Author Archives: Malibran

To close its 2015-16 season, The Atlanta Opera tipped its hat to French Grand opera and unveiled a star-studded production of Gounod’s Romeo et Juliette this past Saturday. While all opera is dependent on singers of not only extraordinary technical pedigree but also of a musical understanding of how language informs declamation, Grand French opera relies on the latter more heavily so, making Romeo et Juliette notoriously difficult to cast.   The Atlanta Opera’s first production, which hailed back to 2007, is fondly remembered as an uneven yet valiant effort at revealing the work’s hidden charms. The company’s current effort shares a similar evaluation.

Acrobats entertain a crowd of Capulets in the Atlanta Opera’s production of Gounod’s Romeo et Juliette. Photo by Jeff Roffman.

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On the evening of March 4th, the Washington Concert Opera closed its 2015-16 season with a wildly applauded performance of Donizetti’s grand opera “La Favorite”. Central to the performance’s success was the work of maestro Antony Walker, who remains a tireless champion of the Bel Canto repertoire represented through this unjustly neglected piece. His love for the works of Donizetti in particular, which are routinely vilified by the cognoscenti as unworthy, is particularly disarming, and from the first note of the overture onwards his faith in the dramatic possibilities of this score was palpable. Indeed, through the combined forces of the Washington Concert Opera Orchestra and Chorus he realized the score with the respect and reverence often reserved for Verdi’s middle and later periods. It was a veritable shame that maestro Walker denied us his take on the opera’s extended ballet sequence. By the by, he smartly opted to forgo the familiar, yet deeply flawed Italian translation of the opera in favor of the French original. In the process, he made a compelling case for the reassessment of the opera’s dramatic appeal, as well as reinstating a decidedly French aesthetic which more closely reflect Donizetti’s original conception of the piece when it debuted in Paris in 1840. Lucky for all, maestro Walker surrounded himself with an inspired cast of young artists capable of achieving his vision.

Joelle Harvey (Ines), Kate Lindsey (Leonor) and Javier Arrey (King Alphonse). Photo credit: Don Lassell.

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As the nation geared its attention towards the Thanksgiving festivities, Washington Concert Opera ushered the season in style by offering Rossini’s epic opera seria, Semiramide as its season opener. By the time the baton led the final chords on the piece, it was clear that the company had scored a huge success. Throughout the evening, the performance had been enthusiastically received, and at its close the enthralled audience was driven to its feet as the soloists took their final bows. It is difficult to disagree with such a display of public approval, and we will do our best in what follows to explain why your friends at newoutpost heard it somewhat differently.

Vivica Genaux (Arsace) and Jessica Pratt (Semiramide). Photo by Don Lassell.

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The Atlanta Opera opened its 2015-16 season with warmly received, though uneven, performances of Puccini’s eternal masterpiece La Boheme. The new production, the brainchild of General and Artistic Director Tomer Zvulun, promised to once again (his words) reimagine the work for the benefit of today’s audience, a most suspect practice that tends to elicit a great deal of scrutiny from your friends at newoutpost. In order to achieve this, among other things, we are told that the opera’s time period has been updated to the 1890’s, likely for the dazzling costume and stylistic opportunities afforded by the Belle Epoque (which costumer designer Martin Pakledinaz fully exploited). In truth, we are happy to report this as one of Mr. Zvulun’s better efforts, displaying less of the self-serving, intrusive devices (mostly in the form of projections) that have plagued his prior productions, and relegating them to the natural enhancement of the scenic tableau. The slowly rolling clouds above the garret, or the carefully realized terminus leading to the gates of Paris added to the beauty of the proceedings without ever distracting from Puccini’s musical designs. Recalling the excesses from last season’s Madama Butterfly, this was quite the welcomed change.

Cafe Momus memoires: Top row: Gianluca Terranova (Rodolfo), Maria Luigia Borsi (Mimi), Nicholas Brownlee (Colline), Trevor Scheunemann (Marcello), Leah Partridge (Musetta). Bottom row: Theo Hoffman (Schaunard). Photo by Jeff Roffman for The Atlanta Opera.Photo by Jeff Roffman for The Atlanta Opera

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“A highway, a Walmart, and one of the most exciting Summer Opera Festivals in United States.” It is the line I often use when questioning friends marvel at my travel plans as we fill our modest backpacks with all essentials and head to Indianola, Iowa, to attend another season at Des Moines Metro Opera. While New York, Chicago, and San Francisco do feature prominently in our yearly operatic calendar, Des Moines is slowly beginning to attain similar importance to your friends at newoutpost, due solely for its fine musical profile and exciting programing. Traveling to Indianola is certainly not an experience one would suffer if not for DMMO. Following this fourth visit, we can honestly state with some authority that there’s truly not a lot going on in Indianola. The lodging options are minimal, and if you cannot withstand the offerings of what must be some of the saltiest Mexican food to be found in the Midwest, gas station pizza may end up being the next best thing. One imagines Indianola as a perfect location for a remake of Stephen King’s classic “Children of the Corn” after a casual morning stroll through the deserted town square, and for the standard city dweller it takes a bit to adjust. While a pilgrimage to DMMO may be low on glamour, it makes a special call to the operatic nomad not afraid to rough the conditions to experience some of the greatest opera one could hope for from a regional company in the United States, and this is exactly what DMMO manages to present. The brain child of Dr. Robert L. Larsen, the company has made a name for itself by featuring some of the most exciting singers in the country, and paired them with the most promising young talent via its excellent apprentice artist program. At a time when regional companies are either folding or compromising their programing, this courageous company is anything but thriving, all the while propelling each festival season through bold and exciting repertoire which more established companies would struggle to present. Now in its 43rd season, the company presented another crackling lineup: Puccini’s rare gem La Fanciulla del West, Mozart’s delightful Die Entfuhrung aus dem Serail, and Janacek’s searing Jenufa. Spoiler alert: This may rank as one of the company’s most solid seasons to date.

