting designs by Ross Kolman that were unrelentingly dark except in the banquet scene at the end of Act One. So dimly illuminated, Erhard Rom’s scenic designs, originally created for Virginia Opera, were foreboding, further conflicting with the abiding jocundity of the direction. [Memorial statuary etiquette may be unfamiliar to many Twenty-First-Century audiences, but Eighteenth-Century Spaniards would have known that riders depicted on rearing steeds typically died in battle. Why do so many productions of Don Giovanni place the Commendatore’s effigy astride a rearing horse when his vengeful epitaph is specifically referenced in the libretto?] Giovanni’s final descent into hell was unintentionally amusing, his disappearance into the base of the Commendatore’s monument too closely resembling the Knusperhexe’s demise in Humperdinck’s Hänsel und Gretel. The wigs and makeup designs of Brittany Rapise and Martha Ruskai ideally complemented Howard Tsvi Kaplan’s attractive and functional costumes, on loan from Sarasota Opera. A notable success of the production was the ease of identifying each of the principals, even in ensembles and in the scene in which Giovanni and Leporello impersonated one another.

Reprising associations with North Carolina Opera and Mozart repertoire that yielded an exhilarating production of Die Zauberflöte in April 2022, conductor Joseph Mechavich paced this performance of Don Giovanni with eloquence befitting the score’s Classicism and propulsive energy that supplied the dramatic thrust that the physical staging lacked. Under Mechavich’s baton, North Carolina Opera’s orchestra played superbly, their performance disrupted by commendably few mistakes, and the company’s choristers, marvelously trained by Scott MacLeod, sang brilliantly. Unfortunately, the demonic chorus accompanying Giovanni’s infernal journey was spoiled by amplification. The electronic keyboard used for the harpsichord continuo was not consistently audible, but the conductor’s accompaniment of the secco recitatives was imaginative and unfailingly musical. Mechavich guided the performance with gripping momentum whilst also being supportive of the singers, reliably choosing logical tempi that facilitated proper breath control and clear articulation of text. Though the orchestra of course utilized modern instruments, there were numerous passages in the performance in which the conductor’s approach exhibited acquaintance with historically-informed aesthetics, accentuating the inventiveness of Mozart’s music.

In the opera’s opening scene, in which the Commendatore interrupts Giovanni’s assault on Donna Anna, bass Oren Gradus declaimed the indignant father’s lines with paternal ferocity, the voice powerful throughout the range. Regrettably, the dreadful amplification employed to add ethereal resonance to the Commendatore’s utterances in the graveyard scene in Act Two robbed Gradus’s tones of impact. His singing in the fateful final encounter with Giovanni possessed ample aural presence but was occasionally covered by the trombones. His efforts at projecting over the orchestra caused his intonation and steadiness to falter. His Commendatore was nonetheless a chilling messenger of righteous condemnation.

I fidanzati testati: baritone Christian J. Blackburn as Masetto (left) and baritone Timothy Murray as Don Giovanni (right) in North Carolina Opera’s January 2023 production of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s Don Giovanni
[Photograph by Eric Waters Photography, © by North Carolina Opera]

Baritone Christian J. Blackburn was an exceptionally engaging and sympathetic Masetto, his vocalism burnished and his acting, though faithful to the production’s manic ethos, evincing the character’s innate good nature. His entrance with Zerlina in Act One was delightful, and Blackburn’s account of the aria ‘Ho capito, Signor, sì!’ was particularly distinguished. He launched the Act One finale excitingly, voicing ‘Presto, presto, pria ch’ei venga’ incisively. In the Act Two scene in which Masetto is beaten by the disguised Giovanni, Blackburn achieved the equilibrium between comedy and sobriety that eluded much of the staging. Credible as both a tender lover for Zerlina and a potent threat to Giovanni, Blackburn’s Masetto was a winningly intelligent, well-sung characterization.

