Verdi's Compassionate Human Drama

Seattle Opera’s season-closing production La Traviata is one of those rare occasions where everything comes together – vocally, dramatically, visually, musically – resulting in an overwhelmingly moving and emotionally devastating theatrical and musical experience.

 

As soon as conductor Carlo Montanaro gave the downbeat for the Prelude to Act I – a masterpiece in string writing - I sensed that we were in for a special afternoon. The musicians of the Seattle Symphony played with great sensitivity and feeling, although the great theme of the Prelude – the melody from Act II when the heroine sings, “Amami Alfredo, Amami quant’io t’amo” – could have been played a little less aggressively, and with more of a glow in the sound. Behind the scrim, we already see what we know to be the end of the opera, a dying Violetta, being cared for in a hospital ward. At the end of the Prelude, the set changed in an instant to the party scene in Violetta’s house, conducted with great energy and a palpable sense of urgency. Indeed, throughout the opera, he managed not only an effective “accompaniment”, but created a curtain of sound that underscored the stream of drama unfolding on stage, and propelled the action with logic and a sense of flow from one emotion, one scene, to the next, until the devastating end of the opera.

 

There were many reasons why this production worked so effectively. The excellence of the young and wonderful voices and the absolutely convincing portrayals of the characters. Even secondary characters, especially Annina and Doctor Grenvil, were beautifully sung, and with palpable compassion. Mane Galoyan’s vocal pyrotechnics, especially her thrilling Sempre libera, certainly sent the first of many chills up my spine. 

 

But vocal pyrotechnics would have been meaningless if the leading soprano did not rise to the dramatic demands of the subsequent. This Ms. Galoyan did, in spades, as she was equally affecting in showing Violetta rising to her ultimate sacrifice in Act II, as well as in Act III, when she succumbs to her tragic fate. Tenor Duke Kim cuts a handsome figure on the stage, and he was utterly convincing in Alfredo’s evolution, from the innocent and guileless youth who lost his heart to Violetta in Act I, to the bitter and angry man at the end of Act II, and to the rather more worldly, but remorseful figure in Act III. Joo Won Kang’s Giorgio Germont gave this Verdi father figure great dignity, effectively using his remarkable voice to convey harshness (in Act II) and fatherly tenderness (in Act III) and convincingly portrays his evolution from the heartless request he made in Act II (perhaps a commentary of Verdi’s contemporary society on “fallen women”?) to the truly compassionate father figure – in this case to Violetta - Verdi is so effective in creating. In the words of that wise and insightful commentator on opera, the late Father Owen Lee, “The scene between Violetta and Alfredo’s father – the courtesan’s generous response to the honest plea of bourgeois respectability – is the great heart of Verdi’s opera.” I would add that Giorgio Germont’s final embrace of Violetta, as a father, is even more overflowing with the composer’s compassion for the neglected in his time. 

 

All three characters grow in different ways during the opera, and the three principals convincingly convey this gradual change through the drama. There was real chemistry between not only the star-crossed lovers, but between the older Germont and the woman yearning for his fatherly love. 

 

After the devasting encounter between Alfredo and Violetta at the end of Act II, the action froze, literally, the scrim comes down, and the music of the Prelude to Act III commenced, a highly effective way to put in sharp relief the strong emotions of Act II and the death-haunted atmosphere of Act III. As the Prelude was being played, the scene gradually changed from the bright colours of the party to the bare walls of a hospital ward. Ms. Galoyan’s delivery as she read aloud the lines from Alfredo’s father, who finally understands the depth of her sacrifice, was highly effective and emotionally searing. At the final moments of the opera, before falling to her death, Violetta rose and, with the almost-too-bright white light on her stark white hospital gown, almost like a transfiguration, stretches out her arm and delivers the lines, “Ah, ma io ritorno a viver! Oh gioia!”, one couldn’t help but felt that power of the miracle that Verdi has created, a miracle of compassion and love. 

 

I can say without hesitation that this was the most dramatically and musically convincing La Traviata I have seen in a long time. How privileged we were to be able to experience this remarkable recreation of Verdi’s supremely moving commentary on, again in the words of Father Owen Lee, “that half-acknowledged society below respectable society”.

