Opera NEO / Reviews

From our contemporary vantage point, old Gioachino Rossini appears to have acquired the patent on comic opera in the early 19th century. That his effervescent opera buffa based on the Cinderella story, La Cenerentola, should have followed his comedic The Barber of Seville in its 1816 sensational opening in Rome is little more than a logical progression. Yet history is seldom so logical. Indeed, Cinderella was not at all on the composer’s radar when he and his librettist Jacopo Ferretti were negotiating with Rome’s Teatro Valle for a new opera to charm the city’s opera crowds for the 1817 carnival season. The Papal censor had rejected the duo’s intended project, Francesca di Foix, and Rossini himself rejected his librettist’s ensuing 20 or so suggestions for another subject for their new opera. With time running short, Rossini finally acquiesced to Ferretti’s idea of using Charles Perrault’s Cinderella story, and once the composer had the libretto in hand, he whipped up the musical score in less than three weeks. San Diego Opera opened its 2016 season at the Civic Theatre with a splendid La Cenerentola, and San Diego’s Opera NEO opened its current summer festival slate of operas on Friday (August 3) with its more intimate production of Rossini’s La Cenerentola in the Four Flowers Theater at La Jolla Country Day School. True to its mission, Opera NEO featured promising young artists in a work whose primary characters are also young: Cinderella and her two spoiled sisters, the eligible, dashing prince and his clever valet Dandini. Only the garrulous father, Don Magnifico, and the prince’s wise tutor Alindoro inhabit the older generation. In Stephanie Doche, Artistic Director Peter Kozma found an admirable Cinderella. Her beautifully modulated mezzo-soprano with its surprisingly brilliant top adapted to every requirement, from the doleful simplicity of Rossini’s imitation folk song “Una volta, c’era un re”—Cinderella’s version of “Whistle While You Work”—to the glorious pyrotechnics of her stunning victory aria, “Nacqui all’affanno e al pianto.” She gave us an admirably earnest Idamante in last season’s Opera NEO production of Mozart’s Idomeneo, but her Cinderella displayed the breadth of her range brilliantly. I could not get enough of Brian James Myer’s precocious Dandini and his warm, always inviting baritone. Yes, Rossini gave this “servant more clever than his master” stock character abundant personality and vocal display, but Myer shrewdly capitalized on this every nanosecond he was on stage. As Myer put on the airs of blue-blood privilege in his role of acting as decoy for the masquerading Don Ramiro, Prince of Salerno, his newfound hauteur added several inches to his stature and steely authority to his rapid declamation. He never let his character down: even after Don Ramiro revealed his true identity while extolling his love for Cinderella, Myer stood off to the side at a table, busily polishing glassware and smoldering silently as he was forced to resume his lowly station as valet. Tenor Andrew Morstein displayed the apt frustration of the disguised Prince Don Ramiro having to defer to his valet, and Morstein’s vocal agility met the composer’s unrelenting demanding passages. But without that ingratiating bloom to his ardent cadences, he portrayed a wan suitor to his vocally resplendent Cinderella. On the other hand, Jared Lesa’s Don Magnifico kept the rafters ringing with his dazzling, robust yet eminently flexible baritone, from his bristling opening cavatina “Miei rampolli femminini” to his unctuous and grandly overconfident aria “Sia qualunque delle figlie.” Soprano Chang Liu’s opulent vocal account of the vain older stepsister Clorinda almost made Cinderella’s cruel half-sibling likeable; mezzo-soprano Miriam Schildkret displayed equal vocal finesse as the younger Tisbe. This duo was careful not to overplay the stepsisters—the libretto itself is sufficiently unflattering to these young women. Baritone Jason Zacher made a confident, completely unflappable Alidoro, sagely shepherding characters into the sunny happy ending everyone associates with the folk tale and to which both Rossini and Ferretti aspired. The eight men of Don Ramiro’s court produced a vocally vibrant ensemble, and they were equally essential doubling in their role as scene changers. Following in Mozart’s footsteps, Rossini wrote superb ensembles, and the most exciting moments of this production regularly came in the highly charged quartets and sextets of principals that so often clarified or clinched the drama. Peter Kozma conducted the orchestra with customary precision and vigor. In the Four Flowers Theater, the instrumental ensemble must play on the same level as the singers, which gives the ample wind section greater heft than usually desirable, although Kozma kept this in check as best he could. The room appeared to amplify the winds and percussion, but not the strings. I will confess that this disparity made me more aware of the felicity of Rossini’s writing for the first chair winds. Kudos especially to Principal Clarinet Sérgio Coelho for many gorgeous cantabile solos and to Michael Sherman, whose fortpiano flourishes in the recitatives were nonpareil. Faced with a very wide stage in a modest-sized room and Opera NEO’s typical minimal set, Stage Director Ophélie Wolf found inventive ways to arrange her singers to avoid monotony, and her pacing overall proved effective. Mike Peveich’s set relied on colorful scenic projections and two movable walls: one provided a pair of doors to provide an obvious entry and exit for characters, and the other wall simply balanced the former. Symbolism could not have been simpler: Don Magnifico’s crumbling domicile had but one chair and clutter all over the floor. Don Ramiro’s palace had several chairs and no clutter on the floor. And I cannot help but observe that projecting a photo of the Hall of Mirrors at Versailles as the background for the Prince’s palace amounted to gilding the fleur-de-lis! Costume Designer Taylor Payne’s smart contemporary costumes provided a colorful array on a tight budget. Dandini’s sleek Saville Row suit and the stepsisters’ ball gowns—one electric green and the other candy-apple red—proved outstanding, and the bright jewel-toned dress shirts of the Prince’s courtiers added visual relief. During the intermission, I had a serious argument with an extremely knowledgeable opera observer. While I thought Don Ramiro’s suspenders added flare to his understated costume, my colleague thought otherwise. The new venue for Opera NEO’s productions provided obvious advantages over the outdoor Palisades Amphitheater, including improved audience seating comfort, ability to hear the music without amplification, and enjoying a summer performance in air-conditioned comfort. All of these considerations are indeed valuable, although I felt a tinge of regret losing that upper level at the rear of the Palisades stage that provided previous productions with many a grand entrance and strategic escape. The Opera NEO Summer Opera Festival opened this production of Rossini’s “La Cenerentola” on Friday, August 2, 2019 in the Four Flowers Theater of the La Jolla Country Day School. There are additional performances of this opera on August 3 and August 4 (matinee), and two additional operas, “Eugene Onegin” and “La Calisto” will be presented next week through August 11, 2019, in the same venue.

