Reviews Archive
'Iolanta' proves worth discovering
Andrew Adler, Courier Journal, Saturday, March 23, 2009
Every so often, a musical event confounds modest expectations to produce a genuinely extraordinary result. It was like that Saturday night at the Kentucky Center, where Kentucky Opera and the Louisville Orchestra combined to present a concert-format performance of Tchaikovsky's final opera, “Iolanta.”
I didn't know much about this work before Saturday, and I'm certain most everyone in Whitney Hall shared my relative ignorance. The work is slender and dramatically uneven. Yet the principal singers who gathered for this performance — two of them direct from the Mariinsky Theatre in St. Petersburg, Russia — had the music in their blood and in their bones.
They sang with an ardor that was immediately arresting. We don't usually get to hear Russian sound as completely idiomatic, unfiltered if you will, as that language emerged within these two hours. The effect was always persuasive. Frequently it was, without exaggeration, magnificent.
“Iolanta” is a fairy-tale opera, telling of a blind princess who gains sight through love. To this ordinary narrative, Tchaikovsky wrote music that is characteristically expansive, orchestrated to be full, but seldom too full. Music Director Jorge Mester conducted the orchestra, which did not always respond in completely disciplined fashion. But Mester grasped the opera's fundamental architecture and how to propel the action forward, and his interpretive strategies — particularly in the vigorously pointed second half — proved consistently satisfying.
The Ukrainian-born soprano Anna Shafajinskaia sang the title role with considerable style and soaring, amply supported tone. She suggested Princess Iolanta's affecting naivete in the early pages of the opera, moving on to one spectacular moment after another as the work neared its finale. Whether in her dark low and middle range to her bold excursions above the staff, she never faltered.
Elsewhere, the vocal splendor belonged to the men. Bass Mikhail Svetlov, apart from a bit of initial gravelly tone, made a superlative King René — sympathetic as an all-powerful monarch, and more significantly, as a father.
Tenor August Amonov and baritone Alexander Gergalov — the Mariinsky Theatre guest artists — were superb exponents of material that moved from the lyrical to the melodramatic, interspersed with touches of awkward comedy.
Amonov's way with Count Vaudémont, who eventually wins Iolanta's trust, gathered authority as the evening progressed, culminating in a love duet with Shafajinskaia that was striking in its honest power. Gergalov, one of the most agile and intuitive baritones I've encountered in quite a while, sang his aria about Duke Robert's gleeful affection for his back-home-beloved Matilda with glorious panache.
As the Moorish doctor who seeks to cure Iolanta, baritone Marcus DeLoach was never less than confident and musical. In smaller roles, bass Conor Angell and particularly tenor Benjamin Robinson (Kentucky Opera Studio Artists) impressed with their emphatic characterizations. The trio of Iolanta's confidants — Studio Artists Natalie Krupansky, Heather Phillips and Meaghan Deiter — were rather colorless.
Saturday's chorus, prepared by Phillip Brisson, sang ably. All told, for a one-act opera that is virtually a footnote to Tchaikovsky's career, “Iolanta” was worth discovering, or re-discovering. And given a performance of Saturday's stature, listeners should deem themselves fortunate indeed.
Reporter Andrew Adler can be reached at (502) 582-4668.
Soprano gives voice to Tchaikovsky's 'Iolanta'
Andrew Adler, Courier Journal, Saturday, March 15, 2009
Nearly everyone's heard of Tchaikovsky. Practically no one has heard of his last opera, "Iolanta." But for area audiences, that will change Saturday, March 21, at the Kentucky Center when the Louisville Orchestra and Kentucky Opera collaborate in a joint concert-format presentation in Whitney Hall.
Composed in 1891, "Iolanta" is a modest creation, at least compared to such major Tchaikovsky operas as "Eugene Onegin" and "Pique Dame." Telling of a blind fairy-tale princess who gains sight through honest love, the one-act work is, at its core, a delicate fantasy. Little wonder, then, that Tchaikovsky called it not simply an opera but a "lyrical opera."
