Ken Howard
Nice Barrington is a good city in Massachusetts, and the Mahaiwe Performing Arts Heart, which boasts unique 1902 stucco frillery on the stage bins, is a wonderfully respectable small-scale theater wherein to stage the Berkshire Opera Competition, regardless of the virtually nonexistent backstage and wing areas. Restrictions encourage artistic staging, for which the competition is famend.
However a Traviata wherein Violetta lights cigarettes throughout the opening quantity, and even takes a puff or two from some admirer’s pipe? I clutched my pearls! That is 1853—maybe it’s the demimonde, however … do girls smoke in public? Perhaps it’s a non-public get together. Perhaps all these girls in lacy culottes are respectable chaperones. (The colourful costumes had been by Brooke Stanton.) Perhaps I’m too previous to confess to blushing. The refreshment counter provided no smelling salts.
However the actual shocker—maybe it’s extra tactful to say startler—was to offer the piece with three lead singers boasting giant, suave voices, hovering gracefully via the long-lasting (hate that phrase) main roles of this most acquainted of home operas. Cabalettas normally omitted from Act II had been restored, at the very least for one verse every, and why? As a result of the tenor and the baritone had voices any cheap viewers would need to take heed to in a recent Verdi tune.
Ken Howard
The woman beside me, a veteran admirer of the ten-year-old firm, identified how inventively director Jonathon Loy used the house—“Did you see their Faust final yr? That was creative too!”—I’m wondering what they did with the five-part Kermesse, however clearly she had come anticipating requirements to be maintained and was glad they’d been.
The dimensions and angle of the Mahaiwe stage requires ingenuity, and Hannah Postlethwaite’s surroundings responded to that. Alfredo sang his reprise on the finish of Act I not from backstage however from one of many stage bins—an impressive harp (and harper) set there to accompany him—which gave an off-the-cuff, boasting high quality to the intrusion that (as written) is likely to be happening in Violetta’s creativeness.
Scene modifications had been swift and witty—Violetta’s get together was backed by curtains; she merely needed to hurl herself on the wall in despair on the finish of “Sempre libera,” then yank on the wainscot till the curtain whisked away and we had been within the nation home for Act II.
One other cute contact: There must be a pier glass in Act I in order that Violetta can have a look at herself and mutter, “O, qual pallor,” and spot Alfredo hovering over her shoulder. And there it was. Fancy body, an out of the best way nook. Then, within the remaining scene—the impact of squalor was achieved by turning the flats round, so we noticed the make-shift picket helps, intelligent, eh?—beside Violetta’s chaise longue, the mirror, now shattered, occupied on the ground. Throughout “Addio, del passato,” she crawled from her mattress and throughout to the damaged mirror that had mirrored her magnificence when she was in well being. Vanessa Becerra, the Violetta, sang the aria from this place, huddling, a wreck. Most affecting.
Ken Howard
Flora’s gala get together doesn’t have a Spanish “interlude” however relatively grew to become a masque a l’español, with everybody in Hispanic costume, and Flamenco dancers pounding their heels on the tabletops. These lengthy tables—three of them—had been pushed onto the stage to broaden the enjoying house by offering an higher story to the motion. The cardboard sport, too, befell on the intersection of the tabletops, and Alfredo tossed his winnings within the air—the place the viewers might see them flutter—relatively than hurling them in Violetta’s face, maybe as a result of they could have gone over her head and into the orchestra pit. Violetta’s public humiliation, too, appeared way more egregious from such a perch.
However I used to be there for the music. The string sound, after all, was lighter than one is used to in Verdi in a grander home, and Brian Garmon’s tempi generally appeared a bit hurried; in any other case this was a by the guide Traviata, tender and sympathique, woodwinds sighing because the unhappy story performs out in opposition to the frivolous background. Voices that know methods to venture, and sound simple once they fill a room haven’t any hassle placing Verdi throughout on the Mahaiwe.
Vanessa Becerra is a fairly girl with a full-bodied voice, appropriate—nicely, appropriate for Verdi. She didn’t chirp the coloratura; she sang it. She didn’t take a few acquainted optionally available excessive notes — we’re used to them, however Verdi didn’t assume them mandatory — and she or he didn’t grandstand by drawing out her “Amami, Alfredo.” Her fioritura was pleasingly good if her merriment was not fairly convincing, pipe apart. She didn’t overdo the tubercular breathlessness. Her full, simple soprano rode sweetly beside Alfredo’s tenor and Germont’s baritone, and the pleasure of a small theater for such a present is to see the feelings on the precise faces.
Ken Howard
Joshua Blue boasts a large tenor, ardent whether or not wooing or daydreaming, irate when he flies off the deal with. A perfectionist would possibly really feel he didn’t convey the fish-out-of-water provincial that Alfredo is, that he appeared too snug with the louche crowd round Violetta. It will be important that we discover his naïveté, or we discover it troublesome to excuse his resentful brutality to the woman he professes to like. Blue is a grandstanding type of performer, and his voice boasts the scale and high quality to justify his expectations of applause, however I’d have favored a bit extra clumsiness, uncertainty, when he’s exploring the sordid facet of Paris wherein he finds himself.
Verdi’s baritones are among the many glories of Italian opera, and Weston Damage’s Germont contributed a fine-grained, thrillingly produced instance of it to the lengthy duet with Violetta that’s the emotional coronary heart of the opera and the aria (and its normally omitted cabaletta) that observe.
Among the many many small components, all nicely forged (although the Marquis didn’t appear a lot embarrassed when Flora caught him flirting round), one seen the acquainted title of John Cheek, veteran of dozens of Met Opera and live performance performances, nonetheless slicing a somber, mellifluous determine as Physician Grenvil.
For an viewers wanting to dally a summer season night with opera, the Berkshire firm supplies a first-rate occasion with wholesome voices and intelligent scenic accomplishments as much as any cheap native customary.
John Yohalem
John Yohalem’s crucial writings have appeared within the New York Occasions E-book Evaluate, American Theater, Opera Information, the Seattle Weekly, Christopher Road, Opera At this time, Musical America and Enchanté: The Journal for the Urbane Pagan, amongst different publications. He claims to have attended 628 completely different operatic works (to not point out forty operettas), however others who had been current usually are not certain they noticed him. What fascinates him, moreover the hyperlinks between operatic occasion and modern historical past, is how the operatic machine works: How voice and music and the ritual expertise of theater work together to provide one thing past itself. He’s writing a guide on Shamanic Opera-Going.
