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3With music and lyrics by Manuel Penella (1880-1939), and under the watchful eye of stage director Jorge Torres, this star-studded production of The Wildcat is packed with all you’d expect in a quintessential Spanish tale including a passionate love triangle, a bullfighter, flamenco dancers, a mountain bandit, and, of course, a beautiful woman at the root of it all. Known as a zarzuela (a Spanish opera), it still shows clear influences of Italian, French, and Viennese operas.
In the role of Butterfly, Hui He made a splendid entrance with Act one’s “ancora un passo,” flanked by her proceeding relatives and their eye-catching, traditional costumes. The soprano’s youthful tones carried wonderfully through the excited, legato phrases which blossomed into a soaring B-flat conclusion. Her infatuation lent itself to her flirtatious lines with Pinkerton, as she revealed her conversion to Christianity and willingness to leave her family, framing these as loving sacrifices. The character’s volatile emotions were expertly captured by Hui He throughout her time onstage, with her sensitivity to the words of others able to drive extended passages of suspicious or romantic fervor. This was powerfully heard in her Act two aria “Un bel di vedremo,” where her delicate passion quickly swept her up into a sonorous reverie, finishing as she demurred and closed the screen door as if to give herself a reprieve from the emotional excess. After the truth of Pinkerton’s return is made clear to her in Act three, Hui He’s utterly crushed lines were highly gripping as she readied for her suicide; her final aria “Tu? Tu? Piccolo iddio” was a thing of ruinous beauty as her grieving farewell to her child swelled to tremendous vocal heights.
Ana María Martínez artful restraint was matched by those around her, including the conductor Karel Mark Chichon, who made his company debut with a performance that kept the drama flowing inexorably forward.