American audiences seldom encounter "Iolanta," which originally was intended to be paired in performance alongside "The Nutcracker," which Tchaikovsky completed in 1892. The composer set the opera to a libretto by his brother, Modest, who had based the text on Henrik Hertz's play "King René's Daughter."
On March 21, the role of Iolanta will be sung by Russian-born soprano Anna Shafajinskaia, who'll collaborate with singers from the Mariinsky Theatre in St. Petersburg.
"It will be my first experience after pregnancy," Shafajinskaia said during a recent phone interview from her home in Toronto, while her infant son gurgled in the background. Though March 21 marks her official debut in the role, she studied the opera while a conservatory student in Russia, where "Iolanta" is far better known than in the West.
Outside of Russia, "it's not so popular, but it should be," she said. She emphasized how glad she was to be singing a lyrical role, in decided contrast to her typical stage fare.
"Usually I'm singing heavy, dramatic parts, like Turandot," she explained, "so this is a real pleasure for me, finally. This part is so smooth — it should sound young and patient."
Though the concert format March 21 will be considerably different from a staged production, Shafajinskaia doesn't just want to stand and sing. "I have to have everything in character," she said, "and I will as much as possible. ... We will see how my partners will respond."
Perhaps her most significant partner is Jorge Mester, music director of the Louisville Orchestra, who'll conduct the performance. He is another latecomer to "Iolanta" but already a confirmed admirer.
"When I heard it, I was struck by the orchestration of it, the harmonic richness, the sound of it," Mester said in an interview. "I think the orchestra will be fascinated."
Mester also conducted last season's LO-KO collaboration, Saint-Saëns' "Samson and Delilah," which starred mezzo-soprano Denyce Graves. Conducting "Iolanta," he said, is something else altogether.
"The challenge for me is that I don't speak the Russian language," Mester said. "When I did 'Samson and Delilah,' I spoke French, and speaking the language helps in knowing where the phrases are going to go."
Acknowledging the concentrated preparation time for the March 21 performance, Mester said he's certain all the necessary components will jell when they must.
"In this case, it's a little different for me. You are not looking for dramatic development — you're putting together an ensemble piece."
Shafajinskaia, who sang the title role of Puccini's "Tosca" at New York City Opera while five months pregnant, is Russian by heritage and Canadian by accident. In 1993 she arrived in Toronto as part of a troupe called "Russians on Broadway," set to begin a North American tour. But when sponsor financing suddenly collapsed, the cast found themselves without a tour or a place to sleep.
"We were thrown out onto the street from the hotel," Shafajinskaia recalled, adding that disaster was averted only when a local TV station put out a call for help. Eventually the 53-member troupe managed to organize their own shows and played close to 20 performances in Toronto.
There was an upside: "I met my husband, Oleg, a former ballet dancer, and he supported not only me but a couple of my friends."
From there, Shafajinskaia gradually constructed her solo career. During the 1996-97 season, she won the Luciano Pavarotti International Voice Competition (and sang Tosca on stage opposite his Cavaradossi). Her independent professional stage debut came in 1999, when she sang "Aida" for the Hamilton (Ontario) Opera. "Afterward, my career started growing like a snowball," she said.
Louisville's "Iolanta" performance will mark a further solo evolution. The fantasy holds great appeal for her, and she hopes audiences will share her emotional attraction.
"When you understand the text and meaning of each word, it's very, very, very cryable," she said. "But happy-cryable."
Reporter Andrew Adler can be reached at (502) 582-4668.
Kentucky Opera's 'Werther' offers full satisfaction from the artistic fringe
By Andrew Adler, The Courier Journal, November, 2008
Kentucky Opera often comes up with offerings that make you grateful for the chance to revisit repertory that falls out of the mainstream. The company premiere of Massenet's "Werther" qualifies as just such a prime opportunity.
In the pantheon of opera — even within the sub-pantheon of French opera — "Werther" does not get the attention it deserves. Ask somebody to name a stage work by Massenet and you are apt to get "Manon" as an answer, or these days, maybe "Thaïs." (Thanks be to Renée Fleming.) "Werther," however, seldom rises to the top of anyone's list.
