RECORDING REVIEW: G.F. Händel, W.A. Mozart, G. Rossini, F. Mendelssohn, J. Massenet, & I. Stravinsky — LYRIC ARIAS (Eric Ferring, tenor; Madeline Slettedahl, piano)

GEORG FRIEDRICH HÄNDEL (1685 – 1759), WOLFGANG AMADEUS MOZART (1756 – 1791), GIOACHINO ROSSINI (1792 – 1868), FELIX MENDELSSOHN (1809 – 1847), JULES MASSENET (1842 – 1912), and IGOR STRAVINSKY (1882 – 1971): Lyric Arias – Eric Ferring, tenor; Madeline Slettedahl, piano [Recorded in WFMT Studio, Chicago, Illinois, USA, February 2019; 31:33; Available for streaming via Apple Music, Spotify, Tidal, and YouTube Music]

Christopher Marlowe wrote that Helen of Troy possessed the ‘face that launched a thousand ships,’ her beauty having been the catalyst in the collision of egos and empires that precipitated the Trojan War. Had she been a singer, as she became in Arrigo Boito’s Mefistofele, how much more contentious quarrels about her virtues might have been! Disputes among today’s Classical singing enthusiasts are sometimes fueled by lessening comprehension of basic vocal attributes and historical precedents. As in many aspects of modern life, a quest for absolutes frequently results in mischaracterizations. A soprano who sings fiorature correctly is not necessarily a coloratura soprano, for instance, and categorizing the voice based upon a single ability rather than its many qualities, no matter how admiringly, disserves the singer.

Recorded in the Chicago studios of WFMT under the supervision of acclaimed audio engineer Chris Willis, whose expertise yielded sonic ambience that, whether heard through headphones or speakers, replicates the acoustic of an intimate performance space, tenor Eric Ferring’s Lyric Arias is a mellifluous recital of selections from three centuries, performed by the sort of voice for which they were written. Captured without multitudes of takes and the goal of release to the public as a collection, these performances are splendid exhibitions of an artist at work, his concentration on stylistic correctness engendering musical and textual accuracy. Lyric arias can be successfully sung by many different voices, but Ferring demonstrates that, just as singers should be judged primarily by how rather than by what they sing, music is defined by how it was written, not by who sings it.

Ferring sagaciously begins his survey of the development of writing for the tenor voice with performances of two numbers popularized in the Eighteenth Century by John Beard, the singer for whom Georg Friedrich Händel composed some of his finest music for tenor. Comparing Händel’s writing for Beard with tenor parts in operas, madrigals, and sacred works by Monteverdi, Cavalli, and other Seventeenth-Century composers suggests that Beard was among the earliest lyric tenors of the type still heard today. Beard was not the tenor soloist in the first performance of Händel’s Messiah (HWV 56) in Dublin in 1742, but the oratorio’s first performances in London in the following year benefited from Beard’s participation.

It is difficult to imagine even Händel’s preferred tenor singing the recitative ‘Comfort ye, my people’ and air ‘Ev’ry valley shall be exalted’ more affectingly than Ferring sings them on this release. With true bel canto technique harkening back to the teachings of Manuel García, Ferring supports tones with breath control that facilitates consistent evenness throughout the upper and lower registers, the passaggio navigated with laryngeal placement that is ideal for the voice. Unlike many native speakers of English, Ferring enunciates the language clearly, the words crisp but avoiding overwrought elocution. His voicing of ‘Comfort ye’ imparts an apt sense of anticipation, and his account of ‘Ev’ry valley,’ its divisions articulated with attention to their relationship with the text, accentuates the ingenuity with which Händel used music as a vital element of his storytelling.

Eight years before singing Messiah in London, Beard portrayed the title character’s brother Lurcanio in the 1735 Covent Garden première of Händel’s opera Ariodante (HWV 33). Ferring furthers his tribute to Beard with his galant but elegant account of the aria ‘Il tuo sangue, ed il tuo zelo.’ The caliber of the tenor’s Italian diction rivals that of his English. The greater difficulty of Lurcanio’s fiorature and the Italian vowels challenge Ferring’s vocal dexterity, but he intuitively uses the rhythmic precision of pianist Madeline Slettedahl’s playing as the foundation upon which he creates an exhilarating account of the piece. Moreover, he sings with unfailing musicality and restraint in ornamentation.

Commissioned in 1845 by the Birmingham Festival to pay homage to the legacies of Händel and Haydn with a work of his own, Felix Mendelssohn gifted the oratorio-loving British public with his Opus 70, Elijah, a score with much in common, structurally, with Händel’s Saul. In addition to being greatly respected by Queen Victoria and Prince Albert, the tenor engaged for the first performance of Elijah in Birmingham Town Hall on 26 August 1846, Berkshire native Charles Lockey, so moved Mendelssohn with his singing of the aria ‘Then shall the righteous shine forth’ that the composer wrote of struggling to contain his emotions. Ferring’s voicing of the aria elicits a similar response, Mendelssohn’s ascending vocal line molded with grace and extraordinary tonal beauty. Ferrig’s incandescent top A♭s are the expressive summits of the performance, the reverence of the text resounding in the voice.

In the operas composed during the first half of his career, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart wrote tenor rôles that embodied the style of bravura singing synthesized from Händel’s models by composers like Niccolò Jommelli, Giovanni Sarti, and Tommaso Traetta, a tradition to which Mozart returned in large part in his final Italian opera, La clemenza di Tito. In his progressive Singspiele Die Entführung aus dem Serail and Die Zauberflöte, as well as in Don Giovanni and Così fan tutte, however, Mozart advanced the art of devising music for tenor protagonists along the path that led to bel canto.

Fascinatingly, Mozart’s first Tito Vespasiano in La clemenza di Tito, a closer relative of the name parts in Idomeneo, rè di Creta and Mitridate, rè di Ponto than of Entführung’s Belmonte and Zauberflöte’s Tamino, was Antonio Baglioni, who had earlier originated the rôle of Don Ottavio in Don Giovanni. The aria written for him in Don Giovanni, ‘Il mio tesoro intanto,’ indicates that Baglioni wielded both vocal nimbleness and exceptional management of breath. With his traversal of ‘Il mio tesoro,’ Ferring affirms that he is a worthy successor of Baglioni, delivering the coloratura passages with an appealing lightness of approach mirrored by Slettedahl’s fleet handling of the aria’s musical progression.

Vincenzo Calvesi, the singer for whom Mozart tailored his music for Ferrando in Così fan tutte, was renowned in Habsburg Vienna as an interpreter of tenor rôles in the operas of Antonio Salieri, whose compositional style encompassed late-Baroque excesses and Gluckian sparsity. Ferrando’s arias in Così fan tutte can be said to manifest similar ambiguity. ‘Ah! lo veggio quell’anima bella’—until recent years often omitted from performances and recordings of the opera—is dazzlingly virtuosic, but ‘Un’aura amorosa,’ while making its own daunting technical demands, enthralls with its expansive, plaintive lines and serenity. Ferring sings ‘Un’aura amorosa’ hypnotically, the voice as firm and focused at the bottom of the range as it is glistening at the top. Here, too, the effectiveness of the tenor’s efforts is heightened by his close collaboration with the pianist, whose phrasing provides poetry and propulsion.

Before leaving the stage and focusing on pedagogy, Manuel García enjoyed a fruitful collaboration with Gioachino Rossini, one of the best-known products of which was his creation of the rôle of Conte d’Almaviva in Il barbiere di Siviglia in 1816. Almaviva’s cavatina in Act One, ‘Ecco ridente in cielo.’ was unquestionably fashioned to capitalize on García’s unique gifts, but the music is also a fine vehicle for Ferring’s vocal and theatrical magnetism. His fiorature, intonation, and top A, B, and C are all stellar, but it is the youthful exuberance of his performance that gives this ‘Ecco ridente in cielo’ its bewitching charm. This is the song of a wily aristocrat whose pursuit of amorous adventure does not impel him to take himself too seriously.

Ferring’s performance of the much-loved ‘Rêve’ from Act Two remindsTwenty-First-Century listeners that Chevalier des Grieux in Jules Massenet’s Manon was also memorably sung, albeit in German, by Slovene tenor Anton Dermota, one of the Twentieth Century’s most accomplished Mozart singers. Ferring shares Dermota’s innate and commendably adaptive command of style, transitioning from the poise of his singing of Mozart’s music to Massenet’s more effusive, emotive musical idiom. Ferring also refines his linguistic skills to encompass shaping of French text that lends his utterance of ‘C’est vrai! ma tête est folle’ stirring sincerity. The wonderment audible in his singing of ‘Instant charmant où la crainte fait trève’ touchingly evinces the mood conjured by the words. The Francophone authenticity of this performance of ‘En fermant les yeux je vois’ is validated by Ferring’s ravishing voix mixte top A, the aural embodiment of des Grieux’s humble but euphoric vision of his life with Manon.

