Mozart: Don Giovanni
Libretto by Lorenzo da
Ponte
Mariusz Kwiecien (baritone) - Don Giovanni
Paul Short
(baritone) - Leporello
Christina Pier (soprano) - Donna Anna
Brindley
Sherratt (bass) - Commendatore
Eric Cutler (tenor) - Don Ottavio
Ana María
Martínez (soprano) - Donna Elvira
Ying Huang (soprano) - Zerlina
Patrick
Carfizzi (baritone) - Masetto
Orchestra of the Santa Fe Opera
Alan
Gilbert (conductor)
Chas Rader-Shieber (director)
Saturday 14 August
2004
Santa Fe
Opera Theater, Santa Fe
Bellini: La sonnambula
Libretto by Felice
Romani
Natalie Dessay (soprano) - Amina
Shalva Mukeria (tenor)
- Elvino
Giovanni Furlanetto (bass) - Count Rodolfo
Evelyn Pollock
(soprano) - Lisa
Matthew Arnold (baritone) - Alessio
Orchestra and
Chorus of the Santa Fe Opera
Evelino Pidò (conductor)
Stephan Grogler
(director)
Friday 13 August 2004
Santa Fe Opera Theater, Santa
Fe
Handel: Agrippina
Libretto by Vincenzo
Grimani
Christine Goerke (soprano) - Agrippina
Kristine Jepson
(mezzo-soprano) - Nero
David Walker (countertenor) - Narciso
Christophe
Dumaux (countertenor) - Ottone
Lisa Saffer (soprano) - Poppea
Brindley
Sherratt (bass) - Claudio
Orchestra of the Santa Fe Opera
Harry Bicket
(conductor)
Francisco Negrin (director)
Thursday 12 August
2004
Santa Fe Opera Theater, Santa Fe
The lightning in the heavens didn't always translate into
thunderclaps onstage. But any artistic shortcomings there may have been in the
congenial, semi-outdoor Santa Fe Opera Theater this summer weren't about ineptness: they
were cases of strong-minded talents not always achieving fully-realized
results.
A rendering of Bellini's bel canto showpiece La sonnambula as well-sung as this one (starring Natalie Dessay) is a rare occasion, so when the thoughtful production concept — that the whole story is the sleepwalking heroine's bad dream — only sometimes fit the opera's flimsy dramaturgy, it was worth remembering that the piece is usually done these days in concert, with no staging at all. Few directors can get their arms around the complex political skullduggery in Handel's Agrippina, so let's not unduly fault this one for going too far down the road of black comedy. Mozart's Don Giovanni has defeated some great opera companies; let's be happy that this one provided confident stage and musical direction, even if the crucial final scene came unhinged.
In other words, these three of the 2004 season's five productions were worth the trip to this unlikely opera capital, a city which otherwise panders so ceaselessly to the tourist trade as to earn the unaffectionate nickname Adobe Disney World. And considering how long it takes to get to Santa Fe from almost anywhere else, an opera that's worth the trip is worth a lot.
Most worthwhile, most thoughtful, most impressive all around was Don Giovanni. Am I the only one who has wondered why the title character's Champagne Aria is always taken at such a fast, expression-defeating tempo? This time it wasn't — and that was only one of numerous sensible, musical touches from conductor Alan Gilbert, who not only maintained lightness and transparency but keenly supported Chas Rader-Shieber's staging. Musical and dramatic elements were so well integrated that it was obvious that the conductor had been closely involved with stage rehearsals. One telling example of this integration was Don Giovanni's Act II serenade, "Deh, vieni alla finestra." Though the song is ostensibly directed to a woman near a window, the Don sang it to the heavens (which happened, at that point, to be devoid of the nightly lightning) — suggesting that beneath his compulsive seductions, he is indeed searching for a feminine ideal. Gilbert's expansive tempos gave the aria a dreaminess that supported that idea, revealing a hidden pocket of humanity in a character usually portrayed as 100 percent dishonorable.
On a more macro level, any production must cope with the un-motivated arrivals and exits of Don Giovanni's nemeses, Elvira, Anna and Ottavio. David Zinn's blood-and-passion-red set subliminally accounted for all the comings-and-goings by showing us interiors and exteriors full of doors, as if he were designing for a farce. Doors don't appear onstage unless they're going to be used, so if everyday logic couldn't be applied to the opera's dramaturgy, the set, using less-rational but just-as-viable stage logic, created a world in which the opera's action wasn't questionable. Costume-wise, style was paramount, the clothes setting the scene in the not-so-distant past with long black leather coats and matching fedoras.