Producing Pyotr Tchaikovsky’s beloved but demanding opera Eugene Onegin was surely an act of faith by Opera NEO’s Artistic Director Peter Kozma. San Diego Opera, for example, hasn’t touched this challenging score in decad Kozma, who both directed the production, sung in Russian, and conducted the orchestra, was fortunate to have enough strong vocalists in the current season’s Summer Festival to carry out Tchaikovsky’s musical and dramatic demands successfully. Thursday’s opening of Eugene Onegin at La Jolla Country Day School’s Four Flowers Theater revealed consistently polished singing coupled with a compelling, well-focused dramatic arc. My potent memories of Lyric Opera Chicago’s early 1980s production of Eugene Onegin with Mirella Freni as Tatyana and Nicolay Ghiaurov as Prince Gremin always set my expectations high for this Tchaikovsky gem, and I left the Opera NEO production more than satisfied. Based on a novel by Alexander Pushkin, the story of Eugene Onegin presents a highly unusual triangle. Set in early 19th-century Russia, Tatyana, the younger sibling in the household of landed gentry far from the city, falls madly in love with Onegin, a dashing but slightly older and more sophisticated neighbor of equal social standing. Onegin casually rejects Tatyana’s brash romantic overtures, sent in a letter, and leaves the country after killing his friend Vladimir Lensky in a duel. When Onegin returns six years later and finds that Tatyana is now happily married to the older Prince Gremin, he realizes his mistake rejecting Tatyana and tries to win her back. She confesses that although she may still love Onegin, she is not going to the leave the Prince and her place in St. Petersburg society. Rachel Blaustein gave us a Tatyana to cherish, at first a complex mix of youthful reticence and wildly impassioned outpourings that grew over the opera’s course into a passionate, mature woman who knows her own mind and finds the strength to carry out her resolve. Her brilliant lyric soprano animated her first act Letter Scene, and it turned into gleaming, steely resolve in her final confrontation with Onegin. Baritone Luke Harnish sang a confident, richly modulated Onegin, especially as the self-possessed aristocrat in the opera’s opening scenes. Onegin’s psychological breakdown in the third act, his anguished self-recrimination colored and shaped by the experience of the composer’s own catastrophic marriage, needed that level of probing emotional depth just beyond Harnish’s reach.Tenor Dane Suarez’s brash, volatile Lensky easily convinced us of his need to challenge Onegin to a duel over the latter’s innocently mischievous flirting at a party with Olga, Lensky’s intended. Suarez’s wrenching farewell aria prior to the second act duel gave us a vocal tour de force of surpassing splendor. Holly N. Dodson used her warm, expansive mezzo-soprano to create an exceptionally gentle, compassionate Filippyevna, Tatyana’s servant confidante. Bass-baritone Jason Zacher communicated the grace and dignity of Prince Gremin, and even though this is one of the classic bass roles of opera, he navigated the Prince’s lowest notes with resonant confidence. Sarabeth Belón’s saucy Olga and Rachel Deatherage’s sweetly overbearing Madame Larina agreeably completed Tatyana’s family members. Chorus Master John Elam trained his ensemble exceedingly well: the pair of rousing peasant choruses in the first act opened the opera on an auspiciously vibrant note. Kozma’s 36-member orchestra, large by Opera NEO standards, gave a favorable account of Tchaikovsky’s voluptuous score, with the exception of the upper strings, whose pitch at times proved less than rock solid. Kozma’s orchestral tempos and his pacing of the dramatic action suited my expectations to a T. Taylor Payne’s costumes, not precisely period yet not rakishly contemporary, gave the opera the sleek sophistication it requires, and the umbrellas neatly symbolized the power of community expectations. The set recycled the moveable panels from Opera NEO’s first production, although projections of the verdant Russian countryside and—surprise, surprise—close-ups of birch trees, helped place the opera. Opera NEO opened this production of Tchaikovsky’s “Eugene Onegin” on Thursday, August 8, 2019, at the La Jolla Country Day School’s Four Flowers Theater. Another performance is slated in the same venue for August 10.

