Monday, May 30, 2011

"The Daughter of the Regiment" at Opera Theatre May 28 through June 26


Copyright 2011 by Ken Howard
Donizetti’s 1840 romantic opéra-comique romp The Daughter of the Regiment has always been popular with audiences and performers alike, but it’s unusual to see two first-rate professional productions within a year of each other. Union Avenue Opera gave us a delightful Daughter (in the original French) last July, and now we have an equally entertaining English version from Opera Theatre. For those of us who admire this cheerful bit of musical fluff, it has been a pleasant coincidence.

The circumstances that led Donizetti to write a French romantic comedy were, ironically, less than joyous. His wife Virginia died in 1837 and the broken-hearted composer fled Italy for Paris where, as historian Herbert Weinstock notes, “he began a new life”. Originally written as a quick replacement for a delayed opera by another composer, Daughter was initially greeted with indifference by the Parisian public and hostility by Berlioz (then music critic for the Journal des débats). Audiences quickly came around, however, and over the years the title role has become a favorite of high-flying sopranos from Jenny Lind to Joan Sutherland.

The titular daughter, Marie, is a war orphan adopted as a baby by the rather tender-hearted French soldiers of the 21st Regiment. Now a beauty with the voice of an angel and a colorful military vocabulary, she loves and is loved by Tonio, who saved her from toppling off an Alp. Their love is opposed initially by her guardian, Sergeant Sulpice, and the other soldiers (who mistake Tonio for a spy) and then by the snobbish Marquise de Birkenfeld, who is determined to marry Marie off to the son of the pompous Duchess of Crackentorp and who also, in a classic comic opera revelation, turns out to be Marie’s long-lost mother. All ends happily, of course, with plenty of rousing ensembles and solo vocal fireworks along the way.

Although a former Gerdine Young Artist and therefore still in the early stages of her career, soprano Ashley Emerson, as Marie, has an understanding of comic acting (both physical and vocal) and a light, nimble voice that would do credit to a more experienced singer. Petite and energetic, her Marie is perhaps the very embodiment of the adjective “feisty”. She is sometimes overpowered by her male co-stars, but her performance is so completely right that I, at least, am willing to cut her a lot of slack in the volume department. Besides, coloratura and comedy are difficult enough individually; in combination they can be a major challenge.

As Tonio, tenor René Barbera is not, perhaps, the strongest actor on the stage, but there’s no doubt that he’s one of the strongest singers. His voice is clear, powerful, and, as far as I can tell, pretty much seamless throughout the wide range called for in the role. Besides, this is a part that is mostly about singing beautifully and accurately hitting those high Cs in the bravura air “Pour mon âme” – a song reckoned to be one of the most difficult in the repertoire. Mr. Barbera’s performance on opening night brought on a spontaneous ovation and cries of “bravo” that were well deserved.
 
History tells us that the original 1840 Tonio, Mécène Marié de l'Isle, had pitch problems. Had Mr. Barbera lived back then history would have a different story to tell.

Baritone Dale Travis completes the strong leading trio in the buffo role of Sulpice. A big actor with an equally large voice, his mere presence on the stage with the diminutive Ms. Emerson can’t help but provoke a smile in the best “Mutt and Jeff” tradition, and his gruff-but-lovable performance is just perfect.

Mezzo Dorothy Byrne is the self-consciously upper-crust Marquise. It’s normally a contralto role and didn’t seem to be the best fit for her voice, but she certainly made the most of her one and only solo. As the Marquise’s snooty servant Hortensius, bass-baritone Jason Eck is appropriately fussy and the two work well together on stage.

Given that director Seán Curran is also a choreographer, you might expect more than the usual amount of scripted movement and dance, and you’d be right. There is even a small corps de ballet which is so neatly integrated with the singing cast that the overall effect is more like a Broadway musical in which everyone sings and dances to some degree. The women of the corps have a particularly funny bit with Ms. Emerson at the opening of the second act as Marie tries (and hilariously fails) to execute classic choreography (think Swan Lake or Les Sylphides with Carol Burnett’s Princess Winifred thrown in).

In his director’s notes, in fact, Mr. Curran acknowledges that his chief source of inspiration for this production is Broadway stage – especially “tomboy” shows such as Annie Get Your Gun, The Unsinkable Molly Brown, and Once Upon a Mattress. There is, as a result, a fair amount of knockabout farce to supplement all the dancing. Personally, I found much of it a bit too broad – with comedy, less is usually more, in my view – but the music and libretto easily support it and the opening night audience seemed to enjoy it immensely.

