The Barber of Seville at the Lyric Opera

Rossini’s The Barber of Seville certainly is a popular opera.  Since Lyric Opera of Chicago’s 1954 inception, the comedy has been performed in 14 seasons, more often than such favorites as Rigoletto, Carmen, Lucia, and Aida.  The story revolves around the matchmaking machinations of a fellow (Figaro) who has a day job as a barber, as he tries to link up his rich patron, a count, with his young inamorata Rosina, who is the ward of an elderly doctor who also has designs on her.  

The opera is an enjoyable comedy, easy to understand, and enduringly popular as a respite from the tragic, and often excessively melodramatic, staples of the repertory.  It’s a visual delight and the audience was certainly entertained.  Musically though the opera does not have the memorable, emotive arias, duets, and ensembles of dramatic opera, but it has plenty of melodic scenes with appealing harmonies.  The cast was terrific, and thankfully, the Lyric played it straight with the production, without any dysfunctional, annoying modern reinterpretations.

Some of my earliest exposure to opera and classical music came from Looney Tunes cartoons, and in my memory I can see and hear the parody of the Figaro, Figaro, Figaro riff that, as fact would have it, is sung in the opera by Figaro himself.  Sitting there taking in The Barber, I was distracted in my mind’s eye by images of Bugs Bunny singing the piece on stage, outwitting Elmer Fudd while the annoyed audience throws produce at him.

R Balsamo

Our Lyric Season Closes with Old Favorites Traviata and Boheme

Here’s a belated note about two wonderful operas we saw, moreover heard, this past winter (which only ended the day before yesterday, hence I didn’t realize I was so dilatory in posting).  Actually, some recent Lyric Opera promotional materials spurred me to write.  The Lyric, understandably needing to promote itself these days perhaps more than ever before, markets itself as providing beautiful musical art that everyday people can (and should) enjoy while simultaneously casting itself as a vehicle for a more rarefied opera lifestyle.  High-definition DVDs played on big screens with surround sound and an ever more-juvenile pop culture are taking their toll.

Verdi’s La Traviata and Puccini’s La Boheme have of course some great similarities.  Each is a story centered on a Parisian woman who wins and then loses at love, only to be reunited with her lover just before dying from tuberculosis.  Each opera is its composer’s most popular – and not for nothing is that true, as they are so full of beautiful music each is the equivalent of a greatest hits album. 

The Traviata production featured Albina Shagimuratova as Violetta, Giorgio Berrugi as her lover Alfredo, and Zeljko Lucic and his father Germont.  In recent years Lyric patrons have heard the wonderful voices, and seen the wonderful acting, of Shagimuratova and Lucic, while Berrugi was very strong in his Lyric debut.  Boheme starred Maria Agresta as the ill-fated Mimi, Michael Fabiano as her lover Rudolfo, Ann Toomey as her friend Musetta, and Zachary Nelson as his friend Marcello.  Agresta and Nelson were heard last season in Puccini’s Turandot. 

Both productions featured strong singing and acting, with sets that were visually traditional yet appealing to a more modern sensibility – no wacky reinterpretations here by self-centered directors.     

Lyric patrons won’t see these two gems for a while.  Traviata and Boheme were last produced in 2013, so it’s maybe a 5-6 year cycle.  Next year Luisa Miller and Madama Butterfly will provide our Verdi and Puccini fixes, spiced up with a production of selected scenes from Donizetti’s The Three Queens and Rossini’s Barber of Seville.  But for now Lyric patrons have warm weather to get through.

R Balsamo

Related posts on these operas:

https://criticalthoughtsblog.blogspot.com/2016/09/la-traviata-at-michigans-harbor-country.html

https://criticalthoughtsblog.blogspot.com/2013/02/la-boheme-at-lyric.html

Cendrillon at the Lyric Opera

The Lyric offered up a solid production of Cendrillon, French composer Massenet’s version of the Cinderella story.  This is the opera’s first showing at the Lyric in its 64 seasons, although it has offered up Rossini’s variation on the theme, La Cenerentola, no less than six times.  Massenet’s version is half comedy (awfully slapstick in this production) and half drama, and he gives Cinderella’s father a sizeable role.  Although the story line for the most part is an operatic version of a chick flick, there are a few worthwhile moments.  Particularly of interest, and the highlight for me, is the serious, touching Act III scene between Cinderella and her father, as she despairs of ever again seeing her magical love Prince Charming. 

In popularity Cendrillon does not rank with Massenet’s main four – Manon and Werther, followed by Don Quichotte and Thais.  The Prince is a “trouser” role, written for a contralto and featuring a mezzo in this production; for me, the opera would be more appealing if the part were transposed for a tenor.  

Soprano Siobhan Stagg was terrific in the title role in her American debut, and I also particularly enjoyed bass-baritone Derek Welton as her meek but gentle and caring father.  Sets consisted of various moving panels with writing on them – inexpensive, minimalist, and very uninteresting.  I know opera companies are struggling with cost control, but this was a pretty lame effort.  The show was almost a concert version in costume.  The blame for the set, though, gets spread around to many other opera companies, so the Lyric is mostly off the hook.  Hell, even the Met used it.

I’m happy to have seen Cendrillon, though I don’t think I would go out of my way to see it again.  If an opera company is going through the expense of putting on a show, there are a lot more appealing choices on the list before you come to Cendrillon.  The set was available, sure, but sets abound.  And it’s not as if a packaged cast, already rehearsed, was readily available, for only Alice Coote as Prince Charming was a carry-over from last spring’s production at the Met.  So here are two picks, for example, that jump to mind long before Cendrillon – Puccini’s sleeper Manon Lescaut, last seen on the Lyric stage 13 years ago and just that once since 1977, and even Massenet’s own take on that story, Manon, regarded by some as his best opera and last seen at the Lyric in 1983 – 35 years ago.

R Balsamo

Opera’s Shrinking Audience

Earlier this Fall, the Lyric Opera of Chicago suffered through a short musicians’ strike that caused the cancellation of a few performances, but a quick resolution was reached and productions are back on.  However, the cause of the strike was proposed reduced employee compensation that the Lyric said was necessitated by the fewer performances and reduced revenue as a consequence of its shrinking audience.

I've been wondering about this development and why it is so.  Multiple factors seem at play.  Certainly the wide availability of high-fidelity opera CDs and DVDs has made an impact.  Perhaps even more importantly, opera seems generally much less familiar to most people than it was decades ago.  The general dumbing-down of our popular culture has had an impact – rarely do opera stars appear in general entertainment and public venues as they did in the past.  For example, years ago opera stars could be seen on widely-watched TV variety shows and Johnny Carson-like late shows, but programs like that are no longer common, and the late-night shows have degenerated into junk time hosted by smug, smirking, and sarcastic personalities offering sophomoric entertainment to pseudo-adults stuck in perpetual adolescence. 

So what can opera companies do in the face of these secular trends?  By themselves, unfortunately perhaps not much.  But they can redouble efforts to promote opera and their performers in the broader culture and in the media.  Add perhaps some programming shifts.  How about adding a few evenings of great scenes from a number of operas?  Tosca Act 1, La Traviata Act 2 Scene 1, and La Boheme Act 3, for example, with narrative introductions that explain each scene.  Solo concerts are fine, but they lack the beautiful mixture of voices in duets and trios and scenes, and lack as well the costumes and the sets that make opera such a wonderful visual experience. 

