A Southern Italian Odyssey of Betrayal and Murder

Mascagni’s Cavalleria Rusticana / Leoncavallo’s I Pagliacci

Metropolitan Opera 

April 14, 2015

The two faces of the star of the show.
Photo Credit: Metropolitan Opera

The Met’s new production of Cavalleria Rusticana is a solemn and downtrodden outing. Purportedly set over Easter weekend in Sicily where the oranges are supposed to hang redolent on the air alongside the square (Aranci olezzano sui verdi margini) and the sunshine of springtime in southern Italy ought to burn brightly, Sir David McVicar’s new setting is instead dark and brooding. All we get is a stark “piazza” and minimalist details that do little to set the scene no matter how effective they are for transitions between piazza, church, tavern, home, and back again. While I’m not necessarily against essential productions, this one definitely missed the mark. I could not get over the darkness that made the whole thing feel more like a northern European Protestant winter rather than a Sicilian Catholic spring. 

Sicilian Easter on McVicar's set in all its starkness.
Photo Credit: Metropolitan Opera

To me the Sicilian land, with its almost violently bright sunlight and generous nature, is an important character in Cavalleria. A place of strong contrasts, torrid and sensual, stirring irresistible passions that lead to tragic impulsive acts. McVicar’s sets, with the only touch of color being a basket of tomatoes in the market scene, if anything stirred a sad gloominess, but certainly nothing remotely sensual or impulsive, which is kind of the point of this opera. On the other hand, the costumes were very Sicilian. And the opening passages of the opera, both its in medias res serenade and initial choruses, are sung in Sicilian dialect which is very musical. But it was a bit strange to hear foreign voices intone these southern accents. It does not quite compute in the mouth of singers who sounded more comfortable singing German. But oh well. Opera is an international art form, as it almost always has been.

Lola amidst her people.
Photo Credit: Cory Weaver/Metropolitan Opera

I’m usually not a fan of verismo opera, especially when in the hands of Puccini when he is at his sappiest in La Boheme. But there is something irresistibly evocative and viscerally suggestive, almost seductive and sexy to me about Mascagni’s Cavalleria Rusticana. There is something to be said about bringing verismo back to its original literary roots in Italy. As a movement it is often placed in a league with the gritty urban French “naturalism” of Emile Zola. But the Italian verismo of Giovanni Verga, the author of the play and short story on which the opera is based, is driven by a different set of social and geographic concerns that are determined largely by its roots in Sicilian peasant life, rather than the underbelly of Parisian life. Verga gives us a different kind of striving and struggling and suffering in the figures of his fishermen, peasants and other subaltern individuals and it translates to the opera stage far more effectively. 

Santuzza implores Turiddu.
Photo Credit: Metropolitan Opera 

The orchestra led by maestro Fabio Luisi plowed through the stunning score with intensity and beauty. For Mascagni’s is such beautiful music. And so unconventional in many ways with its opening in medias res and its two choral introductory passages alternating with musical interludes. The singing was also mostly phenomenal. Marcelo Alvarez as the cold-blooded mamma’s boy, Turiddu, was a revelation. While I’ve seen him before, this was the first time he really impressed me. Alvarez burst onto the scene with a full round tenor sound that we don’t get nearly enough at the Met. He was manly and masculine and full chested as he made easy work of his long legato lines. 

I was particularly moved by his “Tu qui, Santuzza,” about halfway through, when he lets his spurned lover know that he is not a slave to her insane jealousy because he intends to go back to his previous lover – nevermind the fact that she is now rather inconveniently married to the biggest, baddest bass baritone in town, who also just happens to like to crack his whip any chance he gets (Schiocca la frusta). The “Tu qui, Santuzza” scene evolves beautifully from a standoffish put down (Bada, Santuzza, schiavo non sono) to a passionate duet in which the audience witnesses the depth of the love bond these characters actually do share (No, no, Turiddu, rimani ancora). Even if the text of what they’re saying to each other dramatizes their unfriendly separation and Turiddu’s insistent leavetaking, Mascagni has scored it in such a way that underscores their contrapuntal affection. It is the stuff that heart-wrenching drama is made of. And Alvarez and Westbroek brought it forcefully to life. I was tingling all over.  

