Bronwen Sharp
Of the three nice Mozart-Da Ponte operas, Le nozze di Figaro may present the best quantity of pure pleasure to the viewers: a stream of nice arias, duets, and ensembles, humor, pathos, farce, unhealthy habits thwarted, no nasty tips, no rape, no moralizing, no person dies, and a (principally) joyful ending.
Okay, it’s true that the Depend spends a lot of the opera attempting to mattress his servant Susanna earlier than she marries Figaro, betraying his loving spouse within the course of, and on the shut we suspect he’ll betray the her once more, however these are the one shadows solid over the sunniest of the three collaborations.
This season, Santa Fe Opera has revived its 2021 Laurent Pelly manufacturing, a jolly confection set someday within the Thirties. This specific conceit signifies that the singers are costumed in almost-modern costume. The servants put on uniforms, the higher courses don’t, however there’s nonetheless some blurring of the category divisions. Ought to a noble just like the Depend seem in his pajamas and a bathrobe earlier than anybody apart from his manservant and spouse?
That famous, the replace doesn’t have a lot affect on the effectiveness of the opera, which is cleverly staged on Chantal Thomas’s rotating set, which resembles an enormous clockwork with cell partitions and plenty of, many doorways, all the higher to facilitate the complicated comings and goings that energy the opera. In keeping with Pelly, the clockwork mechanism refers to La folle journée (the loopy day), the title of the Beaumarchais play on which the opera relies, however it might additionally check with the intricate plot and the split-second timing wanted to deliver it off.
Santa Fe has put collectively a generally-excellent worldwide solid of singers for this revival. The Italian bass Riccardo Fassi made a nice firm and U.S. debut within the title function, taking part in Figaro as a little bit of a dunderhead and singing with a strong, if barely gritty, tone. Nicely, as Susanna says within the very first scene, “Perché io son la Susanna e tu sei pazzo.” (I’m Susanna and you’re a idiot.) He’s a captivating idiot, although, and as we all know, he loves Susanna dearly.
Liv Redpath, his Susanna, has a crystalline soprano and the best Mozartian line within the manufacturing and she or he was a delight all through. The Chinese language mezzo-soprano Hongni Wu was a flustered and lovable Cherubino, apprentice singer Isobel Anthony a assured Barbarina.
The manufacturing skilled some turnover in its Countess Almaviva in the course of the run. Jacquelyn Stucker sang the primary efficiency; the initially introduced Spanish soprano Marina Monzó sang two performances, then withdrew for private causes. Ailyn Pérez, who sang a recital on the Santa Fe Chamber Music Pageant on 23 July, was already on the town and knew the manufacturing, so she stepped into the function.
Tira Howard
Pérez is an excellent singer; her Rusalka in that opera in Santa Fe’s 2023 season will stick with me endlessly. However from her efficiency, evidently Mozart roles aren’t working properly for her simply now. She was nice in ensembles and duets, crisp in recitatives, however in the course of the Countess’s two arias, her assaults have been messy and she or he had issue sustaining the uncovered line.
The French baritone Florian Sempey, like Fassi making his U.S. and Santa Fe debut, was an amusing, somewhat than threatening, Depend Almaviva and in addition not a buffoon, consistent with the widely mild and kindly tenor of the manufacturing. The veteran Maurizio Muraro was an authoritative Bartolo, charmingly matched by the pleasant Marcellina of Lucy Schaufer, each in Santa Fe debuts. Steven Cole was a witty Basilio.
Pelly’s path saved the manufacturing shifting swiftly alongside and saved the difficult plot completely clear. He additionally landed a troublesome second completely: Sempey’s “Contessa, perdono,” when all is revealed on the finish of the opera, was so properly staged and acted that there was no laughter and the gravity of the second was clear to all.
Santa Fe music director Harry Bicket performed with a light-weight contact, with each musical element in place, each tempo in stability, and very best help to the singers.
Curtis Brown for The Santa Fe Opera
Henry James’s nice novella The Flip of the Screw is known for its disquieting sense of horror and its ambiguity. Arethere ghosts at Bly? Is the Governess hallucinating the hazards to the youngsters? How does Miles die?
After I final learn The Flip of the Screw, I discovered a single sentence that may resolve the matter, however how a lot weight does that sentence have in opposition to the stability of the novella?
Benjamin Britten’s opera has are available for criticism precisely as a result of it resolves the anomaly by placing the ghosts on stage: sure, evidently they’re actual. (Or if not, each character on stage has an unusually vivid creativeness.) Myfanwy Piper’s libretto is specific in regards to the interactions between Peter Quint and Miles, Miss Jessel and Flora, the Governess and each the ghosts.
Louisa Muller’s manufacturing, a Canadian Opera Firm manufacturing initially from Britain’s Garsington Opera, the primary at Santa Fe Opera since 1983, is as simple and as simple to observe because the libretto. Just like the novella, it’s set within the nineteenth century. In Christopher Oram’s unit set, Bly is barely decrepit, the woodwork in imperfect situation and even a bit moldy, as if the mansion’s decay displays each neglect and the ethical decay introduced in by Peter Quint. The manufacturing and Oram’s costumes are predominantly in black and shades of brown, with flashes of white in nightdresses and colour within the kids’s outfits and toys.
Every thing in regards to the efficiency was well-executed, with wonderful singing, although I want there had been extra thriller and extra terror early within the opera. The ultimate scenes, main as much as Miles’s identification of Quint and his loss of life within the arms of the Governess, did develop in pressure and energy.
Gemma New led the chamber orchestra confidently, drawing eloquent taking part in from every instrumentalist. Soprano Jacqueline Stucker’s Governess, her first outing within the function, mixed fragility and concern with rising power in protection of the youngsters. Jennifer Johnson Cano was a forthright, naive Mrs. Grose.
Everett Baumgarten, 13, seems youthful than his age and made a superb Miles; equally, 14-year-old Annie Blitzwas charming as Flora. Soprano Wendy Bryn Harmer sang powerfully as Miss Jessel and tenor Brenton Ryan was a scary, but seductive, Quint and ruminative Prologue.
Lisa Hirsch
Lisa Hirsch studied music at Brandeis College and Stony Brook. She studied flute severely for quite a few years and has sung all kinds of music in lots of choruses. She has written about opera and classical music for San Francisco Classical Voice, Opera Information (RIP), Opera, and the San Francisco Chronicle. She blogs about these topics at Iron Tongue of Midnight, which additionally contains lots of her pictures.
Although she has attended San Francisco Opera and different corporations for the reason that early Nineteen Eighties, her opera obsession actually began within the early 90s, when she began listening to historic singers.