This production of Daughter of the Regiment incorporates another element of the Broadway stage, at least as it existed in the early 20th century: the show-stopping star turn. The role of the Duchess of Crackentorp is normally a spoken part, which has often, in recent years, been taken by retired or semi-retired singers with high name recognition. Casting noted soprano Sylvia McNair in the role falls right in with that tradition. Giving her an interpolated song and accompanying it with a fair amount of extra gag lines, however, is straight out of 1920s Broadway.

The added song – “A Word On My Ear” by the great British comic songwriters Flanders and Swann – is a hilarious send-up of tin-eared (but LOUD) singers in the Jonathan and Darlene Edwards vein. As with much of the rest of the evening’s comic business, I found it a bit overplayed, but the audience loved it and seemed perfectly content to let the entire show come to a halt while Ms. McNair did her bit.

Down in the pit, St. Louis native John McDaniel – a gent with an impressive Broadway and cabaret resume of his own – leads a polished performance of the score, played with the usual professionalism by musicians from the St. Louis Symphony. Chorus Master R. Robert Ainsley and English Diction Specialist Erie Mills have done their usual fine job of keeping everything crisp and comprehensible.

Set and costume designer James Schuette has given the whole production a bright, comic book look, complete with a whimsical fleur-de-lis–inspired false proscenium and imitation footlights in the shape of drums. Christopher Akerlind’s lighting nicely compliments it all and does a find job of signaling the applause points.

This is, in short, a solid production of a lively and tuneful score by one of the masters of bel canto. If you love comic opera and like your humor broad, you can hardly go wrong with this Daughter of the Regiment. It is, as they say, “family friendly”, and as an introduction to opera for those who might otherwise find the genre intimidating it’s hard to beat.

Performances of Daughter of the Regiment continue at the Loretto-Hilton Center on the Webster University campus through June 26th. For more information, visit experienceopera.org or call 314-961-0644.

Winter Opera Saint Louis' Gina Galati to Perform with Compton Heights Concert Band on Memorial Day


Soprano Gina Galati, founder of Winter Opera Saint Louis, will guest with the 65 piece Compton Heights Concert Band, under the direction of band conductor Edward Dolbashian, on Monday, May 30, at 3:00 p.m. The Band's 33rd Annual Memorial Day concert will be held in the Henry Shaw Memorial Bandstand in Tower Grove Park. The concert is free and open to the public.

Galati will sing a variety of patriotic and popular selections including "God Bless America," "I Could’ve Danced All Night," "Over the Rainbow," "Someone to Watch Over Me," and "America The Beautiful."

Monday, May 23, 2011

"Spotlight on Opera" at Ethical Society of St. Louis, Monday, May 23


Opera Theatre of St. Louis will host a series of dialogues featuring a variety of local experts and creative teams that will explore different themes in each of this year's operas.

The "Spotlight on Opera," series will be held at 7:30 p.m. on Monday evenings throughout May at the Ethical Society of St. Louis, 9001 Clayton Road.

The evenings will also feature live performances by Opera Theatre's "Gerdine Young Artists."

On Monday, May 23, Amy Kaiser, director of the Saint Louis Symphony Chorus, will discuss The Death of Klinghoffer in a program called "John Adams: An American Musical Master. Taking part in the panel discussion will be James Robinson, OTSL artistic director, and conductor Michael Christie.

Single tickets are $10 and $5 for students and groups of at least 15. More information available by clicking here or by phone at 314-961-0644.

Sunday, May 22, 2011

"Don Giovanni" at Opera Theatre May 21 through June 25

Don Giovanni
Photo by Ken Howard
Opera Theatre’s Don Giovanni is oddly schizoid. Conductor Jane Glover and the singers are doing solid Mozart/Da Ponte but stage directors James Robinson and Michael Shell appear to be doing Marat/Sade, repeatedly undercutting the music and text with contradictory or just plain distracting stage business. You know it's going to be a bumpy night when the opera opens with Leporello pretending to urinate on a wall.

This is hardly a problem unique to Opera Theatre. I opened the Sunday New York Times the day after OTSL’s opening night to find an article by Charles Isherwood critiquing Robert Lepage’s Ring cycle at the Met in ways that closely mirrored my thoughts on what I had seen and heard the night before. When he writes that “the first responsibility of the director should be serving the musical drama,” and describes a production that “seems to be perpetually in competition for our attention with the opera itself,” he could just as easily be commenting on Mozart in St. Louis as on Wagner in New York.

