Long before they looped the décolletés of 1920s flappers, spiraled pearls ran rings around the ocean’s ornamental output in the form of frothy swirls: white whorls whose limpid luminosity brought earthly jewelry into pre-antiquity.

Seven tiers of snowy marble in a staircase or a wedding cake can spark a similar entrancement in our ultra-modern times. As can the imaging of spinning soundwaves taking flight at music’s entrance to the ether.

Phenomena like these are slow to lend themselves to an immediate comparison, trapped as each era is by the confinement of its trimmings. Yet when our only natural instrument is coiled to fashion both the elements’ unending exploits and a synthesizer’s pitch bends, we’re reminded that the human voice was first to bear elastic artistry.

Limberness applies as equally to the unspooling ribbons of Joyce DiDonato’s instrument as it does to occurrences contrived and real; spontaneous and unnatural. In a recital with pianist Craig Terry at the Barbican Centre in London her performance drew parallels between the seas’ beating waves and a flute’s withered siren; blinking sunlight and trills’ teasing lures. Nature was music – and yet music had evolved beyond it.

Despair debuted in the beginning. Embracing four arias from Haydn’s “Arianna a Naxos”, DiDonato embodied the mythical girl plagued with pain after leaving her land and her father for Theseus’ treacherous arms. Blind love was bolstered by her urgently stretched, cavernous crescendo over “Ah, vieni, ah vie-e-e-e-ni, o caro” then simmered down in shyness as she came to “stringi, stringi con nodo più tenace” to show the girl receding bashfully from her precocious declarations.

Enchantment was delivered in the form of pitch bends as piquant as pieces on the deity Pan’s flute as DiDonato dipped into “Dove sei, mio bel tesoro?” Herein her voice became as onomatopoeically vast as the enormous straits it sought to capture in the phrase “Teseo non mi risponde, e portano le voci e l’aure e l’onde.” As she realized that the hero was no more a savior for her, the mezzo’s Ariadne expressed shock with a wide vowel on “abbandono” before shrinking her protagonist’s scared voice with “Più speranza non v’è.”

Emanating the idylls evoked in Mahler’s Rückert-Lieder, DiDonato let her voice linger and languish in diminuendo at the culmination of “Ich atmet einen linden Duft;” symbolizing an escaping waft with the eventual dissolution of her imitating instrument.

Love’s recklessness crept into “Liebst du um Schönheit” as her character urged, “Liebe mich immer,” with a forceful vibrato-crescendo that carried “im….mer”. Bliss peaked in the beloved song “Ich bin der Welt gestorben” as the narrator predicts a peaceful separation from the world’s tumultuousness in the line “Ich bin gestorben dem Weltgetümmel,” dimming it until slow contemplation sealed its silence. Nature’s effects were palpable through DiDonato’s crafting of this ode to stillness; mimicking a butterfly’s swift, flapping wings through her vibrato as she cited “meinem Leben” – almost as if to juxtapose a mortal’s lifespan with the day-long journey of the trembling migrant.

In the last piece from the selection, “Um Mitternacht,” fear of one’s own physiology was audible in a crescendo on “Die Schläge meines Herzens.” Hollow was the doom of pitch-black loneliness as a vibrato-laden furor lay an angry siege to the prophetic words “Es hat kein Lichtgedanken mir Trost gebracht;” fearful awe embraced “Du hältst die Wacht um Mitternacht.”

With seamless easiness chromatic scales let loose across “Morte col fiero aspetto” from Hasse’s “Marc’Antonio e Cleopatra” while Dido’s stilling shock held sway after a futile prayer in “Ah! Ah!, Je vais mourir” from Berlioz’s “Les Troyens.” As she implored the mother of her ex-lover Aeneas, Venus, to return her son, the heroine paused pointedly before a metatextual commentary: “Inutile prière,” she mused in augury – killing the “ère” of “prière” with a hope-deprived diminuendo.

Twisting Giordani’s ubiquitously executed song, “Caro mio ben” into a Gershwin-like expulsion oozing streams of glistening glissandi, improvisation and a take on “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little, Star,” Craig Terry’s accompaniment carried DiDonato’s voice through his “American Songbook” rendition of the late-eighteenth century standard. Ella Fitzgerald could be heard in portamenti on such syllables as “te” in “senza di te;” airy crescendi wrapped the vowels in satin. Riffing was rampant as the mezzo played with the remodeled notes spontaneously; echoing a jazz band’s bass performer using rests to spin the instrument.

Almost humming on the “j’appartiens” of “La Vie en Rose,” DiDonato lent the song a hypnotized enamorment. Her voice pulsated with excitement on the clambering crescendo of “qui bat.” An English version of the song most popularly sung by Louis Armstrong saw her turn the “songs” of “love songs” into a staccato trill and melismas.

For the first encore, DiDonato tuned back to a classical selection to offer a paradigm of the tenacious, timid Cherubino in “Voi, che sapete” from “Le Nozze di Figaro”. Immediately the lilts which she’d toyed with were in a twentieth-century style, yet still packed in the character of a diffident and gawky teenager who hides behind floppy eighteenth-century hair.

But Cherubino was rapidly abandoned as DiDonato let loose in Irving Berlin’s “I Love a Piano;” flirting amusingly with a refined fluidity; loath to let risks endanger her technique.

Artifice was camouflaged in authenticity to flaunt an inborn art. Through well over two centuries of music DiDonato’s voice became a showcase to spontaneous and polished beauty and dissolved the line between the two; lifting the final product to ineffable sublimity.

The post Barbican Centre 2021-22 Review: Joyce DiDonato in Recital appeared first on OperaWire.

Smothered in monochrome, Keith Warner’s 2017 production of Verdi’s “Otello” is a humorless parody of art deco design. Tar-colored towers hold its personages in a chokehold; escorting them onstage with sliding trays resembling CD player disc drives.

Vertical slots in the abyss and square-shaped patterns often visible on casual sweaters sever the obscurity. In its enclosure the protagonists are arbitrarily attired: at times accoutered in the costumes of the opera’s period; at times enrobed in clown-like dress. Amidst computer-generated growing doors recalling girl bands’ onstage entrances throughout the 1990s and a giant marble lion there’s little that the cast can do to salvage Verdi’s realism.

Unleashed but Nowhere to Go

In the title role tenor Gregory Kunde unleashed bombastic barbarity; molding an Otello more uncivilized than zealous. Where the former ends and the latter begins is a challenging question for any Otello – but Kunde allowed the protagonist’s hubris to hamper his vocal performance.

The tenderness in his duet with Desdemona “Già nella notte densa” was scarce; eschewing the character’s masked vulnerability. Studying his bride, the warrior should be transfixed with adoration. Instead his recollection of her face – comparing her expression to the heaven and the stars – grew arrogant with an elaborate crescendo over “paradiso” too abrupt to appear lovestruck. Alone at last with his enamored bride, Kunde’s Otello offered her a presentation rather than a passionate avowal: “l’ira immensa (immense rage)” wavered unstably in volume. Meanwhile, the directive of “vien” (“come”) was too affectatious. It makes sense for the warlord’s potency to leak out even unbeknownst to him. But Kunde’s sudden drops in volume, precariously loud notes and struggling intervals endangered both his pitch and equally Otello’s taut tenacity.

