MAD FOR THE MAD SCENE

Soprano Brenda Rae as Lucia and Santa Fe Apprentices in Donizetti's Lucia de Lamermoor (photo by Ken Howard)

Another brilliant evening at the Santa Fe Opera brought to us another compelling heroine--the fragile and vulnerable Lucia portrayed by the brilliant soprano Brenda Rae who impressed us four years ago as Violetta. What a stunning contrast with last night's Alcina, a heroine who is manipulative and deceitful! Lucia is a an unfortunate young woman who wants nothing more than to wed her beloved Edgardo, sung by terrific tenor Mario Chang who has also impressed us in the past five years since we began writing  www.vocedimeche.reviews. Mr. Chang made an exceptional Edgardo, gathering impact as the evening progressed. His final scene was heartbreaking.

In Salvadore Cammarano's libretto, based on a work by Sir Walter Scott, poor Lucia is thwarted by her desperate brother Enrico, whose political future, and perhaps his life, hang upon his establishing a relationship with Lord Arturo Bucklaw; Baritone Zachary Nelson (about whom we have also been writing for about five years) lent his forceful stage presence and rich voice to the role. Lucia becomes a pawn in this political intrigue and is manipulated into signing a contract of marriage with Lord Bucklaw, here portrayed by a promising member of the Apprentice Program--Carlos Santelli, who has a pleasing, if somewhat covered sound. 

Obviously, this cannot end well! Indeed, by the end of the opera, Lucia has died of a broken heart, Arturo has been murdered on his wedding night, Edgardo commits suicide by grabbing Enrico's dagger, and Enrico will probably suffer the ignominious defeat of one who falls out of favor with the court.

What makes Gaetano Donizetti's opera such a favorite is the theme of a woman's suffering at the hands of men, the torrent of tunes that fell from Donizetti's pen, and the opportunity to hear a favorite soprano unravel to the accompaniment of the eerie sound of a glass harmonica, here played by international expert Friedrich Heinrich Kern. (Thanks Benjamin Franklin for this amazing invention!) The lengthy mad scene requires the casting of a soprano of prodigious coloratura skills-- but the rest of the opera requires her to arouse our sympathy. To this end, Ms. Rae succeeded admirably on both counts. It was a riveting performance that completely deserved the standing ovation at the end of the performance.

Also notable was bass-baritone Christian Van Horn as Raimondo the Chaplain and apprentice Stephen Martin as Normanno, Captain of the Guard, who takes the rap for Lucia's death by virtue of having exposed her illicit romance with Edgardo of Ravenswood, her brother's arch enemy.

One of the great pleasures of the Santa Fe Opera is witnessing the rise of the apprentice singers. Mezzo-soprano Sarah Coit captured our notice when she sang the role of Laurene Jobs in a preview of The (R)Evolution of Steve Jobs which we attended in NYC at Works and Process at the Guggenheim Museum.  Last night she sang the role of Lucia's companion Alisa and she sang it with superb vocal resources and appropriate deference to Ms. Rae.

Maestro Corrado Rovaris, a notable bel canto expert, led the Santa Fe Opera Orchestra which sounded superb, as always. We thought that his somewhat accelerated tempi for the first act was a double-edged sword: on the one hand, it increased the sense of urgency in the plot; on the other hand, we missed the sense of spaciousness he provided for the singers in the second act.

All of the singers impressed us with their musicality of phrasing; the variations of dynamics and tempi as well as vocal coloration indicated the presence of true artistry. The vocal blending in the sextet (when Edgardo crashes the wedding celebration) could not have been better and was second only to the mad scene in its ability to astonish us with the writing of Donizetti and the performances of the singers.

Also noteworthy were the confrontational duets between Mr. Nelson and Mr. Chang--two powerful artists matching artistry with equivalent artistry.

Director Ron Daniels went for a minimalist approach, such a contrast with last night's overcooked Alcina. He set the opera at the time Donizetti composed it--thankfully not in contemporary times. The principals seemed well directed toward sustaining dramatic verisimilitude but the chorus seemed static, standing in rows and moving rather mechanically and in unison. We take issue with Lucia visiting her brother in his bedroom; it just seemed inappropriately informal. And it bothered us that Lucia's hallucinations were invisible to the audience whilst Edgardo's dying hallucination was presented onstage.  However, it was indeed a gorgeous image of Ms. Rae looking pure and heavenly!

The chorus, comprising the Santa Fe Apprentices and under the fine direction of Susanne Sheston, sang with similar superb musicianship and well-defined diction. We expect no less!

Riccardo Hernandez' set design was also minimalistic. The walls and ceiling comprised square panels done in skewed perspective that emphasized the feeling of claustrophobia that Lucia must have felt. The fateful fountain at which Lucia hallucinates a ghost was a fluorescent plastic tub of water. There was nothing great about the great hall in which the wedding ceremony took place. Edgardo's room was nothing but a chair and tiny table with a lamp. This simplicity is not a bad thing but another double-edged sword in that it allowed us to focus more on the performances than on the background.

Peter Negrini's projections overlay the walls with images of forests. Effective lighting was by Christopher Akerlind.

Emily Rebholz' costume design worked very well for the women who wore muted ball gowns to the wedding, as one would expect among the Scottish aristocracy. But the men at the ball were dressed in white tie and tails and not sporting kilts or the colors of their clan, which we have come to expect. The men looked more authentic in the first act, wearing dark clothes trimmed in fur.