Turiddu and Santuzza have a moment.
Photo Credit: Metropolitan Opera

Soprano Eva-Maria Westbroek’s Santuzza was beautifully acted and powerfully sung. I find Santuzza’s plight heartbreaking. Poor Santuzza and all that she is forced to endure at the whims of this cowardly mammone (mamma’s boy). I mean, come on, Turiddu is supposed to marry her but betrays her, lies to her face and goes to church (!) with his lover Lola right under Santuzza’s nose. Also, he is not even enough of a man to stand behind his actions and runs whining to his mamma Lucia all the time. What an immature jerk! He really does seem to get what he deserves when Lola’s irascible husband Alfio finally kills him. 

"A te, la mala Pasqua!"
Photo Credit: Cory Weaver/Metropolitan Opera

My one big qualm with Westbroek’s performance is the way in which she chose to embody the “mala Pasqua” curse she levels at her offender at the end of their big showdown scene. When a southern Italian, especially a Sicilian woman, intones a mala Pasqua against you, they say it like they mean it. We’re talking Medea-style, chthonic earth cult Mediterranean thumos coming at you loud and clear, with the visceral fury of a wounded wild animal. When Westbroek got to it she sang it with a weary worn out desperation that half seemed like she didn’t really mean it, especially when accompanied by facial expressions and body language that made it seem like she immediately reconsidered what she said, as if she couldn’t believe what she just uttered, rather than unleashing on him the fury of a dishonored southern Italian woman along with all the force of the land that bore and bred her. When a woman like Santuzza issues a mala Pasqua curse, she definitely does not regret it and rides that boiling wave of anger for a long while before calming down. 

Santuzza in the Sicilian borgo.
Photo Credit: Metropolitan Opera

Both Mascagni and Verga give us a pessimistic vision of the lower classes in this Sicilian borgo who are oppressed by culture though they should be uplifted by nature that is springing back to life all around them. But there is no Christ-like resurrection here. No rebirth. Only the struggle of two equally ill-fated individuals, one perhaps more morally just than the other, to live out their passions. There will be no resurrection of the flesh for compar Turiddu this Easter. 

Model of McVicar's early 20th Century Pagliacci set.
Photo Credit: Metropolitan Opera

McVicar’s new Pagliacci on the other hand is an entirely different beast. He sets it in a town square that is bustling with realistic detail including stunning depth of field with an authentic looking southern Italian bar in the farthest reaches of the stage that bristles with small town life – beautiful details that made me nostalgic for small town Italian life. So charming. So gritty. The modernizing touches with respect to the Met’s prior cartoonish production of Pagliacci were just a handful: a truck (instead of a horse-drawn caravan), some telephone poles and electric wires and the visual vocabulary of the vaudeville stage replacing that of the commedia dell’arte. Otherwise this production, while pleasant and visually engaging, felt pretty safe, traditional and not terribly innovative. The contrast with McVicar’s approach to Cavalleria was nevertheless striking. From so stark and lifeless to so bubbling with life, what does he really accomplish dividing the split bill so squarely? 

Canio, the clown is not all laughs.
Photo Credit: Metropolitan Opera

Marcelo Alvarez continued to impress as Canio, a more noble and moving character than that useless and cruel Turiddu. He embodied the painful intertwining between theatrical fiction and harsh reality with a profound, heart-piercing desperation that moved me to tears, particularly in the signature aria Vesti la giubba. His female counterpart, the cheating wife Nedda, was played by soprano Patricia Racette, who positively surprised me with an extremely energetic stage presence and a vocal performance to match it, particularly effective in her duet with her lover Silvio and in the vaudeville performance. Georgian bass-baritone George Gagnidze was also on double duty from Cavalleria (where he played a lumbering lug of an Alfio), here more incisive as the troupe’s hunchback Tonio, also in love with Nedda.

Nedda struts her stuff.
Photo Credit: Metropolitan Opera

While musically and dramatically I prefer Cavalleria over Pagliacci, I did find McVicar’s specific direction choices for the Leoncavallo companion piece more enjoyable and true to the original narrative core when compared to his take on Mascagni. The meta-theatrical themes of Pagliacci came vividly to life in this production’s cheerful Italian village. I cannot help but wonder, though, if they injected some Sicilian sunshine into Cavalleria, what a better show it would have been.