What about being more aggressive in offering smartly-edited performances of operas that perhaps don’t get shown because they’re too long or too complicated.  The Lyric’s recent complete staging of Bizet’s The Trojans (Les Troyens) was wonderful, but it is very long; some opera companies eliminate the first two acts which are frankly not the more musically-pleasing parts and are severable plot-wise.  Although I like having an opera produced in its entirety, if length and cost prevent its production an opera is much better being trimmed than never being seen.  Rossini’s William Tell is another candidate.  Ballet sequences, where they exist in some operas, are now often omitted in the interest of time, so the precedent of editing operas is already established.

Finally, I wonder if opera selection has been a factor in recent years.  The current Lyric management seems to have a tilt toward German, Russian, and modern operas.  Of course those operas have their fans, but I have known few casual opera lovers to pine for a German or Russian opera, or hum a tune from an atonal modern show.  In the professional opera world and among the intelligentsia that may be true, but for many of us in the hoi polloi German and Russian operas remain better in theory than they sound in practice.  A good example of the recent selection tilt is the 2016-2017 Lyric season, which featured two German operas and one Russian among the eight produced, and, remarkably, no Verdi or Puccini.  Don’t get me wrong – it featured some wonderful productions – Norma, Carmen, and a premier of Berlioz’s masterpiece The Trojans.  But no Verdi or even Puccini? 

I realize that some in the high-brow set love to love not-very-popular operas, and I am certainly not arguing for Boheme, Butterfly, Tosca, and Traviata every year or two, but can the Lyric find room for more Italian classics?  In its 64 seasons, including the current one, the Lyric has put on Puccini’s beautiful Manon Lescaut just four times, just once since 1977 and not since 2005-2006.  What about Verdi’s La Forza del Destino, put on just three times over 30 years ago, or his Luisa Miller, done just once in 1982.  How about more Bellini, whose version of the Romeo and Juliet story, I Capuleti e i Montecchi, has appeared just twice.  And never on the menu in 64 years are such notables as Verdi’s Sicilian Vespers and I Lombardi, Bellini’s Il Pirata, and Rossini’s William Tell.

My ideas might not help the Lyric and other opera companies much, and even then perhaps only at the margins.  Opera as an art form is swimming against the cultural current for the first time in its history, and it’s a tough slog.

R Balsamo

Il Trovatore at the Lyric Opera

Il Trovatore is an operatic treat, musically and visually, and the missus and I were delighted to take it all in the other day at the Lyric Opera of Chicago.  We last saw it four years ago to the month at the Lyric, and it was just as fresh and wonderful this time around.  Its music to me is as beautiful as any Verdi wrote.  After its world premiere in Rome in 1853, according to The Lyric Opera Companion, a music critic wrote:  “The music transported us to heaven ... because this is, without exaggeration, heavenly music.  The public listened to every number in religious silence and broke into applause at every interval.” 

As remarkable as Trovatore is, given the wealth of the Verdi repertory it is only the fourth most-shown Verdi in the Lyric’s 64 seasons, appearing nine times, after Traviata, Rigoletto, Un Ballo, in that order, and tied with Aida.  The first production was in 1955 with none other than tenor Jussi Bjorling and soprano Maria Callas.  How’s that for casting?  In fact, in November of 1955 alone, when the Lyric’s season was very short and very, very sweet, opera lovers had not only Callas (in three operas) and Bjorling (in five!), but also Giuseppe Di Stefano, Renata Tebaldi, Tito Gobbi, and Carlo Bergonzi, plus Chicago (Melrose Park) native Carol Laraia, stage name Carol Lawrence, in no less than six productions.

Trovatore has not been everyone’s cup of tea, puzzlingly.  Highbrow critics slam it for its allegedly confusing libretto, but, assuming the knock is even true, few opera lovers have read the libretto, and the plot seems straightforward to me, and with supertitles at a performance the narrative is quite understandable.  Those same critics also look down their noses at Verdi’s supposed retreat in Trovatore from the musical “advances” of Rigoletto (which premiered two years earlier) toward the ideal – loved by the cognoscenti – of the Wagner-like “numberless” opera – in other words, music that’s better than it sounds, as Twain supposedly phrased it. 

Il Trovatore is a wonderful opera, and the Lyric put on a great show.  Highlights of the performance were soprano Tamara Wilson as Leonora, mezzo Jamie Barton as Azucena, baritone Artur Rucinski as Count di Luna, and Roberto Tagliavini as Ferrando.  On tenor Russell Thomas I plead the 5th.  The choruses were terrific, as usual at the Lyric.  And the sets were visually arresting and appropriate to the storyline, and a welcome step up from the less-expensive offerings (however understandable) that occasionally pop up.  Costuming was fine enough for the leads, but the Lyric seemingly ran out of gypsy costumes, for most of the gypsies in the Anvil Chorus gypsy camp scene, set in 15th century rural, northeastern Iberia, were dressed in relatively-dressy 17^th century clothing, including some in top hats; well, there always has to be some transgressive functionary who likes to poke the audience in the eye, highlighting the need for constant adult supervision.

Stephanie von Buchau writes in The Lyric Opera Companion that “Il Trovatore is the quintessential Italian opera, its drama propelled by the human voice.”  In fact, it is so quintessential that it was chosen as the opera backdrop for the zany antics of the anarchist Marx Brothers in their film masterpiece A Night at the Opera.  High praise indeed.

R Balsamo

A post on the 2014 Trovatore at the Lyric:

https://criticalthoughtsblog.blogspot.com/2014/11/il-trovatore-at-lyric-opera.html

Faust at the Lyric Opera

Chicago’s Lyric Opera has a striking new production of Faust, Gounod’s most popular opera whose story is loosely based on Goethe’s most famous play.  The Wikipedia entry for the latter asserts that it “is considered by many to be Goethe's magnum opus and the greatest work of German literature.”  The basic story is well-known – a disenchanted, aging philosopher named Faust sells his soul to Mephistopheles in exchange for his earthly transformation into a dashing and attractive young man, especially, but not exclusively, so he can pursue the beautiful young maiden Marguerite.  Many suffer tragic consequences. 

Faust debuted in Paris in 1859 and has become a world-wide favorite.  Created in the French grand opera tradition, like many others of its kind it is so long that many productions scale it back.  Thankfully, the ballet is often omitted entirely.  Faust offers some wonderful music in addition to its thought-provoking story line.  But although there is beautiful, flowing music in this opera, little of it seems to show up in compilations of favorite opera selections.  The tenor aria “Salut, demeure chaste et pure” is the only one I’ve frequently encountered.  

The Lyric production featured terrific singing from the leads and the usual great vocals from the chorus.   French tenor Benjamin Bernheim played Faust in his American debut, Ana Maria Martinez played Marguerite in her one appearance in this role (Ailyn Perez sang the role in the other performances), Christian Van Horne played Mephistopheles, and Edward Parks was Marguerite’s brother Valentin.  The sets, although somewhat abstract in parts, were for the most part interesting and relievedly period-appropriate.  Taking in the Lyric production in sight and sound was a delightful way to spend a few hours.

Faust has evoked some strong feelings.  Despite being French and spending time studying in Italy, Gounod fell under the spell of Wagner.  In the Lyric Opera Companion, Dale Harris writes that after the appearance of Faust “accusations of ‘Wagnerism’ were leveled against [Gounod].”  Harris quotes one British critic who “accused [Gounod] of being to all intents and purposes a German composer ... and too much after the manner of Wagner to please the lovers of unadulterated music.”   Joseph Wechsberg writes in his masterful The Opera that “Gounod’s Faust remains one of the most popular works in the repertory, but compared to Carmen it is second-rate salon music...  The critics hate Faust and the public loves it.” 

