Opera Reviews and Interviews

Sondra Radvanovsky as Tosca and Marco Berti as Cavaradossi, with Lado Ataneli as Scarpia. Photo: Robert Millard

Monday, May 20: Review by David Gregson

The Los Angeles Opera opening night audience appeared to love it. Every moment of Floria Tosca’s obsessively jealous behavior evoked an appreciative response, mostly laughter of course — for La Tosca‘s treatment of her boyfriend, the painter Mario Cavaradossi, is indeed comically irritating. Everyone was clearly following the supertitles closely. The emergence and reemergence in the pit of conductor Plácido Domingo leading the Los Angeles Opera orchestra elicited endless delight.

Perhaps the only totally inappropriate response came at the moment of Baron Scarpia’s bloody demise: the laughter was definitely out of place at this juncture. In general, however, the crowd reacted as if they were experiencing Giacomo Puccini’s familiar overheated melodrama for the very first time. They made their appreciation for the diva, soprano Sondra Radvanovsky, abundantly clear; and they showed their admiration for the villain Scarpia, baritone Lado Ataneli, by mixing in some good-natured boos with the cheers; and they awarded tenor Marco Berti a much heartier welcome than he may have deserved. If points had been awarded, however, Radvanovsky would have accumulated the lion’s share.

With the mise en scene and costumes (Bunny Christie) updated to World War I, or so it seemed to me (I thought Scarpia looked a bit like Puccini who died in 1924), this was one of the ugliest productions I have seen in some time, and the stage direction (John Caird, he of Les Misérables fame) was full of sophomoric innovations. A Mini-Me version of Tosca (pace Austin Powers) made numerous unwelcome ghostly intrusions, especially when she unsuccessfully substituted for the famous Shepherd whose haunting song helps characterize the opening of Act Three.

Apparently lured to it by Mini-Me, Tosca slits her own throat before leaping from what is often the Castel Sant’Angeleo (at least in the composer’s original intentions) but here appeared to be an all-purpose execution chamber perfect for shootings and hangings and lacking only an electric chair. The often elegant Act Two Palazzo Farnese, Baron Scarpia’s apartment, looked almost precisely like the loot-filled expanses of Xanadu in the final moments of Orson Welles’ Citizen Kane: miles and miles of crates and classic statuary. I gather Scarpia was collecting Canovas, Berninis, and even a Michelangelo captive. It was rather fun trying to figure out what all the artwork was supposed to be.

We first see the basic unit set in Act One where it is supposed to serve as the Church of Sant’Andrea delle Valle.

The Act One finale of “Tosca,” with Lado Ataneli (at upper left) as Scarpia. Photo: Robert Millard

In perspective it is a pie-shaped bombed-out shell with a gaping hole in the ceiling and high-placed window-like openings all around. The painter Cavaradossi’s famous scaffolding props up three gigantic and unalluring fragments of his supposed portrait of Mary Magdalene. Singing “Recondite armonia” from the top of this structure created some awkward synchronization problems for tenor Barti vis-à-vis the vocal/orchestral blend, and he was clearly nervous. Frankly, I felt there was a disconnect all evening between the vocal and orchestral elements, scaffolding or no. The whole performance seemed as if it needed more rehearsal: singers and orchestra were very often not perfectly together.

Berti has the large ringing sound one loves to hear from Italians, but he seemed a little off his game, perhaps because of the odd physical production. “E lucevan le stelle” needed more depth of feeling; it came off as way less than heartfelt and was unaided by any visual component more romantic than a small square view of dimly shimmering stars at the back of the stage. The suffocating environment may have suffocated the singer.

Baritone Lado Ataneli has a gorgeous voice, but it is not dark enough for Scarpia, and Ataneli does little to give the voice a villainous edge. He comes off as much too charming. I have heard this singer several times before and I want to hear him again, but not in this role.

Radvanovsky can be so phenomenally loud at times that everyone else sounds as if they are not singing. Her voice is richly textured with a complex timbre — and it is not to everyone’s taste. I am reminded of the classic disagreement as to whether Maria Callas had a beautiful voice or not. When Radvonovsky forces it to top volume, the sound is ugly to me. I also feel she externalizes as an actress and we are not aware of much internal life. I felt the presence of a major artist, but I was not moved by anything, including the “Vissi d’arte.” That said, there is no question that Radvanovsky is the chief reason to see this current Tosca. My opinion of the diva is deep, deep down in a tiny minority section.