One obvious impediment is finding a tenor equal to the measure of Goethe's brooding title character. Here Kentucky Opera, which too often has settled for mediocre leading tenors, has a terrific Werther in the young American singer Garrett Sorenson.
Not only does he appreciate the particular vocal requirements of this role — rounding his phrases with a lustrous tone that rings right to the core — he suggests just the right degree of tragic vulnerability. By the time he reached Werther's defining Act Three aria, "Pourquois me réveiller" last night at the Kentucky Center, Sorensen had shaped a theatrically credible portrait of a man undone by hopeless love.
His real-life wife, mezzo-soprano Elizabeth Batton, was every bit his equal in her Charlotte. The relationship between these two characters sometimes feels like a literary contrivance. Yet Batton avoided getting caught up in simpering, anti-idiomatic gestures. Her voice could be appropriately dark and dusky in its lower range, while also flirting with a sleek top that never ran out of necessary support.
"Werther" at its heart is an intimate, fastidiously constructed piece that finds its spectacle deep within individual characterizations. Stage director Kristine McIntyre allowed her singers necessary space, both physically and emotionally, no matter what the scene. Baritone Troy Cook, for example, was as cool and distant as Albert as Sorenson was a Werther frequently on the verge of boiling over. These two men — each utterly unyielding in his own fashion as they vied for Charlotte's love — created an ongoing tension that served the work admirably.
Elsewhere in this production, with spare scenic designs that originated with the Opera Company of Philadelphia, there were laudably strong contributions from supporting principals. Easily the finest of these was soprano Karen Vuong, who imbued her Sophie with marvelous articulation and a lilting, creamy tone. Daniel Collins' Johann and Benjamin Robinson's Schmidt provided keen bits of comic relief, with Connor Angell capering nimbly as the Bailiff. A modest gaggle of children sang confidently.
Conductor Joseph Mechavich led the Louisville Orchestra with exceptional verve and style, drawing some of the best playing from this ensemble in the pit that I've heard in recent outings. All told, this "Werther" was a superb cap to Kentucky Opera's fall season — and a reminder that the fringes of the repertory can yield remarkable, mainstream satisfactions.
Kentucky Opera debuts 'Werther'
By Bill Doolittle, LEO Weekly, November 26, 2008
If you’re looking for the Jules Massenet opera “Werther” on the big map of music, it’s pretty near Obscure, just east of Unknown. While Massenet’s “Manon” is still regularly performed, more than a century after its debut, the composer’s “Werther” (pronounced Vair-tair) is almost nowhere to be heard — at least on this side of the Atlantic. It’s never been sung in Louisville, and hasn’t played New York in 22 years.
But if things go the way director Kristine McIntyre expects this weekend, Kentucky Opera audiences might find themselves wondering why? As in: Why haven’t we heard this opera before?
“It’s not like we reached into some dusty old library and pulled something off the shelf that might or might not succeed,” says McIntyre. “This is real music and a real story.”
It fits naturally into the role Kentucky Opera has assumed as an “incubator” of opera in the region. Two years ago, Kentucky Opera produced the seldom-heard “The Pearl Fishers,” launching what has become a popular revival of the Bizet opera. The “find” for next year, promises Executive Director David Roth, will be “Of Mice and Men.” That opera, based on the John Steinbeck novel, has its origins in literature — as does “Werther.”
The “Werther” story springs from the Goethe novel “The Sorrows of Young Werther,” a worldwide best-seller published in 1774. The book tells the tale of a troubled young poet who finds himself the odd man out in a two-guys, one-girl love triangle — and ends up taking his own life. The book’s romanticized view of suicide was blamed for a wave of suicides by young men, and the notion was still around a century later when Massenet composed “Werther” in 1789. But, unlike the book, the opera never caught on.
Certainly, suicide has always been a part of opera, but usually it’s some mythical king falling on his own sword after a spate of bloody palace murders. This Werther thing, however, was more about modern men and women, and maybe a little too close to real life.
McIntyre says she studied Goethe’s “Werther” as a literature major in college.