In the 1951 world première of Igor Stravinsky’s operatic treatment of situations taken from the eight images of William Hogarth’s iconic The Rake’s Progress, the eponymous rake was sung by American tenor Robert Rounseville, a singer now remembered more for his work in cinema and musical theater than for his operatic portrayals. Eighteen months after the opera’s first performance in Venice, the Metropolitan Opera staged the work with Eugene Conley as Tom Rakewell. In this recorded performance of Tom’s Act One aria ‘Here I stand,’ it is another MET Rakewell, Paul Groves, whose Ferring’s singing recalls. The character’s trademark self-assurance is palpable in this ardent, utterly secure traversal of the music. Even in the context of a studio recording, Ferring vividly acts through the voice. In the opera, Tom’s exclamation of ‘I wish I had money!’ has the fateful consequence of summoning the malevolent Nick Shadow: here, it delights without peril.

There is no greater pleasure for voice aficionados than hearing a voice of high quality, bolstered by proper technique, singing music to which it is suited. This is the abidng pleasure of Eric Ferring’s performances of these lyric arias, in which a young artist invites the listener to experience the music from a singer’s perspective with immediacy that can rarely be achieved in recital halls.

PERFORMANCE REVIEW: Gaetano Donizetti — LINDA DI CHAMOUNIX (M. A. Zentner, K. Alston, D. Romano, S. Lee, M. Redding, L. Hall, K. Ledbetter, D. Maize; UNCSA A.J. Fletcher Opera Institute, 4 February 2022)

GAETANO DONIZETTI (1797 – 1848): Linda di Chamounix – Margaret Ann Zentner (Linda), Kameron Alston (Carlo, visconte di Sirval), Danielle Romano (Pierotto), Scott Lee (Antonio), Michael Redding (Il prefetto), Lawrence Hall (Il marchese di Boisfleury), Katherine Ledbetter (Maddalena), David Maize (L’intendente del feudo); A.J. Fletcher Opera Institute Chorus; UNCSA Symphony Orchestra; James Allbritten, conductor [Steven LaCosse, Stage Director; Sarah A. Webster, Scenic Designer; Maggie Turoff, Lighting Designer; Diana Ridge, Costume Designer; Natosha Martin, Wig and Makeup Designer; Lindsey Cope, Stage Manager; University of North Carolina School of the Arts A.J. Fletcher Opera Institute, Stevens Center, Winston-Salem, North Carolina, USA; Friday, 4 February 2022]

In a career spanning three decades, Gaetano Donizetti composed more than five dozen operas, a few of which continue to be performed with relative frequency 174 years after the composer’s death. Despite musical and theatrical felicities, agreater number of Donizetti’s scores are seldom heard by Twenty-First-Century audiences. Between these extremes is a small group of pieces that battle with other lesser-known bel canto works for places on the periphery of the international repertory. Among these pieces is Linda di Chamounix, the  earliest of three Donizetti operas that were first performed not in his native Italy but at Vienna’s Kärntnertortheater. [The third of these Viennese works was a German edition of Dom Sèbastien, roi de Portugal rather than a wholly new piece.] Habsburg Austria hosted the inaugural production of Linda di Chamounix, but the melodramma semiserio’s first heroine was Italian, the soprano Eugenia Tadolini, to whom Donizetti also entrusted creation of the title ròle in his second opera for Vienna, Maria di Rohan. The first performance of Linda di Chamounix on 19 May 1842, was sufficiently successful to launch a journey that took the opera to three continents within a decade.

Following its tour of Europe and the Americas in the 1840s and 1850s, Linda di Chamounix gradually disappeared from theaters’ repertories, supplanted in the latter half of the Nineteenth Century by the middle- and late-period operas of Giuseppe Verdi, whose bel canto-influenced early works shared Linda’s fate. Nevertheless, Donizetti’s musical setting of librettist Gaetano Rossi’s tale of thwarted love and psychological instability, drawn from Adolphe d’Ennery’s 1841 novel La grâce de Dieu; ou La nouvelle fachon, has won notable admirers. Conducted by Tullio Serafin, the cast of the opera’s Metropolitan Opera première, the first of the eight performances in 1934 and 1935 that constitute the work’s entire MET performance history, included Lily Pons, Gladys Swarthout, Giuseppe de Luca, and Ezio Pinza. Edita Gruberová’s espousal of the title rôle brought the opera greater attention in the final quarter of the Twentieth Century, but, like many of its bel canto brethren, Linda di Chamounix continues to await the renewal of interest that the quality of its music merits.

A.J. Fletcher Opera Institute’s residency at the University of North Carolina School of the Arts in Winston-Salem—and the Institute’s commitment to staging lesser-known bel canto works—began in 2001 with a production of Bellini’s Beatrice di Tenda. As Friday evening’s performance demonstrated, choosing Linda di Chamounix to continue the tradition inaugurated with Beatrice di Tenda was both logical and inspired. Echoes of Bellini resound in Linda, the bucolic atmosphere of La sonnambula permeating Donizetti’s score. Linda’s oft-recorded cavatina in Act One, ‘O luce di quest’anima,’ has much in common with Elvira’s polacca, ‘Son vergin vezzosa,’ in I puritani. The continuing popularity of Rossini’s operas in Vienna more than a decade after the completion of his final opera is evident in Donizetti’s writing for the Marchese di Boisfleury, a relation of Rossini’s wiliest buffo characters. There are obvious parallels with Donizetti’s Lucia di Lammermoor in Linda’s mad scene, but there are also abundant reminiscences of L’elisir d’amore and Don Pasquale.

Directed with keen perceptiveness and musicality by Steven LaCosse, Fletcher Institute’s production of Linda di Chamounix was a triumph over adverse conditions. A pandemic, winter weather, and an industrial fire that necessitated evacuation of part of Winston-Salem could not stop Linda from reaching the stage, LaCosse’s direction glorying in the circumstances rather than apologizing for them. Blessed with stunningly beautiful scenic designs by Sarah A. Webster, their vista of Mont Blanc astonishingly realistic, and Diana Ridge’s luxurious costumes, the production had an inviting visual setting in which, under LaCosse’s guidance, Donizetti’s villagers went about their lives with engaging naturalness. Complemented by Maggie Turoff’s warm, well-focused lighting designs, Natosha Martin’s wigs and makeup transformed the young cast into a credible Nineteenth-Century community. Fusing these elements with his work with the singers, LaCosse was attentive to both the lightness and the wistfulness that lend Linda di Chamounix its singular appeal. In this production, the opera was truly a melodramma semiserio, Donizetti’s finely-wrought balance between Rossinian comedy and Verdian tragedy fully and compellingly realized.

Il servo vigile: tenor David Maize as L’intendente del feudo in A.J. Fletcher Opera Institute’s February 2022 production of Gaetano Donizetti’s Linda di Chamounix
[Photograph © by André Peele; used with permission]

In recent seasons, conductor James Allbritten has exhibited expert handling of Donizetti’s music in Piedmont Opera productions of L’elisir d’amore and Maria Stuarda. His conducting of Linda di Chamounix embodied the essence of bel canto, his management of tempi, dynamics, and orchestral balances supporting the singers’ navigations of the melodic lines. Fiorature were paced excitingly, challenging but never rushing the principals, and cantilena passages were allowed time to expand organically in tandem with the words and emotions that they communicated. The UNCSA Symphony Orchestra’s playing was not without mistakes, but the musicians followed Allbritten’s beat with absolute and warranted trust in his leadership. The conductor unfailingly elucidated the dramatic significance of details like the transitions from larghetto to allegro vivace and vivace in the opera’s Sinfonia, accentuating the ingenuity of Donizetti’s musical storytelling. Juxtaposed with the opera’s darker pages, the score’s comedic moments possessed irrepressible verve, reflecting Allbritten’s comprehension of Linda’s distinctive musical and theatrical anatomies.

One of this production’s greatest strengths was the singing of the UNSCA Chorus. In the opera’s opening scene, the choristers intoned ‘Presti! al tempio!’ reverently, their delivery imparting piety and rustic charm. The men of the village leaving their Haute-Savoie home in the Act One finale in order to earn their living in Paris, the voices combined sublimely, voicing Donizetti’s music with immediacy that would not have been out of place in a performance of a Bach Passion. Owing to time constraints and the unavoidable disruptions in the rehearsal schedule, cutting the choral introduction and Brindisi in Act Three was understandable. The jubilation of the opera’s final scene was heightened by the choristers’ exuberant singing and acting, their celebration of the restoration of Linda’s sanity manifesting the sense of community that they projected throughout the performance.

The sole regret roused by tenor David Maize’s singing was that Donizetti did not allot more music to L’intendente del feudo. Though his time on stage was brief, Maize established a lasting presence with his assured vocalism. Wielding a gleaming timbre, he was easily heard above the orchestra, each word of his part enunciated with accurate intonation and admirable diction.

I genitori sconsolati: baritone Scott Lee as Antonio (left) and soprano Katherine Ledbetter as Maddalena (right) in A.J. Fletcher Opera Institute’s February 2022 production of Gaetano Donizetti’s Linda di Chamounix
[Photograph © by André Peele; used with permission]

Linda’s doting mother Maddalena was portrayed by soprano Katherine Ledbetter, whose vocalism glowed with maternal affection. University productions often offer propitious casting of rôles assigned in other companies’ performances to singers whose vocal resources are no longer ideal for the music. Particularly in the period in which Fletcher Institute’s production was set, a young lady of Linda’s age would likely have been the daughter of young parents. The freshness of Ledbetter’s tones was especially valuable in passages in which Maddalena sings the top line in ensembles. The mother’s love and fear for her daughter were omnipresen​t in the soprano​’s performance, as was accomplished musicality.