Because the character started out the opera as a man with little self-control, no change took place when he succumbed to Iago’s forceful fables.

During “Ora e per sempre addio, sante memorie (Farewell for now and ever, sacred memories),” Kunde’s Otello sang in a perplexingly triumphal tone; suggesting bloodlust for his wife was as predictable a spasm as a lust erotic. This Otello oscillated between the crooked portraits of a gallery of rages; under their misguided influence his notes fell prey to frequent insecurity.

Calculated Diminuendi & Tempi Shifts

Incarnating the innocuous Desdemona, Ermonela Jaho crafted her voice to capture the unknowing wife’s docility by slenderizing sections of her instrument – especially her high notes, which were somewhat shrunken in abrupt diminuendi. Struggling with certain passages like “gli spasimi sofferti (the pains you suffered)” in the “Già nella notte” duet, Jaho also had to sneak in tacit breaths to properly sustain the role’s prophetic low notes. Her premeditated diminuendi – such as the one enlacing “Amen, risponda” at the love duet’s end – emerged well calculated and superbly delicate.

The same could be said of some phrases in “The Willow Song”– where the demure trio of “salice…. salice… salice” was wrapped in a diffident, deftly dealt diminuendo. Pathos was palpably elicited when Emilia asked who had murdered the dying Desdemona and her response, in a scarcely existent soft voice, was: “Nessuno… io stessa… (No one… I did it myself).”

On account of instability across the top and bottom registers and intermittent issues with her breath control, the part was nonetheless bereft of consummate conditioning.

Assembling different tempi for the various stages of his Iago’s plots, Carlos Álvarez offered a display of the destructive knave’s decisive moments. From the beginning of the work his baritone was boldly lined with villainous resolve; dynamics were determined, rhythms fixed according to the map of Iago’s cruel conspiracy. Spouting self-important, lackadaisical imperatives of “Beva, beva” in the first scene, he was equally convincing as a servile lackey when Otello entered and he calmly claimed he didn’t know what caused the conflict he deliberately provoked.

Vocal traps besieged the singer nonetheless. Espousing Iago’s notorious axiom, “Credo in un Dio crudel,” Álvarez gave in too much to Iago’s confidence: breaking the master’s ironclad determination with disorderly expulsions of his wrath. Subtler moments, such as the tension with which he charged the anticipatory “E poi…” were made eerie behind a duplicitous smile. On other occasions the baritone overdid Iago’s pretense; dangerously risking a jester’s expressions.

More Disappointment

Freddie De Tommaso invigorated Cassio with a youthful belligerence in his use of dynamics but also endangered his top notes with forcefulness. Frozen in fright at Desdemona’s murder, Catherine Carby’s Emilia sustained enough vibrato to lend the scene eeriness without losing the sheen of her instrument.

Adhering to traditional tempi for most of the score, Antonio Pappano drove the orchestra to dominate proceedings with its devilish embodiment of Verdi’s darkest opera. Alacrity was manifest throughout but purity was lacking. Effervescent in its underbelly of propulsive lower strings, the orchestra deprived its surface of a similarly smooth tonality; ceding to off-pitch brass and muffled woodwind with a noticeable regularity.

When the solo cello marked the entrance of “Già nella notte” it was paradoxically bold; divesting the lovers of intimacy with its absence of subtlety. In a completely different context the same could be said for the solo cor anglais before the “Canzone del salice:” it unfolded the sad fable of Barbara in a prominent fashion bereft of portentousness. Sour brass unfortunately hindered the effect the final chords which suffered from a lack of synchronicity.

Drenched in the dreary backdrop of a set whose matte black bars and slots create a half-made grid, the bland production suffered from pervasive signs of pantomime both visually and in its’ players crafts. With the exception of the orchestra’s conducting which embraced the Romantic music and Shakespearean twists, the eeriness created by it didn’t center on Otello’s plight but rather Verdi’s: haplessly held hostage in this maelstrom of mundanity.

The post Royal Opera House 2019-20 Review: Otello appeared first on OperaWire.

A map unfolds to become mammoth-sized over the stage in Laurent Pelly’s 2007 production of “La Fille du Régiment:” a zany and cartoonish exposition of this far-fetched comic tale that stretches paper-thin our talent for suspending disbelief. Mounting the set in an unspecified era with almost incidental visual references to furniture, furnishings and fashions of the work’s Napoleonic period, Pelly lays bare the opera’s luminous comedic gems, occasionally straddling the border between cuteness and pantomime camp.

Set designs mostly resist branching out into the straits of superfluousness; the color palette of contrasting missing walls in a royal purple backdrop with the rich mahogany of slanting furniture in the Marquise’s castle is equal parts aesthetically enticing as it is absurd. The production’s by-now infamous image of heroine Marie, the regiment’s canteen girl, in the process of ironing an unending washing line of the troops’ oversized underpants is just one of the spectacle’s aspects that poke innocent fun at the plot and the characters’ incredibility. Marie’s purportedly militant garb – the ensemble of a white vest, blue trousers and suspenders – makes light of her attempts to fancy herself “one of them” whilst also highlighting her tomboy nature by accompanying this with her ungainly trundling and galumphing.

Though select comically broader moments approach too closely the frontier between good taste and quick ‘n’ easy ways to rouse laughs – such as Marie repeatedly popping out of her regiment’s manmade Jack-in-the-Box to lap up spectators’ applause – their style is saved by this cast’s buoyant urge to honor fine comedic timing and ignite the piece with blazing spirit.

Daughter of the Regiment

Sabine Devieilhe’s Marie is mobilized with well-apportioned manifestations of grit, pluck, camaraderie and irreverence towards her blood family; her muffled, inaudible rants to herself as she begrudgingly busies herself with her tasks is a bounteous display of immaturity and the reckless, unwieldy ambition of youth. Devieilhe’s silvery coloratura soprano is an agile and twistable instrument easily molded to craft the protagonist’s mock-shock diminuendi and limber, staccato-glazed sprightliness.

Certain chromatic scales slide down without integral fluency nonetheless, omitting select notes and racing hard-pressed to the finish. With an occasionally skimpy higher register, Devieilhe would do well to support more of the top part with extra vibrato and diaphragmatic support, and not allow loose breath to make words such as “mes camarades” (“my comrades”) in the renowned aria “Il faut partir” too affected and melodramatic. Most of the time the soprano’s legato remains intact over challenging vocal passages – but in this aria a harder note comes close to cracking at the apex of her range. While her embodiment of the humorous heroine unleashes many a laugh, Devieilhe struggles in the midst of this madcap production to shift into the vulnerable recess of her character, diminishing her verity in the opera’s rare tender moments.

Mischievous Rapscallion

An adventurous and boisterous match for Devieilhe’s rapt, scampering antics, Javier Camarena’s Tonio is as much a mischievous rapscallion as his beloved. Excitement haphazardly spurs him to rush certain quicker sections and his beginning of “Ah, mes amis quel jour de fête” quivers slightly in its nervousness. Having prepared the aria with manifest confidence and aplomb Camarena nevertheless sustains the cavernous force of his extremely well supported tenor throughout the arduous climb of the piece, exploiting a gamut of alternations between thick and thin vibrato and abrupt and gradual diminuendi in this steep ascent of a laborious aria. Amply painted with the zealous ardor of a fledgling’s love, his bold self-proclamation as a soldier and a budding husband – “Me voici militaire et mari” – is palpably smattered in the effrontery of his daring affection for the regiment’s “daughter.”