The central problem with this Don Giovanni can, I think, be found in the brief directors’ note in the program. The characters who are seduced and/or abused by the Don “are not happy people to begin with.” They’re “self-deceiving, insomniac, and conflicted, and none of them seems to know how to escape from a tortured orbit around Giovanni.” Their Don may be a sociopath but instead of leaving a trail of innocent victims he’s dogged by broken enablers.

Nor is he the heedless libertine the libretto suggests. This Don Giovanni is “aware of his own vulnerability, his fleeting youth. Fear has set in.” For those who don’t read program notes, Mr. Robinson and Mr. Shell underline the point by having elderly ghosts confront Giovanni throughout the opera. In the end it’s the ghostly geezers who drag him to Hell, not the libretto’s chorus of demons.

The production, in short, injects a note of contemporary psychobabble that is at odds with both the music and libretto and serves neither of them well.

Still, to quote Mr. Isherwood again, a “pre-eminent truth about opera-going is that the quality of the music-making will always remain the matter of paramount importance…a great night at the opera relies infinitely more on the singers and the players in the pit than on any conceptual innovations from the production’s director.” The fine work by Ms. Glover, the St. Louis Symphony musicians, and the strong singers on stage is, ultimately, what rescues this production from the doldrums to which the stage direction seems determined to consign it. I’d like to think they were the motivation for the standing ovation the show received on opening night. They certainly deserved it.

Baritone Elliot Madore is a compelling and powerful Don Giovanni. He has clearly been directed to chew the scenery – almost literally so, in the final banquet scene – but he does it well. Baritone Levi Hernandez makes an impressive OTSL debut as the Don’s wily and put-upon servant Leporello, and his crystal-clear diction is a real plus in the patter songs.

As Don Ottavio, David Portillo was a great favorite of the opening night crowd, and with good reason. His “Il mio tesoro” allowed him to show off a fine, clear tenor to great advantage. Soprano Maria Kanyova, who gave us top-notch performances in Marriage of Figaro last year and Nixon in China back in 2004, is in fine form again as the grieving Donna Anna. It’s a beautifully sung performance – and even better if you close your eyes and ignore the ludicrous costumes and unflattering hairstyle with which she has been saddled.

Mezzo Kathryn Leemhuis, whom I described as a “lively and provocative Flora” in 2007’s La Traviata, brings a fine sense of comedy and vitality to the role of the peasant Zerlina. Bass Bradley Smoak, who was such a hit as the comically inebriated Antonio in last season’s Marriage of Figaro, once again demonstrates his humor chops as Zerlina’s befuddled (and, as it happens, intoxicated) bridegroom Masetto.

As the chronically indecisive Donna Elivra, soprano Kishani Jayasinghe falls a bit short of the vocal power and clarity of her fellow cast members, but her acting is convincing and in the end she won me over. Bass Andrew Gangestad cuts an imposing figure as the Commendatore, both in life and death.

Chistopher Akerlind is credited as the lighting designer but, as my fellow critic Gerry Kowarsky noted during intermission, he might more accurately be described as the “darkness designer”, given how dim the stage is. I understand that this is part of The Concept, but it does make it difficult to see what the actors are doing often enough to be distracting.

Equally distracting are Bruno Schwengel’s sets and costumes. The former feature fake three-dimensional scenes on painted flats with plenty of forced perspective – presumably to underscore the falseness of the Don’s world. The latter seem to place the action of the opera in both the 18th and 21st centuries simultaneously, which only further muddles the character relationships. Still, it’s all executed with great skill. It’s the overall concept that’s the problem.

That’s not to say that all of Mr. Robinson and Mr. Shell’s ideas were bad. Using on-stage musicians for the first act “battle of the bands” sequence is a nice touch, for example, and the Don’s final descent into Hell was appropriately dramatic. Playing some scenes “in one” in front of midnight blue curtain to cover lengthy scene changes was also a good choice – or would have been if those changes hadn’t been so protracted and so noisy.

I won’t say this Don Giovanni isn’t worth seeing because it’s certainly worth hearing, and if you love this opera you’ll find considerable musical pleasure in this production. I just wish directors would have a bit more faith in their material and their audiences. Honestly, we don’t need to be distracted by non-stop stage business. We understand that a Mozart opera has different ground rules than a Rogers and Hammerstein musical. Just trust us, OK?

Opera Theatre’s Don Giovanni continues at the Loretto-Hilton Center on the Webster University campus through June 25th. For more information, you may visit experienceopera.org or call 314-961-0644.