Attenzione indesiderate: baritone Lawrence Hall as Il marchese di Boisfleury (left) and soprano Margaret Ann Zentner as Linda in A.J. Fletcher Opera Institute’s February 2022 production of Gaetano Donizetti’s Linda di Chamounix
[Photograph © by André Peele; used with permission]

A close relation of Dottore Dulcamara in L’elisir d’amore, the Marchese di Boisfleury provides much of Linda di Chamounix’s comedy despite the character’s libidinous pursuit of the virtuous Linda. In baritone Lawrence Hall’s portrayal, the Marchese’s iniquitous machinations were unquestionably vexing, but he never seemed like the sort of smarmy aristocrat who might attempt to exercise his droit du seigneur. Hall sang the Marchese’s Act One cavatina, ‘Buono gente, noi siamo chi siamo’ confidently, the nobleman’s arrogance evinced by the singer’s insouciant top F. In the scene with Linda in Act Two, this Marchese accosted the object of his desire with determination, her rejections making the game all the more enjoyable for him.

Hall was at his best in the aria buffa in Act Three, ‘Ella è un giglio di puro candore.’ His lyric instrument was tested by the rôle’s Rossinian patter and tessitura, but his technique prevailed in every vocal contest. Recalling Angelina’s forgiveness of the ill treatment that she receives from Clorinda, Tisbe, and Don Magnifico in Rossini’s La Cenerentola, the moment in the opera’s final scene in which, as the Marchele starts to announce himself as the cause of Linda’s troubles, Linda embraces him as her future uncle-in-law was unusually touching in this performance, Hall having made the Marchese atypically forgivable.

Il padre ed il prefetto: baritones Scott Lee as Antonio (left) and Michael Redding as Il prefetto (right) in A.J. Fletcher Opera Institute’s February 2022 production of Gaetano Donizetti’s Linda di Chamounix
[Photograph © by André Peele; used with permission]

UNCSA alumnus Michael Redding returned to Winston-Salem to serve as Linda di Chamounix’s moral foundation, and his depiction of the Prefetto, an Alpine cousin of Raimondo in Lucia di Lammermoor, exuded vicarial probity. Having revealed that the Marchese’s interest in Antonio’s family is motivated by lecherous designs on Linda, Redding’s vigilant Prefetto voiced ‘Quella pietà sì provvida​’ in the Act One due​t with the humble farmer nobly, the voice’s evenness throughout the music’s range heightening the effect of his singing here and in the burghers’ farewell to their departing kinsmen.

In the Act Three scene in which the despondent Carlo returns to Chamounix in search of Linda, Redding sang the Prefetto’s lines plaintively, evey tone disclosing the character’s regard for the forlorn girl and her parents. Redding initiated the unaccompanied Preghiera in the opera’s finale powerfully. Two months before the Vienna première of Linda di Chamounix, Donizetti’s first Prefetto, Prosper Derivis, created the rôle of the high priest Zaccaria in Verdi’s Nabucco. Redding’s thoughtful, orotund singing of the Prefetto’s music honored the legacy of the part’s first interpreter.

L’uomo ghironda: mezzo-soprano Danielle Romano as Pierotto in A.J. Fletcher Opera Institute’s February 2022 production of Gaetano Donizetti’s Linda di Chamounix
[Photograph © by André Peele; used with permission]

The timbre of UNCSA’s Pierotto, Danielle Romano, often brought the voice of Québécoise mezzo-soprano Huguette Tourangeau to mind. First heard in Act One from off stage, Romano sang ‘Cari luoghi ov’io passai’ evocatively, the boy’s song introducing a sense of foreboding into the scene’s Arcadian tranquility. [Pierotto’s appearances were often accompanied by keyboardist Neil Mitchell’s beguiling representation of the lad’s hurdy-gurdy.] Romano’s account of the melancholy ballatta ‘Per sua madre andò una figlia’ was unaffected but compelling. Her voice strongest at the upper and lower extremities of the range, the mezzo-soprano’s singing was sometimes covered by the orchestra, but she sagaciously avoided forcing the voice.

The suffering that Pierotto endured on the streets of Paris was palpable in the softness of Romano’s singing in the duet with Linda in Act Two, the feeling with which she phrased ‘Al bel destin che attendevi’ redolent of relief. Pierotto’s defense of Linda’s honor in the trio, ‘In un palazzo poco discosto,’ was as vehement as his horror and alarm in the mad scene were believable. Entering with the still-distubed Linda in Act Three, Romano’s Pierotto’s frustration was tempered by tenderness. ‘Ed ecco in qual maniera abbiamo fatto’ was captivatingly sung. Convincingly masculine without overdoing the puckishness, Romano enlivened every scene in which Pierotto graced the stage.

Sull’orlo della tragedia: baritones Scott Lee as Antonio (left) and Michael Redding as Il prefetto (right) in A.J. Fletcher Opera Institute’s February 2022 production of Gaetano Donizetti’s Linda di Chamounix
[Photograph © by André Peele; used with permission]

Baritone Scott Lee’s portrayal of ​​Linda’s father Antonio was one of the production’s foremost joys. The paternal prudence and weariness that his performance imparted were astonishing for so young a singer. Antonio’s first interactions with his wife at the start of Act One divulged well-honed artistry, and the stylistic acumen of Lee’s traversal of the romanza ‘Ambo nati in quest​a valle,’ the top Es dispatched robustly, affirmed the thoroughness of his training. Antonio’s music in the duet with the Prefetto was voiced with emotional intensity, the father’s trepidation for his daughter movingly relayed.

Wandering through Paris, unable to find his daughter, Antonio’s entry into Linda’s opulent residence in Act Two was the dramatic apogee of the performance. Prefiguring Verdi’s scenes for Violetta and Giorgio Germont in La traviata and for Aida and Amonasro, Antonio’s duet with Linda contains some of the opera’s most impassioned music. Lee voiced ‘Un buon servo del visconte’ simply, emphasizing the gentle man’s humility. The pain of Linda’s seeming dishonor burst from Lee’s singing in the trio with Linda and Pierotto frighteningly, but the father’s love for his daughter remained obvious in Lee’s depiction of the moment of fury in which Pierotto prevented Antonio from striking his daughter. In Lee’s performance, Antonio’s vivid reactions to Linda’s return and psychological recovery in Act Three were no less gratifying than the young lovers’ reunion. The opportunity to experience a staging of Linda di Chamounix was a rare gift to UNCSA’s audience, but singing such as Lee’s is still rarer, not only in student production but upon all of the world’s stages.

Gli amanti ardenti: soprano Margaret Ann Zentner as Linda (left) and tenor Kameron Alston as Carlo (right) in A.J. Fletcher Opera Institute’s February 2022 production of Gaetano Donizetti’s Linda di Chamounix
[Photograph © by André Peele; used with permission]

It can be argued that, when Alfredo Kraus sang the rôle of Carlo, visconte di Sirval, at Teatro alla Scala in 1972, the opera might justifiably have been rechristened as Il sire di Sirval. Donizetti’s music for Carlo is often ravishingly melodious, but its tunefulness is also perilous. The melodic fecundity is bolstered by daunting technical requirements, not the least of which is unfailing breath control. Harkening back more to another noteworthy Carlo, Ugo Benelli, than to Kraus, tenor Kameron Alston approached the rôle with tonal and technical suavity. In the Act One duet with Linda, he sculpted the line in ‘Da quel dì che t’incontrai’ delicately, maintaining poise without applying pressure to the voice. Carlo’s romanza in Act Two, ‘Se tanto in ira agli uomini,’ was also sung pensively, the top A♭s caressed, but the upper register’s security faltered in the coda. Alston regained vocal solidity in the subsequent scene with Linda, voicing ‘Ah! dimmi...dimmi, io t’amo’ stirringly.

The grief that plagues Carlo as he fruitlessly seeks Linda at the start of Act Three burgeoned in Alston’s voicing of ‘Ciel, che dite? Linda è morta!’ in the duet with the Prefetto. The Act Two romanza is Carlo’s most familiar music, but, in this performance, the aria ‘È la voce che primiera’ was his most memorably appealing selection, the tenor’s timbre shimmeringly youthful across the compass. Aside from a few phrases in the stretta in which the top of the voice sounded fatigued, Alston’s voicing of ‘Di tuo pene sparve il sogno’ in Carlo’s final duet with Linda brilliantly proclaimed the viscount’s exultation. In Alston’s performance, Carlo was a nuanced Romantic figure whose singing was balm to both Linda’s psyche and the audience’s ears.