Many music lovers take a different view.  The Lyric offers that “the score ... simply bursts with memorable music. Marguerite’s Jewel Song, the Soldiers’ Chorus, the spectacular final trio — these and much more make Faust a sublime experience.”  And the public does love it.  At the Lyric, in the last 50 years Faust has been the tenth most frequently-produced opera in the Italian and French repertory, with its six productions second only to Carmen of those by French composers.  Boito’s treatment of the same story in his opera Mephistopheles seems well-regarded, if not more regarded, by critics but has not been as popular with the public, as illustrated by its only two Lyric productions in the past 50 years – both in the 1990s. 

The moral of the Faust story is immortal.  Although the notion of literally selling one’s soul to the devil may strike a great many today as fanciful, selling out one’s principles and honor for some temporal advantage is not, so the story has lasting relevance.  Such folly is all the more tragic when committed by someone old enough to know better, for truly there’s no fool like an old fool.

R Balsamo

The Pearl Fishers at the Lyric Opera

A mention of Bizet and one naturally thinks of the composer’s masterpiece Carmen, but he was not a one-hit wonder.  Ten years before that eventual favorite, in 1863 at the tender age of 24 he introduced Paris to a love story set on the island of Ceylon. 

A wandering adventurer arrives at a village of pearl fishermen and meets up with a long-lost friend.  Years ago they both loved the same woman, a priestess, but renounced that love to maintain their strong friendship.  Early in the story, before tensions develop, they sing one of the, if not the, most well-known and well-loved tenor-baritone duets in the Italian-French repertory – Au fond du temple saint.  I think the first version I ever heard was perhaps the most famous one of all, recorded in 1951 by tenor Jussi Björling and baritone Robert Merrill.

Then the priestess surprisingly reappears, under a pledge of chasteness, and conflict ensues.  The story is a relatively simple one, as opera goes, about love, loyalty, and honor.  And all along the way we are treated to sumptuous music and arresting visuals.  In addition to the famous duet already mentioned, of particular note are the wonderful soprano-tenor duet and soprano and tenor arias, and plentiful chorus singing, all a delight as our imagination is drawn to a faraway place and time.

This month the Lyric did a splendid job putting on this production.  The sets and lighting were very well-done, and those responsible deserve a special tip of the hat.  In fact the sets were perhaps the most colorful I've ever seen in an opera.  The singing was spectacular.  Latvian soprano Marina Rebeka was the priestess, American tenor Matthew Polenzani the fellow who wins the girl, and Polish baritone Mariusz Kwiecien the odd man out.  The rest of the singers and especially the chorus were also terrific. 

This isn't ballet-saturated French Grand Opera, but Bizet was of that place so occasionally there was some dancing about, though it was generally uninteresting and ended just before it got annoying.

The Pearl Fishers was a flop when it premiered, standing it in good company with some other initial sleepers.  After an initial short run it was not revived in Bizet’s lifetime.  Well, those same Parisians pooh-poohed Berlioz’s masterpiece The Trojans that same year (the insightful Berlioz was perhaps the only music maven in Paris to have a good word to say about The Pearl Fishers).  The unfortunate Bizet went to his grave in his late 30s convinced that Carmen and The Pearl Fishers were both flops. 

Eventually the opera found its way into the repertory, but still today seems not highly regarded.  Apparently to the cognoscenti the libretto is not sophisticated enough and the score not complex enough – the opera is not as good as it sounds, they say, to borrow a phrase.  But after listening to the rich melodies while sitting in a darkened theater captivated by colorful sets, all an inviting stimulative to the imagination, I wonder – what do the experts really know?  Opera is too important to be left just to them.   

R Balsamo

An earlier related commentary:
Carmen at the Lyric Opera

Rigoletto at the Lyric Opera

Rigoletto was Verdi’s big comeback opera after the waning success of his earlier works, and it ushered in an especially productive time in his life.  Il Trovatore, La Traviata, and I Vespri Siciliani followed directly in this celebrated “middle period,” and constitute a remarkable quartet.  Rigoletto premiered March, 1851, at La Fenice in Venice when Verdi was 38 years old.

The story is set perhaps a few hundred years ago in northern Italy, centering on a widower, embittered by his hunchback deformity and empowered by his sharp, barbed tongue, who labors in degrading work as a court jester to a licentious Duke.  While he gets back at the courtiers who mock him by encouraging the Duke’s abuse of their wives and daughters, he fails in his efforts to protect his own young, beautiful, and naïve daughter from those very same predatory men. 

Parent-child relationships are not commonly the main focus in Italian opera, but they often are with Verdi.  His only two children died in infancy, and he lost his first wife soon after that.  He almost did not recover from those blows, but later he explored parents and children in his work.  In Rigoletto, a father-daughter relationship is central to the tragedy, and the complex father-son relationship in Sicilian Vespers and the very complex mother-son relationship in Trovatore also come quickly to mind. 

One theme of the opera is hubris, or what goes around comes around.  When confronted by an aristocrat who objects to the Duke’s violation of his daughter, Rigoletto mocks him and encourages the Duke to execute him.  The jester is shaken to the bone, however, when that aggrieved father places a curse on him.  The opera's original title, in fact, was La Maledizione – The Curse.  In Verdi’s time, a curse in such circumstances was for some a thing to be frightened of, and it comes to fruition when Rigoletto’s daughter Gilda herself is seduced and then violated by his employer the Duke.  Then the overprotected Gilda, filled with foolish, reckless, and thoughtless passion, sacrifices her life to save the Duke, whom she has already learned to be unfaithful to her, from an assassin hired by her father. 

Deception, and its tragic consequences, is another element of the story.  The jester hides his occupation from his daughter, while she hides her budding romance with the mysterious stranger who turns out to be the Duke.  The Duke deceives Gilda by pretending to be an impoverished student, and is himself deceived by the assassin’s accomplice and sister, who lures him into the trap.  The assassin attempts to deceive Rigoletto when he delivers the wrong body.    

The emotional range of Rigoletto is a key part of the opera’s impact.  His most touching music fills the tender moments between father and daughter, contrasting sharply with his harshness when singing to his courtier enemies and his terror when begging for the safe return of his abducted daughter.

The music of the characters is more intertwined than in many of Verdi’s past operas, with fewer set pieces easily segregated from the surrounding action and other characters.  Per Wikipedia: “Musicologist Julian Budden regards the opera as ‘revolutionary’: .... ‘the barriers between formal melody and recitative are down as never before.  In the whole opera, there is only one conventional double aria [...and there are...] no concerted act finales.’  Verdi used that same word – ‘revolutionary’ – in a letter to [librettist] Piave, [and in another letter Verdi wrote] ‘I conceived Rigoletto almost without arias, without finales but only an unending string of duets.’”

Of course, having said all that, one must acknowledge that one of the most recognizable arias in all of opera is the Duke’s La donna e mobile (in the singular, but better translated as “women are fickle”).  In fact, as the story goes, Verdi recognized that he tune was so catchy he feared that the opera’s cast would be humming it around Venice and reveal it before the premier, so he kept a tight lid on it until the first show.  The Duke has, in fact, not one but three arias, one other of which, Questa o quella, is also commonly heard.  But the real special music in Rigoletto is that between father and daughter.  