Every expulsion of Camarena’s pristinely clean high ‘C’s emerges gallant and aglow, chaining its listeners in fetters of goosepimples. The exhilaration of the roar of the crowd in this instance unleashed an encore, prompting the tenor to mistakenly break character and shrug to the audience before beginning again: an action which cracked the spell somewhat. Nevertheless the voltage of his fervid realization of the character steered unremittingly full steam ahead throughout the second act – even if certain notes like “en tremblant” and “de vivre” in “Tout en tremblant, je viens, madame” (“I come, Madame, all atremble”) suffer a tad from instability. Although there is no question of Camarena’s vocal preparation and the enviable relish he takes in his roles, resisting the temptation to get carried away in some moments would heighten his hefty accomplishment.

Soldier & Marquise

Enkelejda Shkoza’s Marquise de Berkenfield makes learned use of vibrato to lend her pompous, capricious, entitled personage her necessary age. The ridges of her warm, brassy mezzo-soprano ensure the Marquise is humorous without too broad a brush, retaining the style of both her social standing and stature. Occasionally chromatic scales lose evenness in their ascent in a trio that cites the respect of beauty, mores and innocence (“la beauté, les mœurs, l’innocence”) in her aria “Pour une femme de mon nom (“For a woman of my name”).” Yet such facets as the glee in her quivering voice as she speaks, “Un château du même nom que moi!” (“A castle with the same name as I!”) render her almost endearing.

Bombasticity rightly pervades Pietro Spagnoli’s imprint on Sergeant Sulpice, the main “papa” of Marie’s four dozen or so doting fathers. Offering his brazen top notes with a consistently steady panache, the baritone allows our ears to glean expressions alternating between pugnacity, a proud father’s effusions and the persnickety snobbery that informs his dismissal of Tonio: Marie’s love and an enemy soldier. His reception of the Marquise’s Act Two confession that she is in fact Marie’s mother makes for cantankerous back-and-forth rounds of shenanigans between the two characters.

Treating the score with a varnish that best highlights its eccentric, unprecedented stirrings of jovial strings or belligerent brass, Evelino Pidò loosens from the ensemble jangling-like, mischievous trills on violins and luscious, incremental bouts of warmth over the swell of tremolos. While there is very occasional inconsistency in the texture of brass, entrances of woodwind are always on point and often comedically rhythmic.

With a great deal of the text transplanted into more modern French jargon in an adaptation by Agathe Mélinand, some of it a little risqué (“conne” does not, as the surtitles profess, translate as “old bat;” neither is “merde” “bloody hell”) this fantastical, almost parodical production of “La Fille du Régiment” serves Donizetti’s satirical score with a much-needed absence of grandeur.

It’s a caliber of musical escapism an audience might wrongly think is incompatible with comedy – and a delightful route to being proven wrong.

The post Royal Opera House 2018-19 Review: La Fille du Régiment appeared first on OperaWire.

At the tender age of 12, Jonathan Kent’s 2004 production of Tosca is among the fledglings of the Royal Opera roster. Visually simplistic and at times homogeneous, it eschews the archetypical velvet red and gleaming gold numerous incarnations of the opera take in favor of a dusky navy that enrobes the Sant’Andrea church, the Palazzo Farnese and the irrepressibly starry sky to which Cavaradossi devotes his last aria. Speckles of glimmering light fracture darkness only through the golden gate and icon both aglitter in the church, and later on in the embroidery of Tosca’s pearl-white gown and loops of her tiara.

The spectacle is no source of displeasure to the eye – if somewhat elementary in its need to color-code the purity of light in both the heroine of Tosca and the pastel shades in Angelotti’s painting of the inappropriately envied, Madonna-like Marchesa Attavanti. Nevertheless, given the lavish worlds in which both heroine and villain each reside – be it the glamour of a 19^th-century prima donna’s life or Scarpia’s unearned luxury as a dictator – the audience is left in want of intricate adornments and a coat of opulence.

Smothering the Role

Immersing herself in an oft-played creation, Angela Gheorghiu smothers the role in an overplayed, overwrought characterization. While the luster in her middle register traverses scales and ornaments with ease in mezzo forte, notes above are frequently subjected to sudden, affected piano, near-cracks or a facile substitution of “parlato:” spoken rather than sung text. Tosca’s demand to know “Chi è quella donna bionda lassù?” should be sung, but in this instance sounds more like a yell.

Other phrases in the work call for the usage of “parlato” – most notably Tosca’s realization after her murder of Chief Scarpia, “E avanti a lui… tremava tutta Roma.”  But rather than make this the introspective reflection of a woman cold with shock from her impulsive and yet indispensable action, Gheorghiu twists this spoken phrase into a high-pitched, neigh-like exclamation of long vowels and several dozen syllables. Instead of reflecting on the nefarious ramifications of what is, in this Roman Republic, an act of treason, Gheorghiu’s Tosca lets the fictional singer’s poor operatic acting abilities rear their Gorgonian heads: killing for Tosca is just another feat worthy of an audience’s standing ovation.

The beloved “Vissi d’arte” is here treated as it may have been during “Tosca’s” inception in 1900, assuming the guise of a vehicle for insouciant, excessive and at times hammy artistic expression. That E-flat of “vi” is a little off-pitch, and not squarely hit but slid up to; “aiutai” – Tosca’s profession that she allayed others’ misfortunes – is met with extra affectation and a surplus of diminuendo before drifting off into the ether. By the time Tosca’s referencing the flowers she deposited at the altar (“diedi fiori agl’altar”), the voice breaks off and briefly no emission can be heard. With Gheorghiu’s passaggio being for the most part secure, it is a shame that pivotal, climactic moments in their overworked state almost veer towards extinction.

The Zeal of Demonstration

Vittorio Grigòlo doesn’t spare the unabashed, declamatory outpour of his robust tenor voice to forge a scarlet-blooded Mario Cavaradossi: his is a bold interpretation riddled by the zeal of demonstration. “Recondita armonia” – the “hidden harmonies” that Cavaradossi uses to paint the Marchesa Attavanti – is embarked on with unstoppable panache in quivering, overstretched notes.

Cavaradossi may be a proud painter, but Grigòlo enhances the character’s bombasticity to the exclusion of his evident tenderness. Anxious about prisoner Angelotti’s escape, Cavaradossi requests that Tosca “lasciami al lavoro.” Even the libretto concedes that despite Tosca’s manifest coquetry, his thoughts are elsewhere. Grigòlo nevertheless interprets “elsewhere” at times to mean he has no interest in this woman, persuading one to wonder how a famous singer of her clout could fall for somebody hard-pressed to cast a second glance in her direction. By the time he has reached “E lucevan le stelle”, Cavaradossi’s admission “l’ora è fuggita” is met with such excessive vibrato that it sounds at times as though the notes purport to shift onto another line.

Most of Out Of Character

Perhaps most out of character is Marco Vratogna’s excessively reflective Scarpia. Missing the reckless swagger of the burly and repulsive beast, Vratogna fashions his Scarpia maybe a little too much as a “misunderstood” individual, accentuating the aging man’s fragility with extra breaths and soft diminuendos that fall short of manifesting his coarse physicality.

