Vivaldi’s Catone in Utica
Libretto by Metastasio
August 1, 2015
Glimmerglass Festival
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| Caesar in love. Photo credit: Karli Cadel |
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| Caesar shows us what he's made of. Photo credit: Karli Cadel |
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| Catone maneuvers for relevance. Photo credit: Karli Cadel |
While Holiday’s Caesar stole the show, the evening’s tragic
trajectory belonged to Cato, at least on paper. However, the particular setting
of the opera performed here with its highly abbreviated first act, the original
of which is not extant, actually configures the story in large part around the
betrothal and courtship of the hand of Marzia, Catone’s beautiful daughter. Her
father has in mind a politically expedient union with Arbace, chief of the
North African Numidian tribe that has sided with him in his treacherous affront
to Caesar’s rise. But, ironically enough, Marzia is already in love with none
other than her father’s sworn enemy, the great Julius Caesar himself.
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| Arbace's marriage of political expediency. Photo credit: Karli Cadel |
Vivaldi’s Catone is the perfect example of the baroque
propensity for casting countertenors as young men in love. Both Arbace and
Caesar are the two contenders for the hand of the lovely Marzia, despite the
waning political influence of her father. The central love triangle of the
story is crisscrossed by another pair of lovers – Fulvio, Ceasar’s lieutenant,
falls for Pompey’s widow, the stunning and vengeful Emilia (here played by the
excellent mezzo Sarah Mesko). Then of course, there is the overarching plotline
of the political intrigue between the stoic Cato (the last stubborn bulwark of
the republic) and the rising emperor.
Early in Act I we get parallel peacocking seduction arias. Arbace,
sung by countertenor Eric Jurenas, is the first to woo his “betrothed.”
He pushes himself on his reluctant prey as he sings S’andrà senza pastore.
The Numidian prince – whose Mad Max-inspired garb fits his desert
lifestyle, it’s post-apocalyptic chic! – is a bit too overbearing and brusque
with the object of his affections. Marzia shuns and spurns him and plays hard
to get while he chases her around the stage like a wild animal on the hunt, or
like a shepherd trying to catch a wayward member of his flock.
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| Arbace woos his reluctant betrothed. Photo credit: Karli Cadel |
Caesar’s introductory aria, on the other hand, his parallel song
of seduction, was genuinely moving. In Se mai senti spirarti sul volto lieve,
he busts out with some major male grandstanding, which forces his beloved
Marzia to admire him in all his splendor, rather than force himself on her. She
comes to him and he doesn’t have to make the effort to even so much as lean in
toward her. In fact, in his vocal preening, posing and posturing, he is so
taken with his own perfections that he almost seems to be more in love with
himself than with her. And the aria in Holiday’s hands is mellifluous magic,
pulling the attention of the house into his orbit, melting everyone around. She
fawns over him and is just as taken as we are with his talents and gifts as a
singer. This is what the power of song is about. Holiday shows us what a great
operatic moment can do. The seduction of the music imbues the narrative with
its Orphic power but yet also transcends the narrative. It is like coloring so
vividly inside the lines that its force radiates out from it.
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| Caesar puts on his game face. Photo credit: Karli Cadel |
In a change of tone, Caesar’s second big aria, shortly thereafter,
is precipitated after a confrontation with Catone who taunts him with threats
of war. Guerra mi piace (“I like war”), says a headstrong Catone. E
guerra avrai (“and war you’ll have”), retorts the emperor in his fury. A
sudden flood of red light washed over the scene, intimating the bloodshed of
war. Caesar is seeing blood and so are we. The quip provokes him to launch into
his great yelps of war aria, Se in campo armato. He doesn’t sound girly
or effeminate at all. Instead, he comes off counter-intuitively as powerful and
manly. His voice has an agile power and a dynamic expressivity. Pacing the
stage slowly and deliberately, Holiday seemed more regal than boyish. The full
bodied way his voice dropped as he prepared each time to launch into his barrage
of little yelps, as he moved from a chesty countertenor to his head voice, were
unforgettable. They came off as little conniption fits that gave you whiplash
of the ear. That night at Glimmerglass we heard the clarion call of Caesar’s
imperial revolution.