The set was in the budget-friendly, semi-abstract, minimalist style so common these days, but it had great visual impact and served to reinforce the theme of varying perspectives.  In this case, though, as is often the case, the single main set did not provide enough visual clue as to exactly where the action was taking place; was that scene in a palace, or on a street, or in an apartment?  Those in the audience familiar with the plot knew what was going on, but if prior study is a prerequisite for understanding and thus enjoyment, opera may struggle even more to expand its audience.        

The set notwithstanding, the Lyric hit a home run with this latest staging.  The singing was wonderful.  Baritone Quinn Kelsey in the title role and tenor Matthew Polenzani as the rapacious Duke, both alums of the Lyric’s training center, were very strong in their roles.  Latvian mezzo-soprano Zanda Svede was also quite notable as the assassin’s accomplice Maddalena, who joins the main three in the opera’s celebrated quartet, beautifully sung in this production.

And then there’s one Rosa Feola, a young Italian soprano in her Lyric debut as Rigoletto’s daughter Gilda.  Not since I saw future Hall-of-Famer Greg Maddux pitch for the Cubs as an unknown rookie over three decades ago have I had such a strong “star is born” feeling.  I expect we’ll hear a great deal about this remarkable young performer in the years to come.

R Balsamo

Norma at the Lyric Opera

The summer solstice is that discordant jolt when just as the warmth arrives daylight begins to shorten.  For opera buffs looking ahead to the next season it’s also a time to take one last look in the rear view mirror.  Patrons of the Lyric Opera are in the middle of a Bellini double-header treat – last season’s Norma, a highlight, and next season’s I Puritani.  Can’t gainsay that.

Composer Vincenzo Bellini is the pride of Sicily.  After his all-too-short life of 33 years, he was buried in the cathedral of his home town Catania, in the shadow of Mt. Aetna looking out on the Ionian Sea.  I regrettably missed visiting that church during my one time on the great island – I only came as close as the nearby airport.  Bellini wrote some wonderful melodies, and one can only wonder what more he would have written had he not died so young.

Norma is the story of a druid high-priestess in Roman-occupied Gaul who faces a reckoning after her longstanding illicit, secret lover, the Roman military leader and enemy of her people with whom she has two young children, decides to decamp for Rome with a younger priestess, his new infatuation.  She had betrayed her religion and her people for him, and faces the consequences, moral and otherwise.  Eventually the Roman sees the error of his ways, but, since this is Italian tragic opera, after all, too late to save either of them.   

The music is spectacular, with the long-flowing melodies for which Bellini is famous.  The singing for the role of Norma, said to be very challenging, I find smooth and full of harmony with little of the unappealing (at least to me) vocal calisthenics common in opera at the time.  Maria Callas gets much credit for reviving so-called bel canto opera in the 1950s, and in fact she made her American debut singing Norma in Chicago at the Lyric in its inaugural 1954 season.  In the program guide, Lyric “dramaturg” Roger Pines quotes the late superstar soprano Joan Sutherland calling Norma “the pinnacle role,” and he writes that “there is no greater music for a soprano in the entire operatic repertoire.”

This time around Norma was performed and sung beautifully by Chicago native soprano Sondra Radvanovsky, who appeared recently at the Met in the three Donizetti “queen” operas.  At the Lyric she was joined by, among others, Elizabeth DeShong as Adalgisa, her conflicted rival in love, and by Russell Thomas as the unfaithful Roman proconsul Pollione.  Radvanovsky’s repertory includes Verdi’s I vespri siciliani; Lyric patrons can only hope.

As for the production, the sets and direction frequently let the audience down, unfortunately a not uncommon problem in opera these days.  Part of opera is visual, so a good set that can help convey the story and stimulate the imagination greatly enhances the experience, while one that is bland, or anachronistic, or confuses the narrative detracts.  The entire Norma set was a single scene, visually interesting in the abstract, but not one representative of Roman Gaul.  I doubt there would be a structure with 60 foot high thick, decorative wooden columns supporting a large indoor space in rural, sylvan Gaul.  And the entire opera was staged in this drab-gray "space," despite some of the scenes taking place in the forest or in a hidden hut deep in the woods.  Well, in the program guide the director says he was visually inspired by … wait for it … Game of Thrones, so that explains that.  That’s relevance, the holy grail of many a hip post-modern director.  But this was a multi-partner co-production, so there’s lot of responsibility spread around.  I appreciate and value imagination, but within the confines of the narrative. 

Some years ago when back in Chicago, Radvanovsky would stop by for delightful chats about opera with the incomparable Milt Rosenberg on his storied late-evening radio show Extension 720; I caught at least one of those programs, and more if memory serves.  I miss that show very much, but that’s another story. 

R Balsamo

Carmen at the Lyric Opera

Carmen resounds once again at the Lyric Opera of Chicago, and I was fortunate to take it all in last week.  The opera is the final and most popular work of French composer Georges Bizet, and the most famous of all French operas.  Bizet’s only other commonly-known work is the opera The Pearl Fishers, known primarily for its marvelous tenor-baritone duet Au fond du temple saint, the first version of which I think I ever heard is the famous one by tenor Jussi Björling and baritone Robert Merrill.  Going back-to-back on Bizet, the Lyric has The Pearl Fishers on next season’s schedule.

Carmen of course tells the tragic story of the bold, seductive gypsy temptress who drives the beguiled Spanish soldier Don Jose into abandoning his duty and his gentle, innocent hometown sweetheart.  Don Jose falls hard for Carmen despite her telling him, quite openly, that she is an unfaithful lover, and when she eventually leaves him for the dashing toreador Escamillo tragedy ensues.  We see through vivid action and marvelous music how passion can be the road to ruin.

But despite all the wonderful music, so evocative of the Spanish setting, the realistic subject matter and the immorality of the main characters did not initially endear the opera to Parisian audiences.  Bizet died suddenly at age 36 just a few months after Carmen’s premier in 1875, and we are left wondering if disappointment played a part.  But Carmen has become one of the world’s favorites.  In his extensive review of the art form titled The Opera, Joseph Wechsberg highlights Carmen as “a perfect opera.”  It anticipates the Italian verismo form, which portrayed the everyday life, often brutish, of everyday people made of real flesh and blood.  The enticing Act 1 habanera, Carmen’s lusty number that snares Don Jose, is perhaps the most recognizable scene in the opera; an indication of its popularity is its appearance in the movie Going My Way, where famed mezzo Rise Stevens gives a spirited performance at the Metropolitan while watched in the wings by Bing Crosby as Father O’Malley.  Carmen’s rhythmic Act 2 seguidilla puts the finishing touches on Don Jose’s enchantment.  I’m not sure, but I may have first heard the rousing Toreador song in a Looney Tunes cartoon.  Then there is the great Act 2 tenor aria known as the Flower song for the bright red rose through which Carmen had selected Don Jose as her next lover, and Micaela’s Act 3 heart-felt pleading aria to Don Jose elicited enthusiastic applause at the performance I attended.  The Prelude and the Interlude are wonderful, and popular, orchestral pieces, and were performed very well by the Lyric’s orchestra.

