The U of A’s Opera Theater–Potent Vocals and Incisive Dramatics Bring Veracity to G. Menotti’s Consul

More than half a century has passed since Gian Carlo Menotti’s The Consul* premiered at the Shubert Theater in Philadelpia in 1950. The opera, called his finest lyrical composition, ran in New York for eight months on Broadway picking up both the Pulitzer Prize and the Drama Critics Award along the way.

The opera’s theme, the personal suffering and loss of life living under a totalitarian government struck very close to home in 1950. The Second World War had ended in 1945, and many people throughout the world were still coping with the dreadful, emotional turmoil caused by the war. But is the opera’s libretto, which was written by Menotti, relevant to the world’s situation today? Well, Charles Roe, the opera theater’s artistic director, seemed to think so. And the proof came with what transpired on stage at Crowder Hall for four performances in November from the 17th to the 20th.

Before Roe could get the production to its successful conclusion, there were many challenges to consider. It wasn’t because the opera’s musical structure which Menotti allied to a pungent text became problematic in performance; it was because the work is so musically and dramatically rewarding to perform, the artistic choices had to be of a very high standard. Since 2006, Roe has been mounting opera in English and most times he has been able to capture the essence of the works by meeting the vocal and dramatic demands of each opera.

And again this time, Roe was confident that he had the students, both undergraduate and graduate, capable of handling Menotti’s opera — which from the opera’s opening chords to the last, requires a total artistic commitment on the part of the performers, if they are to win over an audience.

Ever since The Consul first premiered, musicologists and opera critics have commented over the years about Menotti’s musical touches reminiscent of the composer Giacomo Puccini, never failing to mention the composers’ supposedly similar musical approaches as exemplified in the Act One trio, “Now lips, say goodbye,” sung by John Sorel, Madga, the opera’s heroine and John’s Mother. Sung at the point in the act when the Mother and Madga say farewell to John who must flee from the secret police, the music shares Puccini’s penchant for lyrical statements of heartbreak, but the musical expression is entirely Menotti’s.
(more…)

From Seen and Heard International
By: Bernard Jacobson

Vancouver Opera, soloists, cond. John DeMain, dir. Michael Cavanagh, scenic designer Erhard Rom, costume designer Parvin Mirhady, lighting designer Harry Frehner, projections designer Sean Nieuwenhuis, choreographer Wen Wei Wang, sound designer Andrew Tugwell, chorus director Leslie Dala, Queen Elizabeth Theatre, Vancouver, British Columbia, 13.3.2009 (BJ)

If Vancouver Opera’s desire was to make a point about the sheer range of the operatic medium, the company could hardly have chosen two more starkly contrasted works than the ones that began its 2009/2010 season. Bellini’s Norma, reviewed here in December, may be called a gem of bel canto art. John Adams’s Nixon in China is a much rougher kind of diamond. This performance constituted the Canadian premiere of the work, which has been seen around the world–and recorded twice–in the 23 years since it was first presented in Houston.

Whatever you or I may think of the work librettist Alice Goodman and composer Adams brought into being, I have no hesitation in calling the Vancouver production superb. With the help of Erhard Rom’s sets, Parvin Mirhady’s costumes, Harry Frehner’s lighting, Sean Nieuwenhuis’s projections, and Wen Wei Wang’s choreography, director Michael Cavanagh has crafted a continuously fascinating visual presentation. The effects range from film-like simulations of Nixon’s airplane landing to a suspended strip of images morphing gradually from Nixon at one end to Mao at the other–a telling comment on the sameness of politicians. The technology is ambitious yet simple, and it all works. (The only small complaint I would level at Cavanagh concerns his adherence to the apparently obligatory directorial disagreement with the normal uses of furniture: at one point in the action Mao wants to sit down–there are four chairs and a table on stage, but, this being opera, he naturally chooses to sit on the table. And the surtitles, though mostly excellent, perpetrate one howler when Kissinger addresses Chou En-lai as “Premiere,” surely an inappropriate questioning of the Chinese prime minister’s sexual identity.)

When I listened recently to the 2008 Colorado recording of Nixon in China conducted by Marin Alsop, long stretches of the vocal writing seemed to me so ungainly that there was not much the singers could do but shout it. Now, in Vancouver, the principals all managed to do some real singing–clearly, sound designer Andrew Tugwell has fulfilled his responsibilities in managing both vocal and instrumental amplification (mandated by the composer) to excellent effect, and conductor John DeMain deserves his share of commendation for keeping the large orchestral and vocal apparatus at once trim, powerful, and lucid.
(more…)

The University of Arizona Mounts a Powerful ‘Crucible’

L to R Robyn Rocklein as Elizabeth Proctor, Jennifer Beauregard as Abigale Williams and Seth Kershisnik as John Proctor in The Crucible. ©

The Opera Theater took a big risk this year as part of its series of presenting contemporary operas in English. After four years of successful modern productions – including a 2008 heartfelt rendition of Benjamin Britten’s Rape of Lucretia - Stage Director Charles Roe and Musical Director Thomas Cockrell decided they finally had the vocal and orchestral talent to give a good account of Robert Ward’s opera The Crucible, based on playwright Arthur Miller’s searing drama.

“It’s an opera I always wanted to do since I was a senior at Baldwin-Wallace College in Cleveland, Ohio,” Roe said at a rehearsal about three weeks before the November performances at Crowder Hall at the University. “Melvin Hakola, my voice teacher at the time, sang the lead role of John Proctor, and I was very impressed with the drama and music and hoped some day to participate in a production. Obviously, I finally got my wish.”

Now that Roe and Cockrell are firmly partnered in their quest to present exciting operas in English, specifically from the second half of the 20th Century, the duo was ready and able to tackle Ward’s opera. The result was a gripping dramatic and vocal production based on the theme of the 1672 Salem Witch Trials, still recognized today as a metaphor for the McCarthy HUAC hearings that so divided our nation in the late 1940s and early 1950s. The opera was an immediate success at its premiere at New York City Opera in 1961 (it was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Music) and had the added benefit of a Bernard Stambler’s libretto which he skillfully adapted from Miller’s play.

But the obstacles Roe and Cockrell faced in doing justice to The Crucible were in the details. The opera, which has 16 singing parts and 39 orchestra members, is the largest performing group the duo has had to work with since their first collaboration of Mark Adamo’s Little Women. Ward’s music is heavily orchestrated, quick moving and demands a range of vocal expressions from the singers. Right from the start of Act One, the cast has to delineate a text filled with declamation that quickly moved into a parlando style interspersed with lyrical phrasing – which it must project over orchestration – that moves faster than a speeding bullet.
(more…)