 

 

Rigoletto in Seattle

Seattle Opera opened its 2019-2020 season with Verdi’s Rigoletto. Although the company seemed to have long departed from its summer Wagnerian tradition, the quality of the music making made the trip to the Emerald City worthwhile.

It is quite rare to witness an opera production where all the voices are so consistently good. From the major roles to the relatively smaller parts like Countess Ceprano, Count Monterone, Giovanna, and Sparafucile (who stole the show with his powerful voice and the force of his personality), the company had surely assembled a vocal ensemble of exceptionally high quality. 

Some day we will see a portrayal of Duke of Mantua that conveys the cynicism as well as the jaded-in-life qualities that, for me, this character is filled with. Liparit Avetisyan’s beautiful voice has a bright and ringing quality that makes it very appealing to hear. If he continues to develop, he could, in time, be singing meatier and weightier tenor roles. Perhaps my only “complaint” is that, in spite of his best efforts, he made it difficult for us to detest the character! 

On opening night, soprano Madison Leonard displayed incredible vocal control over every aspect of her challenging role. Her singing of “Caro nome”, in addition to displaying incredible vocal control, convincingly brought forth the innocence of her character and the feelings of a young girl in love for the first time.

Seattle favourite Lester Lynch brought to the title role Rigoletto a human and humane quality that made the final tragedy all the more heartbreaking and poignant. He successfully conveyed the conflicting feelings of a father, torn by his almost obsessive love for his daughter and the shame of seeing her shame. The confrontation between father and daughter in Act II was musically electrifying. 

Conductor Carlo Montanaro controlled every facet of Verdi’s complex score, and his relatively brisk tempi brought a sense of urgency and tension we do not often hear. Certainly he brought out beautiful playing from members of the Seattle Symphony. For me, Mary Lynch’s oboe solo that introduces “Tutte le feste al tempio” was particularly heartfelt and affecting. This is surely an opera conductor who will go far. 

I must say that I was worried when I read the notes by director Lindy Hume and Scholar in Residence Naomi André, with words like “misogynistic”, “destructive parents”, and “toxic masculinity” filling the pages. Fortunately, their rhetoric appears worse than the production, which turned out to not more than setting the opera in the present day. Apparently, the director was inspired by the shenanigans of former Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi when she decided to update the opera. In the programme notes, she explained why she simply had to update the opera, to make this “Renaissance-era codpiece-cloak-and-hose setting” relevant to today’s audience. Apologies to Victor Hugo for not making this story relevant!

Such is the climate of antagonism towards religion today that the director felt it necessary to insert two Cardinals amongst the Duke’s entourage, who also took part in Gilda’s kidnapping! Other than revealing the director’s own biases, this little touch makes no dramaticsense, and certainly added nothing to the story.

The problem with such updating is that it made the human relationships in the opera meaningless, even irrelevant. When Rigoletto confronted Gilda in Act II, where the young girl – looking very disheveled and wearing nothing more than a man’s shirt – dressing Rigoletto in modern vest and pants, rather than the vulgar jester’s costume indicated by Verdi, took away completely the shock and horror of this pivotal scene. And perhaps such is the climate of our sexualized society, that Maddalena’s seduction of the Duke involved a highly graphic “table dance”. Clever perhaps, but was this really necessary?

Instead of looking at Verdi from our 21^stcentury perspective, should we not place ourselves within the context and sensibilities of Verdi’s times in order to really understand and appreciate the drama?

I believe that even the famous “La donna è mobile” is not Verdi thinking that women are fickle, but it is, with a supreme sense of irony, the composer chiding menfor not thinking with their brains, but with other parts of their anatomy.

Perhaps we should end with the rather more inspiring words of beloved opera commentator Father M. Owen Lee, who’s recent death deprived us of some of the most insightful words into the operatic canon. In his essay on Rigoletto, titled “When Verdi’s Fathers Sing” (Lee, M. Owen, First Intermissions, New York: Oxford University Press, 1995, pp. 22-23) Father Lee wrote not about “destructive parents”, but the real role of the father: 

“In Italy it is the father who presides over the only permanent social unit: the family. Governments occupying forces, kings, popes, political regimes come and go, but the family is always there, providing the pattern for the larger structures of state and even church…Understanding this patriarchal tradition, so strong in Virgil and Verdi, is the beginning of understanding so many things about Italy that confound the non-Italian, from papal infallibility to The Godfather. Italy’s long patriarchal tradition is not without its dangers, as Verdi’s operas tell us again and again. But no one really understands Verdi, or Italy, who does not understand that tradition, for it shaped both country and composer.”