Scarcely are we invited to see that Scarpia is overbearing, unsparing and completely at the mercy of his zealous hate; instead, his declaration in the “Te Deum” of “Nel tuo cor s’innida Scarpia” – resounds in modesty as just an airy afterthought.

Alexander Joel’s conducting aptly incorporates Puccini’s abrupt starts and stops into its feisty execution of the score – but often to their detriment. A flaring crescendo during the introduction of Act Three’s “E Lucevan Le Stelle” motif is as outrightly expositional as Gheorghiu’s Statue of Liberty-like lifted arm before Tosca’s fatal last plunge. Brass are almost infallibly muffled with select raspberries being blown here and there; at times the strings are so disheveled that the pitch of notes becomes a struggle for the ears to recognize.

Next to the other members of their struggling troupe both Michael Mofidian’s Angelotti and Jonathan Lemalu’s Sacristan offer considerable reinforcements by sculpting their much smaller roles with better vocal proportions and overall far more realism.

Their carefulness however cannot compensate for the production’s omnipresent cartoon-like interpretations which, for whatever reason, spearhead this “Tosca” back into the genre’s dark ages: when acting was a superimposition never to be integrated into a performance.

It’s a journey on a time machine the audience is ill-advised to undertake.

The post Royal Opera 2018-19 Review: Tosca appeared first on OperaWire.

Elegantly structured and effulgent, David McVicar’s 2015 production positions the tale in the much-needed luxury of its setting, exposing the covetousness of the battled bourgeois with palatial walls of dusty pearl and white bricks, sparkling gilded furniture, and a wide host of chandeliers and candelabras. While certain facets are too basic – such as a charred French flag that rains down during intervals bearing a Robespierre quote – “Platon même a banni les poètes de sa République (“Even Plato banished the poets from his Republic”)” – costumes are well color-coordinated in their lavender and ruby splendor; golden lighting dims periodically with the growth of the characters’ plight.

A work lavishly aburst with soaring strings and looping melodies of triumph, it is too easy for singers to get carried away in expressive immersion – and founder.

Getting Carried Away

Roberto Alagna’s titular Andrea Chénier – the ill-fated poet who manages first to be an enemy of the aristocracy then of the people – is aplomb with brazen, loud notes in forte regardless of a scene’s particular demands. While his panache is often impressive in a well-sustained, potent and at times pugnacious middle register, as a result the introspective contemplation of the artist is in large part absent. Rapid and insecure along some of “Un di all’azzurro spazio,” certain sections of the tenor’s instrument exude rushed, skimpy notes occasionally overladen with vibrato as a compensation for the vocal strain. When he sings of his unbridled patriotism – how “the earth itself kissed his forehead (“Su dalla terra a la mia fronte veniva una carezza viva, un bacio”)” he doesn’t sound as noble as he does declamatory.

This characteristic extends to Alagna’s interpretation in the tenderer parts; as Chénier recalls a “destiny that calls itself love (“E questo mio destino si chiama amore”),” he at first overamplifies the volume then extinguishes the sound in its diminuendo to transform it into airy affectation. Confronting death in “Sì, fui soldato,” certain high notes are palpably strained. The ending of “Ma lasciami l’onor! (“But leave me my honour!”)” is boldly sung but seems alyrical.

A Stark Contrast

His nemesis-turned-savior Carlo Gérard is in contrast a visceral incarnation of doubt, denial, bitter nostalgia and, lastly, repentance. Dmitri Platanias transforms the villainous but ultimately redeemable personage into a benign Scarpia: convincing us in earnest of the love that he has felt since time began for Sondra Radvanovsky’s Maddalena di Coigny. Though Platanias begins his role with a tempo a little too wayward against the backdrop of the not entirely parallel orchestra, by the time he is advising Chénier in a menacing yet afeard voice “Proteggi Maddalena (“Protect Maddalena”),” we can hear in the deliberate emotional swagger of his vocalization a mixture of pride, rigid stubbornness and arrogance that closely guards the blunt, disruptive wound of love.

Platanias’s execution of “Nemico della patria” – an aria of wrestling inner demons as he wonders how he could have at first been the victim of lords, then of lasciviousness – is ridden with gradual crescendi of mounting aggravation dueling with incremental, lamenting diminuendi: he is as brusquely violent in the declaration “Uccido e tremo” (“I kill and I tremble”) as he is remorseful in the reluctant admission: “e mentre uccido io piango” (“and as I kill I weep”).

As Gérard eventually confesses love to Maddalena, reminiscing about how he would open and shut doors to spy on her practicing a minuet, there is malleability throughout the somewhat tarnished timbre of his baritone voice that stealthily unearths the character’s fraught vulnerability.

Complex & Unique

Radvanovsky’s vocal depiction of Maddalena di Coigny is more pliant; at times exhibiting too extensive a panoply of characters for her single, albeit morphing heroine. Equipped with a gentle and facile staccato technique across coloratura-like notes, the soprano’s higher register can at times become strained or be bordered too thickly with a conspicuous, shaky vibrato. In her admission of desolation to Chénier during the Reign of Terror, certain words such as “possente (“powerful”)” are lost to vocal strain in their perhaps overwrought sentimentality. That said, there is a solacing sweetness to the diminuendo in her reticent confessions of “Son sola (“I am alone”).” By the time she has evolved into a defiant, irrefutable woman in the third act, she confronts Gérard with her willful surrender – “Se della vita sua tu fai prezzo il mio corpo, ebbene, prendimi (“If your price in exchange for Chénier’s life is my body – then take me”)” with grisly, fierce notes in the chest voice.

The soprano’s assumption of the beloved “La mamma morta” is an unexpected and interesting one. Radvanovsky takes the tempo more slowly than usual, creating a belabored effect which, while exuding the excruciating pain that Maddalena faced watching her mother being murdered, also forges the illusion that the worldly ingénue is somewhat weary; older than her age. It takes the young girl a long time to remember the realization of love that compelled her to live again. However, by the time she reaches the start of the aria’s pinnacle with Love’s declaration “I am oblivion (“Io son l’obblio”),” Radvanovsky expels a vigorous F-sharp of boundless dominion.

Strong Pillars & Wobbly Ones

In the role of Bersi Christine Rice’s mezzo-soprano offers the pillar vocally that Maddalena cites in words throughout her monologue: a well-sustained instrument that travels the course from high to low and soft to loud easily.

Rosalind Plowright’s Contessa di Coigny is expectedly capricious, performing with a body language full of airs and feigned grace one anticipates from a French lady of her station.

The opera is not sabotaged under the temperate baton of Daniel Oren’s conducting; it is likewise not spared. While Oren layers the orchestration with its prerequisite sways of rubato, abrupt changes in dynamics and pace and slick lyrical elegance, instruments in their sections do occasionally stick out like loose wicker from its lattice basket frame. Though this is not insulting to the ears in faster, louder passages that mask subtle discrepancies, in the finale of Maddalena and the poet’s own Italian “Liebestod” – the duet “Vicino a te” – the chords ring with distinctive clutter: a blunt contrast to the dying characters’ steely resolve.

Suggesting the glamorization of self-sacrifice and ideological zeniths which lay the foundation of this undermined opera, the production falls prey to defects in both its intermittent vocal struggles and orchestral flaws. And yet the cataclysmic disarray of the unsparing Revolution at its core renders these faults a little more excusable.