Mariusz Kwiecien led the cast as a sexy, boyish, spoiled-rotten Don Giovanni — and one that made perfect sense, even as he departed from the usual grace of Mozartean vocal style to show brutish side of his character. Luckily, his recitatives were worked out with a dramatic thoroughness that allowed his character to emerge in many shades.
The other singers, though all excellent, emerged with less vocal and theatrical originality. Few Leporellos project such a sense of co-dependency as Kevin Short did, making his descent into his master's perfidious world more than just a matter of (im)morality. Ana María Martínez was a visually severe Donna Elvira whose self-righteous pursuit of Don Giovanni was in fact a coming-to-terms with her sensual side. Ying Huang's Zerlina was so randy that her ultimate flight from Don Giovanni's advances didn't entirely make sense, but she sang quite well. The Ottavio, Eric Cutler, is that rarest of creatures, a very tall tenor — and one whose light timbre and fast vibrato are immediately recognizable. Yet his upper range sounded labored, and I'm not sure that the voice, for all its charisma, yet has its final polish.
Natalie Dessay is one of the few coloraturas since Callas who can both sing La sonnambula and manage to look Swiss without wearing a dirndl and a bell around her neck. This production was in many ways built around her slight figure, lightweight voice and penetrating mind, showing the opera through the eyes of her character Amina, a sickly child who spends much of her day in her nightgown with her nose in a book. That concept, however, didn't account for key scenes when Amina is sleepwalking with eyes closed. (Oh well ...) The outside world, a pristine Victorian-era village, was effectively portrayed as a strange and grotesque place with overbearing townspeople in outsized bonnets and hats, disregarding any sense of personal boundaries when coming to call. Elvino, who traveled by rowboat in an artificial onstage lake, was an overdressed village nerd here; that he was portrayed as highly eligible drove home the bourgeois values of this almost shockingly provincial milieu. As her world unraveled, Amina's house broke into sections suggesting Edgar Allen Poe's House of Usher, minus ominousness.
For all this cleverness on director Stephan Grogler's part, I'm still unconvinced that the opera is stageworthy. Dessay and her co-stars Shalva Mukeria (Elvino) and Giovanni Furlanetto (the Count) sang with a style and fluency that one should never take for granted in Bellini. Yet there's always the challenge of making the florid arias sound more consequential than artful vocal embroidery — a challenge that was only occasionally met. La sonnambula still seemed like staged note-spinning.
Of course, there's no wrong reason to hear Natalie Dessay, particularly in her current vocal state. In years past I've felt the amplitude of her tone sounded forced; now it's as natural as can be. Add that to her keen treatment of words and her accuracy of pitch and you had an exceptional performance, even if her voice couldn't convey the gravity that Callas could. La sonnambula may well end up as a footnote in Dessay's repertoire, but it's one I wouldn't want to have missed.
Some in the Santa Fe audience expressed relief at the precision of Dessay's coloratura after having heard Agrippina, which was cast with a number of seasoned Handelians who seemed to be having too good a time tearing up the stage to attend to vocal accuracy. Even conductor Harry Bicket, who has worked wonders in Handel in such places as New York City Opera, was in less-than-miraculous form here.
In the cast's defense, Agrippina is so dramatically vivid that, when listening to a recording without following the libretto, your curiosity is constantly piqued about what's going on. The answer: A precursor to The Manchurian Candidate, the opera's anti-heroine being a Roman version of the Angela Lansbury/Meryl Streep character, catapulting her son Nero to the imperial throne.
Director Francisco Negrin, with a handsome, all-purpose Allen Moyer set that accommodated the relatively modern-dress production, offered enough witty touches early on to establish a world in which you're supposed to enjoy the machinations and manipulations of some very, very bad people. Agrippina, for example, starts by finding girly magazines under Nero's mattress — gleefully — and proceeds to all but swoop from victim to victim.
Much of this interpretation seemed based around the natural comedic sense of Christine Goerke. She is generally an exemplary Handel heroine, capable of an ideal balance between vocal agility and weight. But here she let her accuracy slip, and despite her theatrical savvy she missed, amid all of her stage business, the humanity that can make the opera a deeper experience. Lisa Saffer was a sexy Poppea; though her pitch was accurate, her rhythm was often messy. The big discovery in the cast was countertenor Christophe Dumaux as Ottone. His singing has an ease, naturalness and body that one still doesn't take for granted in his voice type, and his stage presence one doesn't take for granted in any voice type.
There were about 30 minutes worth of cuts, mostly of arias for minor
characters. Though dramatic continuity was maintained, since the characters kept
their recitatives, Handel's long-term scheme of tonal planning was not. If
cutting is really necessary for this audience, at least it was done
carefully.