– Lui & Lei

Commedia dell'arte goes Vaudeville.
Photo Credit: Metropolitan Opera

Donizetti off the L Train

Lucrezia Borgia 

LoftOpera

April 11, 2015 - LightSpace Studios (Brooklyn)

Photo credit: Sam Slaughter 

When I got off the L train at Jefferson Street, I surfaced into a lonely no man’s land of abandoned storefronts, used car dealerships and rusty barbed-wire fences. It felt like an industrial far west, windy and desolate. I sighed and pulled out my phone to google map my destination, doing my best to ignore a guy cat-calling at me from a speeding pick up truck. All of a sudden a cellist briskly walked past me, looking like he knew where he was going. Relieved, I happily put my phone away and rushed to follow the musician, confident that he would lead me to the venue for LoftOpera’s production of one of my most favorite Donizetti operas: the poisonous, heart-wrenching and exciting Lucrezia Borgia.

Photo credit: Sam Slaughter

Photo credit: Sam Slaughter

The streets may have been desolate but the vibe inside LightSpace Studios was as hip and bubbly as the most artsy and edgy gallery opening, the bar handing out Brooklyn lagers, under 30 audience members dangling legging wearing legs from a duplex balcony - definitely not your average NYC opera scene. The only vague indicator of a theatrical performance was a small dimly lit stage curtain at the back of the room, though the focus seemed to rather be a big empty rectangular area at the center of the space, surrounded by folded blankets and few rows of backless benches. Notwithstanding a 30 piece orchestra crumpled in a corner, techno music was pumping and the whole set-up looked a bit too trendy for an opera as grand as Lucrezia. I started to worry, but I shouldn’t have: from the moment the lights and techno music went off, my Donizetti-butchering fears were quickly dissipated as the orchestra led by Sean Kelly masterfully attacked the prologue and remained phenomenal through the opera’s finale. There were a few cuts here and there, but mostly to parts of spies and wingmen of Lucrezia and her husband that really did not detract much from the narrative core of the opera. All costumes were by high fashion Italian maison Etro, which made for a pretty extravagant and luxurious modern take on the original Renaissance setting.

Photo credit: LoftOpera

Soprano Joanna Parisi carried and made the show as Lucrezia. Ms. Parisi has a chesty and supremely agile voice and an intense stage presence. Her Lucrezia was a sexy platinum blonde strutting around on platform heels and jeweled dresses while at the same time rendering the anti-heroine complex emotional spectrum in all its nuances from motherly tenderness to raging fury to vengeful scheming and defeated desperation. The duets with her son Gennaro were deeply moving, while the confrontation with her husband the Duke of Ferrara was the perfect crescendo from a very physical seduction (where she managed to super-humanly sing from his lap while arching her back and dipping her head almost to the floor) to the most pyrotechnic fury. This Lucrezia is not afraid to use any of her weapons, from sex to poisoned wine, to get what she wants. She is a scary powerful tyrant who murders her opponents left and right, yes, but one that cannot be entirely loathed as we see her trapped by her own wrongdoings when it comes to the tragic relationship with her illegitimate son, which is really the emotional core of the opera. Ms. Parisi vividly brought to life the tension between public terror-inducing power and private tender motherly love, as a most viscerally captivating and charismatic Lucrezia.

Photo credit: Ellen Marie Hindson

Photo credit: Sam Slaughter

Photo credit: Triebensee

As it often happens with strong leading ladies when they’re so good, everybody else in the cast was below Parisi, however this disparity did not affect the overall package. Tenor Nikhil Nakval as Gennaro, while not the most handsome voice, was fresh and ardent, his best moments in the duets with Lucrezia. Mezzo Melissa Collom as Maffio Orsini was not in full form (she apparently had a bad cold but sung nevertheless) and it showed as she sounded a bit muffled. Bass Matthew Anchel had impressive stage presence as the Duke of Ferrara, threatening and entitled, but not an equally big voice. Tenor Michael Kuhn as his wingman Rustighello had a small part but was vocally crisp and charismatic. The rest of the cast was comprised of baritone Joel Herold (Gubetta), tenor Spence Viator (Liverotto), bass-baritone Isaiah Musik-Ayala (Gazella), bass Andrew Hiers (Petrucci) and tenor Jordan Pitts (Vitellozzo), who all did a terrific job in the chorus scenes, from debonair gallivanting to chillingly belligerent.    