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Elegance Disorganized

Extracting the eeriest episodes from the libretto in the interest of ominous staging could make for an elegant, clear-cut vision. David McVicar’s original 2004 production followed a well-conceived template of designs meant to showcase the debauchery, lasciviousness and hypocrisy of the Belle-Époque France of Gounod’s later years. Its color palette – the grisly, soot-smeared stone apartment blocks that echo the visuals of naturalism and works of Zola, together with the scarlet velvet curtains and red lightbulbs reminiscent of the Moulin Rouge’s first years in service, interlock elegantly.

Although the production has always suffered from a handful of excessively “on-the-nose,” moments – such as a pregnant ballerina imitating sinful Marguerite in its ballet, a dance inserted in the work 10 years after its premiere purely to ensure it fitted the conventions of “Grand Opera” tropes – it has never been guilty of clutter. Now in its fifth inception, revival director Bruno Ravella has clumsily plastered this sheen on the congruous gloss of the spectacle, casting over it a shadow of manifest disarray.

Chorus members, who perform very well vocally, are largely clueless as to where to move. Their presence is frequently obstructed by the now-ubiquitous band of bare-chested male dancers who appear in the majority of Royal Opera productions. Often clad in black leather regardless of any time setting, they perform modern dances so questionably choreographed that routines from movies like “Risky Business” and “Coyote Ugly”seem inventive in hindsight. With so much physically ado onstage, spectators’ eyes are at loss as to where they should wander.

Ailing Leads

On the musical side, things were similarly lacking in cohesion.

Michael Fabiano’s Faust – contrary to the intrinsic nature of the wanton anti-hero – seemed cautious throughout. Though he impressively layers the voice of old Faust with a deliberate wobble in the middle register, following his youthful reincarnation Fabiano seems far more reserved and somewhat cooler in his expression. In some instances his diction sounded more Italian than French with some vowels closed up a tad bit; this was present in his pronunciation of “pénetre” which sounded more like “pi-ne-tre.”

Throughout the aria that follows that word, the aforementioned beloved “Salut, demeure, chaste et pure,” Fabiano seemed unsteady in the upper register, at times growing an abrupt crescendo at the end of a phrase to compensate. Coming to the high C at the end of “pré-sen-ce,” his voice fell into the falsetto pit.

Despite an announcement that a throat infection plagued him, Erwin Schrott sustained the physical carriage of sadistic Méphistophélès, very clearly looming over this production as its most authentic character. Complimenting his movement, his instrument – with its uncrackable, cavernous volume – can manifestly tackle the role of the formidable devil. On this occasion, however, the knowledge of his illness got the better of him. He sustained most notes comfortably but elected anxiously to hasten the completion of others. As a result the celebrated “Le veau d’or” aria, whose tempo customarily challenges basses to race through its accelerated, intricate intervals, sounded too nervous to incorporate its much needed panache and the ceremony Schrott can undoubtedly bring to the role.

Substituting the ailing Irina Lungu, who was in turn substituting the previously announced Diana Damrau, soprano Mandy Fredrich performed the role of Marguerite with impressive technical accuracy. With the endearingly slender instrument of a swallow, her Marguerite easily came off as a naïve, girlish fledgling. Fredrich’s contemplative approach to the narration of the tale of the King of Thule, “Il était un roi de Thulé”, was a subtly intimate, morose admission of the character’s emotions.

Poignancy Characterized

She adjusted tempo and rhythm in the excited aria that follows, “Ah! Je ris de me voir si belle dans ce miroir…” without any hesitation. While there was some element of caution about her performance – she had reportedly flown in to London only a couple of hours before – she managed the ascending arpeggios with sweet, refined delicacy.

Stéphane Degout’s Valentin brought a sophisticated dignity to this undignified production. Instilling in his personage the stubbornly authoritative physique of a soldier, he also imparted characterization to the ends of his phrases in “Avant de quitter ces lieux,” making them crisp and militarily brusque. It was an intriguing approach to what is usually a more lyrical aria, but Degout simultaneously infuses the lines with a pathos the soldier would never make known.

Imparting a puerile urgency to the trouser role of Siébel, mezzo-soprano Marta Fontanals-Simmons had occasional trouble with distributing her breath wisely but filled a large part of her notes with great ardor and clean vocal potency. Endowed with the kind of voluminous mezzo that sits precisely at the halfway point between alto and soprano, her higher register is well-sustained most of the time; some scales and ornaments could be improved on. Overall, however, there was great potential in her voice and the personification she amply applied to it.

The orchestra, here under the baton of Dan Ettinger, features brass frequently blasting brusque collectives of disbanded notes. They find they’re not alone as a great deal of instruments fall out of place in their sections. The sounds evoked from strings were unclean chords, their coalescence overly linear and lacking in roundness. With rubato for the most part lacking, Ettinger’s selected rhythms confine chords into a set of rigid blocks made up of mezzo-forte sameness. The solo violin that underlines the tenor aria “Salut, demeure, chaste et pure” was out of sync with its singer, as were the groups of other instruments accompanying many a duet and aria.

Buried under a hodgepodge of new, poorly engineered choreography and outspoken disorder, the original McVicar production seems to yearn to be exhumed. People get nervous in loud throngs of crowds. Chaos begets chaos. It’s no wonder that the practice of wrapping up old concepts in an indecisive new packaging – one with unrelated additions of movements and spectacle that don’t gel with the backdrop – will plunge its performers into an unforeseen state of anxiety.

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The crux of its concept a curse, Verdi’s “La Forza del Destino” relies on motifs as portentous as ravens. With its harrowing theme of inescapable fate rearing its head in the overture, the early murder of the Marquis of Calatrava heralds the “maledizione:” a hounding lethal curse that will hunt our protagonists down to their deaths. Though the music lacks the eeriness of the later, musically maturer “Otello,” its persistently gloomy foreshadowing leaves it bereft of a much-needed luminousness.

A conception of the opera staged entirely in black and white could be plausible. The music evokes backdrops of glistening checkered floors, marble staircases in the mansion, a Gothic monastery for Padre Guardiano. Instead, director Christof Loy employs a loud approach in his production, substituting introspection with crazed bursts of noise and saturating all parts of the stage with tasteless, cringe-inducing choreography.

Forte At the Cost of Ample Legato Line

But his is not the spectacle’s sole vice. Priming herself for this burdensome, endlessly suffering dramatic role, Anna Netrebko applies colossal vocal wealth to Donna Leonora; frequently far too much so. Her instrument radiates throughout the auditorium, bouncing off the design’s only virtue – tremendous acoustics. During crowd scenes and the altercations between Jonas Kaufmann and Ludovic Tézier as Don Alvaro and Don Carlo respectively, the impenetrable richness of her mountainous soprano is most sorely missed.

Nevertheless, despite Netrebko’s uninhibited, full-blown, somewhat unvarying emotionality, crinkles in the vocal line are laid bare far too often. Pushing her voice to the cusp of its potency, there are moments when Netrebko’s instrument veers fractionally off-pitch – such as the beginning of “Me pellegrina ad orfana,” the first of Leonora’s self-pitying arias. Pumping her diaphragm to emit loud notes of panic, Netrebko opts for fortissimo over legato. One evidently doesn’t have to trump the other; in her performance, nonetheless, it’s an inevitable outcome. Extra breaths are interspersed continuously throughout the vocal line: quick and heavy, they frequently cut little holes in the drama.

