San Antonio Opera
Have you heard the one about the murderous clown and the
suicidal nun?
September 18, 2010Tenor Stuart Neill’s murderous clown was the brightest of the several planets that came into uncommonly fine alignment in San Antonio Opera’s staging of “Pagliacci,” oddly paired with “Suor Angelica” to open the company’s 15th season. Opening night was Sept. 17 in Municipal Auditorium.
“Pagliacci,” hugely popular ever since its premiere in 1892, was the only hit of composer Ruggero Leoncavallo, who also wrote the libretto. Its compact two-act frame, including a play-within-a-play that turns too real, tells a story of jealousy, rejection, vengeance and murder in a commedia dell’arte troupe in 1860s Italy.
The show rests largely on the shoulders of the tenor singing the role of Canio, and especially on “Vesti la giubba,” probably the most widely recognized aria in all of opera, thanks to Enrico Caruso and, um, Otis B. Driftwood.
Neill seemed ideally suited to the role. He commanded the enormous power and thrust of a true dramatic tenor, with a bright, steely coloration (reminiscent of Jon Vickers) that emphasized his character’s emotional turmoil in Act II, yet calmer passages also revealed a true lyric tenor. There was sometimes a rough-hewn quality to his singing, but that was entirely appropriate to the role.
The rest of the cast was well chosen, if on a slightly lower plane. Soprano Sandra Lopez brought warmth and a good measure of fire to the role of Nedda, Canio’s faithless wife. Her lover, Silvio, was ardently sung by baritone Nmon Ford with a big voice that wanted a little more elegance. Baritone Luis Ledesma, as the treacherous clown (aren’t they all?) Tonio, was slightly underpowered for the auditorium, but his singing was consistently beautiful and his stage presence convincing. Tenor Joseph Hu brought a very attractive, youthful voice to the role of Beppe.
The big chorus of townspeople, prepared by Gary Mabry, sang with clarity and confidence -- easily the best work by the chorus in this company’s history. The orchestra was in fine shape, as well, and conductor Enrique Patrón de Rueda led the proceedings stylishly and with crisp pacing.
James Marvel’s stage direction was fairly straightforward. His best work was in the concluding play-within-a-play, with its broad but disciplined physical comedy inexorably yielding to tragedy. Designer David P. Gordon’s simple but highly effective set, built for Sarasota Opera in 2005, had lanterns strung above a makeshift outdoor stage, with a lone tree twisting upward before a menacing sky.
Giacomo Puccini’s “Suor Angelica” has its partisans, but not many of them. It is the least-often performed opera of Puccini’s “Il Trittico,” a trio of one-acts that also include the comic “Gianni Schicchi” and the bloody “Il Tabarro.”
The libretto, by Giovacchino Forzano, concerns a young woman whose noble family banished her to a convent after she bore a son without benefit of marriage. The only real drama occurs in the middle, when Angelica’s aunt, the nastily sanctimonious Princess, shows up at the convent to secure her signature on a document relating to her parents’ estate and to inform her that her son had died two years earlier. In the hokey conclusion, Angelica poisons herself, then remembers that suicide is a mortal sin (oops!), but the Blessed Virgin and the dead son welcome her into Heaven anyway. The music is pleasant enough but far from Puccini’s best. It lacks conviction, except for the interview between Angelica and the Princess.
Lopez, the opening-night Angelica, sang beautifully if somewhat monochromatically. (Elizabeth Blancke-Bigg took the role on Sept. 18 and 19.) Mezzo-soprano Cindy Sadler was a wonderfully imperious Princess, capable of startlingly resonant, organ-like low notes. Among the other nuns, soprano Emily Ward made the strongest impression as the former shepherdess, Sister Genevieve.
Marvel couldn’t find much to do with his cast in “Suor Angelica,” and even Patrón’s conducting seemed short of its usual energy. The sky backdrop and some of the structure from the “Pagliacci” set were enterprisingly fitted out with Spanish Colonial convent architecture, evidently produced locally by a San Antonio Opera crew led by technical director Max Parrilla.
Mike
Greenberg