The Zerlina of soprano Helen Zhibing Huang was endearingly waifish but wielded inescapable emotional influence on her volatile but doting Masetto. Like Blackburn, Huang exuded charm in her first scene in Act One. Wooed by Giovanni in their beloved duettino, this Zerlina sang ‘Vorrei e non vorrei’ unaffectedly, persuasively imparting the flattered young girl’s conflicting emotions. Overcoming the production’s silliness, she made ‘Batti, batti, o bel Masetto’ genuinely touching by singing without coy artifice. Similarly, Zerlina’s aria in Act Two, ‘Vedrai, carino, se sei buonino,’ sung to comfort Masetto after his altercation with Giovanni, was delivered with beguiling affection. [To the noisy amusement of the audience, the projected translation of the aria exaggerated the text’s innuendo.] Her diminutive physique notwithstanding, Huang shone in ensembles, her vibrant stagecraft equaling the beauty of her singing.

Il giuramento: soprano Mary Dunleavy as Donna Anna (left) and tenor Alex McKissick as Don Ottavio (right) in North Carolina Opera’s January 2023 production of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s Don Giovanni
[Photograph by Eric Waters Photography, © by North Carolina Opera]

In some productions of Don Giovanni, Donna Anna’s fiancé Don Ottavio lacks dramatic purpose, a flaw for which da Ponte’s libretto bears some culpability. Mozart allotted fine music to the part, however, and North Carolina Opera engaged a singer for the rôle who proved to be capable of dauntlessly meeting every challenge of Mozart’s writing. Possessing a voice with a more robust timbre than is sometimes heard in Ottavio’s music, tenor Alex McKissick animated each of the part’s lines with appealing tone and unerring theatrical instincts. Comforting Donna Anna after her discovery of her slain father’s corpse, he delivered ‘Senti, cor mio, deh senti’ with a musical caress. The vocal power at his disposal engendered an unusually rousing ‘Che giuramento, o Dei!’ and cogent singing in the quartet.

The company electing to perform Don Giovanni in the form in which it was first heard in Prague, Ottavio’s aria ‘Dalla sua pace la mia dipende,’ composed for the opera’s 1788 Vienna première and often included regardless of the edition being performed, was not sung. A firebrand in the Act One finale, McKissick voiced Ottavio’s words in the sublime masquers’ trio enthrallingly. No less engaging in Act Two, he sang vividly in the sestetto. Shaped by assured handling of the fiorature, his traversal of ‘Il mio tesoro intanto’ recalled the singing of Anton Dermota. Unlike some depictions, McKissick’s Ottavio conveyed not annoyance but loving acceptance of Anna’s postponement of their marriage, ending the opera with handsomely-voiced gentleness and gentility.

La signora tradita: soprano Sylvia D’Eramo as Donna Elvira in North Carolina Opera’s January 2023 production of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s Don Giovanni
[Photograph by Eric Waters Photography, © by North Carolina Opera]

Recently acclaimed as Kitty in the Metropolitan Opera’s triumphant world-première production of Kevin Puts’s The Hours, soprano Sylvia D’Eramo transitioned from Puts’s modern musical language to Mozart’s writing for Donna Elvira, which often harkens back to Baroque heroines. Though subjected to distracting stage business with Elvira’s maid at her entrance in Act One, D’Eramo sang ‘Ah, chi mi dice mai’ captivatingly, intimating the lady’s erratic but profound feelings. The aria ‘Ah! fuggi il traditor!’ would not sound out of place in Händel’s Rodelinda or Tamerlano, and this Elvira articulated it with bracing intensity, the divisions imparting the direness of her warning to the hapless Zerlina. In both the quartet and the masquers’ trio in the Act One finale, D’Eramo sang forcefully, projecting Elvira’s frustration and despair into the auditorium.

