MANNES DOES ALCINA

 David Khang, Zhedong Ren, Ruijia Dong, Brooke Jones, Maestro Geoffrey McDonald,

Marcella Astore, Jooyeon Park, and Yoonji Kim

The music of Händel is favorable for young voices and we were pleased that Mannes Opera chose one of his operas to showcase seven young and talented singers. We are pleased not only because we love his music but also because it means that these young singers will have learned a role that may lead to employment. Casting students in unknown contemporary operas has always seemed to us to be wasteful of the singers' time and efforts, inasmuch as they will likely never get to reprise the role. Alcina is one of our favorite Händel operas and we have seen it and enjoyed it a number of times.

Each character gets a chance to shine since each aria offers a ritornello that invites decoration of the vocal line-- as much as the singer can Händel.  (Sorry about that; we just couldn't resist.) The story is just one episode in a 16th c. epic poem by Ludovico Ariosto entitled Orlando Furioso. It is not necessary to know the entire poem to appreciate this 1735 opera seria but it is amusing to note that poor Bradamante has been pursuing Ruggiero throughout the entire epic, and also that the prolific Händel drew not one but three operas  (Orlando and Ariodante) from the same source.

In this episode, Ruggiero (mezzo-soprano Ruijia Dong) winds up on an enchanted island where the beautiful sorceress Alcina (soprano Brooke Jones) has seduced men and turned them into animals, plants, and rocks. Poor Bradamante (mezzo-soprano Marcella Astore) has disguised herself as her own brother and, accompanied by Ruggiero's former tutor Melisso (bass-baritone David Khang), come looking for Ruggiero.

Alcina's sister Morgana (soprano Jooyeon Park) instantly falls for the disguised Bradamante and casts aside her lover Oronte (tenor Zhedong Ren). The youth Oberto (soprano Yoonji Kim) is also on the island searching for his father Astolfo who had been converted into a beast.

As you can see Dear Reader, the plot is complicated but has to do with infatuation, seduction, betrayal, forgiveness, revenge, delusion and disillusionment. Having read the notes of Director Sam Helfrich a few hours after the conclusion of the opera, we were a bit surprised to learn that his interpretation of the themes were quite similar to ours.  We can understand his intention to highlight these themes but somehow presenting the work as a French farce didn't work. 

Set designer Daedalus Wainwright created a beautiful set which seemed to be early 20th century art nouveau, at least we recognized some pieces of furniture that reminded us of Musée D'Orsay in Paris. There was a divan, a chest, gorgeous lighting, and lots of doors which emphasized the dramatic entrances and exits of the performers. 

The costume designs of Camille Charara were disappointing. Ruggiero looked not a bit heroic. Bradamante was stuffed into an ill-fitting man's suit which appeared rather contemporary. Alcina might have looked more glamorous. Morgana and Oberto made out somewhat better. As a matter of fact, in terms of acting Ms. Kim's Oberto was most convincing, since it was sincere and underplayed. Oberto's reunion with his restored father was touching.

So, between the anachronism of contemporary clothing and the art nouveau set, magnified by substituting a pistol for the libretto-identified spear--well, we just didn't get it. It's no wonder we associated a French farce with characters  running in and out. 

This is not the only strange concept a director has imposed upon this opera. We reviewed one in Santa Fe that took place in a theater, and one in New York City in which Alcina's magic spell was produced by narcotics and all her victims had to endure withdrawal. We suppose there will never be a straight production of this opera so the best we could hope for is consistency within a given concept.

We decided to try to ignore the silly stage business and focus on the musical values which were fine. Maestro Geoffrey McDonald always brings out the best in musicians and the Mannes Orchestra did not disappoint. By a strange coincidence, the first time we heard Mo. McDonald conduct, it was at least ten years ago, in a chamber production of the same opera!

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THE OTHER ALCINA

Colin Balzer, Kelsey Lauritano, and Shannon Mercer in Caccini's Alcina

It was 1625 in the Grand Duchy of Florence and the Archduchess Maria Maddalena of Austria was Regent, following the death of her husband Cosimo II, one of the last of the Medici dynasty.  How would she entertain her nephew, the visiting Crown Prince Vładysłav of Poland (to whom she hoped to marry off her daughter)?  