Bass Joshua Bloom, by the way, makes an excellent Angelotti, bass-baritone Philip Cokorinos an engaging Sacristan, and tenor Rodell Rosel a fine Spoletta. Grant Gershon’s choral work is excellent as usual, and lighting designer Duane Schuler deserves praise for making a dark and gloomy set actually visible.

CAST
Floria Tosca: Sondra Radvanovsky
Mario Cavaradossi: Marco Berti
Baron Scarpia: Lado Ataneli
Cesare Angelotti: Joshua Bloom
The Sacristan: Philip Cokorinos
Spoletta: Rodell Rosel
Sciarrone: Daniel Armstrong++
Young Girl: Eden McCoy*

CREATIVE TEAM
Conductor: Plácido Domingo
Conductor (June 2): Jordi Bernàcer*
Director: John Caird*
Scenic and Costume Design: Bunny Christie*
Lighting Designer: Duane Schuler
Chorus Director: Grant Gershon
Fight Director: Ed Douglas
* LA Opera debut artist
++ Domingo-Thornton Young Artist Program alumnus

Saturday May 18, 2013 07:30 PM
Sunday May 26, 2013 02:00 PM
Thursday May 30, 2013 07:30 PM
Sunday June 02, 2013 02:00 PM
Wednesday June 05, 2013 07:30 PM
Saturday June 08, 2013 07:30 PM

Production from the Houston Grand Opera. Production new to Los Angeles.

LOS ANGELES OPERA

Sondra Radvanovsky as Tosca, with Lado Ataneli as Scarpia. Photo: Robert Millard

Tell-Tale Heart | Mark Bringelson, Jason Switzer, John Matthew Myers, Ashley Knight, Danielle Bond, Robin Buck Photo by Keith Ian Polakoff.

Sunday, May 12: Review by David Gregson of May 11 performance.

–

“Vincent Price will be turning in his grave!”

This provocative warning made by a Long Beach Opera supporter (and I confess to being one myself) was supposed to prepare my nerves for a transgressive Edgar Allan Poe experience, the US premiere of Stewart Copeland’s Tell-Tale Heart, Long Beach Opera’s latest daring effort which opened as part of a double bill with Michael Gordon’s Van Gogh in a four-performance run which began Sunday night at the Long Beach Expo building on Atlantic Boulevard.

It was indeed a harrowing experience, exceeding in shock value those horror-show double-feature movies I enjoyed so much as a teenager. I must confess, however, the infamous Roger Corman low-budget “Poe” movies made for American International Pictures, were released during my more mature college years, and I never cared for any of them; and I always felt that Vincent Price, a fine actor really, had much to atone for. The films were invariably wildly inaccurate adaptations of the Poe stories, with Price replicating his hammy villain act time after time. It’s Poe that was turning in his grave!

In graduate school I read all of Poe and actually went on to earn a Ph.D. in English and American Literature from UCSD. (I apologize, dear reader! This is the first time as a critic I that I have ever emerged in print waving my diploma!) In any event, I take issue with Mr. Copeland’s stated attempt to equate Poe with the murderous madman of The Tell-Tale Heart (Poe’s title). “The author was such an odd fish and the account is so convincing that it’s tempting to see a genuine confession in the tale.” Well, actually Poe was more of an intellectual theorist who wanted to create a new literary genre in which a reader would be subjected to a brief, highly intense experience. He tried this with love poetry, but horror seemed to work the best.

Whatever one thinks of The Tell-Tale Heart as a work of art, one thing is undeniable: it is very brief (less than three pages long), very intense, nicely streamlined and uncomplicated — at least in terms of what is termed “the Aristotelean unity of of action”: the narrator is obsessed with a harmless old man’s vulture eye, and so he murders and dismembers the man and buries him under the floorboards. But the narrator’s guilt is so great that he imagines the heart beating — beating — beating away and revealing his crime. He confesses all to the police.