La bella pazza: soprano Margaret Ann Zentner in the title rôle of A.J. Fletcher Opera Institute’s February 2022 production of Gaetano Donizetti’s Linda di Chamounix
[Photograph © by André Peele; used with permission]

Soprano Margaret Ann Zentner was a Linda who reminded the audience that, although the part was sung in the opera’s sole Metropolitan Opera production by Lily Pons and was associated later in the Twentieth Century with the light voices of Margherita Carosio and Margherita Rinaldi, the eponymous heroine was sung on the opera’s first widely-available studio recording by Antonietta Stella, a singer more renowned for performances of Verdi and Puccini rôles than for her forays into bel canto. A particular pleasure of Zentner’s performance was hearing Linda’s music sung by a voluptuous voice.

Brightening the stage with her first entrance in Act One, Zentner sang ‘Ah! tardai troppo, e al nostro favorito convegno io non trovai’ strikingly, the character’s amiable disposition cascading beyond the footlights. Her performance of Linda’s best-known number, the cavatina ‘O luce di quest’anima,’ was the effervescent expression of a young girl’s excitement rather than a singer’s display of vocal prowess. Similarly, Zentner sang ‘Son più misera di te’ in the duet with Carlo bewitchingly but straightforwardly. The voice soared in the Gran Preghiera, the words felt rather than merely sung.

The lushness of Zentner’s vocalism suited the luxury in which Linda finds herself in Act Two, the viscount-in-disguise having confessed his true identity and installed his intended bride in his Paris villa. Looking and sounding like Ruth Ann Swenson at the outset of her career, Zentner joined Romano in a subtle account of Linda’s duet with Pierotto. There was little subtlety in the Marchese’s goading of Linda in their scene, and the soprano slapped her baritone colleague with stinging top Bs in ‘Io vi dico che partiate’ before resorting to a physical blow. The duet with Carlo that followed could hardly have been more different, and Zentner’s singing took on more subdued colors.

Dismayed by her father’s unexpected appearance in her Paris lodgings, where he first fails to recognize her and then erroneously surmises that she has been living not as a chaste bride-to-be but as a kept woman, Linda is reluctant to acknowledge her identity. In Zentner’s portrayal, Linda’s hesitation was the first indication of her mental distress. Her singing in the potent trio with Pierotto and Antonio throbbed with agitation, but her musicianship was never sacrificed to dramatic involvement. As with the popular cavatina in Act One, the impression made by Zentner’s vocalism in the Gran scena del delirio was primarily one of empathy for Linda’s vulnerable state rather than admiration for virtuosity. Ascents above the stave were not effortless, but the fiorature dazzled. Nonetheless, it was the expressivity of her reading of ‘A consolarmi, affrettati’ that awed.

Zentner’s vocal acting in Act Three was the work of an artist who knows and trusts the potential of understatement. Led back to Chamounix by the exhausted Pierotto, Zentner’s Linda was lost in a realm of silence and isolation, but her thoughts resounded with music, fragments of tunes that, when reassembled, were memories of her life before the calamities of Act Two. Returned to her parents’ house, reconciled with the Marchese, and assured of Carlo’s fidelity, this Linda reconstructed her life one beautifully-sung note at a time.

The modern concept of music therapy had not yet been devised in the era in which Linda di Chamounix was written, but, even if only empirically, Donizetti clearly intuited music’s capacity for healing. After two years of pandemic, Fletcher Institute’s engrossing Linda di Chamounix was wonderfully therapeutic.

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This review is dedicated with love and gratitude to the memory of James Forrest, a cherished friend of Voix des Arts and the Performing Arts whose contributions to music criticism are incalculable.

PERFORMANCE REVIEW: Giacomo Puccini — LA BOHÈME (L. Cesaroni, S. Quinn, L. Hernandez, S. Kessler Dooley, A. Lau, T. Murray, D. Hartmann, W. Henderson, J. Cortes, F. Bunter; North Carolina Opera, 28 January 2022)

GIACOMO PUCCINI (1858 – 1924): La bohème – Lucia Cesaroni (Mimì), Scott Quinn (Rodolfo), Shannon Kessler Dooley (Musetta), Levi Hernandez (Marcello), Timothy Murray (Schaunard), Adam Lau (Colline), Donald Hartmann (Benoît, Alcindoro), Wade Henderson (Parpignol), Jacob Cortes (Un sergente dei doganieri), Forrest Bunter (Un doganiere); North Carolina Opera Chorus and Orchestra; Joseph Mechavich, conductor [Brenna Corner, Stage Director; Steven C. Kemp, Set Designer; Ross Kolman, Lighting Designer; Martha Ruskai, Wig and Makeup Designer; North Carolina Opera, Raleigh Memorial Auditorium, Duke Energy Center for the Performing Arts, Raleigh, North Carolina, USA; Friday, 28 January 2022]

When opera companies announce seasons that include productions of Giacomo Puccini’s La bohème, some observers disgustedly ask, ‘Why do they choose to again perform La bohème?’ The answer to that question is very simple: audiences buy tickets for performances of La bohème. Paralleling Abraham Lincoln’s famed remark about the uncertainties of politicians deceiving their constituents, La bohème will never lure all potential patrons to every performances, but some aficionados would never purposefully miss a staging of the piece, while virtually all operaphiles can sometimes be coaxed by the participation of a favored singer or conductor into attending a performance of La bohème. Why, then, does Puccini’s adaptation of Henri Murger’s 1851 tome Scènes de la vie de bohème continue to appeal so strongly to audiences 126 years after the opera’s première at Teatro Regio di Torino? Luigi Illica’s and Giuseppe Giacosa’s libretto is irrefutably a work of theatrical savvy, but would even the most dedicated poet allege that purchasing an opera ticket is motivated by a desire to extol the words? What inspires audiences’ faith in La bohème’s capacity to satisfy, whether it is being experienced for the second or the seventieth time?

North Carolina Opera’s new production of La bohème, the first staging of the opera in Raleigh since 2014, offered persuasive answers to these questions, presenting the opera with unapologetic but unexaggerated sentimentality that gave new life to the opera’s familiar tragedy. Steven C. Kemp’s set designs placed Puccini’s bohemians in recognizably Parisian surroundings without subjecting them to fairy-tale over-romanticisation and anachronistic views of well-known landmarks. The costumes, originally created for Sarasota Opera, and Martha Ruskai’s astute wig and makeup designs also suited the people who wore them, physically and dramatically, attractively reflecting the era in which the opera is set but illustrating the poverty with which Puccini’s protagonists contend. In Ross Kolman’s lighting, the frigid garret and the streets of Paris, teeming with holiday revelry in Act Two and slowly awakening in Act Three, glowed with natural ambience, in which spotlighting enabled the audience to easily follow the opera’s narrative. This production contradicted the notion that traditional stagings unfailingly lack imagination and novelty. The opera’s extensive performance history demonstrates that La bohème can succeed in many guises. Rather than inventing new contexts for the librettists’ adaptation of Murger’s story, this Bohème satisfied by lifting the characters directly from the pages of Puccini’s score.

An abundance of small but significant details distinguished Brenna Corner’s direction of this production, her concentration on interactions amongst characters and their environment deployed with subtlety and intelligence. Marcello observing that the handkerchief dropped by Mimį after a coughing fit in Act Three was stained with blood was a poignant sign of the direness of her illness, and the simple act of Colline extinguishing a candle as Schaunard perceived that Mimì was dead symbolized the darkness that descended upon the bohemians’ community with the loss of Mimì. Starkly effective, too, was the muffler, only recently procured by Musetta and given in Rodolfo’s name, falling with wrenching finality from Mimì’s lifeless hands. Corner delivered the expected tumult in Act Two but avoided the frenetic business of productions like Franco Zeffirelli’s famed staging for the Metropolitan Opera, in which individual characters can be lost in the hubbub. Corner’s work was shaped by intuitive musicality, her creativity spurred by the score.

Ecco il padrone: (from left to right) tenor Scott Quinn as Rodolfo, baritone Levi Hernandez as Marcello, bass-baritone Donald Hartmann as Benoît, baritone Timothy Murray as Schaunard, and bass Adam Lau as Colline in North Carolina Opera’s January 2022 production of Giacomo Puccini’s La bohème
[Photograph © by Eric Waters Photography]

Sadly, conductor Joseph Mechavich’s comprehensive knowledge of and respect for Puccini’s music qualities that were manifested in every bar of the performance, were undermined by orchestral playing that lacked both accuracy and polish. Singers’ timing was frequently disrupted by mistakes from the pit, two of the most regrettable of which were incorrect entries by the harp that spoiled the atmosphere in Mimì’s Act One aria and her subsequent duet with Rodolfo. The coordination between stage and pit disintegrated markedly as Act Two progressed, the ensemble of children’s voices, chorus, and principals making its customary effect despite nearly devolving into chaos. Nevertheless, moments of beauty, accuracy, and true dramatic power were bountiful. Winter weather having wreaked havoc during the production’s rehearsal period, Mechavich achieved much with limited time with the singers and orchestra, his expansive reading of the score accentuating intricacies of Puccini’s orchestrations that are often inaudible. Despite the disfiguring errors from his colleagues in the pit, Mechavich supported the singers ably, enabling them to immerse themselves in their characters’ struggles without struggling to be heard.