Perhaps our stage directors should, if they are able to, look deeply into the score, and not their own political agendas, when they try to reveal the secrets imbedded within these great works of art. Fortunately for us, no amount of “-isms” could destroy Verdi’s timelesswork of art. Even more fortunate for me, it was the musicians and singers who made Verdi’s masterpiece meaningful, not directors who think they know better.

Patrick May

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                            

Seattle Opera's Il Trovatore - the primal emotions within all our hearts

It has often been said that it is easy to mount a production of Verdi’s Il Trovatore, all you need are four great singers. There is some truth in that rather facetious statement, because the vocal demands, as well as the range of emotions conveyed, are considerable. Verdi endowed each of the opera’s four acts with titles – “The Duel”, “The Gypsy Woman”, “The Gypsy Woman’s son”, and “The Punishment”. Indeed, these four acts (four movements?) of Il Trovatoreis almost like a gigantic string quartet, with the different voices of the main characters weaving in and out of the musical fabric. 

Seattle Opera’s production of Il Trovatorecertainly met the above criterion, for indeed all four of the principal singers were a match for each other in terms of vocal beauty and technique, as well as dramatic abilities. 

I was captivated by the effective set design – one basic set “dressed” differently for each act – but even more by the lighting, which I thought was magical throughout the afternoon. The tableau of opening scene, when Ferrando was narrating the tale of the killing of the old Count’s young son, reminded me so much of Rembrandt’s The Night Watch. The stage action of the soldiers, so full of vehemence, certainly set stage for the opera, and reminded us that this was really an age of violence – have we “evolved” since that time? 

The men and women of the Seattle Opera chorus did themselves proud in the many, justly famous, choruses, singing with strength and beauty, with dramatic conviction, and also a real sense of ensemble. In Act II, when Leonora was preparing to take her vows to enter the convent, the women of the chorus sang with a great sense of reverence.

The outstanding singing of even the “minor” roles of Ferrando (Adam Lau) and Inez (Nerys Jones) give an idea of the very high bar the company had set, and achieved, in this production. Lau’s lively and dramatic singing of the opening narration really brought the story alive.

Michael Mayes, singing the role of Count di Luna, initially had a veiled quality of his voice, but that soon disappeared, and he sang the rest of the opera with great dramatic intensity. His singing of “Il balen del suo sorriso” and “Per me ora fatale” was, respectively, passionate and full of violent emotions. According to opera writer, Father M. Owen Lee, the aria and cabaletta, “show him to be a sensitive but unduly sensual man, raised in chivalry yet – unlike his young brother, who was not given his advantages – utterly lacking in it. He knows his own weakness and admits it…” In this way, he is unlike the truly evil Scarpia who lusts after the beautiful Tosca. Mayes successfully portrayed di Luna as not a bad man, but one driven by his obsessive and possessive love.

It is truly amazing how beautifully Verdi writes for the Mezzo. Nora Sourouziant fits this role perfectly; in her voice and in her acting, she really embodies the many conflicting emotions driving this tortured woman. Her outstanding and dark-hued rendition of “Stride la vampa” was just one example of her considerable vocal and dramatic qualities in portraying this pivotal character, essentially the keeper of all of the story’s secrets, and maybe the only person who really understands the plot of the opera!

From the first notes we hear of Manrico’s, (“Deserto sulla terra” – he is alone on this earth) we knew that we were in the presence of a great singing actor. Martin Muehle’s voice is not a big one, but it is one endowed with a brightness, nuance, projection, and beauty. His rendition of “Di quella pira” was filled with a real sense of urgency and incredible tension. This outstanding artist was matched in every way by Angela Meade’s portrayal of Leonora. This is a truly bel cantovoice capable of an infinite degree of nuances. Her singing of “D’amor sull’ ali rosee” certainly elicited the greatest ovation from the audience last Sunday. 