To destroy the unity of action in this tale, all you would have to do is introduce extraneous elements such as slutty neighbors (swimmingly slummed in this show by soprano Ashley Knight and mezzo Daniella Bond), a Jungian “shadow self” (baritone Jason Switzer, excellent also as an imposing police officer), not to forget another character, Alan, plus a second officer (gorgeous-voiced tenor John Matthew Meyers). And then you could include an inexplicable mass murder. But I imagine that in his capacity as stage director and production designer, the usually astute Andreas Mitisek, has added all that extra freight to Copeland’s piece. Tell-Tale Heart ends up as a Grand Guignol chamber of horrors, a bit — no, way over the top — and certainly palpable proof to Mr. Copeland that the composer is not God: “In opera, the composer is God. And I like playing God.” Well, welcome Herr Copeland to Regietheater!

And watch out for the charmer Andreas. He’s a genius — but a bit of a devil!

The accomplished baritone Robin Buck managed to be genuinely scary as “Edgar,” the protagonist (as Copeland would have it), and he was aided in the scariness by greenish video enlargements of his features. LBO casts strongly as usual. And listed in the program as “Actor,” Mark Bringelson made a constantly intriguing presence in both operas.

I was not especially enamored of a score that seemed devoid of any special vitality and originality, but its execution (lots of percussion!) by the What’s Next? Ensemble under the direction of Benjamin Makino was exciting — even overwhelming. A string quintet, clarinet and electric guitar were in the mix I believe. Visually we were being bombarded by images from the scaffolded stage and by wonderful video projections by Adam Flemming. Nobody beats LBO for projections, not even the Met. The opera’s text, however, was some of the worst rhyming doggerel I have heard in years.

Much the finer of the two works, Van Gogh opened the program (at about 55 minutes length) — and quite frankly, it would have made an emotionally satisfying evening all on its own. Copeland may be the founder of The Police, but Michael Gordon, a really fine composer, is the co-founder and co-artistic director of Bang on a Can, my contemporary music heroes — and I am totally with The New Yorker‘s Alex Ross in admiration for Gordon’s work.

That said, the sensitively conceived Van Gogh, really a series of scenes and/or songs drawn from Van Gogh’s famous correspondence with his brother Theo, came off as a bit of a horror show, an obvious attempt by Mitisek to link it to the Poe piece. The music is pure Gordon, projecting a sort of Steve Reich-ish minimalist appeal but with more emotional oomph. In Gordon’s own description, the excellent and touching texts follow the arc of Van Gogh’s life chronologically. Van Gogh travels through England, decries his lack of employment, measures his rising creativity, seeks love from a prostitute, falls far from the mainstream of contemporary art, contemplates suicide and ends up in the mad house. Only one of the six scenes is entirely instrumental, and here again, praise is due to Makino and his superb ensemble, no stranger to the piece it seems.

The main horror of Van Gogh (for me at least), came from the writhing figure of Van Gogh trashing about on his high-perched bed, terrifying me with the idea he might actually fall out of his elevated cubicle sans guard rails. Opera performers these days really do risk injury on dangerous sets! But the letter-singing/reciting trio of Ashley Knight, John Matthew Myers, and Jason Switzer brought great pleasure musically (despite passages in an odd vibrato-less intonation). The video projections were amazing, greatly enhancing our sense of the artist’s torment. At least one scene may have shocked some people in the audience for its highly suggestive sexual union between Van Gogh and a prostitute.

As I said before — it was a harrowing experience. And the Expo venue, despite literally luxurious Porta Potties, is not comfortable: hot, stuffy and humid, with closely placed straight-back seats.

As for the operas — well, I have my quibbles, but nobody should miss what goes on at the LBO. I think total fossilization is the alternative. Can I face yet another Tosca? Looks as if I am about to! This Saturday in LA. Thanks to the LBO, life does not have to be all business as usual.

PERFORMANCES:
Sat. May 11 @ 8pm – limited availability
Sat. May 18, @ 2pm
Sat. May 18, @ 8pm
Sun. May 19, @ 7pm

Expo Arts Center
4321 Atlantic Ave
Long Beach, CA 90807

Casts:

VAN GOGH
Soprano: Ashley Knight
Tenor: John Matthew Myers
Baritone: Jason Switzer
Actor: Mark Bringelson

TELL-TALE HEART
Edgar: Robin Buck
Neighbor 1: Ashley Knight
Neighbor 2: Danielle Bond
Alan/Police Officer 1: John Matthew Myers
Shadow Edgar/Police Officer 2: Jason Switzer
Actor: Mark Bringelson

Conductor: Andreas Mitisek / Ben Makino
Stage Director/Production Design: Andreas Mitisek
Video Designer: Adam Flemming

Van Gogh | Mark Bringelson, John Matthew Myers, Jason Switzer, Ashley Knight. Photo by Keith Ian Polakoff.