“One of the things we honestly don’t know is whether the book actually did cause young men to commit suicide, or if it’s simply one of those urban legends,” she says. “In literature, we talk about it as the Werther Effect. But it’s a little hard to know how profound that was. Certainly, the disaffected youth of that generation responded to it. But I think it’s the same thing (in other times) with rock music or cult films. It tapped into a generation’s sense of not belonging.”
While the Werther Effect might belong to another age, psychological drama is very much a part of modern stage.
“The thing Massenet is clearly trying to do is make it like a play,” says McIntyre. “It’s not some grandiose story. It’s about people like us. He sets up situations that almost feel like we’re eavesdropping. Like we’re kind of spying on them.”
McIntyre says Massenet paints the story in a “lush soundscape” of the Romantic Age. “It feels like a play, and then has these gorgeous, long French lines, and this kind of soaring music that is very rich in sound and orchestration.”
The lead roles of Werther and Charlotte will be sung by the promising young husband and wife team of Garrett Sorenson and Elizabeth Batton, who live in Louisville. Troy Cook sings the Mr. Lucky role of Albert, who gets the girl.
Opera opens soundly with 'Turandot'
Andrew Adler, Courier Journal, Saturday, September 8, 2007 Scene pg8
Spinning off in great gobs of sound for individual voices, chorus and orchestra, which defined Thursday night's season launch at the Kentucky Center's Whitney Hall. "Turandot" is an exotic immensity that Kentucky Opera has produced in several striking productions over the past two decades, a crowd-pleaser demanding much from its performers and, under favorable circumstances, returning wave after wave of pleasure."
"...nobody blazes as gloriously as soprano Lise Lindstrom, who Thursday sang the opera's title role with the kind of superbly focused, pitch-sure, ringing-core tone that renders the Icy Princess into an object of marvelous wonder. No swooping up to the note or broadening phrases with excessive vibrato -- even when Turandot succumbs to romantic ardor near the finale, Lindstrom didn't allow herself to indulge in vocal mush."
Rich Copley, Lexington Herald Leader, Copius Notes Kentucky Opera opens season in grand style
"There are lots of memorable things about Kentucky Opera 's production of Turandot, which opened the company's season Thursday and Saturday. Director Garnett Bruce's version was a true grand opera spectacle, with scenery and costumes worthy of Giacomo Puccini's sumptuous score. And under Joseph Rescigno's baton, the musicians, for the most part, lived up to their end of the bargain. Then, there were little extras, such as a mind-bending team of acrobats that added even more zest to an Act II that felt like a grand finale."
Praise for Opera, 'Turandot'
"Andrew Adler is quite correct in his favorable review ( C-J , Sept. 8) of Kentucky Opera production of Puccini's final opera and masterpiece, "Turandot." Most encouraging to this opera-goer was Kentucky Opera general director David Roth's pre-opera remarks about the company's dedication to that which we call art. Bravo, Mr. Roth.
Common usage of the term art suggests reference to that which is contextually deemed to be the best or of the best of creative endeavors. In the broadest context of this definition lies opera, as so ably stated by Roth. Kentucky Opera's recent production of "Turandot" particularly satisfied this given definition. Director Garnett Bruce's staging was brilliant and allowed the exuberance of Puccini's score to provoke and inspire those willing to submit to it.
An important part of any dialogue -- especially musical dialogue -- is in the listening. The ovation and uprising at the final curtain seemed to indicate this was the condition at 'Turandot.'
Congratulations, Kentucky Opera. "
Andrew Adler, Courier Journal, February, 26, 2006 B5
“Overall this is a pleasing treatment of ‘Il barbiere”
“ There’s plenty of broad physical humor. Much of it is intrinsic to ‘Barber’ and is confidently managed by principals and choristers alike.”
Happily, the singing is robust and fundamentally stylish. Most satisfying of all is Zheng Cao’s Rosina. Cao brings something more substantial, more authentic. And her Rossini mezzo – lush and ample, clean in ornamentation and velvety in its lower range – is just what the role requires.”
Ian Greenlaw did not disappoint. He whisked on amid a brisk and lightly emphasized ‘Largo al factotum’ evolving a performance that was lithe in sound and movement.”
