An apt opening to the evening was Wainwright's "Damned Ladies," an ode to soprano heroines and a lament for their fates, ominous and wistful by turns. I didn't know it, but I warmed to it instantly, not only because I also always want to say "Brown-eyed Tosca, don't believe the creep!" Wainwright's account of the plot of Don Carlo was muddled, but Laura Vlasak Nolen gave Eboli's "O don fatale" with dramatic clarity as well as flair. With a full-bodied mezzo, she also milked the gravi for all they were worth, to my joy. Here as for the other operatic selections, Keith Murphy was a more than able collaborator at the piano. Robert Mack, who has been praised for his lyric tenor, sounded pushed in "Che gelida manina"; perhaps "Una furtiva lagrima" would have been kinder. Anne-Carolyn Bird revealed a radiant soprano in "Dans mon pays de Picardie," a selection from Prima Donna in which the ladies' maid muses on the frailty of human loves. I found it reminiscent of nineteenth-century French art song, and quite lovely. Wainwright himself sang the atmospheric, bittersweet "Les feux d'artifice," also from his opera. I still don't have much of a sense of what Prima Donna might sound like as a whole, but the excerpts made me care about the characters.
Then bass-baritone Matthew Burns made me cry. Wainwright introduced "O du mein holder Abendstern" as a favorite ballad of the generation which sang around a piano in the evenings (it's a favorite of some of us who still do.) The first ethereal notes came from the piano, Burns sang "Wie Todesahnung Dämm'rung deckt die Lande," and as if on cue, the light outside began to change. Burns had beautiful and expressive phrasing, and... did I mention I cried? Maybe it was the contrast, but "O fond du temple saint," in duet with Mack, failed to ignite for me. Wainwright's ballad "Who are you New York?" provided an interlude of less anguished yearning before Massenet. Thais got a great introduction by Wainwright, and a great interpretation, I thought, by Bird (NYCO's blog did an interview with her here.) To meet the technical demands of "Dis moi que je suis belle" is no small thing, and Bird sang it with sympathetic poignancy.
Next, Nolen smoldered in Carmen's "Habanera," the opening notes of which were greeted with a murmur of recognition by the audience. After my translation-synopsis afterwards, my nice seat neighbor asked "So has she just fallen in love?" "No," I promptly said, and then realized that this was a possibly contentious interpretation. Oops? After Wainwright's passionate "Vibrate" the evening was rounded off with the quartet from Rigoletto. I hope some of the opera novices in the audience might have been moved to further investigation by Wainwright's enthusing about the Verdian genius of intertwining vocal lines to express the characters' conflicting emotions and goals. The singers were attentive to each other and expressive in performance, and received deservedly warm applause. I'm looking forward to hearing Prima Donna next spring, but I'll be hoping to hear more from New York City Opera much sooner. As Wainwright said, the great city of New York needs it.
The Winter Garden was so neat I photographed it. ("Aren't these palms great?" said Wainwright. "We should stage a production of Aida or something!") By the time things started I was squished in so tightly on the stairs that trying to photograph the singers would have seemed like bad manners to my neighbors. So:
I arrived an hour early; the stairs filled up, as did the balconies. |
My vantage point. |
How *did* those palms end up there anyway? It's true, a very operatic setting. Gorgeous.
ReplyDeleteAnd how big were they when they were moved in in the rebuild? These ones are more impressive than the old ones.
ReplyDeleteThe old Winter Garden also had godawful acoustics. Hope they improved that, too, in version 2.0.
@DTO @stray I don't know how the palms got there, but cursory research seems to indicate they were part of the original design for the space by César Pelli (1985.) I couldn't find info about how the palms fit into the post-9/11 rebuilding either on the venue website or on, ahem, Wikipedia. The singers were miked but there wasn't too much weird reverberation.
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