 

The mood was set from the start of this production with the vivid, lush blood-red curtain that caught everyone’s attention as we took our seats.  The set though was a minimalist one, so common these days, but given that limitation it was surprisingly creative and effective.  The relatively brief ballet numbers added zest to the performance; of particular note was the exceptionally-creative and visually-arresting dance opening in Act 4 in which flowing dresses were used as bull-fighting capes against a flaming red background – the performance elicited an approving gasp from the audience.  The one disappointment, a small one, was the insertion of a distracting, writhing sideline ballet sequence between a shirtless man with a bull-head hat and a toreador in Act 4 while Don Jose and Carmen were having their final confrontation.  Sometimes, even in opera, less is more.     

The music is, of course, spectacular and we come to hear it all.  Georgian mezzo Anita Rachvelishvili was in fine voice in her Lyric debut as Carmen, although I thought she could have acted more seductively in her movements.  She has sung the role of Carmen at the Metropolitan, and The New Criterion music critic Jay Nordlinger wrote of her “big, glowing, smoky voice” in a 2012 performance.  American tenor Brandon Jovanovich was strong as the callow and hapless Don Jose.  He recently appeared last fall at the Lyric as Aeneas in Berlioz’s grand opera masterpiece The Trojans and did a great job in that role.  Nordlinger caught Jovanovich a few years ago at the Met in Shostakovich’s opera Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk, and wrote of him:  “I always knew him as a solid and appealing lyric singer [but] I had no idea he could pull off [this role].  Jovanovich was like a young Marlon Brandon. And he could sing: freshly and ruggedly, easily and commandingly.”

Italian soprano Eleonora Buratto was warmly received as the innocent Micaela, who contrasts sharply with the bold, alluring Carmen.  Lyric Opera Ryan Center alums/members, Americans all, were strong in their roles:  Christian Van Horn as the toreador Escamillo, Bradley Smoak as Don Jose’s superior officer Zuniga, and Diana Newman and Lindsay Metzger as Carmen’s friends Frasquita and Mercedes.  The Lyric chorus, including a talented group of kids, was terrific, as usual.

As is so unfortunately common in opera these days, the director changed the setting of the story in order to insert some sort of additional meaning or send some personal political message.  Rather than write his own opera, he hijacked someone else’s.  In this case, director Rob Ashford moved the story from early 19^th Century traditional Spain to the 1930s during the Spanish Civil War – so instead of bright, traditional Spanish dress we get many performers plainly clothed in drab colors.  But the greater offense was the director’s transmogrifying the men with whom Don Jose takes up after his desertion from smugglers to revolutionaries fighting for “liberty.”  In an interview in the program, the director gives his reason – “The [Spanish Civil] war was often described as Fascism vs. Democracy – so it seemed a good parallel for the opera.”  Unfortunately director Ashford is completely unfamiliar with the relevant history despite opining on it.  In the Spanish Civil War, the “revolutionaries” were the traditionalists, commonly characterized as fascists, who were supported by Nazi Germany; that side was fighting communists and anarchists, loyal to the radical socialist government, who were supported by Communist Soviet Union.  There were horrible atrocities on both sides, and neither side was remotely fighting for “democracy” or “liberty.”  A modest proposal is that opera directors stick to operas as written and stay away from subjects about which they are unfamiliar.  The Lyric has a dramaturg on staff, but it needs an historian as well.

I first saw Carmen at the Lyric in the early 1980s, with Placido Domingo as Don Jose.  Quite coincidentally, just one week earlier also at the Lyric we attended a wonderful concert headlined by the now 76 year-old Domingo.  I had forgotten the exact year of that earlier Carmen, but the concert’s program informed me that it was 1984.  I’m fortunate to have seen Domingo at both ends of his remarkable career.

Carmen has permeated popular culture.  There are some non-traditional appearances of the opera’s story and music that I particularly enjoy.  In 1984 pop music star Malcolm McLaren released an album of pop adaptations of some well-known opera selections, and his riff on Carmen and the Habanera is quite entertaining.  The creative Oscar Hammerstein II transposed Carmen’s story and lyrics to the early 1950s in the American South and Chicago in the film Carmen Jones, which featured an all-black cast with Dorothy Dandridge in the title role.  Finally, the British duo Opera Babes sing a wonderful duet with words put to the Carmen Interlude, an enchanting piece of music; they have performed some of their entertaining repertory, including the piece from Carmen I would like to think, at the Los Angeles Opera House with none other than Placido Domingo.

R Balsamo

Les Troyens (The Trojans) at the Lyric Opera

Looking back upon the many wonderful musical performances I took in this past year, the highlight was the Chicago premiere last month of Les Troyens (The Trojans), the opera masterpiece from the prolific French composer Hector Berlioz.  The libretto, which he wrote in addition to the music, is faithfully based on sections of Virgil’s Aeneid, a foundational work in Western literature, which tells the story of Aeneas and his band of Trojans who survive the fall of Troy and wander the Mediterranean to reach the shores of Italy where they are destined to found the great city of Rome.  The opera focuses on two parts of that epic story – the fall of Troy and the Trojans’ time at the North African city of Carthage where its Queen Dido and Aeneas experience the great love affair that ends tragically when the reluctant Aeneas is ordered by the gods to leave for Italy to fulfill his destiny.  

"The Meeting of Dido and Aeneas," by English painter Nathaniel Dance-Holland

Les Troyens is considered one of the gems of Grand Opera, large-scale works with huge casts, elaborate sets, and evocative ballet which portray some great historical theme.  Berlioz fell in love with the Aeneid after reading it in Latin as a boy and bringing the story to the operatic stage was the toil of his later life.  It is now regarded as his opus magnus.  The story of the Aeneid, particularly its first half which mirrors Homer’s Odyssey, is still read in high school Latin courses (like mine of some years past) and still captures the imagination of many a young man. 

The opera is full of soaring melodies that flesh out the mythological historical drama.  The long, elaborate love duet (Nuit d'ivresse et d'extase infinie!) is one of the most beautiful in all of opera.  An Act 4 quintet is a particular favorite of mine.  In fact, the score is so full of treats that the two most recognizable tenor arias are given to singers other than the lead tenor role of Aeneas.  In Dido’s touching farewell aria (Adieu, fière cité), Berlioz reprises the main melodic line from the earlier sumptuous love duet just for a moment, then ends it all on a somber note, reflecting the love destroyed by fate and the gods.  Opera at its grandest. 

The singing was excellent – strong, clear, and passionate.  The strong cast was led by mezzo-soprano Susan Graham as the ill-fated Queen Dido, Brandon Jovanovich as the conflicted hero Aeneas, and soprano Christine Goerke as the doomed Trojan seer Cassandra.    

The set was of the barren, minimalist variety one has come to expect these days in opera, although for this grand dramatic story I was expecting more.  One example: the cave scene in which Dido and Aeneas consummate their love and create their bond is not shown, thus omitting an important event that drives the plot.  Another: nary a glimpse of the Trojan fleet along the Carthaginian shoreline, where some of the events take place.  At the opera’s end, in the libretto Dido’s sister Anna and minister Narbal curse at the departing Trojans in their ships, but in the Lyric production there are no ships at which to gesture, so the two just sing at the audience.  There was creativity nonetheless; most notably, the Trojan Horse made its appearance as the arresting projection of its giant, awesome shadow on the war-ravaged walls of Troy. 