ANDREW ADLER, Courier Journal, January 29, 2006 B5
Little Women
‘Little Women’ big on talent, story and voice
“…sung and acted with tremendous verve Friday by mezzo-soprano Jennifer Dudley, Jo in every significant way…”
“Directed by David Gately, it seems unerringly genuine.”
“Friday’s performance offered plenty of honest pleasure.”
“…as a unifying experience of music and theater, this production of ‘Little Women’ counts as a benchmark of where Kentucky Opera needs to look in coming seasons.”
CHARLES H. PARSONS Opera News online January 2006, Vol 70, no. 7
Eugene Onegin
Kentucky Opera (Louisville) opened its season with a beautifully romantic, firmly paced and performed production of Eugene Onegin (seen Oct. 14).
The Louisville Orchestra, led by John Keenan, began with the gentlest of musical caresses and grew in romantic sweep, becoming madly passionate with drive and drama while maintaining plenty of lightness for the dance numbers. Robust, full-throated singing by the chorus added to the excitement.
Richard Zeller … superbly caught the insouciance and insolence of the character. His voice was equally pointed with disdain, his performance curiously inwardly controlled and expressed until he unleashed the dramatic outbursts of his final emotional entreaties to Tatyana.
Zvetelina Vassileva’s Tatyana was a delicately etched portrayal of uncertain youth coupled with sound musicianship, her creamy voice owning just enough edge to project clearly.
ANDREW ADLER Courier Journal, Sunday, October 16.2005 B3
Eugene Onegin
“ After Friday’s absorbing, evocative Kentucky Center performance… listeners would have to deem it (‘Onegin’) a fully worthwhile encounter.”
“…this ‘Onegin’ boasts admirable unity of purpose.”
“Soprano Svetelina Vassileva’s Tatyana matures persuasively from the bookish romantic innocent of Act I to the more worldly, pragmatic woman two acts (and some years) afterward. Her Letter Scene was sung Friday with impetuous desperate fury.”
“Possibly the evening’s most vivid singing came courtesy of Arthur Woodley’s Prince Gremin. Often portrayed as a doddering old aristocrat, under Woodley’s care Gremin instead was a sympathetic, instantly commanding fellow with a resonant bass that made you want to hear more and more.
“Kentucky Opera showed courage in producing this work, and for that the company should be commended – and attended.”
CHARLES H. PARSONS Opera News, January 2005 , vol 69 , no.7
Thaïs
Massenet’s Thaïs arrived, in high style for a richly satisfying opening of Kentucky Opera season. This riot of exotic color and erotic passion provided a real rush, musically and dramatically at Louisville’s Whitney Hall on October 22.
Most striking was Doucet’s staging of the Meditation as an emotional conversion experience symbolized by the replacement of Thaïs’s Eye of Horus mirrors by a single Eye of the Christian God symbol.
Musically, Thaïs was a triumph as well. As Thaïs, Lyne Fortin’s richly dark soprano belted out the high notes with laser accuracy, then was easily reigned in for emotional expression.
Simone Alberghini’s Athanaël was strongly communicative to the audience, passionately involved, emotionally expressive, easily encompassing the high-lying dramatic outbursts with a dark, firm underpinning.
Kentucky Opera chorus was a vigorous lot, and the Louisville Orchestra responded magnificently to the firm but pliant ministrations of conductor John Keenan.
Andrew Adler Courier Journal, October 24, 2004 B6
Thaïs
Opera at its finest: Love, lust and God, with lots of tunes
“… when produced by a regional opera company counts as a departure from normal practice all this makes Kentucky Opera’s decision to open its 52nd season with this comparative rarity something to examine closely, to gape at, and ultimately to savor.
“With conductor John Keenan displaying ardent, discerning appreciation for the abundant vocal and orchestral elements…Friday night had the stamp of authentic style.”
“Fortin herself is steeped in that tradition, and Friday her creamy, ample tone (was) an instant and continuing pleasure.”
“Kentucky Opera chorus and the Louisville Orchestra have seldom sounded more confident.”