Given her manifest vocal strength, Netrebko could easily utilize the same reliable breathing technique to produce longer, more flexible phrases with changing dynamics and motley expression. With a slick chest voice, words such as the unusually musically dark “Sì, mio Alvaro, io t’amo, io t’amo” (“Yes, my Alvaro, I love you, I love you”) come out the most determined and secure.

In this regard the reckless cunning of last season’s Lady Macbeth, with its copious use of the low register, was more convincing than her assumption of the overly vulnerable personage Leonora. In the scant diminuendi we hear – such as the start of the softer aria, “La vergine degli angeli,” there are flecks of the character’s innocent disposition. But phrases such as “Perdona al mio peccato” (“Forgive my sin,”) – addressed to the Virgin Mary in prayer – are executed with paradoxical vocal arrogance.

More Vocal Trade-Off

Jonas Kaufmann’s Don Alvaro similarly trades in a potential legato and bending dynamics for a largely homogeneous, declamatory voice. His euphoric declaration of love “Ah, per sempre, o mio bell’angiol… (“Ah, forever my angel…”)” is performed with the same strength of volume as most other notes.

Lacquering certain parts with either affected breathiness or near-falsetto – such as the start of the mournful prayer, “O tu che in seno agli angeli (“O you, who dwell among the angels”),” Kaufmann struggles with high notes and in the middle register opts sadly to neglect use of diminuendo. Frequently his instrument sounds constrained; sometimes – as in the imploration from the aforementioned aria, “Soccorrimi” (“Help me”) – it veers on cracking.

In the antagonistic role of Don Carlo, Ludovic Tézier makes the most of the declamatory bass register in his baritone voice and an unflappably virile physique. Standing opposite Kaufmann’s Don Alvaro, whose right leg is bent and turned to face the audience inexplicably during the “Amici in vita e in morte” (“Friends in life and death”) duet, Tézier’s staunch posture inarguably personifies his villainous role.

With the assumption of diminuendo and pace changes in the vocal line, he inserts ominousness into his instrument with subtle but noticeable emphasis on words such as “che meco morrà” (“[the secret] that will die with me.”) Among the cast, his is the only character who emanates bad auspices.

Empathy Embodied

Ferruccio Furlanetto infuses listeners with empathy as Padre Guardiano. On one hand, vibrato is well-employed in the nether depths of his bass to create the impression of the Father’s authority; on the other, the evenness in his legato renders his the only calming presence.

As the gypsy entertainer Preziosilla, mezzo-soprano Veronica Simeoni punctuates the lines of her role well and paints a commanding and slick lower register despite leaving raspy top notes not entirely unscathed.

Dramatic Potpourri & Kitsch

Unwinding the opera’s setting into a downward spiral of chaos, Christof Loy’s concept for the work remains obscure in his potpourri, kitsch and disheveled production. Why must the audience watch the same scene of a murder they are witnessing onstage transpire simultaneously on film behind it? Why must the film be shown slow-motion – comprising opera’s theatrical, broad gestures, incompatible with the silver screen – so that it looks as though we’re watching not a work of music but a daytime soap opera?

Incessant choreographic sequences, apparently mimicking routines a lot tawdrier and tackier than nineties boy band fads, do little but consume the space and make some noise. While there are shades of perhaps eighteenth-century or maybe nineteenth-century Spain, a color palette is missing. The décor subscribes to no system.

Antonio Pappano’s conducting whips the opera up into its prerequisite frenzy, supporting traditional rhythms for the music and gradually building to climaxes.

That said, there could be more use of rubato. The distribution of dynamics across sections could be made more malleable in order to extract the music’s darker underbelly of lugubriously shimmering lower strings. At intervals one can hear crude French horns come loose unceremoniously from their group; the woodwind occasionally suffers from an impurity of tone; brass, for the most part, are muffled.

For first-timers at “La forza,” it is satisfactory. But for accustomed listeners, the notion that a lot more could be fabricated from the music – particularly with Pappano’s baton – remains irresistible.

With its incessant rhythmic clapping over music during dances and a great deal of overemphatic, persistently loud singing, the production overall comes stubbornly across as something mirroring a carnival. Its entrails show no trace of destiny at work. On the contrary, what we’re subjected to is just another Covent Garden spectacle that visually contains less artistry and fewer intricacies than a typical fiesta.

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Boasting cardboard imitations of forests, a doctor’s costume making its Despina look like Jesus Christ, huge placards with classic fonts spelling out the Italian words “fedeltà,” “amore” and others, some parts are embarrassing to watch. With the director’s every arduous effort to include a quirky, cute, or whimsical element, we are exposed to what appears to be the kind of banal humor only frat boys at their drunkest could engage in.

The age-old sagacious rule that situation comedy is funny by its situation, rather than the incidental jokes occasionally interspersed to cue a drum-roll – is astray in this bland, unimaginative treatment of the work.

Stating the Obvious

Following the overused, overworked concept that “All The World’s a Stage,” Gloger has approximately half an hour of the opera taking place before the velvet red stage curtain. All one can think of looking up at it is why they are forced to stare at those pale, rugged curvy lines; the imprint of the golden ropes that hold the curtains in their place during performances – here sadly underused. The characters bear programs for the same production we’re attending; even the same cast sheets. It purports to be endearing. For sheer lack of innovation, all it truly looks like is a sham.

Across an empty stage, a Broadway-like sign of electric bulbs reads “Così fan tutte,” only to have three rows from the last letter dimmed to spell “Così fan tutti:” “All women do it” becomes “Everyone does it.” Doubtlessly they do, and doubtlessly Ferrando and Guglielmo, if tested by a couple of seductive women, would yield more quickly than their naïve fiancées and probably regret it less.

But why must a smart audience – or any audience – hear about this concept through a sign of letters? Why not show the two men flirting with some women, ogling them, if such a theme demands its proof? In any case the notion is so obvious, supporting evidence is no requirement.

Other demonstrations of comedic moments scarcely even speak to the humor of “Così fan tutte,” seeking simply to emphasize what’s funny about them in particular: witnessing them is like watching an endlessly self-deprecating, bitterly struggling stand-up comedian. Despina is no maid, but rather the owner of a bar; for half a second she lifts a black board with the words, “Coca, birra, tutto a €5 (“Coke, beer, everything for €5”).” It’s funnier when real-life vendors at the Arena di Verona yell it throughout intermissions. Despina is the Queen of Cool; she treats her own bar as a catwalk and prances about. To the rhythm of the music, soprano Serena Gamberoni must rattle Despina’s musical cocktail shaker. Charming as the sound of one is, it hardly contends to be another instrument of the orchestra – which it seems to be here for a handful of bars.

Ultimately far too many gags try so hard to alert the audience’s attention that spectators remain bored. Onstage there may be squealing and falsetto notes and giggles; in the auditorium, the laughs are few.

Working Through Difficulties

The extent to which the directorial vision impacts the players’ performances remains questionable – but their difficulties are apparent. Tenor Paolo Fanale faltered vocally through his role as Ferrando, struggling with a manifestly precarious higher register. Frequently bordering on or breaking through to falsetto – and not always in the interest of comedy – in his Cavatina “Tradito, schernito del perfido cor,” he barely executed the roundness of some notes. He struggled mightily with the quicker parts of the scales and “le voci d’amor”.