Elvira’s emotions surging in Act Two, D’Eramo voiced ‘Ah taci, ingiusto core!’ in the terzetto fervently and began the sestetto with a febrile ‘Sola, sola in buio loco.’ Added to the score for the 1788 Vienna production, ‘Mi tradì quell’alma ingrata’ was not performed in this staging, but the aria’s ardent spirit permeated the soprano’s enunciation of ‘L’ultima prova dell’amor mio’ in the opera’s finale. Intermittent shrillness at the top of the range heightened the dramatic impetus of this Elvira’s singing, which efficaciously communicated the desperation of a woman in love with a man unworthy of her devotion.

La voce della giustizia: soprano Mary Dunleavy as Donna Anna in North Carolina Opera’s January 2023 production of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s Don Giovanni
[Photograph by Eric Waters Photography, © by North Carolina Opera]

Casting the rôle of the proud but vulnerable Donna Anna is one of the foremost challenges of producing Don Giovanni. Aside from her uncommon longevity and participation in the first performances of an array of operas by lesser-known composers, history documents little of the life and career of the first Donna Anna, Teresa Saporiti. It is conjectured that, nearly a half-century after the première of Don Giovanni, Verdi solicited her opinion of his writing for Abigaille in Nabucco, suggesting that she remained a respected authority on bravura singing. Bringing to North Carolina Opera’s Don Giovanni extensive experience in Mozart repertoire that encompasses lauded portrayals of both Mutter and Tochter, Die Königin der Nacht and Pamina, in Die Zauberflöte at the Metropolitan Opera, soprano Mary Dunleavy honored Saporiti’s legacy with a performance that fused technical prowess with theatrical savvy. In the opera’s opening scene, Dunleavy’s Anna was distraught but no passive victim, exclaiming ‘Fuggi, crudel, fuggi!’ with vehemence. Her confidence shattered by the discovery of her father’s murder, she pledged to avenge him in a galvanizing ‘Che giuramento, o Dei!’ that rang with sincerity, a trait that also resounded in the quartet.

The accompagnato ‘Don Ottavio, son morta!’ was delivered with tragic grandeur, leading to a momentous performance of ‘Or sai chi l’onore’ in which the voice pulsed with anger and determination. Dunleavy matched her colleagues’ poised singing in the masquers’ trio, and she excelled in the complex ensembles of Act Two. Her statement of ‘Crudele? Ah no, mio bene!’ expressed the sting of Ottavio’s bitter recrimination. Dunleavy’s formidable technique allowed her to concentrate on the psychological nuances of ‘Non mi dir, bell’idol mio,’ begetting a ruminative atmosphere. The foreshortened version of the final ensemble was preferred, eliminating the extended duet for Anna and Ottavio, but this Anna manifested an aura of resolution, bolstered by the confidence of Dunleavy’s vocalism.

Il servo ed il padrone: baritones Zachary Nelson as Leporello (left) and Timothy Murray as Don Giovanni (right) in North Carolina Opera’s January 2023 production of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s Don Giovanni
[Photograph by Eric Waters Photography, © by North Carolina Opera]

Giovanni’s cunning servant Leporello was perhaps most adversely affected by the production’s focus on jocundity, what dignity Mozart and da Ponte gave the character sacrificed to slapstick, but baritone Zachary Nelson placed his trust in the music and fashioned an insightful characterization rather than a caricature. Beginning Act One with an effervescent voicing of ‘Notte e giorno faticar,’ Nelson exercised vocal restraint even in the production’s most madcap moments. The frenetic stage action sometimes reduced the clarity of his diction, yet he sang the celebrated ‘Madamina, il catalogo è questo’ and Leporello’s quips and asides in the act’s final scenes with commendable textual precision.

There were passages in both acts in which Nelson’s lowest notes did not have ideal amplitude and the staging instigated over-emphatic singing. His intonation was reliably sure, however, and his timbre lent requisite gravitas to the character’s flashes of panic and remorse. This clever Leporello joined his master in a rollicking performance of their duetto at the start of Act Two, intoning ‘No, no, padrone, non vo’ restar!’ engrossingly. His singing in the terzetto and sestetto was fantastic, but there was no portion of his performance that was more successful than his ‘Ah, pietà, signori miei,’ in which legitimate contrition was discernible. Both the duetto ‘O statua gentilissima’ and the final scenes inspired Nelson’s finest singing of the afternoon, Leporello’s terror and eventual relief upon being spared palpable. Throughout the performance, Nelson’s singing heightened the charisma that the production’s portrait of Leporello muted.