Mozart’s prodigy humbles all of us. He started writing operas at an age when most of us had just learned to successfully ride a two-wheeled bicycle, so when the Elector of Bavaria commissioned him at age 24 to write Idomeneo for a court festivity, he had already composed 12 operas. Like most of the Mozart canon apart from Don Giovanni, Idomeneo scores sat on library shelves gathering dust in the 19th century, and when the opera was revived in the early 1930s, the notoriously un-humble Richard Strauss “improved” the score by adding some of his own music to it. Fortunately, Opera NEO produced a musically sparkling although spare production Mozart’s Idomeneo—without any Richard Strauss-helper—as part of this year’s Opera NEO Summer Opera Festival and Workshop at the outdoor Palisades Presbyterian Amphitheater in Allied Gardens. The plot of Idomeneo is a love triangle—the son of Cretan King Idomeneo, Idamante, is loved by both Elettra and the captured Trojan princess Ilia—tangled into Idomeneo’s soul-crushing sentence from the god of the sea Neptune, who saved Idomeneo from drowning in a storm at sea and then commanded to the king to slay the first person he encountered as the price for his rescue. And the first person he sees is his son, Idamante. The glory of this Opera NEO production is its fine cast of young singers, who confidently imbued Mozart’s flowing, impassioned lines with grace and assurance. From Ilia’s opera-opening aria “Padre, germani, addio,” Sara Womble’s supple, warm soprano immediately won the hearts of the audience. In her boldly convincing trouser role, mezzo-soprano Stephanie Doche’s Idamante communicated the prince’s love for Ilia as well as his loyalty to his father with fervent, commanding vocal prowess. In Elettra’s final aria “D’Oreste, d’Ajace ho in seno i tormenti,” soprano Sydney Anderson unleashed a torrent of stunning vocal fireworks that had remained hidden in her smartly defined role of the scheming, self-absorbed lover who vainly attempts to win Idamante from Ilia. As the title character, Dane Suarez cogently balanced his acute sense of royal authority with his internal conflict over carrying out the savage will of the gods, and his hearty tenor proved more than up to the task. I kept wanting more musical depth from his interpretation, but part of that problem may be attributed to Mozart. He wrote the role for an aging tenor, Anton Raaff, and he carefully avoided a level of complexity that would have compromised Raaff. Tenor Omar Najmi soared as Arbace, the king’s advisor and physician, demonstrating the emotional vibrancy that drives his splendid tenor instrument. Bass-baritone Jason Zacher thundered magnificently as the offstage voice of Neptune, and tenor Blair Remmers gave Neptune’s High Priest persuasive, golden appeal. Brendon Shapiro trained the chorus well, and these members of the Opera NEO Summer Festival filled out enthusiastically the composer’s large ensembles that so neatly conclude various scenes. Company Artistic Director Peter Kozma took responsibility for stage direction as well as conducting the 32-member orchestra. Even if the Idomeneo story lacks the dramatic complexities of his later operas, his rich, effulgent orchestral writing in this opera easily compensates, and these instrumentalists gave a consistently robust yet polished account of Mozart’s magical score. Kudos to the strings’ keen ensemble and the beautifully sculpted woodwind choruses. To call Mark Kanieff’s set design basic is to venture into exaggeration. The blue tarps on the stage floor usually represented the sea, and the black tarps covering everything else represented the royal chambers, the royal garden, and Neptune’s temple. I did like the pyramid-shaped obelisks that suggested the composer’s era, and one very moveable pyramid that became a storm-tossed ship at sea. With so little scenery upon which to focus, we were forced to focus on the singers, and Kozma plotted their movement and stage placement judiciously. In the great third act quartet “Andrò, ramingo e solo,” each singer was given ample space to vent their conflicting emotional torments while appearing united—as only Mozart can do. Although the opera’s story takes place in ancient times, Vanessa Stewart chose modern dress as a practical solution. Idomeneo’s electric blue suit—with Trumpian solid red tie—and Arbace’s khaki military suit proved perfect. Elettra’s wardrobe of flashy pastel dresses is exactly what a princess would choose to wear, and Idamante’s light grey suit for travel into exile could not have been more tasteful. Opera NEO made an excellent case for this overlooked Mozart opera, and I could see San Diego Opera staging it in grand style in Civic Theatre or presenting a more spare but clever production in the Balboa Theatre. Opera NEO presented W. A. Mozart’s “Idomeneo, Re di Creta” as part of its Summer Opera Festival and Workshop on August 10, 2018, in the Palisades Presbyterian Amphitheatre. For this review, the August 10 performance was attended, and the opera will be repeated in the same venue on August 11, 2018.