Washington Concert Opera
Devoted opera listeners delight in having lots of high-quality live performances to attend. So it should be no surprise to find that two of Washington's most devoted fans of opera -- Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg and yours truly -- after hearing the premiere of Washington National Opera's production of L'Elisir d'Amore on Saturday night, were reunited in the audience for Washington Concert Opera's performance Sunday night at Lisner Auditorium. Artistic director and conductor Antony Walker led the final performance of the group's two-opera season, a stunning concert rendition of Gioacchino Rossini's lesser-known opera seria Tancredi, from 1813. Rossini composed this opera for his first production at one of the most famous opera houses in Italy, the Gran Teatro La Fenice in Venice, incredibly one of four operas that he composed and saw produced in that one year alone. No one can accuse Rossini of lingering too long over a composition, and for that reason a few of his operas are titans in the beloved operatic repertoire and the rest are forgotten.
Tancredi deserves to be forgotten because of its absurd libretto, adapted rather freely by Gaetano Rossi from Voltaire's play Tancrède (1760). Voltaire's intention was to show that if people are credulous and believe patently false things, they are capable of committing terrible acts in the name of morality. The tragedy in the story is that nearly all the people who love the play's heroine, Aménaïde -- even her father and Tancrède, the man who claims to love her -- believe that she has been false on the basis of an intercepted letter and condemn her to death. The opera undoes Voltaire's tragic conclusion, with Tancrède dying on the field of battle, in favor of a rather forced happy ending. At the moment in the libretto where this happens, and the male characters all realize that they have been mistaken, the audience's laughter in the auditorium signaled the absurdity of the reversal.
Little matter, since Rossini's incendiary vocal writing and the singing of the assembled team of top-notch singers, especially the three leads, were so extraordinary. Mezzo-soprano Stephanie Blythe is now a world-famous singer, and justly so, since she dominated the stage with a voice so present, so accurate, so powerful, that it grabbed you by the ears and shook you. A staged performance of Tancredi could be yet another vehicle for this rich, coffee-colored voice, with deep chest range and a soaring top. Look for Ms. Blythe to take the position vacated by Marilyn Horne: she would be a possible casting for the hilarious role that Horne premiered so well in John Corigliano's Ghosts of Versailles, for example.
Tenor Lawrence Brownlee was an excellent and at times phenomenal Argirio (father of Amenaide), and soprano Sarah Coburn was a runaway show-stealer as Amenaide, with flawless melismatic singing and seemingly endless strength in her high notes, not to mention an attractive stage presence. Bass David Langan was a blustery Orbazzano, and mezzo-soprano Linda Maguire and soprano Lisa Eden gave fine support in lesser roles. The male-only chorus was sound, and the orchestra mostly played to great effect. The only let-down was the anachronistic harpsichord, filling in for an "indisposed fortepiano" on the recitatives, as announced at the opening of the concert. All in all, this was an evening of great singing that merited the many ovations from the enthusiastic and nearly full house.
Washington Concert Opera will announce its 2006-2007 season next month.