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OPERA NEWS
June 2006, vol.70, no.12
IN REVIEW
Pagliacci, Toledo Opera, 4/1/06
Toledo Opera closed its 2005–06 season with Leoncavallo’s
Pagliacci (seen on April 1), given alone and without intermission,
allowing for a generous reception afterward. Conductor Thomas Conlin
led an idiomatic, passionate reading of the uncut score. The Toledo
Symphony Orchestra had a few odd ensemble problems, but these were
minor lapses in an otherwise fine evening. Constantinos Kritikos’s
settings were an accurate depiction of Italian small-town life,
but the wagon/stage kept the commedia section of Act II too far
upstage, allowing many smaller nuances to go unseen.
Director Gregory Fortner showed a good eye for the realistic mode
of acting. He also had many individual ideas that worked beautifully.
Notable was the parallel action between Canio and Nedda in Act
I and Pagliacci and Colombina in Act II. Also the “Prologue” was
clearly a character divorced from the character Tonio — possibly
a later Tonio, musing on what had happened? (For the record, Tonio,
not Canio, said the final line as the Prologue character.)
Todd Thomas opened the proceedings with a Prologue well sung and
yet acted with restraint. As Tonio, he was always yearning after
Nedda from a distance. In Act II, Thomas made clear when Taddeo
yielded to Tonio. Nedda was Barbara Shirvis, who earlier this season
had sung Tatiana in Cleveland Opera’s Onegin. Her warm, substantial
lyric soprano, well suited to Nedda, soared through her aria. She
sent Tonio away with a swipe of a knife, not the called-for whip,
foreshadowing the weapon of choice for the final scene. Shirvis
sang with passionate nuance in her duet with Silvio, played as
a clean-cut businessman, a far cry from the traveling troop of
actors. Daniel Sutin sang the role very nicely, his voice blending
well with Shirvis’s. Matt Morgan’s youthful demeanor
made his Beppe a perfect actor-in-training for the troop; his slightly
reedy lyric tenor made Harlequin’s serenade a highlight of
the evening.
Tenor Roy Cornelius Smith’s first Canio was already a powerful
assumption. His early hints of jealousy gave way to outbursts of
towering rage, his voice rising to every climax with thrilling
results.
The Toledo Opera Children’s Chorus (under Renay Conlin, company
general and artistic director) and the Toledo Opera Chorus all
sang quite well, enjoying the opportunity to sing passages not
normally heard.
ALAN MONTGOMERY
Reprinted with permission. |