Projection upon the grounds of the Blank Performance Arts Center at night. Photo by Daniel Vasquez

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Moving past the tragedy of Verdi’s Rigoletto, the Atlanta Opera changed gears and delighted audiences with performances of Mozart’s masterpiece “Le nozze di Figaro”, and the company should pride itself in the big success that it proved to be. The dimensions of the piece, though a mainstay of the standard repertoire, are surely daunting for any company: It is a very long opera with a large cast, filled with sprawling dramatic complications and musical pitfalls. Thus it was to the Atlanta Opera’s credit that so much of this presentation struck the right chord, and between the hours of 8 pm and midnight on the performance of April 10, there were many long stretches of time where Mozart lived. The credit belonged to a rather unlikely cast comprised of both young and veteran singers, who were able to bring forth the score’s vitality through their elegant declamation.

Lauren Snouffer (Susanna) and Craig Colclough (Figaro), Photo credit: Jeff Roffman

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Before I embark in this review of Capitol City Opera’s presentation of Mozart’s Die Entfuhrung aud dem Serail, a story. This is not my first brush with Atlanta’s most notorious fringe opera company. For that we must go back to 1992, a time when I, a self-prescribed boy dramatic soprano, found one of the company’s audition flyers in suburban Dunwoody. I was fifteen, all too aware of my brilliance, and you could not tell me differently. Armed with the unstoppable daring made possible by extraordinary ignorance, I dialed the printed number, only to find myself speaking with Capitol City Opera’s founder herself, Ms. Donna Angel. She listened as I explained my plight as the undiscovered second coming of Salomea Krushelniski (plus the e-flat), and before Ms. Angel had a chance to intervene, I proceeded to back up my statement by letting out a howl that would have silenced the Misippipi Mass Choir. A grave silence was followed by: “I think we could use you. Swing by and audition for us.” Alas, my path to lyric glory would eventually be thwarted by my mother’s inability to locate Wieuca Road on a map (#suburbanissues), yet the story illustrates (as the following review also will), that one never knows what to expect with such fringe companies, and Capitol City Opera is no exception.

William Green as Pedrillo. Photo Credit: Nicholas Cole

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Against the forecast of five snow flurries that threatened to subjugate the Olympic city, the Atlanta Opera braved on, and despite having cancelled an important orchestra rehearsal per the mandatory Mayoral city shutdown, Rigoletto opened to a full house this past Saturday February 28. While uneven, the presentation was still an exciting one, and introduced a new wave of talent that promises much for the future of opera in America.

Adam Cannedy as Marullo and Todd Thomas as Rigoletto. Photo by Jeff Roffman

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The Atlanta Opera opened its 2014-15 season with an enthusiastically received presentation of Puccini’s Madama Butterfly. The opening of the season marks the turning of a new leaf for the company, it being the first planned season by its new General Artistic Director Tomer Zvulun. Mr. Zvulun, whose prior work with the Atlanta Opera found him in the director’s chair, is a champion of applying new technologies to the operatic stage seldom seen in Atlanta prior to his arrival. Indeed, before the curtain’s rise, Mr. Zvulun addressed the audience, and in addition to the traditional salutations and contribution acknowledgements, he praised the Atlanta Opera audience for its sophisticated taste, declaring it ready for more adventurous presentations from this point forward.

Pinkerton (Adam Diegel) and Cio-Cio-San (Dina Kuznetsova) kiss under the full moon. Photo by Jeff Roffman.

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This October, Opera Carolina inaugurated its 2014-15 season with a run of spectacular presentations of Verdi’s first hit, Nabucco. Encouraged by the promise of such inspired casting, your friends at Newoutpost made sure to be present for the event. In fact, the opening night presentation of October 18 proved to be such an artistic success, your editor was obliged to endure the horrors of Megabus in order to attend the opera’s final performance on October 26. With Nabucco, Verdi experienced his first taste of international success, and while the opera lacks a the voice the world would hear even in his immediate later works, such as I Lombardi and Ernani, it retained prime importance for being the opera that allowed the great master to become the premier voice of Italian opera the world over.. While it never fully left the international repertoire, it hardly maintained a prominent place within it, and thus its presence in the repertoire of a regional company is rare. The North Carolina company deserves much credit for choosing Nabucco as the opener for its 66th season.

The Opera Carolina Chorus sings “Va pensiero”. Photo by jonsilla.com

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