Photo credit: Sam Slaughter

Photo credit: L'Altro

Direction by Laine Rettmer was mostly great, transposing effectively to decadent modern day debauchery the original Renaissance plot. I particularly enjoyed the raucous group scenes (that more than ever reminded me of Rigoletto’s cortigiani) and the take on Lucrezia’s uber-seductive ways. One choice I strongly disagreed with, however, was to have the character of Maffio Orsini be the “sometimes girlfriend” of Lucrezia’s son Gennaro (according to the director’s notes). While Lucrezia lacks a traditional love interest plot point, the male friendship between Gennaro and Orsini fills that space in the most sincere and non-traditional way. Turning this bond from deep male camaraderie (one saves the other’s life in battle and since then the two are bound together) to a fleeting romantic fling just does not work with the plot and most importantly with the libretto, not to mention it cheapens the relationship between the two characters.  But, Rettmer nailed the finale, when Lucrezia in a desperate rage for having killed her own son throws with fury an empty bottle of poisoned wine against the wall with the (B)orgia insignia. The glass bottle shattered and the public roared. Rightly so, as LoftOpera’s production team lead by general manager Brianna Maury delivered a most visceral, electrifying and captivating bel canto performance. The intimate space helped, as one felt the air vibrate and could hear every breath and sigh of the singers. Most importantly, the 1833 Donizetti masterpiece felt more alive and furiously kicking than ever, even to the under-30 leg-dangling audience - evenings like this give hope to opera.  

- Lei

Photo credit: Sam Slaughter

A Double Delight from Destitution to Debauchery

Heartbeat Opera Spring Festival

Kurtág’s Kafka-Fragments & Offenbach’s Daphnis & Chloé

Sheen Center - March 20, 2015

Heartbeat Opera is a New York indie company freshly minted by Yale School of Drama graduates Louisa Proske and Ethan Heard. Their stated mission is to return to the essence of opera, placing singers at the center of their work, with productions that are daring and visceral, manifesting the emotional grandeur and theatrical power of opera with minimal means. Intrigued by the prospects, we went to Heartbeat Opera’s Spring Festival “double delight” to see if it was up to its inspired objectives.

György Kurtág’s Kafka-Fragments

The stark beginnings
Photo credit: Heartbeat Opera

Ethan Heard’s take on Kurtág’s Kafka-Fragments, a 1985-87 piece for violin and voice based on Franz Kafka’s letters to his lover, opens with two mittel-European emigrants or “exiles very far away” appearing on stage when the lights come up. They are dressed in vaguely World War II era garb, though there is a 1980s television set in the seemingly temporary lodgings they are settling into. After a long journey, they are resigned to whatever fate awaits them in the world outside the three walls of the stage. They set their modest luggage down. The Voice puts her keys on the table with a weary hand. Her traveling companion thoughtfully fingers his violin case. The couple seems down on their luck and destitute, until the violinist breaks out his violin. Brace yourselves because from the moment he plays the first chord, the Voice kicks into gear and it’s off to the races for the two of them.

Lofty dreams juxtaposed to base destitution
Photo credit: Christopher Ash 

The music they make together seems to be their escape from the folly of life. Music is their way out. He plays, she sings. It’s a back and forth, an exchange, a call and response. Sometimes he leads, sometimes she does. At times the music they make and the feelings they evoke are tender and delicate, other times it’s more cathartic, other times it is philosophical, others still it manages to be frivolous and free, embracing the pure folly of existence and the incredible lightness of being human.

“Once I broke my leg: it was the most wonderful experience of my life”

“There are countless hiding places, but only one salvation; but then again, there are as many paths to salvation as there are hiding places.”

“Coitus as punishment for the happiness of being together.”

“Sleep, wake, sleep, wake, miserable life”

Passages like this last one, that actually got repeated twice, poignantly capture the existential dread of living. And the painful music that accompanies such sentiments heightens our discomfort.

Kafka's language as a character in the opera
Photo credit: Jill Steinberg

The piece was in German and the supertitles were artfully incorporated into the images that were projected onto the minimal yet effective set. The translations were often awkward though and I wasn’t always sure if the lack of grammatical flow was meant as an extension of the absurdity inherent in both the text and the music. There were moments in which a more correct and even more concise translation may have been even more powerful, in terms of the music being both a source of chaos but also a sort of saving grace for our poor destitute immigrants in their sad yet sardonic world. 