Both the adults of North Carolina Opera’s Chorus, directed by Scott McacLeod, and the Children’s Chorus, trained by Lauren Saeger, contributed sonorously to Act Two’s festivities. The orchestra pit’s misfortunes adversely affected the choral singing, undoubtedly confusing the singers in some passages, but the choristers’ professionalism prevailed. The youngsters pursued Parpignol and his cartload of toys with restless excitement and were themselves pursued with whimsical exasperation by their adult counterparts. As the working folk who come to Paris in Act Three in order to peddle their wares on the city’s snowy streets, first the gentlemen and then the ladies of the chorus sang vividly. More so than in many productions, the choristers were here participants in and not merely observers of the opera’s drama.

The customs officer and his sergeant who guard the city gate in Act Two—or do so when not distracted, as in this production, by the female patrons of the nearby tavern—wer​e galantly portrayed by Forrest Bunter and Jacob Cortes. A familiar participant in North Carolina Opera productions, Wade Henderson sang Parpignol’s lines exuberantly, but the tenor’s voice lacked its typical clarity and brightness.

An unexpected knock at the bohemians’ door in Act One announced an impromptu visit from the landlord Benoît, demanding remittance for his tenants’ unpaid rent. Unwelcome as the intrusion is to the destitute bohemians, bass-baritone Donald Hartmann’s entrance delighted the audience, who responded to his faultless comic adroitness and firm, forceful singing, all too rare in the rôles that he sang in this production, with uninhibited mirth. Hartmann sang ‘A lei ne vengo’ with deadpan hilarity, and his disdainful, almost disgusted exclamation of ‘mia moglie,’ prompting the bohemians’ feigned censure, was lobbed like a grenade. As Musetta’s deep-pocketed suitor Alcindoro in Act Two, Hartmann was an unusually debonair figure, a fitting companion for the glamorous coquette. Exemplified by a brilliantly-timed ‘Dove?’ in response to Musetta’s sham cries of pain, his singing of Alcindoro’s music—and, indeed, he sang rather than shouting the part—recalled the performances of Salvatore Baccaloni and Pompilio Malatesta, the preeminent Alcindori of the first half of the Twentieth Century. In both rôles, Hartmann was funny without being embarrassingly farcical, relying upon Puccini’s music to provide the characters’ comedic impetus.

Prima la musica: baritone Timothy Murray as Schaunard in North Carolina Opera’s January 2022 production of Giacomo Puccini’s La bohème
[Photograph © by Eric Waters Photography]

The musician Schaunard needs a more opulent voice than he receives in many productions. North Carolina Opera entrusted the rôle to baritone Timothy Murray, whose performance drew Schaunard from the background, where he sometimes hides in the shadows of his fellow bohemians. This Schaunard’s gleeful arrival in Act One, bearing the much-fêted products of his labors, lifted the spirits of his friends and those of their audience, the scene enlivened by Murray’s engaging vocal and theatrical presence. He relayed Schaunard’s tale of the frazzled Englishman and his noisy avian neighbor with droll humor and a rousing top F, his exclamation of mock annoyance at his ravenous comrades’ inattention revealing endearing playfulness. Always discernible in ensembles, Murray’s vocalism exuded conviviality in Act Two, but it was in the opera’s final act that Murray’s portrayal was most admirable. Jesting with his friends, this Schaunard was charmingly boyish, but Musetta’s entrance with news of Mimì’s decline shattered his illusion of happiness. The tenderness with which he caressed the dying Mimì’s hand was affectingly poignant. His demeanor suggested that Murray’s Schaunard sensed that Mimì’s death was inevitable, but finding that she had quietly expired devastated him. Murray sang splendidly throughout the evening, and his acting fully explored the emotional depth of Puccini’s music for the part.

La sua filosofia è la compassione: bass Adam Lau as Colline in North Carolina Opera’s January 2022 production of Giacomo Puccini’s La bohème
[Photograph © by Eric Waters Photography]

A wily Leporello and a powerhouse Don Basilio in North Carolina Opera’s productions of Mozart’s Don Giovanni (2015) and Rossini’s Il barbiere di Siviglia (2016), bass Adam Lau returned to Raleigh to philosophize benevolently as Colline in La bohème. Like Murray’s Schaunard, Lau’s Colline made a galvanizing entrance in Act One, the voice full and formidable throughout the range. His unkempt ‘fur’ tamed by a barber’s razor in Act Two, Lau’s Colline solemnly accepted Mimì into the bohemians’ society and bemusedly analyzed Marcello’s sparring with Musetta. When the friends’ horseplay was halted by impending tragedy in Act Four, Lau touchingly limned the crumbling of Colline’s stoicism. The bass sang ‘Vecchia zimara, senti, io resto al pian’ with disarming directness, approaching the piece not as an ode to a grand gesture but as an ordinary man’s selfless attempt at providing comfort. Lau projected his voice and his characterization without pushing the former or overplaying the latter, guilelessly amplifying the rôle’s humanity.

La voce della libertà: soprano Shannon Kessler Dooley as Musetta in North Carolina Opera’s January 2022 production of Giacomo Puccini’s La bohème
[Photograph © by Eric Waters Photography]

The rôle of the capricious Musetta was created by Camilla Pasini, a versatile singer whose repertoire included both Norina in Donizetti’s Don Pasquale and Elsa in Wagner’s Lohengrin. In the Puccini canon, she also sang Tosca, inaugurating a lineage perpetuated in North Carolina Opera’s production by soprano Shannon Kessler Dooley. Her Musetta’s charisma surged onto the stage like an aural avalanche in Act Two, her entrance on Alcindoro’s arm eliciting as much awe from the Raleigh audience as from Puccini’s starstruck Parisians. Her toying with Marcello was spiteful but never malevolent. Dooley voiced ‘Quando me’n vo soletta per la vita’ fantastically, executing a resplendent subito piano on one of the aria’s climatic top Bs. Triumphantly adding the bill for the bohenians’ feast to Alcindoro’s tab at the end of the act and querulously quarreling with Marcello in Act Three, Dooley’s Musetta sang with élan, commanding the stage with insouciant panache.

More profound dimensions of Musetta’s character emerged in Act Four with her realization that Mimì’s life was rapidly waning. Dooley uttered ‘C’è Mimi che mi segue e che sta male’ and ‘Intesi dire che Mimì, fuggita dal viscontino’ urgently, heightening the bohemians’ and the audience’s awareness of the severity of Mimì’s condition. The expressivity of the soprano’s voicing of ‘Forse è l'ultima volta che ha espresso un desiderio​’ was very moving, the voice imparting the breadth of Musetta’s affection for Mimì. Dooley was untroubled by the low tessitura of the prayer,‘Madonna benedetta, fate la grazia a questa poveretta,’ singing the plea for divine mercy fervently. Her chic elegance notwithstanding, this Musetta was as integral a part of the bohemians’ community as Mimì, and Dooley sang her music accordingly.

La vita è la sua tela: baritone Levi Hernandez as Marcello in North Carolina Opera’s January 2022 production of Giacomo Puccini’s La bohème
[Photograph © by Eric Waters Photography]

Baritone Levi Hernandez was a Marcello whose abiding sincerity overcame orchestral misfires and vocal obstacles. His singing of ‘Questo Mar Rosso mi ammollisce assidera’ in the opera’s opening scene disclosed the effervescence of Hernandez’s concept of the part, and his interplay with Rodolfo, Colline, and Schaunard in Act One evinced Marcello’s reliance upon the support of his friends to brave loneliness and deprivation. As Mimì discerned, the vehemence of this Marcello’s denunciations of Musetta in Act Two proclaimed that his contemptuous indifference was an ineffective defense mechanism. Hernandez catapulted Marcello’s recapitulation of the famed waltz tune and his bellow of ‘mia sirena!’ into the theater with the ardor of rekindled passion.

In the scene before the tavern in Act Three, Marcello’s fraternal love for Mimī softened the iron core of Hernandez’s vocalism. Even when begging her to leave without making a scene, there was no harshness in the voice. Rodolfo’s subsequent cataloguing of Mimì’s alleged failings restored the steely edge in the baritone’s singing, Marcello’s rebuke of his friend’s dishonesty unsparing but not unkind. Hernandez conveyed an unnerving feeling of powerlessness as Rodolfo recounted the truth of Mimì’s growing frailty, the painter’s ire tinged with relief when Musetta’s laughter was heard from within the tavern. The vitriol of his fight with Musetta was transformed into longing of equal intensity in the duet with Rodolfo in Act Four. Hernandez articulated Marcello’s lines in the final scene with vulnerability, the wearied artist humbled by Musetta’s kindness and dismayed by Mimì’s death. Marcello’s tessitura is centered slightly higher than Hernandez’s vocal comfort zone, but he sang potently and pensively, using every moment of stress to embody the character’s anguish.