Gyula Orendt’s Guglielmo was better technically sustained; his use of declamatory emphasis in the lower notes of his baritone lent a mock-serious slant to some words. Unfortunately he maintained that kind of comedic approach in his seduction of the unwitting Dorabella, adding a breathy, highly affected and melodramatic quality to the words “T’intendo, furbetta” – “I understand, you little rogue,” after his alleged soldier offers his heart and she (officially) spurns it.

It’s an understandable choice; the 18th-century opera easily fits the profile of commedia dell’arte. Heaped atop of other self-proclamatory aspects of the show, nevertheless, the relentless tongue-in-cheek and self-satisfied nature of Orendt’s Guglielmo – who doesn’t seem to regard the seduction of Dorabella as much as a challenge as merely a joke – became somewhat monotonous.

Most Cynical

Despite being the first to lose her battle with temptation, it is ironically Serena Malfi’s Dorabella who came across as the warier and more cynical of the two. With a smooth legato across most of her propulsive mezzo voice and finely executed staccato and ornaments, Malfi granted her character a somewhat paradoxical interpretation, using the gravity of her instrument to suggest that Dorabella is perhaps not so much guilty for her infidelity as she is contrarily principled in a creed of deliberate hedonism.

Straddling a histrionic quality in her acting, Salome Jicia’s Fiordiligi – with many a strenuous note above the stave – was overemphatically repentant about her betrayal. While her bottom register was well sustained, scales were slippery and she exaggerated with her unstable high notes in “Come scoglio,” involuntarily exposing her weaknesses. Unexpected crescendi across the top register likewise didn’t help them along.

Squawks and Squeaks

Often harnessed by exigencies of Gloger’s loud and proud over-the-top direction, Serena Gamberoni’s Despina was often too wrapped-up in physical antics to sustain solid control over her breathing. While her voice was a silvery, dependable soprano with reliable middle notes, in an effort to crinkle it humorously – especially when Despina assumes the disguise of a doctor – she distorted her instrument to an amusical extent. While twisting the voice is not unheard of in these circumstances, and many a gifted tenor playing “The Barber of Seville’s” Almaviva dressed-up as a nun has done it successfully, Gamberoni’s parody exuded unwanted squawks and squeaks.

As if relegated to the notion that he lacks control over the pantomime onstage, Stefano Montanari took his baton half-heartedly, at times barely arranging his strings to perform in cohesion. Far too frequently the brass tumbled out of proportion, recalling – as always when they’re inconsistent – traffic jam hoots. The woodwinds also struggled to mesh, turning out ditties that didn’t stay in line. Montanari’s solo playing on the fortepiano continuo was much better in comparison, providing what may have been the production’s sole humorous moment: a brief variation on the theme from “Love Story” when Guglielmo and Ferrando first make their phony appearance as soldiers that went mostly unnoticed.

Altogether the veneer of the production speaks volumes about amateur theatre. Some scenes might have caused some raucous laughter in a bar or pub one night – but only among those already merry and inebriated. Lacking a single concept to unite all facets of the direction – unless one counts the idea of, “Oh look – this is funny!”- one wonders why Halloween parties maintain a greater thematic consistency.

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Unlike many opera settings, the visual background for this work is neither lush nor regal; with pedantic references to boredom, social rules and regulations and mundanity, it is most likely to comprise a bowl of ripe and rotting fruit, a wooden table and commode and possibly the image of a woman peeling a potato. In essence, one expects to see a picture reminiscent of Cézanne’s more earthly, glum depictions of humanity’s humdrum existence.

An Incomplete Concept

While Richard Jones’s new production of the work zooms in on the banal entrapment in its story – a young woman bullied by her mother-in-law, caged in a marriage to a man she doesn’t love, harboring unruly sentiments towards another – it also doesn’t specify the horror of the heroine’s environment. In what appears to be a sixties or seventies backdrop, both the outdoors and Káťa’s living room are housed in luminously glowing yellow walls: their shape makes them resemble the interior of a cardboard box. Costumes are appropriately plain and rudimentary; bay windows line the outside of the home. The latter incites puzzlement, for while the opera’s story could be easily transferred to twentieth-century or even modern Russia or the Czech Republic, both the exterior of the house and a tall street lamp look distinctly British or, at least, not European.

Most of the devices Jones employs function in favor of the opera’s concept – yet they also don’t sufficiently reflect it. Evidently the illicit love that Káťa feels for Boris is a self-explanatory matter, but without some more elaborate exploration of her basic confines, we’re at loss to know what is so horribly unbearable about her environs. Though decorations are a little scarce, there are few details that help highlight the “provincial” element of the libretto or Ostrovsky’s play.

Only the emptiness outside – an “outside” wholly barren of both plants and sidewalks – acts symbolically to let us know that Káťa’s world is empty. In this minimalist setting, crucial grittiness is missing. The hauntingly repellent stimulus we hear being repeated throughout Janáček’s motifs is heard but never seen – unless one counts the scathing looks of passers-by laughing at Káťa after learning of her extramarital affair. That in itself is one trope overused too many; if we have to witness social disapproval, could it not be somewhat subtler, or at least expressed originally?

If Janáček’s experimental score had been far more orchestrally reductive, Jones’s staging would more compatible with the work’s music. Yet with its unexpectedly propulsive forte moments and incessant ominous motifs on woodwind cutting into violins’ high-pitched and eerie sounds, the opera merits a more vivid and more daunting portrait of the world at hand.

Star Performance

In a stark contrast to the bleak and frightful nature of the score, Amanda Majeski lends a welcomingly innocent portrayal of the scared heroine to her interpretation of Káťa. Gifted with a simultaneously full-bodied, silvery soprano and nearly omnipotent vocal technique, Majeski controls her vibrato with sumptuous self-guidance. Its total potential is unleashed in peaks of the protagonist’s dreaminess – such as her admission of the “stupid dreams” that she has had (“A jaké sny se mi zdá, jaké sny”). In her use of superlative, tender diminuedi, Majeski thins her voice so that her character seems almost in a trance.

It seems at intervals however that certain artistic choices of hers are imposed by the director – or the movement director Sarah Fahie, who seems to hold far too much sway over the onstage gestures, making characters’ premeditated miming seem unnatural. Just before Káťa intends to commit suicide, Majeski holds on to the same stoic facial expression – one used at length at several other points through the performance. One wonders, given many other obviously directed gestures in this production, what her physical interpretation would be like if she had been completely free to paint the image of her heroine.

Monsters

Pavel Černoch’s Boris makes for a much less sympathetic character. While some of this can be attributed to directorial decisions – in his first scene Boris stands with his hands stuck in his pockets, ostensibly smug – in large part it is Černoch’s vocal approach that diminishes Boris’s pitiability. Though his tenor is a well-equipped and potent instrument, Černoch hurls certain lines somewhat insouciantly, lending his personage a brazen quality.

In some moments he emphasises almost every other syllable with slight crescendi in a gesture comparable to reading the iambic meter of a poem with pronounced aplomb. In his declaration to Káťa, “I love you more than anything in this world (“Když vás miluji víc než všechno na svêtê!”),” Černoch almost cracks a note as a result of blatant bombasticity.