Making his rôle début as the eponymous cad in this production, baritone Timothy Murray reinvigorated the part with vocal allure and youthful élan. Portrayals of complex characters like Don Giovanni typically deepen with repetition, but Murray’s mastery of the rôle’s demands was already comprehensive. In the opening scene of Act One, he revealed Giovanni’s insouciance, and the unexpected encounter with Donna Elvira prompted him to regret the effectiveness of his own wiles. Murray depicted the sly duplicity of the nobleman’s perilous charm as he simultaneously seduced Zerlina and scorned Masetto. Zerlina’s surrender was understandable, the baritone’s singing of ‘Là ci darem la mano’ having bewitched the audience. The quartet found Giovanni hectoring in defense of his schemes, the voice glinting with arrogance. ‘Fin ch’han dal vino calda la testa’ has rarely been sung so marvelously in recent years, every note in place and the trill dutifully executed on par with a singer like Sir Thomas Allen, and each of Giovanni’s words in the Act One finale was emitted with bravado.

Murray’s fleet singing of ‘Eh via, buffone, non mi seccar!’ in the duetto with Leporello catapulted Act Two onto its inexorable course towards punishment for Giovanni’s misdeeds. Each phrase in the terzetto was pronounced with unmistakable cognizance of its significance. Tossing a purse to the mandolinist in the orchestra pit was a wise investment, Murray’s honeyed voicing of the canzonetta ‘Deh vieni alla finestra, o mio tesoro’ benefiting from the lovely accompaniment, and Murray voiced ‘Metà di voi qua vadano’ compellingly. Both the duetto ‘O statua gentilissima’ and ‘Già la mensa è preparata’ in his final scene were sung intrepidly, this Giovanni as defiant and unrepentant in the clutches of hell as on the streets of Spain. North Carolina Opera’s casting for this Don Giovanni assembled an ensemble that few of the world’s most renowned opera houses could rival and hosted a first interpretation of the title rôle that would surely have awed as unforgettably in Prague in 1787 as in Raleigh in 2023.

PERFORMANCE REVIEW: Gaetano Donizetti — ROBERTO DEVEREUX (A. Owens, R. Mantegna, E. DeShong, R. J. Rivera, D. O’Hearn, K. Wilkerson, A. Yergiyev, J. Sacín; Washington Concert Opera, 4 December 2022)

GAETANO DONIZETTI (1797 – 1848): Roberto Devereux; ossia Il conte di Essex — Andrew Owens (Roberto Devereux, conte di Essex), Roberta Mantegna (Elisabetta prima, regina d’Inghilterra), Elizabeth DeShong (Sara, duchessa di Nottingham), Ricardo José Rivera (Il duca di Nottingham), Daniel O’Hearn (Lord Cecil), Kerry Wilkerson (Sir Gualtiero Raleigh), Andrew Bawden Yergiyev (Un paggio), José Sacín (Un familiare di Nottingham); Washington Concert Opera Chorus and Orchestra; Antony Walker, conductor [Washington Concert Opera, Lisner Auditorium, The George Washington University, Washington, DC, USA; Sunday, 4 December 2022]