Perhaps this powerful woman was a proto-feminist for she commissioned an opera from Francesca Caccini, the daughter of the well-known early Baroque composer Giulio Caccini, composer of "Amarilli mia bella" which was the first Italian art song we heard and with which we instantly fell in love.

The beautiful Francesca was a singer, composer, lutenist, music teacher, and poet; nonetheless, she chose as her librettist one Ferdinando Saracinelli. His libretto was, as so many other libretti were, derived from Ludovico Ariosto's epic poem Orlando Furioso.  In this episode, the Christian knight Ruggiero must be rescued from the evil sorceress Alcina who seduces men and then transforms them into trees and plants.

You may, dear reader, be familiar with Händel's version, in which they are transformed into beasts. Ruggiero's beloved Bradamante, disguised as a man, comes to the island to rescue him, accompanied by Ruggiero's former tutor Melisso. The plot is very complicated.

In Saracinelli's rather simpler version, Bradamante has remained at home and Melisso is transmogrified into Melissa, a good magician whose power will triumph over Alcina's manipulations and evil spells. It is interesting that there was no role in this opera for a castrato and we wondered whether the gender transformation was instituted because there was a marvelous mezzo or contralto in the city-state of Florence.

In this Boston Early Music Festival production at the Morgan Library, there certainly was a marvelous mezzo in the person of Kelsey Lauritano, an impressive Juilliard-trained singer who relished the role and enhanced her expressive singing with gestures which seemed informed by the study of baroque dance. At one point in the story, she appeared in travesti as the wizard Atlante who was once Ruggiero's mentor. We noticed subtle variations in vocal coloration and body movement--a truly impressive performance.

As the eponymous evil sorceress we heard soprano Shannon Mercer who sang beautifully whether she was deceiving the knight with seductive promises, manipulating him with her tears, or snarling at him with rage. She certainly rose to the occasion by means of vocal coloration and facial expression, the over-the-top nature of which delighted us.

The role of Ruggiero, well sung by tenor Colin Balzer, was not nearly as interesting and we keep coming back to the fact that the commissioner of the work and the composer were both women!

 Alcina's three henchwomen were particularly well sung and enacted by Sophie Michaux, Margot Rood, and Teresa Wakim. The men who portrayed the bewitched suitors were similarly excellent, as were their sweethearts who begged for their restoration, readily accomplished at the end of the opera by the lovely Melissa.

The story was bookended by a prologue and epilogue which must have served political purposes. The prologue comprised an homage to the visiting Polish crown prince and the epilogue praised the deceased Duke Ferdinand and the power of the Duchess Maria.

It didn't take too much reflection to realize the similarities with Wagner's Tannhaüser.  A man must be rescued from the wiles of a dangerous and seductive woman! The epilogue also praised loyal loving Florentine wives. 

We speculate further that the Thirty Years War occurring in Europe at that time might have required the glorification of the military and, indeed, Melissa urges Ruggiero to discard the trinkets bestowed upon him by Alcina and to pick up his sword and shield to restore his honor as a warrior.

Enough history and politics!  Let us now praise the enchanting performances by the Boston Early Music Festival Chamber Ensemble, featuring concertmaster Robert Mealy. The parts we liked best were those in which the voice was accompanied solely by the continuo. The sound of the Baroque harp, theorbo, and lute pleased our ear and allowed us to hear more of the singer than when the tutti played.

The costuming by Anna Watkins added enormously to our pleasure and looked very much like Renaissance paintings, especially in the palette of colors. The men who had been converted into trees were costumed with particular creativity; leaves sprouted from their heads and hands.

Although the playing area was small, sharing the stage with the musicians, Stage Director Gilbert Blin utilized the aisles and the area below the stage for the dancing.

Choreography by Melinda Sullivan looked exactly the way we imagined it to look. It was evening of delights to both eye and ear. Let it be noted that Prince Vładisłav did not wed Maria's daughter. However, he must have loved the opera because he had it produced in Warsaw in 1628, making Francesca the first female composer to have an opera produced abroad!