Visit Long Beach Opera for detailed information

“Waiting for the Throbbing to Begin” by Doris Koplik

Jill Grove as Amneris and Latonia Moore as Aida. Photo by Ken Howard.

San Diego Opera presents Verdi’s Aida designed by Zandra Rhodes

San Diego Opera: VERDI: AIDA 
At San Diego Civic Theater

Aida: Latonia Moore
Amneris: Jill Grove
Radames: Walter Fraccaro
Amonasro: Mark S. Doss

Conductor: Daniele Callegari
Director: Andrew Sinclair
Set and Costume Designer: Zandra Rhodes
Choreographer: Kenneth von Heidecke

Saturday Apr 20 7 pm
Tuesday Apr 23 7 pm
Friday Apr 26 7 pm
Sunday Apr 28 2 pm

TICKETS AND INFO

Tenor Walter Fraccaro as Radames. Photo by Ken Howard.

Enivia Mendoza, Chorus. Photo by Keith Ian Polakoff

Long Beach Opera presents a US premiere: ‘Camelia la Tejana’

Camelia la Tejana (¡Únicamente La Verdad!)
BY GABRIELA ORTIZ
Sung in Spanish with English Supertitles

Camelia la Tejana: Enivia Mendoza
Escritor: John Atkins
Periodista: John Matthew Myers
Compositor/Blogger/Senor: Adam Meza
El Tigre: Nova Safo
Alarma Secretary: M.C. Navarro
Alarma Designer: Susan Kotses
Alarma Photographer: David A. Blair

Conductor: Andreas Mitisek
Stage Director: Mario Espinosa
Set/Costume Designer: Gloria Carrasco
Light Designer: Angel Ancona
Video Designer: Ruben Ortiz Torres
Additional Video Design: Adam Flemming
Sound Designer: Bob Christian
Choreographer: Nannette Brodie

PERFORMANCES
Sun. March 24, 2013 @ 2pm
Sat. March 30, 2013 @ 8pm

Terrace Theater
300 E. Ocean Blvd., Long Beach

Long Beach Opera

Mezzo soprano Nadia Krasteva is Delilah and tenor Clifton Forbis is Samson in San Diego Opera’s SAMSON AND DELILAH. Photo by J. Katarzyna Woronowicz. San Diego Opera, February 2013

SAN DIEGO OPERA

THE CAST

Delilah: Nadia Krasteva
Samson: Clifton Forbis
High Priest of Dagon: Anooshah Golesorkhi
Old Hebrew: Gregory Reinhart
Conductor: Karen Keltner
Director: Lesley Koenig
Choreographer: Kenneth von Heidecke

PERFORMANCES

Saturday, Feb. 16 at 7pm
Tuesday, Feb. 19 at 7pm
Friday, Feb. 22 at 7pm
Sunday, Feb, 24 at 2pm

As a matter of interest and a comment on the passage of time:  The original San Francisco Opera presentation of this production of Samson et Dalilia took place in 1980 at War Memorial Opera House and was made possible by and produced through the cooperation of the Gramma Fisher Foundation of Marshalltown, Iowa, the Lyric Opera of Chicago and San Francisco Opera. The conductor was Julius Rudel, the stage director Nicolas Joel. The cast featured a sensational Plácido Domingo (then in his prime) as Samson,  Arnold Voketaitis as Abimélech, a superb Wolfgang Brendel as the High Priest of Dagon, and the unforgettable Shirley Verrett as Dalila. It was telecast for PBS’s Great Performances and has been preserved as a DVD recording.

I was in the audience during the first performance. It was sensational at the time — and the temple collapse alone (which functioned properly back then) thrilled the audience — along with Domingo’s high B-flat. And here it is — through the miracle of You Tube.

And here is a Dalila t0 remember singing ”Mon coeur s’ouvre a ta voix” – Shirley Verrett, from another telecast

Here is the original program in a PDF file.