The student of history who relies upon tutelage gleaned from opera is unlikely to be found at the head of the class. Fascinating and fantastical as history often is, many operatic depictions of historical events and personages are more fanciful than factual. The fateful confrontation between Mary, Queen of Scots and Elizabeth I that ends Act Two of Gaetano Donizetti’s Maria Stuarda, for example, is riveting theater but was devised by Friedrich von Schiller, from whose play Mary Stuart the libretto for Donizetti’s opera was derived. Surviving historical evidence indicates that Mary and Elizabeth never met, but their encounter in Maria Stuarda is a manifestation of a penchant for dramatizing the plights of historical figures that permeated literature and opera in the Nineteenth Century. Returning to Tudor England in Roberto Devereux, Donizetti again followed source material beyond the fringes of substantiated history. Robert Devereux, the second Earl of Essex, was executed for treason in 1601 after masterminding a rebellion intended to deprive Elizabeth of her throne, but, contrary to the events that transpire in Act Three of Roberto Devereux, his sentence neither hastened the Queen’s death nor precipitated abdication. Fact may well be stranger than fiction, but history is sometimes considerably more engrossing in the opera house than in academic tomes.

Commissioned by Teatro di San Carlo, at which theater the opera premièred on 27 October 1837, Roberto Devereux advanced a relationship with Naples that, by 1837, encompassed successful first stagings of new works, the most notable of which was Lucia di Lammermoor, not only at the San Carlo but also at the city᾿s Teatrp del Fondo and Teatro Nuovo. Following Roberto Devereux, Donizetti would write only another pair of operas for Naples, Poliuto and Caterina Cornaro, instead transitioning his attention to London, Paris, and Vienna. Composed during a time of tremendous personal strife, his young wife dying only a few weeks after delivering a child who died at birth, Roberto Devereux was perhaps a welcome distraction for Donizetti, its complicated genesis—upon the opera᾿s completion, an outbreak of cholera delayed rehearsals for the inaugural production—shaping the score᾿s dramatic confrontations and psychological perspicacity. Neapolitan audiences and critics responded enthusiastically to the theatrical vigor of Donizetti᾿s music, and the success of the first staging was repeated throughout Europe in the decade prior to the composer᾿s death in 1848. The extent to which this appreciative reception for Roberto Devereux was a source of consolation for its grieving composer can only be conjectured, but it can also be theorized that telling the story of a woman who, despite her dedication to duty, casts aside both life and crown when the pain inflicted by them overwhelm her must have been cathartic for the despairing Donizetti.

At the time of his collaboration on Roberto Devereux, Neapolitan poet and playwright Salvadore Cammarano had already provided Donizetti with libretti for Lucia di Lammermoor, Belisario, L᾿assedio di Calais, and Pia de᾿ Tolomei. Texts for Maria de Rudenz, Poliuto, and Maria di Rohan would follow in the final decade of Donizetti᾿s life. His work on Alzira in 1845 began a partnership with Giuseppe Verdi that, during the next eight years, would produce La battaglia di Legnano, Luisa Miller, and Il trovatore. In his adaptation of Jacques-François Ancelot᾿s 1829 drama Elisabeth d᾿Angleterre, itself derived from tragedies by Pierre Corneille and Gauthier de Costes, Cammarano transformed these literary treatments of the troubled liaison between Queen Elizabeth I and the second Earl of Essex into a libretto charged with heated conflicts and Italian morbidezza, qualities that unquestionably appealed to Donizetti in his state of anguish. The union of the composer᾿s music with the librettist᾿s words yielded a work that advanced bel canto from the Rossinian scores of the first half of Donizetti᾿s career to the Romantic intensity of Verdi᾿s middle period.

Da Londra, con trama: (from left to right) bass-baritone Kerry Wilkerson as Sir Gualtiero Raleigh, tenor Daniel O’Hearn as Lord Cecil, soprano Roberta Mantegna as Elisabetta, tenor Andrew Owens as Roberto, and baritone Ricardo José Rivera as Nottingham in Washington Concert Opera’s performance of Gaetano Donizetti’s Roberto Devereux, 4 December 2022
[Photograph by Caitlin Oldham, © by Washington Concert Opera]