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EAR CANDY EYE CANDY

Anna Christy as Morgana in Handel's Alcina (photo by Ken Howard)

We love our Handel operas with their melodies tumbling out "time-signature over final barline". To hear a perfectly cast group of singers and the perfect orchestra under one (semi-outdoor) roof is a matchless experience. Last night, Harry Bicket, renowned conductor of Early Music, led a spirited reading of Handel's Alcina, one marked by clarity and precision without any loss of emotional range.

Ariosto's 16th c. epic Orlando Furioso visited an 8th c. realm of sorcery and knighthood; it was the source material for many future theatrical works, including Handel's 1735 opera, one that achieved instant success in that epoch and which is given frequent productions in our era. We have reviewed Alcina at least three times in as many years. (All archived).

The story concerns the knight Ruggiero who has fallen under the spell of the beautiful and seductive sorceress Alcina who turns men into animals and rocks when she tires of them. His fiancee Bradamante who, in the Ariosto poem is always rescuing her fiance from some peril or other, has come to the magic island with Melisso, Ruggiero's former tutor, disguised as her brother Ricciardo. The pair must break Alcina's spell. Of course, they succeed.  But not before a lot of deception, betrayal, and some gender bending fun, as Alcina's sister Morgana falls in lust with "Ricciardo".

The singers were uniformly superb and highly invested in their assigned characterizations. As the eponymous sorceress, soprano Elza van den Heever employed her powerful pipes to limn the wide-ranging emotions of the titular character. She is in turn loving, seductive, manipulative, vengeful, defeated, and vulnerable. 

As her sister Morgana, Anna Christy fulfilled the demands of the high-lying tessitura with crystalline clarity and an undeniable facility with the coloratura passages. She imbued the character with plenty of humor in counterpoint with the serious mien of Alcina.

One could not have asked for a better Ruggiero than mezzo-soprano Paula Murrihy who must sing accurately whilst wandering around the stage in a state of confusion and bewilderment. We enjoyed her performance so thoroughly that we are arranging to attend a solo recital next week  presented by Performance Santa Fe. It is never taken for granted that a trouser role will be performed with such believability.

As his abandoned lover Bradamante, the marvelous mezzo Daniela Mack must be convincing in the gender bending role of Ricciardo, her very own brother, such that her revelation to Ruggiero as his beloved can delight the audience as well as astonishing Ruggiero. Her dramatic performance equalled the success of her vocal performance.

On her quest to liberate Ruggiero from the clutches of Alcina, she has assumed this disguise and is traveling accompanied by the tutor Melisso; the role was splendidly sung by bass-baritone Christian Van Horn, whose powerful and resonant sound was blissfully interposed among that wealth of female voices.

Tenor Alek Shrader's lovely sound was similarly welcome as he brought to life the character of Oronte, Alcina's general. Oronte is the lover of Morgana and when Morgana falls for the disguised Bradamante, he gets cast off and only reunites with her at the end when she pleads for forgiveness.

It is said that there are no small roles, and soprano Jacquelyn Stucker's winning and convincing performance as Oberto, a young boy looking for his father on Alcina's enchanted island, won a huge and well-deserved round of applause from us and the rest of the house. We felt sad for her character who never found his father!

We were particularly overwhelmed by the music of Act II when there were fewer distracting high jinx onstage. Bradamante's aria was followed by one of Ruggiero's in response. The famous "Verdi prati" in which Ruggiero bids farewell to the enchanted island, always moves us to tears. Alcina's expression of despair over her loss of power was similarly affecting.

If melodies sound familiar, it is because Handel never thought twice about recycling arias from other operas. His inventiveness comes into play in his accurate characterizations and in his liberal and creative use of ornamentation in the ritornelli. As a matter of fact, one of director David Alden's touches that we most enjoyed was his having the singer deliver an aria with the A-B-A sections performed from three different vantage points.

His direction, from our point of view, was "too much of a muchness". Handel's operas seem to lend themselves to wild adaptations (see our prior reviews) and there seems to be a tendency to not trust the music to entertain a modern audience without an elaborate "concept". Perhaps the directors are right because the operas are long and the plots often confusing. We observed that the audience loved the onstage high jinx and laughed out loud.