Comments about the San Diego Opera production are welcomed below.

Lee Gregory, Ryan MacPherson, Suzan Hanson. Photo Keith Ian Polakoff

“It was a mystery all insoluble; nor could I grapple with the shadowy fancies that crowded upon me as I pondered. I was forced to fall back upon the unsatisfactory conclusion, that while, beyond doubt, there are combinations of very simple natural objects which have the power of thus affecting us, still the analysis of this power lies among considerations beyond our depth. There was an iciness, a sinking, a sickening of the heart — an unredeemed dreariness of thought which no goading of the imagination could torture into aught of the sublime. What was it — I paused to think — what was it that so unnerved me in the contemplation of the House of Usher?”

Well, sir — it’s a glimpse into your own soul. It is the poet, Poe, facing what lies in his own subconscious mind. And none off this is easy to figure out.

An allegedly sane, healthy man encounters his apparent polar opposite. Edgar Allan Poe treats this theme most memorably in his short story, ‘William Wilson,’ in which the protagonist is literally doubled. The good William Wilson dogs the tracks of the evil William Wilson. In the end of the tale, one Wilson kills the other Wilson with a knife. But the lives of both men, clearly projections of the artist’s divided nature (Wilson shares Poe’s birthday, in fact), are inextricably bound together. In Jungian terms, Wilson Number One might be termed the self, and Wilson Number Two might be called the shadow. They need to resolve their issues — but they don’t.

Carl Jung thought that all men and women have shadow selves, and reconciling these two opposites is necessary to the healthy individuation of the psyche. But, to be frank, Jung’s system defies any quick summarization inasmuch as it includes the masculine and feminine principles (the animus and the anima) among other things. If Roderick’s sister Madeline is the anima, it is in a state of permanent peril: Madeline is prone to cataleptic trances and ends up being entombed alive by her neurasthenic brother. In a sense he buries part of himself, but that self cannot be repressed and returns to haunt him. Premature burial, of course, was one of Poe’s obsessions.

To cut to the chase, my take on Long Beach Opera’s fascinating new offering of Philip Glass’s The Fall of the House of Usher, sees the visitor to the Usher mansion (William, superbly sung and acted by baritone Lee Gregory) as the self confronting a mammoth complex of disturbing unconscious turmoil that includes the shadow, Roderick Usher (the excellent tenor Ryan MacPherson), and the dreadful tarn and the cracked, doomed house itself. Complicating matters is the mysterious presence of Jung’s anima in the form of Madeline Usher (in an impressively assured performance by soprano Suzan Hanson). Glass has created a symbolically ambiguous Madeline: she speaks no lines, but sings in a continual wordless vocalise.

I think suggestiveness and complex ambiguity are an essential element in Poe, so I was not in the least bit bothered by stage director Ken Cazan’s attempt to graft a homosexual element onto the William and Roderick characters. Why not? But, despite his pre-performance remarks that his professedly heterosexual hunkentenor and barihunk had agreed that Roderick and William must have been very, very close as school chums, the homosexual elements of the production, overt as they were, did not overshadow the story’s multifaceted weirdness, and Madeline’s presence was accompanied by an incestuous aura Cazan said he did not intend. Ah well, the “intentional fallacy” is what this is called: the director may not have intended it, but it’s there anyway.

Lee Gregory (William), Suzan Hanson (Madeline) and Ryan MacPherson (Roderick). Photo by Keith Ian Polakoff.

Of course, Glass uses his own version of the text — a libretto by Arthur Yorinks. Without that in hand, I cannot say what the stage directions actually indicate. What we got at the LBO was all controlled by Cazan. The virtually inexplicable presence of Madeline hovering about the two male principals resonated in such a way that we were forced into “dreaming dreams no mortal dreamed before.” And this is a good thing.

Because Poe intended “The Fall of the House of Usher” to mean both the fall of the physical house and the end of a dynasty, one would have to see the homosexuality of Roderick as the ultimate reason for the stop of the line. But that notion makes literal Poe’s more abstract fears of mortality. And that, I think, is a bad thing. It promotes the false impression that gay men cannot propagate through heterosexual intercourse. Even Tennessee Williams was not above suggesting such nonsense in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof.