The gestational accents of Verdian musical language that are heard in virtually every bar of Roberto Devereux proved to be ideal fodder for the vivid conducting of Washington Concert Opera’s Artistic Director Antony Walker. Even more acutely than in the company’s memorable 2004 performance of the opera, Walker asserted the efficacy of presenting Roberto Devereux in concert. The bel canto operas that have been the core of WCO’s repertoire since founder Stephen Crout’s 1990 performance of Bellini’s I puritani benefit tremendously from the heightened focus on musical values that concert performances facilitate, and this traversal of Roberto Devereux demonstrated the theatrical savvy with which Donizetti molded his music to the drama. From the first page of the opera’s overture, composed in 1838 for the piece’s Paris première, Walker established and sustained dramatic momentum. Gifted with a cast capable of meeting every challenge of his propulsive approach to the score, he chose tempi that were wholly apt for music and drama, his pacing fashioning a performance in which the characters’ emotional evolutions were captivatingly depicted. Walker’s conducting invariably excites, but this evening at Lisner Auditorium found him on best form, the power and pathos of Donizetti’s music and Cammarano’s words elucidated with uncompromising musicality.

In the eighteen years since Walker last conducted Roberto Devereux for WCO, the company’s orchestra and chorus, the latter prepared for this 2022 performance by chorus master David Hanlon, have markedly elevated their standards of musical integrity and reliability. In this performance, the orchestral playing was often very good, the limited rehearsal time that is an intrinsic aspect of WCO’s endeavors fomenting few problems on this evening. The consistency of balances among sections of the orchestra permitted appreciation of details of Donizetti’s part writing, not least in passages for woodwinds, which in the title character’s Act Three prison scene were in this performance unmistakably linked to Beethoven’s introduction to Florestan’s scene at the beginning of Act Two of Fidelio. The choral singing also exhibited the advantages of increased concentration on equalizing the sound, individual voices more integrated into the aural tableaux than in past WCO performances. Despite at times being confined to a stool by a knee energy, Walker marshaled the orchestral and choral forces with his usual vigor, drawing from them sounds both imposing and delicate, as bel canto requires.

Character development in Roberto Devereux ventures little beyond the quartet of principals, but Donizetti’s music for secondary rôles is not devoid of technical and theatrical demands. Bass-baritone Andrew Bawden Yergiyev sang forcefully in the Paggio’s brief appearance in Act One, and baritone José Sacín delivered the lines for un familiare di Nottingham in the scene at the start of Act Three powerfully. Not as intriguing a figure in Roberto Devereux as in history, Sir Gualtiero Raleigh was nonetheless animated by the spirited vocalism of bass-baritone Kerry Wilkerson, who sang ‘Fu disarmato’ in the Act Two scene with Elisabetta robustly. Stepping into the rôle of Lord Cecil at the proverbial eleventh hour, tenor Daniel O’Hearn voiced every note of the part eloquently, his timbre burnished throughout the range and his ease of navigating the passaggio indicating expert technical assurance.

Il duca tradito: (from left to right) tenors Daniel O’Hearn as Lord Cecil and Andrew Owens as Roberto and baritone Ricardo José Rivera as Nottingham in Washington Concert Opera’s performance of Gaetano Donizetti’s Roberto Devereux, 4 December 2022
[Photograph by Caitlin Oldham, © by Washington Concert Opera]

Bringing an instrument of fine quality to his singing of Donizetti’s music for Il duca di Nottingham, baritone Ricardo José Rivera convincingly imparted the Duke’s rampant pride, the trait that makes him first an ardent friend and later a dangerous enemy to Roberto. Rivera voiced Nottingham’s Act One cavatina ‘Forse in quel cor sensibile’ confidently, his tonal production as firm at the bottom of the range as at the exhilarating top. His account of the cabaletta ‘Qui ribelle ognun ti chiama’ was invigorating, the Duke’s musical kinship with Verdi’s Rigoletto and Conte di Luna especially apparent as the baritone ascended above the stave in the coda. Nottingham’s metamorphosis in Act Two from friend defending Essex from the Queen’s ire to wronged husband seeking revenge was persuasively depicted, Rivera’s plangent singing of ‘Non venni mai sì mesto’ in the duettino with Elisabetta contrasting tellingly with the vehemence with which he articulated ‘Ah! la spada, la spada un istante’ in the subsequent terzetto.