Maestro Carlo Montanaro conducted with a real understanding of the Verdi idiom, a sense of atmosphere and forward motion, and supported the singers with sensitivity. If I could wish for one thing, it would be a greater sense of drive, intensity, even aggression in the orchestral playing – I believe these qualities are essential to a truly great performance of especially this opera. The playing on Sunday was, for me, almost too “nice”, thereby robbing the music of a certain degree of tension.

The stagecraft for this production is often very effective. When Azucena was telling the story of how she had mistakenly killed her own baby when her mother was being burned at the stake, the actions were enacted in the background in silhouette, against a flaming red background. The stage director employed this same piece of stagecraft at the end of the opera, when Manrico was being executed. In the final confrontation between Leonora, Azucena, and di Luna, the director had the characters in the background “frozen” in action, thereby really focusing our attention on the confrontation before us. 

As a whole, I personally find Il Trovatoreto be a more satisfying opera than, say, La Traviata. This is an opera where we find every facet of human emotions, and each of the four characters becomes archetypes embodying these emotions. In the words of Father Owen Lee, “Caught in their fixed attitudes, these characters are not, nor are they meant to be, true to life. They are emotionally charged symbols of life’s ironies.” Futhermore, the bitterness inherent in the entire opera is really a mirror of the composer’s own growing sense of pessimism and bitterness over the tragedies in his own life as well as the politics of the day.  

Perhaps this is why it is so satisfying to witness a production of this great opera, for could we not inevitably find in one or more of the characters some of the emotional turmoil within our own hearts?

Patrick May

Vancouver, British Columbia

Macbeth from Congo

The late great Austrian conductor Herbert von Karajan once said that even in a small theatre with a small orchestra, Verdi’s music “works”, which presumably means that the power of the music comes across.

I attended last night’s Vancouver Opera presentation of Macbeth with a great deal of trepidation, mainly because I had read that the score had been “reworked” for a mere 12 musicians by Fabrizio Cassol. I came away from the performance convinced that this production of Macbeth absolutely “works” as a theatre piece, if not exactly as “grand” opera.

I was thankful that the performance was held at the acoustically acceptable Vancouver Playhouse, and not in that travesty of a hall called the Queen Elizabeth Theatre. All of the voices were clearly heard, and the power of the music came through much more effectively in the smaller venue.

The set was incredibly simple. The chorus was seated (mostly) on stage left, and acts as a sort of Greek chorus commenting on the unfolding drama. The instrumentalists and the conductor were seated on stage right, and not in an orchestra pit, which also contributed to the immediacy of the sound. All of the action took place in an elevated area center stage, the size of a boxing ring, with black and white painted squares on the floor like a chessboard. Changing scenery was very effectively and evocatively achieved by back projections.

Rather than Scotland, the opera had been relocated to the Great Lakes region of Central Africa, with Macbeth being an ambitious Congolese warlord. Against this backdrop the director was able to address the many atrocities committed today on the African continent, exploitation of the land as well as the people, intimidation and raping of women, ethnic conflicts, and child soldiers. The performance, which lasted only one hour and forty minutes, necessitated streamlining of the story, which made the dramatic impact of the story much more powerful.

None of these things would matter if the music making were not up to standards, which it was. This reworking of Verdi’s score did not destroy the music, and the singing of the chorus as well as all the principals were Italianate, strong and beautiful. Nobulumko Mngxekeza, as Lady Macbeth, possesses a voice that soars over the most dramatic musical outbursts. And Owen Metsileng strikes a perfect balance between Macbeth's cowardice and ambition. Performing this work with such minimal forces did not diminish the power of the music or the message of the drama.

At a time when so many iconoclasts seek to, in their works, insert their dose of political correctness or political agenda, it is refreshing to see a production such as this, which gives us a new and different glimpse of this all too familiar tale, and yet retaining all the essence of Verdi’s masterpiece. In the end, it is not about whether the opera is set in Scotland or Africa, but how the artists were able to use this timeless tale to highlight Shakespeare’s insight into the human heart.

Patrick May

January 20, 2017