Il poeta e la poesia: soprano Lucia Cesaroni as Mimì (left) and tenor Scott Quinn as Rodolfo (right) in North Carolina Opera’s January 2022 production of Giacomo Puccini’s La bohème
[Photograph © by Eric Waters Photography]

Tenor Scott Quinn was an earnest, hardworking Rodolfo whose impressive upper register was betrayed to some extent by inconsistent resonance in the bottom octave. Alongside Hernandez, Lau, and Murray, Quinn was a subdued actor, his Rodolfo seeming more lost in a daydream than experiencing the opera’s drama. Still, Quinn sang ‘Nei cieli bigi guardo fumar dai mille’ and all of his music in Act One capably and at time thrillingly, his account of ‘Che gelida manina,’ transposed downward, building to a reverberant summit. He began ‘O soave fanciulla’ with apt wonder, rising ecstatically to the unison top As but adhering to Puccini’s intentions by eschewing the oft-interpolated top C at the duet’s close. The musical and theatrical challenges of Act Two were met with similar commitment, his straightforward singing of ‘Dal mio cervel sbocciano i canti’ and the beguiling phrase ‘son io il poeta, essa la poesia’ avoiding emotional excess. A sinister aspect of Rodolfo’s psyche was glimpsed in his warning to Mimì about his jealousy, enunciated by Quinn with disconcerting matter-of-factness.

The buoyancy of Quinn’s singing in the opera’s opening scene returned with his voicing of ‘Marcello, finalmente!’ in Act Three, but the nonchalance was short-lived. Bitterness darkened his articulations of ‘Già un’altra volta credetti morto il mio cor’ and ‘Mimì è una civetta,’ giving way to open-hearted despair in ‘Invan nascondo la mia vera tortura’ and especially ‘Mimì è tanto malata.’ The tenor’s best singing of the evening was heard in the scene with Mimì, who, shaken by overhearing Rodolfo’s assessment of her worsening health, resolves to leave him. Here, Quinn’s technique enabled him to sing sotto voce passages with finesse. Again in Act Four, initial ribaldry was replaced first by wistful regret in the duet with Marcello and then by abject sorrow in the final moments with Mimì. Rodolfo’s grief was all the more piercing for being expressed without sobs and distortions of the vocal line, completing a portrayal molded by music, not histrionics.

Lucia, la portatrice di luce: soprano Lucia Cesaroni as Mimì in North Carolina Opera’s January 2022 production of Giacomo Puccini’s La bohème
[Photograph © by Eric Waters Photography]

Her timbre often reminiscent of the voice of Rosanna Carteri, soprano Lucia Cesaroni sang Mimì’s music with consistent security and tonal beauty. From her first ‘Scusi’ in Act One, she brought to her performance gladdening vestiges of long-dormant styles, integrated with her own sensibilities and vocal persona. Recalling Licia Albanese, this Mimì’s first words to Rodolfo disclosed awkward excitement tempered by unassailable propriety. Cesaroni sang ‘Sì, mi chiamano Mimì’ gorgeously, her top As ideally lofted on the breath, and, crucially, she offered Rodolfo and the audience a look into Mimì’s solitary but fulfilling world. The shrewdness of her artistry was apparent in her suggestive but shy voicing of the single word ‘curioso’ in the duet with Rodolfo, in which she ended Act One with a dulcet top C. Central to Cesaroni’s portrayal of Mimì in Act Two was a palpable awareness of belonging, the thoughtful young woman having found a place among people who appreciated and embraced her. She sang ‘Una cuffetta a pizzi’ with girlish elation, and the emotions that overtook Mimì as the act progressed—burgeoning devotion to Rodolfo, empathy for the love-scarred Marcello, comfort with Colline and Schaunard, and admiration for Musetta—were reflected in the colorations with which Cesaroni infused her voice.

The euphoria of Act Two was gone when Mimì stumbled into Act Three, her gait weakened by sickness and conflict. Cesaroni’s voicing of ‘Sa dirma, scusi’ was pained, the demure outsider of Act One supplanting the more assured lady who arrived at Café Momus on Rodolfo’s arm. Desperation propelled the soprano’s singing of ‘O! buon Marcello, aiuto,’ the top B♭s redolent of emotional crisis. Listening as Rodolfo told Marcello of the ravages of her illness, this Mimì uttered Ahimè, morire?’ with genuine fear, not having admitted to herself that her life was slipping away. Facing this reality, Cesaroni phrased ‘Donde lieta uscì al tuo grido d’amore’ with tremendous feeling. Mimì’s entrance in Act Four was harrowing, but Cesaroni’s singing of ‘O mio Rodolfo!’ and ‘Ah, come si sta bene qui’ heralded the dying woman’s consoling return to the milieu in which she knew happiness. She permeated ‘Sono andati?’ with serenity. Having lived discreetly, Cesaroni’s Mimì also died peacefully, liberated by her final reunion with the people who loved her. Cesaroni was a Mimì whose intimate death was felt by every observer who has endured the loss of a loved one. It is this connection between music and audience that keeps La bohème on the world’s stages and in listeners’ hearts.

PERFORMANCE REVIEW: George Gershwin — PORGY AND BESS (T. Cannon, R. Giddens, A. R. Simpson, M. Preacely, R. A. Mack, I. Mahajan, S. Outlaw, G. Shirley, E. Green, C. Packer; Greensboro Opera, 21 January 2022)

GEORGE GERSHWIN (1898 – 1937): Porgy and Bess – Thomas Cannon (Porgy), Rhiannon Giddens (Bess), Angela Renée Simpson (Serena), Michael Preacely (Crown), Robert Anthony Mack (Sportin’ Life), Indira Mahajan (Clara), Sidney Outlaw (Jake), George Shirley (Peter), Elvira O. Green (Maria), Chauncey Packer (Robbins, Crab man), Paisley Alexandra Williams (Strawberry woman), Maurio Hines (Nelson), Ernest Jackson (Mingo), Monique McLeod (Annie), Alicia Helm McCorvey (Lily), Reginald Powell (Jim), Richard L. Hodges (Undertaker, Lawyer Frazier), Donald Hartmann (Detective), Robert Wells (Coroner), Douglas Grimm (Policeman), Collin McCrea (Policeman), A. Robinson Hassell (Mr. Archdale), Levi Ponder (Scipio); Greensboro Opera Chorus and Orchestra; Awadagin Pratt, conductor [David Holley, Producer; Everett McCorvey, Stage Director; John Farrell, Set Designer; Ashley Lindsey, Choreographer; Jeff Neubauer, Technical Director and Lighting Designer; Jennifer Zumpf-Valosen, Costume Designer; Trent Pcenicni, Wig and Makeup Designer; Greensboro Opera; Steven Tanger Center for the Performing Arts, Greensboro, North Carolina, USA; Friday, 21 January 2022]

When Todd Duncan and Anne Brown created the title rôles in George Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess on the stage of Boston’s Colonial Theatre on 30 September 1935, the cultural landscape of American musical theater was lastingly—and controversially—expanded to include communities and stories beyond the genre’s conventional parameters. Drawing his subject from DuBose Heyward’s 1925 novel Porgy, adapted for the Broadway stage by Heyward and his wife Dorothy in 1927, Ira Gershwin collaborated with the authors to provide his brother with a libretto that, though unquestionably perpetuating derogatory stereotypes, offered the composer opportunities to celebrate the nobility of a segment of the nation’s population that few theatergoers had experienced in 1935.

Characterizing Porgy and Bess as an ‘American opera,’ Gershwin composed with his heart in the opera house and his mind on the Great White Way, knowing that a piece with Black protagonists portrayed by Black singers was unlikely to be accepted by America’s opera houses. As the centennial of the opera’s première approaches, stagings like Greensboro Opera’s long-anticipated production affirm that Porgy and Bess belongs in opera houses, alongside the masterworks of Mozart, Verdi, Wagner, Puccini, and Richard Strauss.

Produced by the company’s General and Artistic Director David Holley, this staging of Porgy and Bess began Greensboro Opera’s association with Steven Tanger Center for the Performing Arts. Unfortunately, this partnership was the source of the evening’s sole disappointment. Designed with the principal aim of being Greensboro’s new home for touring productions of Broadway musicals, Tanger Center proved to be an imperfect venue for opera. Without the body microphones and sound mixing now common in musical theater, too much of the sound emanating from the stage was muddled by the auditorium’s dull acoustic. Large voices made no greater impact than their more modest counterparts, and both diction and intonation were sometimes difficult to assess. The singers adapted their performances to the room, however, and the production took advantage of Tanger Center’s spatial and technological capabilities, magnificently transforming the expansive stage into Catfish Row.

The extended delays imposed upon this production by the COVID-19 pandemic clearly intensified Greensboro Opera’s focus on realizing the full dramatic power of Porgy and Bess. Imaginatively but sensibly illuminated by Jeff Neubauer’s lighting designs and technical direction, both John Farrell’s atmospheric set designs, beautifully evoking South Carolina’s Low Country by framing the tableaux with suggestions of hanging mosses and a view of the Morris Island Lighthouse, and Jennifer Zumpf-Valosen’s vibrant costumes complemented the singers’ characterizations of the residents of—and the intruders into—Catfish Row. Trent Pcenicni’s wig and makeup designs were wholly credible for the opera’s setting, glorifying the natural beauty of Catfish Row’s inhabitants.

