Opera San Jose
Donizetti’s Lucia di Lammermoor
Sept. 10, 2016
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| Sylvia Lee as Lucia. Photos by Pat Kirk. |
In the presence of a hundred musicians and three hours of
gorgeous, sweeping music, the most gripping moments in this opera come from a
single soprano and a single flute, performing passages not actually written by
the composer. That is merely one of the wonders of Donizetti’s masterwork.
Lucia’s Mad Scene is such a powerful creation that a theater
full of modern, highly distractable citizens will inch toward the edges of their
seats for long minutes of tense, mesmerized silence as a Scottish girl
disintegrates before them. The scene is punctuated by sudden flights and
nerve-wracking pauses, until finally she collapses to the stage, reduced to an
infant conversing with a crazy bird in her head.
The extended cadenza, created by soprano Fanny
Tacchinardi-Persiani for the opera’s 1835 premiere, was accompanied on this
night by OSJ’s sterling flautist Isabelle Chapuis. It also probably cemented
Sylvia Lee’s performance as best introduction of a new resident soprano ever.
With OSJ’s artist-resident approach, the patron-singer connection is deeper
than most, and you could sense some first-date anxiety, particularly when
you’re asking the new girl to tackle one of the toughest roles in the canon. When
Lee reached the end of the fountain scene cabaletta, “Quando rapito in estasi,”
the rousing applause was also a sigh of relief, that this was a voice they could listen to for years to come.
Lee’s instrument is not the most powerful, but her ease in
the upper register is divine, her dips into the lower surprisingly strong. Given
her lyric tone and small stature, she plays the Mad Scene in a logical manner,
a young girl driven by immense pressure into a childlike state. She adds
sudden, threatening movements with weaponry that maintain the tension and draw
surprised gasps from the audience. (And a nervous, comic thought from the
spectators: “Would you please get
that knife away from her?”)
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| Kirk Dougherty as Edgardo, Matthew Hanscom as Enrico. |
The development of the opera’s characters is often driven by
its casting, and here the case is made for a classic testosterone sandwich.
Exhibit A is Lucia’s brother/destroyer Enrico, played by baritone Matthew
Hanscom with pure rage and power. Hanscom created confidence with the audience
immediately, with his assured performance of the cabaletta “La pietade in suo
favore.” The discerning listener may hear the attentiveness and energy of his
approach in a single word, “dolor,” that finishes the preceding Larghetto.
Hanscom lends this single word a dynamic shape, driving through to the end, and
then finishes with a rolled R. These are small touches, but they are also signs
of craft, the things that make a complete singer complete.
Our second macho man is Edgardo, Lucia’s love and Enrico’s
nemesis, played by tenor Kirk Dougherty with passion and a forceful lirico
spinto. It’s easy to anticipate the meeting of two such powerful entities, but
what is more interesting is what happens on the way there. Rather than drowning
out the gentler tones of their Lucia, each, in turn, backs off for beautifully
blended duets: Dougherty in the lilting fountain-scene love duet “Verranno a te
sull’auré,” Hanscom in the heavily conflicted Act 2 duet scene, in which Enrico
tries to save his own neck by tricking his sister into a politically expedient
marriage.
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| Kirk Dougherty as Edgardo. |
This sublime sense of balance reaches its apogee in the
famed Sextet, in which Donizetti pulls the trick of exploring six sets of
character motivations simultaneously. The piece is genius enough on the page,
but with six singers working so beautifully together, under the careful
guidance of conductor Ming Luke, it’s a musical/dramatic paradise. This attentive
construction allows Lee to soar over the top at the end, launching Lucia into
her terrible fate.
Playing the chaplain, Raimondo, bass Colin Ramsey exhibits a
delicious richness of timbre. He is well-equipped to handle one of the opera’s
pivotal moments, the delivery of the horrendous marriage-night news to the
guests (“Dalle stanza ove Lucia”). The scene is punctuated by one of stage director
Benjamin Spierman’s provocative touches, having Raimondo absent-mindedly rub
his hands over his face, forgetting that his hands are covered in blood.
Spierman also sets up Lucia’s victim, Arturo (tenor Michael Mendelsohn) as an
A-one jerk, treating his new brother-in-law as a servant as he ogles all the
ladies at the wedding. I can’t decide if Dougherty’s distracting, herky-jerky
movements were a directorial decision or just a natural quirk. A subtle but
beautifully choreographed device has the huntsman Normanno (tenor Yungbae Yang)
stashing Lucia’s murder-knife in his belt, where it is later stolen by Edgardo
for his suicide.
Steven Kemp’s exterior sets feature bare winter trees with
dagger-like branches and a striking background flat of a tilting, destroyed
castle window. The Ravenswood interiors are less effective, rather bland wooden
panels, but the wall-length display of weaponry make for apt ornaments. B.
Modern’s costumes are deft and artful, especially Lucia’s gorgeous green gown
in the second act. The chorus is particularly strong, and especially the men’s
chorus, which sang the opening pursuit of Edgardo with vigor. Karen Theilen
opened the second scene with Donizetti’s sublime harp interlude.
Through Sept. 25 at the California Theater, 345 S. First
Street, San Jose. Tickets are $56-$176. 408/437-4450, www.operasj.org
Michael J. Vaughn is a 30-year opera critic and the author
of 19 novels, including Gabriella’s Voice and the new Kindle edition of Frosted Glass.
