Review: La traviata and La CenerentolaOpera News (David Shengold) Opera New Jersey’s Princeton summer season seems to grow more polished by the year. Fairly traditional in production style — and scenically, at least, appearing quite lavish — the company offers high-level young guest principals with two tiers of student singers supporting them. The younger “studio” artists generally constitute the chorus, and this summer they formed a sonorous, well-drilled ensemble. July 12’s La Cenerentola sparkled at its center. Leah Wool seems among the more distinctive and accomplished artists of her generation, worth traveling to hear: her mezzo has a distinguished, lovely timbre, and she has achieved admirable equalization in scale passages. She handles text, in both cantilena and recit, with aplomb and point. Only two concerns arise: her soft-grained instrument did not always dominate in ensembles, and — as in her fine Cendrillon in Central City last summer — Wool tends to smile too much and too soon, however endearingly. When Angelina enters, singing “Una volta c’era un re,” which Wool vocalized meltingly, the character has absolutely nothing to smile about. By the end of the performance, Wool gave the audience much to enjoy. Javier Abreu made an ardent, stylish Ramiro, with more baritonal heft on the bottom than several current Rossinian rivals. His words could be more crisply placed on the fine musical lines he draws, and occasionally a high note turned adenoidal (though D seems not a problem); but in sum he’s a highly qualified exponent of this Fach. Eric T. Dubin made an affable Dandini, without exceptional mastery of the vocal demands by today’s standards; he improved markedly in tonal focus in Act II. Scott Conner made a positive impression as Alidoro, singing with good style, apt geniality and notable agility. In the pit, Robert Wood showed a good grasp of bel canto structure and had very good instrumentalists for the many delightful solo passages. Wood gave us a near-complete score (a rare encounter in and of itself ), with Clorinda’s aria reconfigured by Wood and Michael Ching as a duet with Tisbe. Pacing flagged on occasion, although the fault may have been Rossini’s as well as director Michael Scarola’s. Scarola’s staging seemed to push Alissa Anderson and Rebecca Kier, the unfortunate festival artists playing Tisbe and Clorinda, respectively, into lowest-common-denominator TV shtick. Their constant pouting and shrieking yielded a hard tonal delivery almost throughout, although their upstaging antics won belly laughs from some in the audience. Matthew Lau’s solidly voiced Don Magnifico had the experience to attempt more subtlety sometimes, but he too lapsed into true comedy’s opposite, “acting funny.” With La Traviata on the afternoon of July 13, more of a gap protruded between the accomplished guest leads and the young “festival artists” supporting them. Though the young performers took John Hoomes’s insightful direction well — with the fracture lines of jealousy uncommonly well mapped in both party scenes — some greenness showed. The most finished portrayals came from Kemper Florin’s Annina and (again) Scott Conner as Dr. Grenvil. Hoomes wrote in the program that Traviata was the dying Violetta’s memory play, but after a funereal Prelude (well led by Fernando Raucci) that idea vanished in favor of a traditional, quite sensible Traviata. The two lovers shared the afternoon’s glory. Elizabeth Caballero made an excellent heroine, with a big, rangy, darkly glowing lyric-coloratura instrument capable of precise fioriture and crystalline high D-flats. Not a TV-star-style wraith in today’s already tiresome marketing-driven mode, Caballero made a handsome figure onstage, commanding and vulnerable by turns and at all times believably the erotic center of this hothouse world. Alert to text, she aced many tough passages: both “Dite alla giovine” and “Amami, Alfredo” were very moving, and others should gather more interiority as this portrayal grows. In sheerly vocal terms, Caballero’s performance already compares quite favorably with today’s most heavily promoted Violettas. Michael Fabiano, a young New Jersey tenor and 2007 Met National Council Auditions winner, is a major talent, with a warm, full-textured Italianate sound and good instincts. Not the textbook shy Alfredo, he showed a sexy, somewhat aggressive physical and vocal presence that accentuated the drama. Fabiano, who is still in his early twenties, would be wise to replace (or at least augment) the di Stefano tracks on his iPod with the singing of Bergonzi, Kraus and Gedda: both here and in a Philadelphia Orchestra outdoor Bohème (July 1), the listener’s excitement at hearing genuine squillo alternated with alarm at some raucous, completely uncovered attacks on high notes, as in Act I’s repeated “croce e delizia.” (Some Lanzaesque veristic sobbing in the concertato at Flora’s party should also be rethought speedily.) Once Fabiano learns some restraint, the sky seems the limit on the trajectory of his career. William Andrew Stuckey’s stock Germont occupied a lower plane, tending to non-legato bluster at both ends of the range. Raucci steered ONJ’s fine orchestral forces (about thirty strong) to a satisfying reading. |