The costuming, though, was an affront – intellectually vapid and artistically offensive.  Rather than transporting the audience’s imagination back to the days of Troy and Carthage, the director Tim Albery and his accomplices sneered at the audience and degraded the masterpiece by costuming the characters in an incoherent array of random fashions of the last hundred years or so.  Ancient Queen Dido, for example, when first introduced is wearing a modern women’s business suit, and later the noble warrior Aeneas wears a cardigan sweater over what looked like a pair of chino pants and boat shoes.  Not only were such visuals ridiculous, reflecting poorly on both the immediate perpetrators and Lyric’s oversight, but some of the story’s drama got lost.  For example, at the end Dido orders Aeneas’s armor, clothing, and weapons burned on a great pyre.  Aeneas had left them behind at the palace when he abruptly sailed for Italy with his people on strict orders from the impatient gods.  In the story Dido climbs up onto the pyre and suddenly slays herself with Aeneas’s sword.  The symbolism of all this was lost in the Lyric’s production because placed on the pyre were no armor and sword but just some unidentifiable and formless cloth items (maybe that cardigan sweater!).  Dido’s kills herself not with the sword of the departed Aeneas, her unfaithful lover, but with some random dagger that was lying around.

One final point about director Albery, who displays an attitude all too common these days.  From "A Talk with the Director" in the Program Guide:  "You could say [that Aeneas's decision to leave Dido to found his own great city of Rome rather than marry Dido and become king of the city that she created] is a metaphor for male ego and ambition.... He's got his Italy right there, but he just can't accept it."  What a misunderstanding of Aeneas's motivations and of themes of the Aeneid – of self-sacrifice, of duty and honor, to accomplish a goal greater than one's own self-defined pleasures.  It's much easier, of course, for this director to alter the story of the Aeneid than to write his own opera, for that would require real effort.  Apparently it’s too much these days to expect solipsistic directors to faithfully portray an opera in its proper place and time rather than to degrade it to satisfy their own juvenile transgressive needs.

But despite the disappointing visuals, the story and the music were all there, plenty enough for the mind and the ear.  The Aeneid is a great narrative, a poem actually, full of the greatest human drama, and Berlioz brought much of it to the opera stage.  After one hundred and fifty years, Les Troyens finally made it to Chicago.  We can warmly thank the Lyric Opera for that.

R Balsamo

Lucia di Lammermoor at the Lyric Opera

Lucia di Lammermoor is back in Chicago at the Lyric Opera.  It was last presented just five years ago this month, when soprano Susanna Phillips kept us in the audience spellbound, and a bit apprehensive, during the opera’s famous “mad scene” as she moved up and down a tall winding staircase without railings.  The staircase is gone in this season’s production but the set and the singing were just as outstanding.

Lucia is widely regarded as Donizetti’s masterpiece, written when the composer was just 37 years old and premiering in Naples in 1838.  The plot is simple, especially by opera standards, featuring proverbial “star-crossed” lovers in Scotland caught up in a blood feud between their families.  The tragedy is set in motion when Lucia’s brother Enrico and a retainer trick her, with a lot of browbeating thrown in, into marrying an aristocrat for her brother’s benefit rather than the man she loves.  Unfortunately, besides not being rich and influential her lover Edgardo happens to be her brother’s enemy.  Returning from an overseas mission, Edgardo bursts in on the scene just as the marriage is completed and confronts Lucia, each one mistakenly feeling betrayed by the other.  The famous sextet breaks out as the six major players simultaneously express their various emotions and desires.  The just-married Lucia, learning that her lover was true after all, goes mad and tragedy ensues.

As popular and famous as it is, I must confess that the opera’s so-called “mad scene” is not one of my favorite parts.  The long, multi-part Act 1 love duet is splendid, the deservedly famous Act 2 sextet is a highlight in all of opera, and the moving Act 3 lament by Edgardo that ends the opera is wonderful.  But opera aficionados do love that mad scene, in which sopranos over the years have added their own vocal embellishments to an already difficult score.  In his critical treatment The Opera, Joseph Wechsberg writes that the “Mad Scene is a ne plus ultra tour de force for prima donnas ...  Afterwards, nineteen other composers wrote ‘mad scenes’, giving their prima donnas such murderous fioriture [florid embellishment of a melody] that only a ‘mad’ woman would be expected to sing them.”      

Gaetano Donizetti

Speaking of singing, it was uniformly terrific, featuring as leads Russian Albina Shagimuratova as Lucia, Pole Piotr Beczala as Edgardo, and American Quinn Kelsey as Lucia’s nefarious brother Enrico.  The sets were arresting and enhanced the experience.  Large multi-sectional panels divided the stage into a foreground and background, and particular arrangements of the panels in various scenes allowed for an interesting visual complexity, accentuated by skillful use of strong light and deep shadows.  With an otherwise minimalist set, which I usually do not care for, the effect was powerful and a strong stimulant to the imagination.

The recording I enjoy is from 1971 with a truly all-star cast – Joan Sutherland, Luciano Pavarotti, Chicago’s very own Sherrill Milnes, and Nicolai Ghiaurov, with Sutherland’s husband Richard Bonynge and the Covent Garden Orchestra and Chorus.  Opera doesn’t get any better than that.

R Balsamo

La Traviata at Michigan’s Harbor Country Opera

You don’t always have to be in a big city to find opera.  The other day we enjoyed a wonderful performance of Verdi’s La Traviata, the world's most popular opera by the world's most popular opera composer, in the sleepy little town of Three Oaks, Michigan.  The hamlet sits amidst corn and bean fields a few miles inland from the Lake Michigan shore in the southwest corner of the state (surprisingly only 90 minutes from downtown Chicago).  The production was the latest offering from Harbor Country Opera.  [“Harbor Country,” for those who might be wondering, is the somewhat fanciful marketing label that the local Chamber of Commerce cooked up for a string of Lake Michigan shore beach towns in the southwest corner of Michigan, an area that contains but a single actual harbor.  Furthermore, Three Oaks is included in this trademarked marketing “region,” despite being seven miles inland.  Whatever.] 

McMurray, Caraman, & Steyer (L to R) in HCO's La Traviata

Harbor Country Opera is a little gem, and its majordomo Bob Swan, an opera singer himself, has been staging productions for quite some time.  In recent years we have taken in, for example, a most enjoyable showing of La Boheme and a wonderful concert by Isola Jones, the famed Met star, accompanied by Bill McMurray and John Concepcion.  That La Boheme was a full production of the opera in the large auditorium of the high school in New Buffalo, the one town in Harbor Country with an actual harbor.  For La Traviata the setting was the small stage at the Acorn Theater, a modest space in a converted factory that once made corset stays from turkey feather quills when whalebone was getting hard to come by.  Fortunately, corsets went out of style before turkeys became hard to come by.  Swan and company put on a production of the major scenes from the opera, with a cast of essentially the three main characters who do most of the singing in the complete opera.  The performers were in full costume, though understandably the set was minimal.  A narrator explained the story line between scenes.  La traviata means "the fallen woman," and the libretto is based on La Dame aux Camélias – The Lady of the Camellias, a play adapted from the novel by Alexandre Dumas, fils.  The camellia flower in bloom is an iconic image for this opera.

The voices were strong and clear, and the acting was convincing.  I don’t know how Swan managed to get performers of this caliber to this rural corner of Michigan, but he did.  Christine Steyer was Violetta, the consumptive courtesan, Emanuel-Cristian Caraman was her paramour Alfredo, and Bill McMurray was Giorgio Germont, Alfredo’s father.  All three have extensive performance resumes, and in fact McMurray appeared in the above-mentioned La Boheme as well as in concert with Isola Jones.  The baritone-soprano complex duet between the elder Germont and Violetta, in which he seeks to convince her to forego her loving relationship with his son for the sake of his family’s reputation, is one of my favorite duets in all of opera.  And the touching “Parigi, o caro” duet between Violetta and Alfredo, in her last moments, was splendidly done.  All in all, a wonderful show from a wonderful cast.  And notably, the bar was stocked with chilled Prosecco, a Venetian sparkling wine appropriately served and enjoyed at an opera that debuted at the storied La Fenice opera house in that very city.