Mr. Alden's concept was that of replacing the enchanted island with an abandoned theater and Ruggiero's enchantment that of someone escaping a mundane reality. We couldn't avoid thinking of Wagner's Tannhauser in which the eponymous knight is held captive by the goddess Venus in the Venusberg. Duty vs. desire is a common theme in opera.

But we haven't seen so much humping and jumping onstage in quite some time and found it distracting and excessive. The beasts (Alcina's ex-lovers) were portrayed by some truly excellent break-dancers (choreographed by Beate Vollack) whom we would have enjoyed at another time and place in which we could have given them our full attention. There was continual shtick that we found unnecessary and did not appreciate the moments that made no dramatic sense.

Updating an opera requires that the dramatic sense be maintained; it doesn't work for us if the story is "shoe-horned" into a concept. Taken moment by moment there were a number of valid images.  For example, when Alcina loses her power, the symbolic fuschia gloves fall to the floor.  But when dozens of them rain down from above it seemed to be overkill.  And why was Morgana pushing a baby carriage? And were the rows of people sitting back to back and jiggling up and down supposed to be on a train?  So many moments didn't make sense to us. We felt as if high vocal art was competing with low sight gags.

The setting (Gideon Davey) had something like a baroque proscenium on the left and a painting of a huge wave (like a Japanese woodcut) on the right.  From time to time a wall with seven doors descended. People rushed in and out as frequently as in a French farce.  Mr. Davey's costumes leaned toward contemporary streetwear with Morgana and Oronte dressed as theater ushers. At one point Morgana was dressed like Bette Midler.  

Oh well, the music was great! Handel's music will live on and Mr. Alden's concept will vanish.

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JUST LIKE CHAMPAGNE

Kimberly Hann and Kristen Kemp

Vocal music is like champagne, you can have too much but you can never have enough.  This is what we thought whilst heading downtown for Kimberly Hann's graduation recital at Mannes just after attending a satisfying recital at the Morgan Library. Is this greed and gluttony? Was it time to show Mannes School of Music some love? Or was it the memory of Ms. Hann's outstanding performance with Cantanti Project as the warrior Orlando, suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder to Handel's beautiful music.

Ms. Hann calls herself a Contralto/Mezzo. She has the low notes but, as you can see in our photo, she is far too beautiful to portray witches and sorceresses, and way to feminine for trouser roles. We will just have to wait and see!  Perhaps someday, someone will write an opera for her unique assets. 

The program lasted only an hour but revealed a well rounded artist who has worked hard to earn her Master of Music degree. She began with two arias by Handel which expressed a great deal of feeling. From Alcina, she sang "E gelosia, forza e d'amore"; in this Act I aria, Bradamante comes to the sorceress' island to find her lover besotted by Alcina.  She expresses her jealous rage in vocal fireworks from the top of her register to the bottom.  Quite an opener, and very well handled by the gifted Ms. Hann.

In the challenging "Cielo! Se tu il consenti" from Orlando (an aria we heard her sing before), the warrior's jealousy is not only murderous but suicidal. Ms. Hann conveyed all the madness of the character. Handel is perfect for her voice and she attacked the fioritura with as much artistry as enthusiasm.

A total change allowed the audience to relax from all that intense excitement. Four melodic songs by Brahms elicited different moods. "Immer leiser wird mein Schlummer" takes us right to death's door with a dying woman begging her lover to come quickly. The last song "Von ewiger Liebe" is a real charmer and clearly Ms. Hann understands what she is singing about. Although we heard a slight alteration of color from the man's trepidation to the woman's reassurance, we would like to hear just a little more variety.

Tchaikovsky's songs are always welcome even though we do not understand Russian.  This is OK as long as the singer understands and communicates. This was beautifully conveyed in "Reconciliation". We loved the phrase "And try not to remember in winter How you picked the roses in spring!"