Dale Girard’s fight choreography yielded altercations of a level of realism rarely encountered in opera, and Ashley Lindsey’s choreography enlivened every scene, particularly those in which Sportin’ Life appeared. Stage director Everett McCorvey brought a singer’s insights and experience to his task, achieving compelling dramatic verisimilitude whilst safeguarding musical integrity. Throughout the performance, no element of the staging impeded the act and art of singing, markedly enhancing the credibility of these characters whose struggles play out in song.

Débuting as a conductor of opera, acclaimed pianist Awadagin Pratt demonstrated deft handling of the jazz rhythms that frolic in Gershwin’s music. The prominent echoes of Tin Pan Alley notwithstanding, the listener is frequently reminded that Porgy and Bess is a contemporary of Berg’s Lulu, Strauss’s Die Liebe der Danae and Die schweigsame Frau, Mascagni’s Nerone, and Enescu’s Œdipe. Pratt’s pacing of the performance accentuated the score’s modernity, emphasizing the piquancy of the harmonies. The prevailing aptness of the balances between stage and orchestra pit was indisputably more to Pratt’s credit than to that of the theater’s aural profile.

Occasionally, the conductor’s assured management of the musical forces was compromised by moments of imprecision in large ensembles, but the adroitness with which he restored equilibrium was indicative of his preparedness. Under Pratt’s baton, Greensboro Opera Orchestra’s musicians played superbly, their mastery of Gershwin’s score producing sounds that were raucous or radiant as each phrase required. Conductor and orchestra collaborated to support the singers and extol Gershwin’s genius.

The choristers assembled under the direction of James Bumgardner sang powerfully from their first utterance in Act One. [In this production, Gershwin’s three acts were arranged into two acts, with the interval following the scene in which Crown accosts Bess on Kittiwah Island.] The choral set pieces were performed with unstinting energy. The fight scene in Act One bristled with agitation and alarm, the chorus’s horrified reaction to Crown’s violence creating an aura of disquiet in which the lament for the slain Robbins, ‘Oh, we’re leavin’ for the Promise’ Lan’,’ was genuinely cathartic. The choral responses to Sportin‘ Life‘s ‘It ain’t necessarily so’ were wonderfully animated. The choristers‘ singing of the prayer for divine protection from the hurricane and the opera’s final ensemble revealed these scenes to be peers of the choral writing in Die Zauberflöte and Fidelio.

Ain’t no misbehavin’: tenor Robert Anthony Mack as Sportin’ Life (left) and mezzo-soprano Elvira O. Green as Maria (right) in Greensboro Opera’s January 2022 production of George Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess
[Photograph © by Luke Jarmoz Photography]

The success of a performance of Porgy and Bess relies greatly upon the cast’s creation of a believable society in which the characters play distinct parts. In Greensboro Opera’s production, the west-of-East-Bay-Street figures who encroach upon Catfish Row’s delicate order seemed to emerge from a foreign realm, their lack of understanding of their neighbors’ community contrasting with the unspoken camaraderie that united the occupants of Catfish Row. Assigning all but one of the rôles of the interloping Charlestonians—parts that are sometimes embarrassingly caricatured—to singers rather than actors lent their lines uncommonly effective timing. The Honorable A. Robinson Hassell’s Mr. Archdale relayed his good tidings benevolently, and young artists Douglas Grimm and Collin McCrae crassly imparted the policemen’s low regard for their countrymen of color. Robert Wells was an earnest but anxious coroner whose discomfort in Catfish Row was palpable. The exasperation of Donald Hartmann bemused, brutal detective erupted into song when, rather than speaking, he joined his witnesses in singing their final ‘Three days and nights’ when questioning them about Crown’s untimely demise.

Amongst the many accomplishments of this production of Porgy and , none was more laudable than the casting of principal and secondary rôles. The theatrical instincts with which Gershwin gave each of the male citizens of Catfish Row a singular function in the drama prefigures Britten’s meticulous depictions of the sailors aboard the HMS Indomitable in Billy Budd. Bass-baritone Reginald Powell declared Jim’s disenfranchisement with toiling in the cotton fields potently and sang all of his music assertively. The gleaming tenor voices of Ernest Jackson and Maurio Hines lent Mingo’s and Nelson’s lines individuality, their tones reverberating in the house excitingly, and Levi Ponder was a spirited Scipio. Baritone Richard L. Hodges was as magisterial as the Undertaker as he was wily as Lawyer Frazier, the voice imposingly handsome.

The cast’s ladies uniformly rivaled the gentlemen’s vocal and theatrical prowess. Sopranos Monique McLeod and Alicia Helm McCorvey voiced Gershwin’s music for Annie and Lily​ fetchingly, their timbres distinguishable but blending gorgeously in ensembles and their upper registers easily overcoming the theater’​s sonic difficulties. Mezzo-soprano Paisley Alexandra Williams touted the Strawberry woman’s merchandise bewitchingly, her tones glistening like rays of aural sunlight.

Fishing for trouble: baritone Sidney Outlaw as Jake in Greensboro Opera’s January 2022 production of George Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess
[Photograph © by Luke Jamroz Photography]

As vital to the advancement of diversity in opera as performances of works like Porgy and Bess is the work of artists of color, and Greensboro Opera’s staging of Porgy and Bess was immeasurably enriched by the participation of a pair of operatic trailblazers. When he substituted for an indisposed colleague to make his Metropolitan Opera début as Ferrando in Mozart’s Così fan tutte on 24 October 1961, George Shirley inaugurated a fruitful association with that company. Having been the first Black singer to win the MET’s National Council Auditions, he became the first Black tenor to interpret leading rôles at the MET.

As the honey man Peter in Greensboro Opera’s Porgy and Bess, Shirley’s singing was a testament to the importance of technique in vocal longevity. The voice retains much of its familiar clarity and recognizable timbre and was deployed with undiminished refinement. Shirley’s acting was exquisitely understated, Peter’s frightened protestations of innocence when being wrongfully arrested as a suspect in Robbins’s murder depicted with wrenching immediacy. Without exaggerating one tone, word, or gesture, Shirley commanded attention whenever he was on stage, not least when, finally released from jail, Peter quietly but joyfully returned to Catfish Row. The sincerity of Shirley’s performance made the battered but resilient honey man the show’s most unforgettably moving characterization.

Following Shirley’s path at Lincoln Center, mezzo-soprano Elvira O. Green’s 1973 début in Richard Strauss’s Der Rosenkavalier began a MET career that partnered her with fellow artists of the caliber of Leontyne Price, Shirley Verrett, Reri Grist, Dame Gwyneth Jones, Fedora Barbieri, Tatiana Troyanos, Jon Vickers, and Luciano Pavarotti. In the course of her tenure at the MET, Green also sang the cookshop owner Maria in two revivals of the Nathaniel Merrill production of Porgy and Bess. [Sadly, Porgy and Bess did not receive a new staging at the MET until the opening of James Robinson’s widely-acclaimed production in 2019.]

Reprising the rôle of Catfish Row’s den mother of sorts, Green watched over her community with indefatigable authority. Whether singing or speaking, her words were not to be ignored, a lesson in which even the flippant Sportin’ Life was schooled. Despite her sternness, epitomized by a ferociously-declaimed ‘I hates yo’ struttin’ style.’ Maria’s affection for her community was unwavering. Green scowled, physically and vocally, and hurled notes at the top of the stave with aplomb, but the core of her portrayal was tenderness. Green’s Maris was a woman made better, not bitter, by hardship.

Returning to rôles that he sang at the Metropolitan Opera as recently as December 2021, tenor Chauncey Packer swept onto the Tanger Center stage with irrepressible zeal. As Robbins, the longing for diversion that leads him to his fatal confrontation with Crown saturated his febrile singing, but there was no cruelty in his rejoinder of ‘I been workin’ all day’ to Serena’s pleas for him to avoid the craps game. Packer’s rousing voicing of the Crab man’s hawking elicited an ecstatic reaction from the audience, the singer’s artistic versatility first grieving and then thrilling.

Preaching to the choir: tenor Robert Anthony Mack as Sportin’ Life (foreground right) in Greensboro Opera’s January 2022 production of George Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess
[Photograph © by Luke Jamroz Photography]

Aside from singing the number that is arguably Gershwin’s best-known vocal piece, Clara’s rôle in the opera’s drama is largely confined to serving as a Cassandra-like foreseer of misfortune. She introduces herself to the audience with ‘Summertime,’ however, and soprano Indira Mahajan’s introduction in Greensboro was sublimely auspicious. The glowing mahogany timbre of Mahajan’s voice enabled her to project her sound above the orchestra (and through the theater’s acoustical murk) without imperiling her facility for floating tones in her upper register. A sweetly magnetic stage presence, Mahajan touchingly depicted the young mother’s unflappable devotion to her husband and child. Clara’s premonition of the approaching hurricane was harrowing, and her scream as she sighted Jake’s capsized boat seemed startlingly spontaneous. The determination with which Mahajan’s Clara rushed out into the tempest to save Jake at any cost underscored the kinship between the adoring wife and Wagner’s Senta that exists in Gershwin’s musical construction. Each of Mahajan’s phrases combined tonal beauty with dramatic intensity.