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| Catone barks orders at his minions. Photo credit: Karli Cadel |
When we signed up for Vivaldi at Glimmerglass this is precisely
the kind of musical experience we were looking for: fiery Venetian baroque
operatic fireworks. The fact that the bill included John Holiday, one of the
big winners at this year’s Operalia competition, was the icing on the cake. He
and most of the rest of the cast that featured an exciting mix of young artists
(mezzos Megan Samarin as Marzia and Allegra De Vita as Fulvio)
and seasoned veterans (tenor Thomas Michael Allen in the title role and
mezzo Sarah Mesko as Emilia) pushed Vivaldi’s vocal score to its
expressive limit in many key moments. After Holiday, the most impressive singer
on stage was Ms. Mesko, who attacked Emilia’s vengeful arias with a fury and
passion worth of Vivaldi.
I wish I could say the same for the orchestra. While
the singers were fleshing out the ends of their lines with bright full colors
and emitting fiery vocal effects into the intimate theater from the stage,
there were fewer sparks to be heard from the orchestra pit. What I love about a
good Vivaldi score are ferocious strings, especially the violins that demand to be
passionately attacked with a Mediterranean animality. Here there were very few
Vivaldi fiery Italian flourishes. The orchestra under Ryan Brown’s
direction just didn’t seem to rise to the level of the singing. They were tight
though slightly academic sounding, more restrained, and more English in
disposition than uncontainably Southern European.
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| Emilia and her game face. Photo credit: Karli Cadel |
I found Tasewell Thompson’s production to be extremely effective in its sophisticated simplicity. The staging presented a brief introduction of each of the characters during the overture. The stage was visible through a translucent scrim and each of the singers in full classical garb strutted out onto the stage one at a time. Their character’s name and a brief description of what they represent was projected onto the scrim to ease us into this world. The costumes were grandiose. The setting was the North African desert in Numidia where Cato has fled. Over the course of the evening an ominous big full moon was alternatively projected on the backdrop along with a portentously setting sun. Gold-encrusted “Roman ruins” (or ruins of the declining Roman republic?) were strewn about in heaps around the stage. An arc du triomphe framed much of the action, as if to signify that the ineluctable march toward empire is under way.
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| A brighter day is promised in the imperial silhouette. Photo credit: Karli Cadel |
Another brighter day is promised in the form of a series of
incisive projections featured at the rear of John Conklin’s set design.
Silhouettes of architectural elements appear against the solemn sunset of the
backdrop: a Corinthian column, the outline of the Coliseum as it stands today.
The gloaming of the dusky sky is offset by a brighter world. Ironically though,
some of the silhouettes are rather ominous, portents of later decline, like the
that of the Coliseum already in the ruins as it appears today, which I suppose
is a proleptic fast forwarding to the eventual fall of Roman imperial glory
altogether. Civilizations rise, and even the greatest fall. Here is the story
of one man’s convictions and his attempt to get out of the way of the
inexorable storm and surge of the locomotive of Caesar’s imperial project, to
whose ineluctable rise even the senate back in Rome has already succumbed.
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| A daughter grieves. Photo credit: Karli Cadel |
And, of course, succumb even Cato does. I was eager to see how
Vivaldi or at the very least how this production would treat Cato’s final
definitive gesture. Attitudes toward tyranny are at stake in how Cato’s
clinging to the moral high road is staged. His is the ultimate study in
conviction. Thompson’s production again gives us an abbreviated finale.
Foregoing the grand finale choral passage featured in at least one version of
the score, Thompson leaves us with what is perhaps the most memorable image of
the evening. The lights go up on the final scene to reveal a Cato slumped over
in his throne with his back to the audience. His arms hang lifeless and red
streamers run from his wrists like streams of crimson blood across the stage on
either side. Rather than a final flourish of vocal fireworks, the orchestra
gives us a majestic oboe solo that is both haunting and incredibly moving at
the same time. Simply magnificent.
– Lui & Lei
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Marzia ponders her personal political predicament.
Photo credit: Karli Cadel
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| The Glimmerglass Opera House. Photo credit: Allegri con Fuoco |