At HCO’s “Broadway Blitz” show earlier this summer, Bob Swan introduced the show and mentioned some recent health trouble.  The other day he looked stronger, a most welcome sign for fans of Harbor Country Opera.  Salut, Mr. Swan.

R Balsamo

Lyric Opera Under the Stars – 2016

The opera gods had their way last Friday and stopped the light drizzle just as the concert began.  It turned out to be a beautiful evening under the stars at Chicago's lakefront Millennium Park for the annual Stars of the Lyric Opera concert.  

The concert, though, was a bit more mixed than the weather.  The new regime at the Lyric does not seem overly-enamored with Italian opera, and the concert as well as the new season reflects that (just two of the upcoming season's eight operas are Italian, with not a single Verdi or Puccini; but in fairness the two chosen – Norma and Lucia – are two of the very best). Selections from four of the new season's eight planned operas were performed, highlighted by mezzo Tanja Ariane Baumgartner's appearance in a flaming red dress as Carmen for the habanera, which she sang wonderfully.

Other than the selections from Carmen and Lucia and a crowd sing-along of the stirring Va Pensiero chorus from Nabucco (a highlight of last season), there wasn't much red meat, operatically speaking, on the bill.  No duets or trios, and just how many concerts feature not one but two bass arias?  I was hoping for a selection from the upcoming Berlioz masterpiece Les Troyens (The Trojans), which I have been studying, but no dice, and nothing from Norma.

Nevertheless, a wonderful way to spend a Friday September evening by the lakeshore, gratis, thanks once again to the Lyric Opera.

R Balsamo

Nabucco at the Lyric Opera

Nabucco is the opera that made Verdi’s name, first performed when the composer was just 29 years old.  Generally regarded as Italy’s, if not the world’s, greatest opera composer, and certainly its most popular, Verdi was born into a family of modest means in northern Italy and had his first music lessons as a boy from his local parish priest.  His talent was noticed and he eventually found his way to Milan.  His early life, though, was not a straight line of success and happiness.  Although his first opera was a modest success, his second was a complete flop.  By that point his two young children both had died, soon followed by his 26 year old wife.  Devastated, he put composing aside, perhaps wondering if he could ever write again.  Eventually he was convinced to try his hand at another opera.  He later recalled, per Wikipedia, how he slowly started his work with "this verse today, tomorrow that, here a note, there a whole phrase, and little by little [it] was written."  The opera was well-received at its first performance in 1842 at La Scala.  It was Nabucco.  I was fortunate to attend a performance the other day at the Lyric Opera of Chicago.

It’s easy for a wonderful work like Nabucco to get lost amidst the great riches of Italian opera.  An example:  The Lyric Opera Companion is a collection of essays on 90 operas – the “world’s greatest” says the cover.  It includes 14 operas by Verdi, but Nabucco is not one of them.  I think that says more about Verdi’s body of work than it does about Nabucco.  It also says more about the collection, one that excludes, for example, the Bellini masterpiece Norma while including Twentieth Century smash hits like The Voyage of Edgar Allan Poe and Philip Glass’s Satyagraha (boy it's hard to stop humming those Glass tunes). 

Nabucco's story line seems a curious one for Verdi, in his grief, to tackle, but the impresario of La Scala pressed him to undertake it.  The libretto is based on biblical stories of the trials and tribulations of the Hebrews in Jerusalem as they are attacked and conquered by the Assyrian king Nebuchadnezzar II (shortened to Nabucco) from Babylon, who after destroying their great Temple hauls them off to Babylon as slaves.  That part is historical.  The libretto adds a love triangle between a Hebrew soldier of royal blood and Nabucco’s two daughters who both desire the young man.  The rejected sister vows vengeance, and eventually usurps the throne intending to kill the Hebrew captives.  Great melodrama ensues.      

Although it has grand musical moments, apart from one piece Nabucco’s music is rarely featured on compilation albums.  One reason may be that despite many wonderful ensemble sections, the tenor role is minimal – the solos and most of the male singing are for the bass and the baritone.  In fact, the bass has a great deal of solo singing, though too much of that low, low register for my taste.  Certainly a band or an orchestra needs a double bass fiddle, but not front and center carrying the melody.  Nevertheless, there is some beautiful music.  Notable is the moving second act quartet, which blends into a moving ensemble as more singers join in.  The one well-known number is the melodic and stirring "Chorus of the Hebrew Slaves," sung by a downtrodden group of Hebrew slaves toiling along the Euphrates who sing the hopeful “Va, pensiero, sull'ali dorate” ("Fly, thought, on golden wings").  In fact, when Nabucco premiered some feared the piece would remind northern Italians of their subjugation by their then Austrian rulers and thus enflame political passions.

This is the recording I have been enjoying;
Domingo sings the relatively-small tenor role

Lyric's major singers are a bunch of Verdians.  Russian soprano Tatiana Serjan returned to the Lyric in the lead role of the spurned and vengeful daughter Abigaille.  She was terrific.  I enjoyed her last year in the lead role in Tosca and thought (link) her “a great actress with a great voice.”  About that performance, Lawrence A. Johnson wrote (link) that Serjan “vocally was beyond reproach, her gleaming lyric-dramatic instrument communicating a wide range of intense emotions as touchingly as her expressive face.”  Music critic Jay Nordlinger caught Serjan a few years ago in Verdi’s Macbeth at the Salzburg Festival and praised her performance, writing that she “smoked, smoldered, and scalded her way through the role.  She could not have been darker, and she was wonderfully effective.  Her soft high notes ... were astounding.” 

Serbian baritone Željko Lucic was strong as the king Nabucco, coming alive in the second half.  He has a warm, powerful voice.  He is a regular at the Met, having sung two roles just last fall – Iago in Otello and Scarpia in Tosca.  Rounding out the all-Slav cast in the three major roles was Russian bass Dmitry Belosselskiy, strong in his part as Zaccaria, the High Priest of the Hebrews.  His bass sound is as forceful and vibrating as I think I have ever heard.  He opened the current season at La Scala alongside Anna Netrebko in Verdi’s Giovanna d’Arco.  Reviewing Belosselskiy’s performance last year in Verdi’s Ernani, Nordlinger wrote that “he owns a beautiful instrument.”  The actual lovers in the story, who set many of the events in motion, have small roles – the Hebrew soldier Ismaele was Russian tenor Sergei Skorokhodov and Nabucco’s daughter Fenena was American mezzo-soprano Elizabeth DeShong.  The Lyric snuck one Italian into the production in the form of conductor Carlo Rizzi.  

The Lyric set was striking in its vivid coloring, though excessively stark and spare in design.  Props were de minimus.  Here budget constraints melded with minimalist Ikea sensibilities.  As for costumes, the suffering Hebrews were all in mourning black, the slaughtering and arsonist Babylonians all in flame red.  Many of the backgrounds were in a deep, rich blue, perhaps to recall the blue used on the traditional Jewish prayer shawls worn at synagogue, a reminder of the great Temple just lost.

