Tidigare produktion recensioner
5"Joseph Canuto Leon brought a domineering menace to Baron Douphol.... The relationship between Violetta and Baron Douphol was front and center from the opera’s beginning rather than a reaction to abandoning Alfredo."
“The Consul? What’s that?” This was not an uncommon reaction when Florida Grand Opera announced the season’s schedule. Lovers of only the bread and butter repertory probably aren’t even going to show up. Those even familiar with the less standard might not know this one. And those of us who do are probably familiar from the original cast recording of its Broadway premiere and/or a DVD of its 1960 television production. If lucky perhaps we caught it at a performance done by a local university’s music department. The idea that Florida Grand Opera is taking it on, is a giant step.
Puccini’s score is not lacking in the composer’s trademark lyricism with the hit soprano aria “O mio babbino caro,” a fine tenor solo and a soaring duet for the lovers Lauretta and Rinuccio. But the fifty-five minute opera is distinguished by quicksilver lightness and rapid patter in the manner of Verdi’s Falstaff that make it unique in Puccini’s output.
“A wonder of a Werther... more daunting than an opera about the hyperbolic nature of unreciprocated love, is to get the audience to suspend disbelief and buy it. Florida Grand Opera accomplished just that on Saturday, April 27 at Miami’s Arsht Center with its new production of Massenet’s tragic opera. When the performers, text, score, orchestra and creative team are all top-shelf and brought together to render a single production, you are going to be included in one magical night of opera. This is what happened on the opening night of FGO’s production of Werther... It is a difficult assignment to direct characters who are constantly in a heightened state of emotion. That line between performer’s becoming melodramatic rather than believable can easily get fuzzy. Stage director Lawrence Edelson skillfully kept his players from being overwrought, effectively keeping them honest. The taking of hands, the turning-aways, the conflicted hesitations, rang true. The staging of several couples dancing (including the newly acquainted Werther and Charlotte) was simple, elegant and tasteful... This opera is about character not spectacle. Feelings were expressed at all times. Tender moments, speaking substance. Edelson’s direction was measured with lovely pacing, nothing rushed, so the romance could build from innocence to something possibly profound. He drew natural reactions out of his performers, the only way to sell this story as believable with emotions in such a consistently heightened state... It is refreshing to recognize how Massenet scored the opera as a vehicle for a competent director to nurture honest relationships and feelings unforced by the constraints of time... Applause doesn’t lie. This production rang true.”
Jonathan Michie’s booming baritone was deployed with subtlety and he played the jealous and hypocritical nobleman to the hilt. At the conclusion as Mozart’s music reaches the sublime with “Contessa perdono,” the Count’s plea for forgiveness, Michie was fully up to the task.