Projections add layers to our impressions
Photo credit: Christopher Ash 

The production was essential but with a thoughtful attention to detail and “scene” changes realized with different uses of lighting and shadows, artful projections onto the back screen and the flipping of furniture. Each passage through each of the four “parts” of the opus was punctuated by television static in a slightly disturbing yet poetic way.

I see a darkness
Photo credit: Christopher Ash 

Heartbeat Opera’s co-music director Jacob Ashworth displayed sheer virtuosity on the violin, and his performance was truly the backbone of the piece. He played the hell out of Kurtág’s evocative and poetic score and his bow was none the better for it. Ashworth shredded his way through this music and shed fibers from his bow as he progressed. Musically he was a force of nature, yet delicate with full and round sound. The more his bow wore down, the warmer and rounder his sound seemed to become. It almost felt like watching a stringed instrument work its way through a late Beethoven quartet, in which a portion of the musical effect comes from the exercise of resistance and stamina the instrument itself is forced to undergo over the roughly hour-long performance. He also cut a striking presence on the stage adding a good deal to the story and staging concept. This is a very versatile music director. Mezzo Annie Rosen, as the unnamed Voice navigating Kafka’s fragmentary thoughts, carried the piece from start to finish. Her instrument is luscious and displayed a variety of colors, from melancholic and reflective to exhilarated and furious. She imbued the performance with an energy that made the whole thing about the transformative power of art and poetry.

Things get Kafka-esque
Photo credit: Christopher Ash 

Dark and unpleasant from one fragment to the next, Rosen and Ashworth brought a life-affirming joy to the piece as a whole. The world beyond the walls of their rundown room may have been at an impasse, but within those three walls, they were able to conjure and create entire worlds of their own. To me the piece was ultimately redemptive: it is the arts that make our hearts beat.

"Stunned, we saw the great horse"
Photo credit:  Jill Steinberg

Jacques Offenbach’s Daphnis & Chloé

Kafka may have been the big avant-garde name that seems to have attracted all the offbeat audience members, but the Offenbach portion of the double bill was the real thrill of the evening. Louisa Proske’s take on the operetta Daphnis and Chloé shined like light of day against the darkness and night of Ethan Heard’s Kafka-Fragments. The two shows couldn’t have been more different.

The Bacchantes hatch a plan
Photo credit: Heartbeat Opera

This Offenbach operetta premiered in Paris in 1860 and is based on the novel by the classical Greek author Longus as adapted for a play at the Théâtre du Vaudeville in 1849. The plot revolves around the two young innocent shepherds of the title, who are just starting to discover the pangs of love and desire for each other, without actually knowing what those impulses are (nor how to deal with them). Enter the debauched God Pan and his raunchy Bacchantes, all on a mission to seduce Chloé and Daphnis, respectively, and teach them a thing or two about the joys of sex. The lessons unfold through a series of hilarious vignettes playing on the back and forth between innocence and depravity, with a surprising plot twist when Pan mistakenly drinks an oblivion-inducing potion in the middle of his seduction of the lovely shepherdess.

Fondling Pan's pipes
Photo credit: Heartbeat Opera

Beth Goldenberg’s costumes along with Jon Carter’s hair and makeup designs really helped to flesh out Proske’s take on the chorus of Bacchantes as a gang of ’80s Cindy Lauper-era punk rockers turned candy ravers, which is always a safe analogy for the classic archetype of the followers of Pan. Here, however, the whole package came off all quite psychedelic, thanks largely to Reid Thompson’s visionary sets. Wow! These things were crazy! Cartoonish pink clouds and a wall of silver streamers framed a stage covered in AstroTurf with brightly colored flowers strewn around and kitschy fluffy plastic sheep. This was bucolic pastoral, on LSD, and it worked. From the moment lights went up on the set and the Bacchantes launched into their opening ensemble number, Heartbeat Opera transported us into a parallel universe and didn’t let us rest until the curtain went down. It was steady euphoria throughout. Everyone on my row had a big smile plastered across their faces from start to finish.