The full weight of Rivera’s voice was deployed in Act Three, when Nottingham accosts his wife and prevents her from delivering to the raging Queen the means of rescuing Roberto from the scaffold. In the duetto with Sara, Rivera sang ‘Noi sai, che un nume vindice’ with startling intensity, the unshakable security of his tones mitigating blustery delivery more suited to verismo than to bel canto. In the opera’s final scene, he declaimed Nottingham’s malicious declaration of responsibility for the subterfuge that prevented Sara from appealing to the Queen to save Roberto’s life with vitriol and a brief suggestion of regret. There were few subtleties in Rivera’s performance, but Nottingham is not a character upon whom Donizetti lavished an array of nuances. Even without significant variations of dynamics and vocal inflections, Rivera’s bold, bronzed singing lent Nottingham greater depth than stereotypical operatic villains often muster.

La duchessa refulgente: mezzo-soprano Elizabeth DeShong as Sara in Washington Concert Opera’s performance of Gaetano Donizetti’s Roberto Devereux, 4 December 2022
[Photograph by Caitlin Oldham, © by Washington Concert Opera]

Mezzo-soprano Elizabeth DeShong’s portrayal of the general Calbo in WCO’s 2021 performance of Rossini’s Maometto secondo [reviewed here] was spectacular, but hearing her singing on that memorable evening was inadequate preparation for experiencing her rôle début as Sara, duchessa di Nottingham. Beginning the opera with her romanza ‘All’afflitto è dolce il pianto,’ Sara serves as the catalyst for the opera’s drama, her illicit love for the Queen’s favorite inadvertently begetting the jealousy that leads Roberto to the block. DeShong sang the romanza enchantingly, her phrasing of the arching melodic line limning the duchess’s private despair. Her true feelings hidden from Elisabetta and Nottingham, Sara first proclaims her fidelity to her love for Roberto and then realizes that they must not see one another again in one of Donizetti’s most gripping duets. DeShong voiced ‘Eri già lunge, quando si chiuse’ commandingly, communicating the character’s churning emotions but always maintaining an authentic bel canto line. In the duet’s cabaletta, she enunciated ‘Ah! Questo addio fatale‘ compellingly, the top B♭s utterly secure.

Rising intrepidly to top B, DeShong’s upper register inspired awe throughout the performance, but her singing in Act Three was particularly notable as a veritable masterclass in the art of acting through the voice. Sara’s duetto with Nottingham is another of Donizetti’s best ensembles, and DeShong voiced ‘Tanto il destin fremente’ blazingly, the meaning of every word imparted with specificity. Sara’s crucial lines in the opera’s final scene were also sung with immediacy, the singer’s shimmering timbre accentuating the sincerity of Sara’s dismay. In this concert setting, DeShong gave Sara emotional dimensions that she sometimes lacks in staged productions, her vocalism distinguishing her as a peer of Bruna Castagna, Ebe Stignani, and Giulietta Simionato as an exponent of dramatic bel canto.

Il conte di sospiri: tenor Andrew Owens as Roberto in Washington Concert Opera’s performance of Gaetano Donizetti’s Roberto Devereux, 4 December 2022
[Photograph by Caitlin Oldham, © by Washington Concert Opera]

Tenor Andrew Owens’s rôle début as the eponymous Earl of Essex was a triumph over adversities. The stress of assuming such a daunting part on short notice was compounded in the performance by an indisposition that increasingly imperiled his vocal production as the evening progressed. He traversed Act One masterfully, voicing ‘Domata in campo la ribelle schiera’ in the duet with Elisabetta with stylistic fluency and dispatching ‘Nascondi, frena i palpiti’ in the cabaletta with vocal and dramatic bravado. Owens partnered DeShong splendidly in Roberto’s duet with Sara, delivering ‘Allor che tacita’ with urgency and capping ‘Ah! Questo addio fatale’ with his own brilliant top B♭s. The disintegration of the Earl’s safety introduced an aura of uncertainty into his characterization in the Act Two terzetto with Elisabetta and Nottingham, but his vocalism disclosed no vulnerability, the technique equal to every musical obstacle.