The libretto’s story of the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem and the Babylonian captivity is broadly based on historical fact.  In the opera, though, Nabucco, the Nebuchadnezzar of Hanging Gardens and Ishtar Gate fame (link), proclaims himself a god and is promptly struck mad by the true Hebrew God.  Fortunately, he eventually recognizes the true God just in time to regain his senses and save his daughter Fenena, Ismaele, and the other Hebrew captives from execution at the hands of the vengeful Abigaille.  The operatic, fictional Nabucco is a composite of a number of historical characters, one of which is Cyrus, the Persian king who eventually freed the captives and allowed them to return to Judea.  The real history was not so easy on the Hebrews, but filled with such grand spectacle and beautiful music, we’re happy to let Verdi and his librettist take the liberties needed to produce such a wonderful musical story. 

R Balsamo 

Domingo & Martinez at the Lyric

Last evening the Lyric Opera of Chicago presented Placido Domingo, Ana Maria Martinez, and the Lyric Orchestra in concert to a packed house.  Though Domingo’s voice is not quite what it once was, he is still wonderful to see and hear, still touring and performing at 74 years old.  Martinez is well-known at the Lyric, and I had the good fortune in recent years to catch her as Mimi in La Boheme (link) and at a Stars of the Lyric late-summer outdoor concert (link).  The concert was a bit subdued emotionally and at times a touch perfunctory, but the audience loved it.  Special was the beautiful baritone-soprano duet from La Traviata, where the thirty or so year difference between the singers perfectly matched the storyline.  Other highlights for me included the love duet from The Merry Widow and “Tonight” from West Side Story.  The Lyric Opera Orchestra performed a number of pieces alone, including the rousing overture from Verdi’s La forza del destino.              

Domingo’s solos included Lehar’s “Dein Ist Mein Ganzes Herz” and Torroba’s “Amor, Vida De Mi Vida”, both of which he sang long ago in Three Tenors concerts, and arias from Andrea Chenier and Macbeth.  Martinez’s program included an aria from Ernani and “If I Loved You” from Carousel.  They concluded their encore set with a pleasant surprise, at least to me – a two-part rendering of the De Curtis Neapolitan song “Non Ti Scordar di Me,” which is as moving and melodic as the composer’s much more well-known “Torna a Surriento.”  The city is fortunate to have the Lyric.  In all a wonderful way to spend a cold winter evening in Chicago.

R Balsamo

Tosca at the Lyric Opera

Original Poster

The Lyric Opera of Chicago is now running a new production of Puccini’s Tosca, and I was fortunate to take it in the other day.  This opera has some beautiful melodies, and its first act is wonderful.  But as the story moves on the gruesomeness of its plot is revealed.  Torture, extortion for sexual favors, murder, a hanging corpse, an execution, and a suicide are all brought starkly before us.  Talk about verismo opera.  And this production’s austere set adds to the gloominess and to boot uses costumes from much later in time than the original – extra touches from a director thinking he’s improved on Puccini.

As opera plots go, this one is simple.  All the action takes place in a 24 hour period in Rome in the year 1800.  The painter Cavaradossi stumbles upon an old revolutionary comrade on the run from a jailbreak and helps him with food and a good hiding place.  But the ruthless police chief Scarpia appears and finds reason to suspect Cavaradossi of just that.  Although the painter denies all, Scarpia proceeds to torture him to see if he’s lying, and forces his inamorata Tosca, a singer, to listen.  Scarpia is clearly obsessed with Tosca – he proclaims in the Te Deum scene of the first act “Tosca, you make me forget God” – and uses her relationship with Cavaradossi to attempt a two-fer – get the information he wants and possess her as well.  When Tosca can no longer stand her lover’s screams, she reveals the truth to Scarpia.  Since she confirms that Cavaradossi has in fact aided a political enemy of the state, it is not at all clear what Tosca thinks the happy ending could be for her lover (and herself as well).  Well, it is usually a capital error to expect much logic from opera characters, so strike that thought.  Nevertheless, Tosca seems to work out a solution, and through double double-crosses the opera moves on to its dramatic conclusion.     

In program notes, the director writes that “the central message of Tosca [is] the clash between corrupt authority and the freedom of the artist....  A painter and a singer have dedicated themselves to the creation of beauty and art, but they find themselves fighting for their moral survival because of a political situation over which they have no control....”  Well, I think I understand the conceit to see artists as suffering for their art, but actually the painter is tortured because he is suspected, correctly, of hiding an escaped prisoner seen as revolutionary by the current regime (technically the Kingdom of Sicily, and soon to be, when joined by the actual island, the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies).  Cavaradossi could have been a shoemaker and he would have been treated all the same.  One does not endorse his behavior in recognizing that Scarpia is not an art critic. 

Cover of the Original 1899 Libretto

It is Tosca’s music that is worth the price of admission.  Notably, there are three wonderful arias, a marvelous, emotionally fluctuating first act duet between the doomed lovers, and the powerful Te Deum first act finale.  The three lead characters are most of the show, and the performers I saw were a pleasure.  Music critic Jay Nordlinger once wrote that “the role of Tosca requires a soprano to be coquettish and tender, imperious and scalding.”  Russian soprano Tatiana Serjan was all that – a great actress with a great voice.  And she can play a scene for a comedic effect as when she commands Cavaradossi to change the eye color of the woman in his unfinished portrait from “azzurra” to the brown of her own.  The Russian baritone Evgeny Nikitin as Baron Scarpia and particularly the American tenor Brian Jagde as Mario Cavaradossi were solid in their roles. 

In the Lyric Opera Companion, Stephanie von Buchau writes that "the most memorable slur cast on opera ... is Professor Joseph Kerman's celebrated dismissal: Tosca, that shabby little shocker."  But, she writes, "Tosca, like all of Puccini's mature operas, consists of more than just a series of caloric tunes draped over a lurid story line in dubious taste.  Puccini was an artisan, and however you rate his inspiration, you have to rate his craftsmanship very near the top of the list." No argument here, but in Tosca we the audience do not develop quite the same emotional attachment to Tosca as we do, for example, with Mimi in Boheme or Cho-Cho-San in Butterfly. 

Filled with beautiful music however brutal the plot, Tosca is one of the most performed operas in the world.  Just among Puccini operas, it is more often performed than Butterfly, Turandot, and all the others save Boheme.  In the index to Opera – the Extravagant Art, Herbert Lindenberger's wide-ranging treatise on opera, there are about as many citations to Tosca as there are to all other Puccini operas combined.  Perhaps it is as simple as opera being mostly about the music.

Tosca has been a favorite at Lyric Opera.  It was featured in the company’s first season in 1954, although it may have been performed in the city earlier as there had been previous opera companies.  That first production featured Eleanor Steber as Tosca, Giuseppe Di Stefano as Cavaradossi, and Tito Gobbi as Scarpia.  Two years later Tosca was back, this time with Renata Tebaldi, Jussi Bjoerling, and Gobbi again.  In the Lyric’s first 25 seasons, Tosca was featured in 10 of them with Gobbi as Scarpia in eight.  In 1976 there was a newcomer to the role of Cavaradossi at the Lyric – Luciano Pavarotti, whose "favorite tenor and idol," according to his Wikipedia entry, was the Lyric's very first in that role, Giuseppe Di Stefano.  

 R Balsamo

Some related posts:
Il Trovatore at the Lyric Opera
The Lyric Opera at Millennium Park, 2014
La Boheme at the Lyric
Aida at the Lyric
Show Boat at the Lyric Opera