The Bacchantes in action
Photo credit: Heartbeat Opera

The God Pan
Photo credit: Allegri con Fuoco

The Bacchantes played by Tynan Davis, Kristin Gornstein, Molly Netter and Alexandra Loutsion were formidable and took the show by storm. They danced (to the wonderful choreographies of Chloe Treat) and sang with a raunchy and devilish energy as they worshipped, schemed, seduced and stirred up trouble left and right. One could just not get enough of them, and aptly so, as after all they are the priestesses of the god of wine and pleasure. Baritone Gary Ramsey killed it as the God Pan. He was the God Pan. Sporting with gusto goat feet, horns, leather pants and a fur trimmed red coat, he was the perfect embodiment of the bacchic lord of drunkenness and debauchery. Not only was Ramsey’s acting spot on, but his enunciation was crisp, funny and engaging and his deep baritone grounded with some manly energy the otherwise all female voices of the cast. His beard and makeup were just perfect. Ramsey was born to be Pan.

Chloé had a little lamb
Photo credit: Heartbeat Opera

The young and confused lovebirds were deliciously portrayed by soprano Nicole Haslett as Chloé and mezzo Karin Mushegain in the pants role of Daphnis. Their first duet “Why does my heart always beat like this” was extremely charming. Throughout the operetta, Haslett and Mushegain expertly carried the evolution of their characters from naive to curious to naughty, both vocally and acting-wise. Particularly memorable was Haslett’s opening number when she sings a sweet song of girlish affection to one of the sheep from her flock. The direction here was genius as she alternated between fondling suggestively her favorite beast and treating it like a child’s plaything, bespeaking her late adolescent waverings from nascent sexuality to its imminent blossoming. Against Reid Thompson’s psychedelic sets, it was a tripped out vision of a bucolic alternate reality.

Young and in love
Photo credit: Heartbeat Opera

The five piece orchestra led by conductor Louis Lohraseb was phenomenal as it played effortlessly and vivaciously , all while wearing absurd psychedelic outfits. They brought to life and made us discover this Offenbach delicious and rarely performed score with unassuming precision and verve. The ensemble's performance of arrangements of Verdi, Rossini and Mozart popular tunes while the audience was settling in was also a most entertaining and pleasurable touch.

Let's hear it for the band: Loosey goosey, yet tight as a clenched fist
Photo credit: Allegri con Fuoco

Offenbach’s operetta was sung in a new English translation from its original French. I usually cringe at the thought of pieces like this being rendered in English, a language with a musicality better suited to the rhythms of other forms of expression. But this was different. The new translation of Clairville and Jules Cordier’s original libretto by Michaël Attias in collaboration with Louisa Proske and Jacob Ashworth was fresh and brought life both to the arias and ensemble musical numbers and exhibited a linguistic playfulness even in the numerous bits of dialogue. Only rarely did the turn of phrase feel forced around the need complete a rhyme. It was ridiculous when the God Pan says something to the effect of “I think not / I need a little pot.” The anachronistic awkwardness of the statement was only heightened by the demands of the rhyme. Fortunately, however, Gary Ramsey’s infectious acting carried the whole thing off and not just in moments like these. Also, the only recording of this operetta we could get our hands on is in a German translation, so it’s not like our ears were accustomed to the French original.

Daphnis debauched
Photo credit: Heartbeat Opera

Two very different pieces, one moody and poetic, the other buoyant and irreverent, both displayed the same level of artistic excellence. There is nobody out there on the NYC independent opera scene offering such a complete package at this level. They’ve got the singers. They’ve got the acting chops. They’ve got an unpretentious orchestra that is both extremely competent and having fun while they’re at it. They’ve got the directorial vision and the modest means to realize it. Scale and means do not matter, on the contrary when opera gets this intimate and is so perfectly crafted in each and every aspect, it is indeed distilled to its essence. The air palpably vibrates and the narrative and emotional core of the work is conveyed as powerfully as ever. Hearbeat Opera is not even a year old, but its founders Louisa Proske and Ethan Heard have a vibrant artistic vision and the skills to realize it. Here’s to the beginning of a beautiful indie company. We look forward to seeing them grow – particularly if, as rumor has it, next season it may tackle Donizetti and Mozart... Bring it on!

- Lui & Lei

The cast of Daphnis and Chloé
Photo credit: L'Altro