I am among the many people whose admiration for Philip Glass’s work has grown tremendously over the past few years, and the offerings of the Long Beach Opera have been significant in increasing my appreciation. This work may perhaps be minor in Glass’s enormous output (so little of which reaches our eyes and ears), but I found it terribly effective, not only in the moods induced by the repetitive music, but by a sustained lyricism in the vocal writing. Once you have adjusted to Glass’s style, you may find its range of expressiveness is astonishing.

The production itself incorporated a “brutalist” concrete structure from all appearances, comprised of units that were intended to make the house breathe, as it were, which is exactly right for Poe’s intentions. Gothic creatures, some with raven-like mohawks, pushed these about gracefully although often intrusively — but I think I would have preferred something akin to the elaborate projections the LBO has used in the past. This house, allegedly occupied by generations of Ushers, seemed too jarringly contemporary to my eyes; and yet it brought to my mind another modernist setting effectively used in a Poe inspired film — Edgar Ulmer’s “The Black Cat,” one of the great Universal horror movies from the ’30s. Boris Karloff and Bela Lugosi face off in that one, and amidst stunning ’30s decor that is not in the least bit Gothic. The story, full of Satanism, mummified necrophilia, and sadistic torture (Lugosi skins Karloff alive), has nothing to do with Poe’s story, but it is certainly suitably twisted.

Formidable and always welcome tenor Jonathan Mack was on hand to give Roderick hypodermic injections, and baritone Nick Shelton effectively performed the duties of the Servant. Meanwhile conductor Andreas Mitisek wielded his usual persuasive command over a small ensemble that offered a surprising range of orchestral color.

I wish someone could afford to light the auditorium of the wonderful art deco Warner Grand Theatre where LBO is now visiting for a second time, but as I peered through the gloom, it does appear much restoration is needed. Still, I love these old palaces and hope they do not crack and fall like the House of Usher.

Roderick Usher: (Ryan MacPherson) seated, and Lee Gregory (William). Photo by Keith Ian Polakoff.

Madeline Usher: Suzan Hanson
Roderick Usher: Ryan MacPherson
Physician: Jonathan Mack
William: Lee Gregory
Servant: Nick Shelton

Conductor: Andreas Mitisek
Stage Director: Ken Cazan
Set Designer: Alan E. Muraoka
Light Designer: David Jacques
Costume Designer: Jacqueline Saint-Anne
Warner Grand Theatre
478 W 6th Street, 
San Pedro

Jan. 27 – 2PM
Feb. 2 – 8PM
Feb. 3 – 2PM
90 minutes, no intermission

Suzan Hanson, Lee Gregory, Ryan MacPherson
Keith Ian Polakoff

An apology to readers of this site:  San Diego Opera’s season opener, Donizetti’s The Daughter of the Regiment, took place Saturday evening, January 26; and Long Beach Opera’s opener, Philip Glass’s The Fall of the House of Usher, was presented on the stage of the Warner Grand Theatre in San Pedro the very next day, Sunday, January 27, at 2 p.m.

I attended both performances and intend to comment on them as soon as possible; however, I am scheduled for surgery early Monday, January 28, and will only post reviews as soon as I feel up to the task. In the meantime, I will simply say both productions are well worth seeing — and the LBO presentation is of exceptional interest. One is unlikely to encounter this Glass work again in a live performance, and the director’s sexually charged concept for telling the the story is highly provocative.

As for Daughter of the Regiment, I judge it to be a crowd pleasing “laugh riot” with some (mostly) enjoyable singing by two attractive principals, and featuring the great Polish contralto Ewa Podleś on high camp overdrive.

Dave Gregson 
Please consult Long Beach Opera and
San Diego Opera for more information.

Soprano L’ubica Vargicová is Marie and tenor Stephen Costello is Tonio. Photo by J. Katarzyna Woronowicz/The Daughter of the Regiment, San Diego Opera, January/February 2013

The Daughter of the Regiment
by Gaetano Donizetti

San Diego Opera opened its 2013 season Saturday evening with Gaetano Donizetti’s La fille du régiment, titled here in English as The Daughter of the Regiment, but sung (and spoken) in French by an international cast under the musical direction of the extremely capable conductor Yves Abel and the imaginative if hyperactive stage direction of Emilo Sagi. The production, updated to represent a French town full of American soldiers during WWII, comes to us from the Teatro Comunale de Bologna. With sets and costumes by the late Mexican designer Julio Galán, this production can be seen on a commercially available DVD, also directed by Sagi and featuring singers Patrizia Ciofi and Juan Diego Florez as the romantic leads. Those two roles were assumed in San Diego by Slovakian Soprano L’ubica Vargicová and American tenor Stephen Costello.