"None but the lonely heart" is yet another setting of Goethe's text "Nur wer die sehnsucht kennt" which we would not have translated as lonely.  It comprises yearning, longing, and anxiety. We would like to offer a prize to a reader who can name all of the composers who set this wonderful text. Someday we would like to hear all the settings on the same program.

Especially lovely was Ms. Hann's performance of the first four songs of Hector Berlioz' Les nuits d'ete. These gave Ms. Hann the opportunity to express a variety of moods and colors from the lighthearted "Villanelle" to the "liebestod" experienced by the rose in "Le spectre de la rose". The darker color of "Sur les lagunes" matched the sorrow of death and the teasing good humor of "L'ile inconnue" involves a man who promises a woman abundant fantasy until she lets him know what she really wants--fidelity.

It was a most satisfying recital and presages a fine future for this lovely young artist. We were glad we went.

Collaborative pianist was Kristen Kemp.

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WHITE BOX-BLACK BOX

Jamie Van Eyck and Katharina Hagopian

Artistic values triumphed last weekend when R.B. Schlather directed a unique presentation of Handel's Alcina--and without sacrificing musical values, thanks to a strong cast of singers and  an octet of fine musicians under the direction of Geoffrey McDonald who conducted with admirable verve.

The atmosphere was casual with musicians and conductor clad in grey t-shirts and a mostly young audience crammed into a black box space painted white.  The stage at the far end was raised high enough for everyone to have a good view and the singers entered from below.  Scenography by Paul Tate DePoo comprised only a short staircase and the head of a fierce wild boar mounted on a side wall, representative of one of Alcina's lovers whom she had transformed. JAX Messenger's lighting was atmospheric.

Costumes by Terese Wadden were vivid, colorful and whimsical.  The sorceress Alcina (Katharina Hagopian) appeared in slinky black with a huge black hat, then in snakeskin and later in a flowing blue caftan and an eerie white wig (hair and makeup by Dave Bova).  Her sister Morgana (Anne-Carolyn Bird) was dressed like a Disney princess with a tiny crown and red sequined shoes.

The knight Ruggiero (Jamie van Eyck in travesti) wandered around in a red kimono, dazed and confused by Alcina's magic spell.  His lover Bradamante (Eve Gigliotti) comes to Alcina's magic island disguised as her own brother, complete with funny moustache and an eye patch. She is accompanied by the knight's old tutor Melisso (David Adam Moore) intent on rescuing Ruggiero.

Oronte (Samuel Levine) is Morgana's lover but in true observation of Baroque gender confusion, Morgana drops him in favor of Bradamante, now called Ricciardo.  Got all that?  It's just one small part of a long and fantastical epic poem called Orlando Furioso written in the 16th c. by Ludovico Ariosto. The segment Handel used in 1735 involves a lot of attractions, deceits, betrayals, rejections, reconciliations, revenge, and gender confusion.

Mr. Schlather made the story interesting by directing his singers to be highly physical with the physicality accompanying the heightened emotions of the text. The young singers handled this well in every case while still managing Handel's elaborate embellishments with aplomb. The voices were excellent and the parts well cast.  The artists worked well as an ensemble.  

Some touches we loved were Morgana's LED-lit magic wand and the way she wielded it, and the magic fruit substituted for the magic ring, a device meant to counteract Alcina's magic spell and to restore Ruggiero to sanity.  There were as well some directorial touches that we failed to fathom.  We didn't grasp why Bradamante appears to Ruggiero in clothes that Alcina had worn, unless we were meant to see her through Ruggiero's mistrustful eyes.  And Melisso at one point appears in one of Alcina's costume with a white mask through which he seems to be inhaling a drug that makes him "stupid".

The small orchestra comprised a string quartet augmented by a bass, a harpsichord and a pair of oboes.  We found no fault with the music and particularly loved  what is arguably the best known of the arias "Verdi Prati", beautifully sung by Ms. Van Eyck.

Titles by Steven Jude Tietjen were barely legible during Act I but with the dimmer lighting of Act II were fine.

Although we can get pretty testy when a director tampers with The Ring Cycle or La Traviata, in the case of a rarely produced opera with such a nonsensical plot, we welcome originality and had a thoroughly enjoyable evening.

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