ROF’s Maometto 11 Embraces the Music but Doesn’t Caress the Notes

Rossini Opera Festival 2008

If the weather can stand as a metaphor for how well an opera production at the Rossini Opera Festival will play out during its run, then the tremendous downpour that reverberated throughout the Arena Adriatica was a bad omen. At the second performance of Michael Hampe’s production of Maometto 11 on August 15th, the rain hit the Arena’s dome like a pack of galloping horses that lasted nearly twenty minutes, trying the nerves of the performers and audience alike. This sudden event proved to be more exciting than what was happening on stage.

The singing is always uppermost in the minds of audiences that come to Pesaro, but the vocal efforts in this production only lived up to their expectations in part.

Bass Michele Pertusi is a favorite singer at ROF and judging by his two previous performances his popularity is warranted. As the Duke D’Orlow in Mario Martone’s 2006 production of Torvaldo e Dorliska, Pertusi was able to match his character’s strong emotions with great vocal insight. And in 2007′s La Gazza Ladra, Pertusi projected Gottardo’s character beyond the lighter touches many singers give this licentious mayor to a darker place where Gottardo’s wanton pursuit of Ninetta overwhelms his soul. Again the bass achieved this effect by using his talented vocal acumen.

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Verdi, La traviata

By Bernard Jacobson

Reprinted with permission from Seen and Heard – Music Web’s Live Opera, Concert and Recital Reviews.

Portland Opera, soloists, cond. Stephen Lord, original production by James Robinson, stage direction by Jennifer Nicoll, sets and costumes by Bruno Schwengl, lighting designer Mimi Jordan Sherin, choreographer Sean Curran, Keller Auditorium, Portland, Oregon, 4.10.2008 (BJ)

Portland Opera’s La traviata, my first experience of the company’s work, was a delight almost from beginning to end. I say “almost” only because several characters stood on couches in Act I, a silly quirk of contemporary staging. But from that point on, James Robinson’s production, mounted originally for Opera Colorado and brought to the stage on this occasion by his former assistant Jennifer Nicoll, offered nothing but pleasure.

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Massenet, Manon: Soloists, Chorus and Orchestra of Lyric Opera of Chicago, Emmanuel Villaume (conductor) Lyric Opera Center, Chicago 27.9.2008

By James L Zychowicz

Reprinted with permission from Seen and Heard - Music Web’s Live Opera, Concert and Recital Reviews.

Production:

Director: David McVicar
Set Design: Tanya McCallin
Original Choreographer: Michael Keegan-Dolan
Lighting: Paula Constable
Chorus Master: Donald Nally

Cast:

Manon: Natalie Dessay
Chevalier des Grieux: Jonas Kaufmann
Lescaut: Christopher Feigum
Count des Grieux: Raymond Aceto
Guillot: David Cangelosi
Brétigny: Jake Gardner

An auspicious opening gala, Lyric Opera of Chicago’s production of Massenet’s Manon offered a festival-quality performance of this familiar opera. The international cast involved with this production brought new life to this work, which has been perennially popular since its premiere over a century ago. At the core of Massenet’s Manon are the title character and her lover, the Chevalier des Grieux. Tracing her lifelong infatuation with Des Grieux, the libretto by Meilhac and Gille is a valiant dramatization of Prévost’s famous novel about the moral decline and spiritual redemption of an archetype courtesan of the eighteenth century. The irony of a young girl destined for the convent to run off with the youthful Des Grieux is matched only by the reversal of character in Manon’s continual search for worldly pleasures, only to realize the value of priceless love when she is dying : in setting this story Massenet found a way to allow the title character’s changing personality to emerge clearly within the five acts of this work. As the young Manon essentially opens her eyes to the sensual world around her in the opening, her aria “Voyons, Manon” is the fine expression of the character’s openness to a world denied to her implicitly as a result of her tender age or provincial upbringing. Yet when opportunity arrives in the persona of the lecherous Guillot, Manon quickly learns how to thwart the man at his own game and to pursue her own pleasure at his expense – she uses his carriage as the vehicle for her escape with Des Grieux. Such action would be difficult to translate to the stage in a spoken drama, and it is Massenet’s enduring music that makes this sometimes extraordinary narrative work well.

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