The man for whom Clara heroically sacrifices her life, the ebullient fisherman Jake, was depicted with imperturbable musicality and galvanizing physical presence by baritone Sidney Outlaw. ‘A woman is a sometimes thing,’Jake’s jovial counterpart to ‘Summertime,’ Clara’s lullaby to their child, was sung with exuberance and tonal allure, the industrious father’s easygoing philosophy stated with amiable enthusiasm. Outlaw brought resolve redolent of Der fliegende Holländer to his voicing of ‘Oh, I’m agoin’ out to the Blackfish banks,’ heightening awareness of the relationships between Wagner’s and Gershwin’s stories. In spite of his untroubled nature, Outlaw’s Jake was shadowed by tragedy from his first scene. Jake’s music afforded the baritone few opportunities for the expressive lyricism at which he excels, but he created a sensitive characterization of one of opera’s few genuinely ordinary men.

Destined to become a widow in the opera’s first half hour, Serena is the moral foundation of Catfish Row, a woman of profound faith who finds solace in the promise of heavenly reward and endeavors to guide her neighbors along a more righteous path. Still, she is a woman who seeks fulfillment in living honestly, and Greensboro Opera’s Serena was never more touching than when Angela Renée Simpson’s smile flooded the stage with warmth. The soprano’s performance intimated that a woman so accustomed to strife embracing life’s fleeting joys is proof of humanity’s bond with Providence.

Serena having watched Robbins fall at Crown’s hand, Simpson intoned ‘My man’s gone now’ arrestingly, building from a hushed start, the words too painful to enunciate, to a crushing apex of despair. When the full volume of Simpson’s voice was unfurled, heaven itself quaked with her sounds. At the picnic on Kittiwah Island, her ‘Shame on all you sinners’ was a stinging rebuke of Sportin’ Life’s sacrilege. In raising prayers for divine intervention during the hurricane and calling upon ‘Doctor Jesus’ to heal Bess, Simpson sang dazzlingly, the emotional deluges never undermining vocal placement. Porgy ends the opera with a pronouncement of optimism, but, in this performance, it was Serena who instilled the belief that, come what may, Catfish Row would endure.

The art of making an entrance: soprano Rhiannon Giddens as Bess (left) and baritone Michael Preacely as Crown (right) in Greensboro Opera’s January 2022 production of George Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess
[Photograph © by Luke Jamroz Photography]

On Broadway, in opera houses, and on recordings, the most effective portrayers of the eerily charismatic blasphemer and ‘happy dust’ peddler Sportin’ Life have been those whose​ virtuoso singing was allied with​ expert acting. Greensboro Opera’s Sportin’ Life, tenor Robert Anthony Mack, cavorted across the stage with agility and a dangerously disarming grin, spouting heresies with the conviction of an evangelist. Always lurking on the periphery of the action, his harassment of Bess was insistent but frustratingly genial. Mack’s performance of the beloved ‘It ain’t necessarily so’ exuded showmanship, his lithe dancing reminiscent of Ben Vereen. Passing phrases betrayed the effort required to project the voice over Gershwin’s orchestrations, but Mack utilized every sound to deepen his portrayal. His voicing of ‘There’s a boat dat’s leavin’ soon for New York’ was obsequiously persuasive. Mack’s Sportin’ Life was keenly aware that the most important weapon in a trickster’s arsenal is the art of escape, but the sparkle of the tenor’s singing could not be hidden.

Baritone Michael Preacely was a Crown who unmistakably understood that, in order to repulse, he must first attract. Entering with bracing bravado in Act One, this Crown was not outshone even by the scarlet-clad Bess. This was also true of Preacely’s vocalism: amidst much wonderful singing, the excellence of his work was never overshadowed. Ever menacing, Preacely’s Crown was also atypically sympathetic, his penchant for savagery seeming to arise not from intrinsic evil or conscious choice but from a lifetime of exposure to others’ ruthlessness. The cornerstones of Crown’s liaison with Bess are lust, pride, and obsession, but the suavity with which Preacely sang, including in the scene on Kittiwah Island in which Crown’s seduction of Bess is anything but romantic, hinted that this Crown may also have truly loved Bess. Similarly, Crown’s taunting of Porgy was more juvenile than monstrous. Each word of the part was sung with meaning, the baritone rarely resorting to growling for dramatic effect. Rather, Preacely sang Crown’s music accurately and euphoniously, finding the impetus for his characterization in Gershwin’s score.

Low Country Lady: soprano Rhiannon Giddens as Bess in Greensboro Opera’s January 2022 production of George Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess
[Photograph © by Luke Jarmoz Photography]

Eighteen years had passed since soprano Rhiannon Giddens appeared on an opera stage. Focusing on widely-acclaimed projects including recording and touring with the Carolina Chocolate Drops, she has concentrated on rejuvenating old-time string-band music. Her contributions to the preservation of America’s folk traditions are invaluable, but her return to opera was a fortuitous and rightly heralded homecoming. Casting Giddens as Bess in this production garnered considerable publicity, but her portrayal of Gershwin’s complex heroine was no mere star turn. It was apparent from her first step onto the set, attired like a refugee from Josephine Baker’s Paris, that Giddens surrendered her own artistic persona to the nuances of Bess’s character, approaching a rôle interpreted in years past by Camilla Williams, Leontyne Price, Grace Bumbry, Roberta Alexander, and Leona Mitchell with unique musical and dramatic sensibilities.

As the ranks of the part’s notable exponents indicate, Bess’s music is best served by spinto voices. Giddens’s voice is a more lyrical instrument, and there were passages in which the vocal lines required slightly more heft than Giddens could supply, yet she met the challenges without pushing the voice beyond its limits. The panic with which she delivered ‘Somebody please help me’ when the police were coming to investigate Robbins’s murder gave way to the serenity that suffused her singing of ‘Oh, the train is at the station’ at Robbins’s wake. Giddens ascended to the amorous heights of ‘Porgy, I’s yo’ woman now’​ fearlessly, her upper register gaining strength as the duet progressed.

The dramatic trajectory of the opera changes with Bess’s encounter with Crown on Kittiwah Island, and the burgeoning constaternation that shaded Giddens’s singing signaled that happiness with Porgy was slipping from Bess’s grasp. The contempt of ‘What you want wid Bess?’ was directed as much at Bess’s own addiction and carnal desire as at Crown. Reunited with Porgy, she sang ‘I loves you, Porgy’ affectionately, but the illusion of their blissful future was broken. In this performance, the wistfulness of Bess’s reprise of ‘Summertime’ instigated her flight from Catfish Row. Whereas some interpreters of the part portray Bess’s departure for New York with Sportin’ Life as a final lapse into debauchery, Giddens’s Bess was impelled to some degree by selflessness, her abandonment of Porgy freeing him from her demons. Giddens was a glamorous Bess, but hers was not a diva’s performance. Like her colleagues, she placed her trust in Gershwin’s music and sang it without artifice or affectation.

Happy never after: soprano Rhiannon Giddens as Bess (left) and baritone Thomas Cannon as Porgy (right) in Greensboro Opera’s January 2022 production of George Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess
[Photograph © by Luke Jamroz Photography]

If love alone were sufficient to right the wrongs of the past, the love of baritone Thomas Cannon’s Porgy for Giddens’s Bess would have secured the joyous, simple life for which Porgy longed. On his terms, Porgy’s entrance in this performance was no less impactful than Crown’s, the visibility of his disability distancing him from his community. Resigned survival of an outsider’s loneliness was a momentous element of Cannon’s portrayal, his voicing of Porgy’s lines in Act One shaped by subtle melancholy. His reading of the famed ‘I got plenty o’ nuttin’’ was surprisingly subdued, an eloquent expression of self-reliance. Whether to reduce the opera’s duration or marginally narrow the part’s range, cutting Porgy’s ‘Buzzard keep on flyin’ over’ is a damaging tradition. Cannon’s exhilarating account of the number revealed the depth of influence of Bess on Porgy’s life, the baritone’s intonation more secure here than in other scenes.

Cannon’s Porgy bared his heart in his ardently-sung ‘Bess, you is my woman now,’ but here, too, an awkward shyness was perceptible, the man used only to his own company slowly leaning to open his private world to another person. Porgy’s concern for Bess during her illness recalled Golaud’s vigil at the side of the dying Mélisande, helplessness crippling Cannon’s Porgy more injuriously than his physiological malady. The exchange in which Porgy divulges that he has sensed that Bess was with Crown on Kittiwah Island was especially poignant, and Cannon voiced ‘What you think I is, anyway’ subtly, assuring Bess of his commitment to liberating her from Crown’s infatuation.

In this performance, the interpretation of the opera’s final scene was refreshingly devoid of saccharine sentimentality. Cannon proclaimed ‘Oh Lawd, I’m on my way’ with bronze-toned confidence, sure of the path before him. More than in many performances, Porgy’s way seemed to lead not to New York but to meeting his Lord. The crutch with which he killed Crown was also the crutch that carried him beyond the safety of Catfish Row, the cross that engendered his salvation. The essence of Porgy and Bess is redemption, and this superlatively-sung performance honored the redeeming grace of humble people doing their best, living and loving through calamities of man and nature.