The ball scene also included some dancing, choreographed by Zack Winokur, which was vaguely "folk" but markedly un-Scottish.

We left at the end of the opera feeling fulfilled on all counts, but especially that of witnessing the success of former apprentices.  We hope to find Ms. Coit, Mr. Santelli, and Mr. Martin following in their footsteps within the next five years!

(c) meche kroop

FINAL DISPATCH FROM SANTA FE

Kasia Borowiec and Jarrett Ott in a scene from Eugene Onegin
(photo by Bobby Gutierrez)

Our last night in Santa Fe was happily spent watching the apprentices show their stuff.  And what stuff they showed!  We were given to understand that the nine scenes were chosen to highlight the individual talents of the apprentices. We have nothing but plaudits for the singing, but we were not always in tune with the staging and costuming.

In the final scene from Tchaikovsky's masterpiece Eugene Onegin, Kasia Borowiec sang Tatiana with a fine tone and deep emotional involvement as she attempted to resist the blandishments of the eponymous Onegin, with whom she had been so infatuated a few years earlier.

Jarrett Ott took the role of the now lovesick Onegin in both hands and made it his own with his superb baritone and impassioned acting. The scene was directed by Jordan Fein. We could imagine no rationale for Nicole Grebb's dressing of Ms. Borowiec as a 1950's prom queen and robbing her of the 19th c. dignity that the role requires.

Similarly, the third act of Puccini's La Bohème was beautifully sung by Alexandra Razskazoff as the ill-fated Mimi and Jessica Jones as the fickle Musetta. We liked Benjamin Werley as Rodolfo and significant contributions were made by Nicholas Davis' Marcello. 

Kyle Lang directed in the manner of film noir-- with costumes of the 1930's designed by Maria Nieto--a period just as remote from today's audience as the time in which the story took place, but with uglier clothes and hairstyles. To what end we could not fathom. Nothing was added to our understanding of the four bohemians.

Beautiful period costuming was provided by Krista Intravanuovo for Cendrillon in which Alyssa Martin captured all the delicacy of Massenet's deliciously Gallic tunes, with her suitor, the pants role of Le Prince Charmant, portrayed finely by mezzo-soprano Pascale Spinney. The harmony of their voices was stirring and we felt squarely in the fairy tale epoch, thanks to Matthew Ozawa's direction.

Similarly, there was an authentic feel of time and place given to his direction of the scene from Donizetti's Lucia di Lammermoor--a confrontation between Lucia's lover Edgardo (tenor Derrek Stark) and her controlling brother Enrico (baritone Jared Bybee). The voices were well matched and the characterizations apt.  We believed every moment. Caleb Howell designed the wonderful clan costuming.

Where Mr. Ozawa lapsed was in his staging of Tannhäuser which struck us as unsuitable to piano accompaniment.  One could barely identify it as a work of Richard Wagner. The men were dressed in suits (Sharne van Ryneveld) and it felt like a corporate meeting.  That being said, we heard some fine singing, especially from tenor Tyson Miller's Walther and bass Önay Köse's Biterolf. Tenor Cooper Nolan did well in the title role with David Leigh as the Landgrave, Adrian Smith as Wolfram, Andrew Maughan as Schreiber, and Andrew Bogard as Reinmar. 

Kathleen Clawson directed a fine scene from Rossini's Guillaume Tell, another case in which the apposite costuming (Cheyenne Smith) added to the believability. Baritone Andrew  Paulson made a fine Swiss patriot, helped along by Andrew Simpson as Walther, in convincing the wayward Arnold to return to the cause.  This role was superbly sung by tenor Carlos Santelli. Everyone's French sounded just fine.

Ambroise Thomas' Mignon impressed us on all accounts.  Sarah Coit was effective and moving as the unfortunate heroine and sang with a lovely free soprano. Carlos Santelli's fine tenor was heard in the role of Wilhelm Meister with bass-baritone Alan Higgs as the kind minstrel Lothario and baritone Nicholas Davis as the gypsy who sells Mignon to Herr Meister.  The scene was directed by Kyle Lang with the perfect costumes by Tommy Cobau. It made us yearn to see the entire opera!

Bellini's Norma is one of our favorite operas and we were presented with two lovely harmonizing voices--the soprano of Tracy Cantin as the eponymous Druid priestess and the mezzo-soprano of Olivia Vote as her handmaiden Adalgisa. In this moving scene from Act II, Norma tries to persuade Adalgisa to look after her children. Why director Jordan Fein decided to set this gorgeous duet in the room of the children is a mystery and why they were in vaguely 20th c. costumes (Morgan Warner) is beyond me. It added nothing in terms of insight and detracted from the verisimilitude of the scene.  The presence of a pistol was just plain jarring.

There was also a scene from a contemporary opera--Joby Talbot's Everest which premiered last year at The Dallas Opera. In spite of fine singing by tenor Tyson Miller as the expedition leader Rob, with mezzo-soprano Corrie Stallings as his wife and Mr. Bybee as Doug--the scene left us as cold as the climate on Everest and we have no wish to see the rest of the opera. Call us a Philistine if you wish but so many contemporary operas lack memorable vocal lines.  Give us romance, give us passion, give us murder, give us suicide, give us arias!

(c) meche kroop