The opera, over-hyped as a tenor vehicle on account of its nine high Cs — the equivalent of a quadruple axel in Olympic figure skating and hence regarded with something of the same one-to-10 scoring system in everyone’s minds — contains much very beautiful lyrical music. Donizetti was a wonder with melody; one often feels he could have used some of his meltingly lovely tunes in his tragic operas instead of wasting them on frivolous comedies like La fille du régiment. I confess to a deep fondness for this composer.

Because they have distressingly become the opera’s main selling point, let’s dispense with the damned high Cs straight off. A man seated near me rapturously counted them out loud to his wife (whilst a gentleman behind me cheerfully rustled what I can only assume were the wrappings of a large ham sandwich). I give Costello about an 8.5,  but only because Pavarotti was a 10 who made you think nothing in the world could equal it, and I give Juan Diego Florez a 10 as well, although his voice is smaller and of a very different quality. Costello, who seemed freer and more comfortable on the stage than I have ever seen him before, still does not seem as relaxed, confident or as joyous as the other two gentlemen. Frankly, I was more interested in the rest of Costello’s singing, much of which was lovely and extremely affecting.

In the opera’s story, these high Cs are ignited by young Tonio’s love object, the beauteous Marie, the daughter of — in this case — an American regiment stationed in France who have adopted her as a sort of mascot. I don’t know if such an adoption is possible in the American military, but it seems to me it is exactly the sort of crazy thing an American regiment might actually want to do. At any rate, they are all her “fathers” and protectors. However, Marie is in fact the love child of the Marquise of Birkenfield (the great Polish contralto Ewa Podleś) who reclaims her just as Tonio joins the regiment to be near his beloved. Most distressing. But not to worry: all ends well.

Podleś, memorable as a superlative Erda in Wagner’s “Ring,” shows an unexpectedly comic side as the Marquise, and yet she is so outrageously campy from the get-go that her calmer moments in the second act seem out of character. Nonetheless, she truly steals the show — but not without some competition. The comedic dress extras’ antics in Act Two as window washers and whatnot were the true scene stealers of the evening, upstaging everything else going on and totally distracting from the singers. I would be “projecting” if I said such egregious reaching for easy laughs comes from director Sagi’s dislike of the opera. I did a similar thing to The Pirates of Penzance when I directed it in college; I disliked the piece then (but not now), so I added endless silly schtick to direct attention from G&S to myself and my own cleverness. A sign of disrespect and immaturity.

Soprano L’ubica Vargicová has appeared here before and is an attractive talent, gifted with a voice that has a full character to it that does not fit Marie ideally. To my ear she was below pitch on almost all of her top notes all evening, and yet she she was largely quite beguiling. I felt basso Kevin Burdette delightfully embodied the character of platoon leader Sergeant Sulpice, and he effectively complemented the trio (“Tous les trois réunis”) while ludicrous antics upstage were trying to draw our attention from it. They should sue.

Soprano Carol Vaness had a cameo appearance in the speaking role of the Duchess of Krakenthorp, but going so far as to sing as few bars of “Mon coeur s’ouvre à ta voix” from Samson and Delilah, a sort of comic advert for the SDO’s next presentation. Amusingly fake San Diego dignitaries showed up for the party.

One wonders what real Frenchmen and women would have made of the accents in the spoken passages.

The chorus continues to do superb work and should never go without recognition — and the orchestra with Abel at the helm was excellent as usual.

THE CAST:
Marie: L’ubica Vargicová
Tonio: Stephen Costello
Sergeant Sulpice: Kevin Burdette
Marquise De Birkenfeld: Ewa Podleś
Duchess Of Krakenthorp: Carol Vaness

Conductor: Yves Abel
Director: Emilio Sagi

PERFORMANCES:
Saturday, Jan 26, 7pm
Tuesday, Jan 29, 7pm
Friday, Feb 1, 7pm
Sunday, Feb 3, 2pm

San Diego Opera