A darker presentiment than the clichéd strobe lighting used for the storm comes in the form of Susan Bickley’s Kabanicha: the chilling incarnation of a stereotypical and dictatorial villain. Curving her mezzo-soprano to make the notes resound with a contorted and frightening timbre without snapping the sound, Bickley makes full use of both her instrument and scrutinizing eyes to make the mother-in-law’s hatred of young Káťa palpable.

The tenor role of Tichon is here portrayed with the growling, emphasized lower bass notes by Andrew Staples, who deliberately executes the lines of his patriarchal and patronizing role with well-timed crescendi that heighten the unending musical drama.

Sporting long, ill-groomed curly hair and glasses in what looks like a seventies parody, Andrew Tortise doesn’t let his comedic attire disrupt the smoothness of his vocal performance, coating his lines with the eeriness found throughout the entire libretto.

Details Gone Amiss

Rhythms are adroit and punctual in Edward Gardner’s reading of the score – but finite details are relentlessly amiss. Though occasionally light tremolos on strings beam with an inauspicious effervescence, too frequently the brass are not as simultaneous as they are meshed together. Arpeggios scrambling on the woodwind instruments come out opaque in their disheveled execution. Dynamics could be much more variegated on the whole, and while the timing of the sections is proportionate and offers listeners the chance to hear these strange, ill-boding sections stealthily contending, the purity of each is obfuscated by its messiness.

Overall it’s a production which is insufficiently intimidating – much to its disservice. Where Káťa’s suicide should have her plummeting herself headfirst into the Volga River, Majeski must here go offstage. Only her dripping clothes and closing eyes as she is carried out inform us of her fatal plight.

With the composer’s enchantingly devilish score and a libretto based on Ostrovsky’s socially conscious, caustic play, “Káťa Kabanová” should be the horror movie among operas. This is a G-rated outline.

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With its apparently ageless characters and scarcely tenable premise, Verdi’s tale of “Simon Boccanegra” – the 14^th century’s first Doge of Genoa – has few laurels on which it can rest. Encompassing a tepid, largely uneventful score and scant lyrical characterization, the work comes across as a faint, pencil outline of the earlier, full-bodied “Il Trovatore.” Even the most vibrant, innovative staging and a vocally untarnished cast would struggle to protect this vessel from inevitably sinking into the obscuring straits of boredom.

Simple & Predictable

Perhaps these unexciting pieces – those that rarely make the “favorites” list – are doomed to be subjected to downgraded treatment. Now in its twenty-eighth year, Elijah Moshinsky’s 1991 production of “Boccanegra” appears to have made few amendments to its simplistic, predictable setting. While Genoa in the 14^th century may not be the most palatable era for design, Moshinsky chooses to rely solely on European clichés of the past without a great deal of elaboration or exactitude.

Palatial courtyards are depicted as nothing but Greek pillars and a shiny, tiled black and white ground; a copper-colored wall inside is inscribed top to bottom with long rows of Latin writing. Changing times of day are manifested by the hue of blue that gleams in the unalterable background. Vexingly monotonous, its single color achieves much more congruence than any real-life sky has done to date.

While costumes are appropriately fitted with medieval cloaks of red and copper velvet, as an entity the spectacle cannot avoid projecting the impression of both laziness and budget-saving. As a compilation of Venetian traits – much less Venetian traits of the medieval era, it accomplishes considerably less descriptive detail than an animated educational short video used in a classroom lesson might.

Saving Grace

Rising to the opera’s saving grace in its lead character, baritone Carlos Álvarez successfully embodies his character in both voice and physical stature.

With a gruff, vibrato-ridden instrument whose sharp fins could corrode the surface of a rock, Álvarez portrayed the aging Boccanegra with a haughtiness whose bombasticity begins to waste away throughout the passing years. Molding his voice to execute a hoarser and more tired sound in the last act, he nonetheless sustained in his portrayal the kind of uncouth, self-entitled body language only someone of the Doge’s power would allow himself.

Authority permeated even the anxiety he feels for his lover Maria as he sings “Misera” shortly before learning of her death. His is a rugged nobility; insouciant imperiousness dissolving with the Doge’s suffering.

Hungry For Revenge

As Jacopo Fiesco, Maria’s father and grandfather of Boccanegra’s daughter Amelia, Ferruccio Furlanetto played an aging man whose energies are being thwarted by destructive wrath. He deliberately pushed the pit of his bass voice to lend an eerie emphasis to words such as “sepolcro,” in describing the palace where his daughter has died, and “seduttore,” in his curse of her lover. This emphasized Furlanetto’s old, enfeebled Fiesco as a man hungry for revenge.

The delivery of his aria of mourning “Il lacerato spirito” was somewhat exaggerated in the shakiness of notes in “Prega Maria per me,” as well as its extended final “me.” Nevertheless, amidst select unstable vocal moments that encroached on his interpretation, Furlanetto was a looming and cantankerous presence.

As the anarchical Paolo, the courtier who arranges Amelia’s kidnapping, baritone Mark Rucker layered his performance with a domineering indecorum striving to contest with that of Boccanegra’s. Unlike the Doge, however, Rucker’s Paolo also exhibits cowardice in certain deliberately shaky vocal moments, alerting us to his status as an insecure criminal lackey. Through his distinct vibrato Rucker renders his instrument throbbingly rancorous in all the right places – even if some high notes flounder in the process.

Less Compelling

Lacking a corpulent middle register, Hrachuhi Bassenz’s soprano is a slender instrument of an unsmooth and brittle timbre that would be much better suited to a host of lighter roles. In her opening aria “Come in quest’ora luna,” Bassenz struggled with many a precarious high note, frequently breathing in places she oughtn’t. While her facial expressions and occasional birdsong-like, silvery notes radiate specks of the character’s innocence, in its entirety Bassenz’s vocal incarnation lacks cohesion – its faults laid bare too often to be easily ignored.

Francesco Meli’s Gabriele – lover of Amelia – took us back to the late 19^th century with incessant blasts of loud notes, raised horseshoe-shaped palms and affected falsetto. It should be understood that Meli has a very powerful tenor voice of a near-perfect timbre. Lined with unmistakable ridges, the instrument is semi-pure – creating a distinct but classical sound that calls to mind Italian voices in the style of Mario Del Monaco.

Sadly his own artistic choices are what regularly jeopardize it. Overzealous in fortissimo, he strains many a top note either by accident or in trying too hard to slap viscous layers of feeling across it; several in the middle register emerge likewise as soured. While evidently Meli sings with what is no less than a natural gift, the end result comes out as little more than smoke and mirrors.

With a score of few colorful arias and grand moments of impetus, Henrik Nánási conducted the orchestra mostly reliably. The distribution of various dynamics and rhythms was moderate and staid; sometimes the sections fell apart in their coherence. Overall it was a traditional rendering that occasionally fell into the trap of squeaky brass and noticeable differences in timing across instruments. There was little creativity in it and almost no rubato.

Ultimately there was a sense that few, with the exception of some cast members, invest a lot of feeling in this unexciting, wan revival. That said, “Simon Boccanegra’s” value as an opera cannot qualify as an excuse. Operas aren’t born equal – but their treatments should be.

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