Monday, May 16, 2011

"Spotlight on Opera" at Ethical Society of St. Louis, Monday, May 16


Opera Theatre of St. Louis will host a series of dialogues featuring a variety of local experts and creative teams that will explore different themes in each of this year's operas.

The "Spotlight on Opera," series will be held at 7:30 p.m. on Monday evenings throughout May at the Ethical Society of St. Louis, 9001 Clayton Road.

The evenings will also feature live performances by Opera Theatre's "Gerdine Young Artists."

On Monday, May 16, Simon Kelly, curator of Modern and Contemporary Art at the Saint Louis Art Museum will lead the discussion "French Impressionism: Monet and the Maeterlinck." Panelist are Stephen Lord, OTSL Music Director; David Alden, director of OSTL's production of Pelléas and Mélisande, and the production's designer Paul Steinberg.

Single tickets are $10 and $5 for students and groups of at least 15. More information available by clicking here or by phone at 314-961-0644.

Friday, May 13, 2011

Deborah Voigt and Bryn Terfel Star in Met Saturday Matinee Broadcast of "Die Walküre"


St. Louis Public Radio will carry the Met Opera broadcast of Richard Wagner’s Die Walküre on their HD channel, KWMU-3 beginning at 11 a.m. Please note the one-hour earlier starting time. You may also listen to a live stream of the broadcast. Approximate running time 5 hours, 10 minutes.

The Metropolitan Opera's season comes to its conclusion this Saturday with a new production of Die Walküre, starring Bryn Terfel and Deborah Voigt.

In the April 23, 2011, New York Times, Anthony Tommasini said:
What moved me about this Walküre and made the five-hour-plus evening seem to whisk by was the exciting, wondrously natural playing that James Levine drew from the great Met orchestra and the involving singing of the impressive cast. Mr. Levine has had a rough time recuperating from back surgery. His conducting on Friday, if not as commanding as his work in Berg’s Wozzeck this month, was inspired and beautiful. Certain passages were perhaps not as together as in Levine Walküre performances past. But this one had fresh urgency and sweep. Taking bows onstage at the end, with the supporting arms of Mr. Terfel and Ms. Voigt, he looked frail. Still, he did superb work and was greeted with a huge ovation.

Among the cast Ms. Voigt had the most at stake. A decade ago, when she owned the role of Sieglinde at the Met, she seemed destined to be a major Brünnhilde. Her voice has lost some warmth and richness in recent years. But the bright colorings and even the sometimes hard-edged sound of her voice today suits Brünnhilde’s music. I have seldom heard the role sung with such rhythmic accuracy and verbal clarity. From the start, with those go-for-broke cries of “Hojotoho,” she sang every note honestly. She invested energy, feeling and character in every phrase.

The High Definition transmission of Die Walküre will be presented at AMC Esquire 7, 6706 Clayton Road; St. Louis Mills 18; 5555 Saint Louis Mills Boulevard; AMC Chesterfield 14, 3000 Chesterfield Mall; and AMC Showplace Edwardsville 13, 6333 Center Grove Road, Edwardsville, Illinois. Click here to buy tickets.

Monday, May 9, 2011

"Spotlight on Opera" at Ethical Society of St. Louis Monday, May 9


Opera Theatre of St. Louis will host a series of dialogues featuring a variety of local experts and creative teams that will explore different themes in each of this year's operas.

The "Spotlight on Opera," series will be held at 7:30 p.m. on Monday evenings throughout May at the Ethical Society of St. Louis, 9001 Clayton Road.

The evenings will also feature live performances by Opera Theatre's "Gerdine Young Artists."

On May 9, St. Louis Post-Dispatch fashion editor Debra Bass will moderate "The Daughter of the Regiment: The Ultimate Makeover, Clothes and Character," with guests Grammy-Award winning conductor John McDaniel, stage director Seán Curran and designer James Schuette. They will explore the role of military style in popular fashion across the centuries.

Single tickets are $10 and $5 for students and groups of at least 15. More information available by clicking here or by phone at 314-961-0644.

Thursday, May 5, 2011

Stauss' "Ariadne auf Naxos" Will Be Met Saturday Matinee on May 7


St. Louis Public Radio will carry the Met Opera broadcast of Richard Strauss’ Ariadne auf Naxos on their HD channel, KWMU-3 beginning at 12 noon. You may also listen to a live stream of the broadcast. Approximate running time 2 hours, 40 minutes with an intermission at approximately 12:40 p.m.

The Met's web site says, "Violeta Urmana and Joyce DiDonato star in Strauss’s brilliant opera-within-an-opera. Fabio Luisi conducts Elijah Moshinsky’s witty production."