The ill effects of the malady that plagued Owens were most evident in Roberto’s prison scene in Act Three, in which the condemned Earl laments his fate. ‘A ti dirò, fra gli ultimi singhiozzi’ was nobly sung despite the hoarseness that grew more pronounced in the aria’s closing bars. The voice constricted by throat congestion, his performance of the cabaletta ‘Bagnato il sen di lagrime’ was an example of an impeccably-trained singer artfully overcoming debilitating circumstances. Singing certain passages an octave lower than written, Owens conserved the voice sagaciously and rallied for a stretta in which he soared to an easy top C♯. The conditions with which he bravely contended notwithstanding, Owens achieved an auspicious rôle début, the excellence of his best singing matched by his courage in the Earl’s final moments.

Non regno, non vivo: soprano Roberta Mantegna as Elisabetta in Washington Concert Opera’s performance of Gaetano Donizetti’s Roberto Devereux, 4 December 2022
[Photograph by Caitlin Oldham, © by Washington Concert Opera]

Making her USA début in this performance, soprano Roberta Mantegna was experienced in her rôle, her portrayal of Elisabetta having been featured in a lauded 2020 semi-staged production of Roberto Devereux at Venice’s Teatro La Fenice. This acquaintance with the part was apparent in her performance in Washington. Upon her entrance in Act One, she was an Elisabetta already succumbing to doubt and insecurity, the lovely sheen of her voicing of the Larghetto cavatina ‘L’amor suo mi fe’ beata’ shaded by glimpses of darker sentiments that lurked still more prominently in the cabaletta ‘Ah! ritorna qual ti spero,’ in which the soprano’s top Bs and Cs evoked defiance. Girlish impetuosity remained a facet of the aging Queen’s constitution in her duet with Roberto, Mantegna singing ‘Un tenero core mi rese felice’ and the cabaletta ‘Un lampo orribile’ with passionate abandon.

The disconsolate monarch inwardly desiring to yield to Nottingham’s pleas for clemency for Essex in Act Two, sadness could be discerned in Mantegna’s vocalism in the duettino with the Duke, but fury and indignation resounded in her ‘D’una rivale occulta.’ Her cry of ‘Ecco l’indegno!’ as Roberto appeared was piercing, and the expressivity of her account of ‘Alma infida, ingrato core’ divulged the profundity of the Queen’s love for the errant Earl. Forsaking her score in order to act with body and voice, Mantegna movingly limned the tragic grandeur of Elisabetta’s grief-laden unraveling in the last scene of Act Three. The Bellinian line of ‘Vivi, ingrato, a lei d’accanto’ was voiced expansively and with special radiance above the stave. Often approached as a de facto mad scene, the engrossing cabaletta ‘Quel sangue versato’ was in Mantegna’s performance an exasperated surrender to a destiny over which even the most powerful queen had no dominion, the top Bs sonic gestures of liberating capitulation.

Though the opera has gradually gained a tenuous foothold in the repertoire owing to occasional performances by companies including New York City Opera, San Francisco Opera, and the Metropolitan Opera and espousal by organizations like American Opera Society, Opera Orchestra of New York, and Washington Concert Opera, American audiences have not yet embraced Roberto Devereux with the sort of affection with which L’elisir d’amore, Don Pasquale, La fille du régiment, and Lucia di Lammermoor are regarded. Just as Roberto Devereux distorts history in pursuit of theatrical potency, Washington Concert Opera’s 2022 performance wrote an important new chapter in the opera’s story.