A splendid, striking outing for Nabucco
BY GEOFF CHAPMAN
MUSIC CRITIC
Where’s Cecil B
deMille when you appear to need him, with 10,000 extras playing soldiers and
slaves, elephants and giant fake columns ascending to the sky to illustrate a
story of heavy happenings in 587 B.C.?
Perhaps this
wouldn’t have suited Opera In Concert – and definitely not Jane
Mallett Theatre – but the company’s sold-out performance yesterday
at the intimate Front St. venue was done on the grandest scale possible.
With busy pianist Raisa
Nakhmanovich subbing for epic movie orchestration, a 35-strong chorus under
Robert Cooper on stage doing the noisy crowd scene thing with elan and sterling
principal singers showing they’re ready for the serious big time, that
rarely performed (never by the COC) opera Nabucco by Verdi was given a
splendid, striking outing.
It was the first operatic
triumph for the Italian master, an extravanganza of bel canto entertainment.
Yet given that events are described rather than shown, you could consider the
work a colourfully dramatic oratorio, wherein Verdi gives the chorus almost
equal billing with the main singers, with many flowing passages involving
combinations of up to eight voices.
The result was delightful
yesterday, with few typical sightings of a singer emoting while the massed
chorus stands around like statues. After a cold start, all those charged with
singing duties really warmed up, showing a sense of radiant commitment to the
presentation.
The standout singers were
baritone Marc Boucher as Babylonian king Nabucco, and soprano Susan Eyton-Jones
as elder daughter Abigaille. While Assyrians are busy ravaging Jerusalem, a
labyrinthine story ensues that involves another daughter, Fenena (mezzo. Lauren
Segal), high priest Zaccaria (bass Claude Solodre, a last-minute substitute for
ailing Joel Katz) and Ismaele (tenor Stephen Harland), nephew to
Jerusalem’s king.
Eyton-Jones was thrillingly
involved, puffing off preposterous arias that demand heavy work at both the top
and the bottom with a galvanizing presence. Boucher’s polished tones and
theatrical eclat were much in evidence, and despite rapidly shifting events, he
still paid careful attention to detail.
Segal projected well and
sang with clarity, though her material doesn’t allow the opportunity for
colouration given her "sister" and Solodre has obvious vast
potential, while the chorus basked in its onerous duties, especially fine on
the anthemic "Va, pensiero" that so heartened Italian nationalists.
Opera Review
- Feb. 5/02
OPERA IN CONCERT - "NABUCCO"
It is a mark of the growing talent pool of Canadian singers that Opera in
Concert was able to pull off a stylish performance of Verdi's
"Nabucco" on Sunday. The opera is early Verdi which means that the
singers are faced with the challenges of bel canto. The most difficult role is
Abigaille and soprano Susan Eyton-Jones was sensational. Her voice may not be
the prettiest, but she is very expressive and possesses both the high top and
growly bottom to produce the requisite goosebumps. Baritone Marc Boucher
displayed a gorgeous, rich, sweet sound in the title role although he is about
twenty years too young for the part. Tenor Stephen Harland showed off an
exciting Italianate, energetic sound as Ismaele and certainly deserves a bigger
career. While mezzo-soprano Lauren Segal as Fenena has a big, expressive voice,
her pitch tends to waver and her vocal output is uneven. Nonetheless there is
talent here. Baby bass Claude Soulodre was a last minute replacement as
Zaccaria, and even though he was miles too young for the role, showed a strong
vocal expression, commanding technique and a hint of the power that will come.
Among the lesser vessels, soprano Amber Bishop has a clear, ringing voice and
is one too watch. Young bass Gregory Brookes who stepped out of the chorus as
the High Priest also shows promise. Kudos to music director Raisa Nakhmanovich
for her exciting interpretation and the fine O in C Chorus under Robert Cooper.
I'm Paula Citron, arts reviewer for CLASSICAL 96.3 FM.
THE GLOBE AND
MAIL -
Right to the heart of Verdi
OPERA
________________________________
Nabucco
Opera in Concert
At Jane Mallett Theatre
in Toronto on Sunday
________________________________
REVIEWED BY ROBERT
HARRIS
In the 19th century, the
Danish philosopher Soren Kierkegaard would routinely buy a ticket to see his
favourite opera, Don Giovanni, and then stay in the theatre lobby and
listen to the performance, rather than watch it on stage. He always insisted
that the truth of Don Giovanni was in its music, and all the actual
operatic trappings merely unwanted distractions.
I thought of Kierkegaard
on Sunday afternoon as Opera in Concert presented a fine performance of
Giuseppe Verdi’s Nabucco, without staging or surtitles, but one
that proved the Dane’s assumption that the heart of opera is in its song.
Nabucco was Verdi’s first major operatic success, a typically convoluted
tale about the Babylonian King Nebuchadnezzar, and the captivity of the Jewish
nation — and an opera, we learned on Sunday afternoon, that carries a
great deal of its power through its music alone. From soloists to chorus, the
Opera in Concert production, while far from perfect, managed to tell
Verdi’s musical story with conviction and drama.
Verdi and his librettist,
Temistocle Solera, wove several human stories through this tale of national
humiliation and redemption, and it is the combination of the human and the epic
that makes the opera so powerful. In the history of Italian nationalism,
Nabucco has taken on mythic proportions, with its third-act chorus, Va,
pensiero, acting as something of an unofficial Italian national anthem. But
it is the human stories and the human characters that make the opera compelling
and timely.
Among these characters,
and among Sunday’s performers, pride of place goes to Susan Eyton-Jones
as Nabucco’s eldest daughter, Abigaille, a twisted, ambitious woman who
becomes the centre of the evil in the opera, and its main antagoinst. Although
Eyton-Jones did not control the full range of her voice with equal precision,
she provided some of the finest moments in the production, especially her
recitative in Act 2.
I am sorry that Verdi did
not write a bigger part for Nabucco’s other, legitimate daughter, Fenena,
because Lauren Segal consistently sang her part with power and a fine mezzo
voice, capable of true expression and power. Marc Boucher, meanwhile, sang the
title role with increasing conviction as the opera progressed, and had some
fine moments in Act 4, in a series of scenes and duets he sang with
Eyton-Jones.
Stephen Harland, as the
Hebrew Ismaele, proved himself the possessor of a lovely tenor voice, which he
displayed most convincingly in the first act. And for a singer who stepped into
his role only three days before the performance (replacing an ailing Joel
Katz), Claude Soulodre performed heroically as the Hebrew high priest,
Zaccaria.
Nabucco is famous for its many choruses (Va,
pensiero being the best known), and the Opera in Concert chorus rose to its
task with honours. Robert Cooper led the group to a highly articulated
performance, phrases beginning and ending with drama and precision, and the
blend he achieved with his group was occasionally hair-raising. Raisa
Nakhmanovich, as well as providing musical direction for the production,
accompanied the entire three-hour performance on the piano with stamina and
style.
Concert productions of
grand operas are not always easy to assimilate, and the Opera in Concert folks
might have added a few more bits of staging to their production to aid the
dramatics (such as Ismaele’s rescue of Fenena in Act 1, a key plot
moment), but the opera’s power came through nonetheless. Verdi’s
hidden aesthetic — that no human matter is so great or so powerful that
it cannot be encapsulated in melody and song — was proven true on Sunday
with the opera that launched him into the world, and provided a spiritual boost
to his budding nation.
Special to The Globe
and Mail