Of all the events that feature in every year's Festival of the Sound, the annual Opera Gala is the one that is hardest to replicate. You can certainly put on a fine recording at home of any of the chamber works produced at the Festival, but the Opera Gala is another matter altogether.
The special chemistry of this event depends absolutely on the mix of personalities involved -- starting right away with the moving spirit of the whole evening, soprano Leslie Fagan. Right next to her you have to place pianist Guy Few, because the ready repartee and hilarious comic timing between Fagan and Few provides the energy that drives the entire show. Then add in mezzo-soprano Krisztina Szabo, tenor Colin Ainsworth, and baritone Samuel Chan -- all of whom fall in with the comic shtick with a will -- and the stage is set for comic mayhem and exquisite music, ham acting and dramatic intensity, fast-paced one-liners and intricate coloratura, all in perfect proportions.
This year, the pandemic experience of the last two summers has led naturally to the idea of the Gala being promoted as a "masked ball" of sorts. Just knowing that ahead of time led me to speculate about which operas would yield selections that fitted most readily into that theme -- Verdi's Un ballo in maschera and Johann Strauss Jr.'s Die Fledermaus being the most obvious ones. At the same time, I couldn't help wondering if the artists would also opt for Nielsen's relatively little-known (but delightful) Maskarade.
As it turned out, only Die Fledermaus made the cut, with the wonderful Champagne Quartet standing as the perfect grand finale of the evening. Before that, though, we had heard familiar and less-familiar selections from Handel, Mozart, Rossini, Verdi, Gounod, Puccini, and Offenbach.
Although the mask idea was suggested in the advance publicity, and some audience members went for it with a will, the title was actually explained as referring to the naughty secrets and deceptions that are part and parcel of just about every plot in the entire galaxy of thousands of operas over hundreds of years.
I could write nearly a book about the background of every number, but I'll confine detailed remarks to just a few highlights of an evening in which every performance was, at the very least, excellent.
Mozart was the most generously represented composer, and I for one didn't mind at all. It was in the excerpts from Don Giovanni that baritone Samuel Chan made his mark as the rakish reprobate Don, with his singing in Deh, vieni alla finestra and La ci darem la mano equally delightful and suggestive. Deh, vieni also brought a splendid turn from pianist, Guy Few, making a most convincing mandolin-like effect on the piano with feather-light touch and articulation of the notes.
Chan then brought a tear to my eyes with the beautiful hopeless love aria Questo amor, vergogna mia from Puccini's all-but-forgotten Edgar.
Rossini's Contro un cor che accende amore from The Barber of Seville gave a splendid opportunity for mezzo-soprano Krisztina Szabo to display her skills, both vocally, with Rossini's vivid coloratura writing, and dramatically, with the quick-fire switches from knowing looks to innocent maiden modesty. She was also splendid in Puccini's Quando m'en vo from La bohème, a number punctuated by amusing comedic byplay from the other three at the café table.
Among his several wonderful performances through the evening, tenor Colin Ainsworth swept all before him with his ardent singing in Ange adorable from Gounod's Roméo et Juliette.
Although soprano Leslie Fagan gave a splendidly ornamented performance of Tornami a vagheggiar from Handel's epic Alcina, she completely brought the house down with her singing and acting in Les oiseaux dans la charmille from Offenbach's Les contes d'Hoffman. This aria demands a bit of explanation. In one act of the opera, the leading soprano plays the role of Olympia, a mechanical doll created by the inventors Coppélius and Spalanzani. In singing her aria, Fagan adopted automaton-like gestures and facial expressions most believably, and drew laughs with the fading falling scale as Olympia runs down and falls silent. At this point, the other singers rushed onto the stage in a panic while Few finally wound her up again with the mechanical key in her back.
From there, the only possible place the performance could go was to the Champagne Quartet, and this brought the show to a fizzing conclusion, with the audience shouting their appreciation for the vastly entertaining programme.
After the concert concluded, the artists came out to the lobby (a normal Festival tradition in Parry Sound), but this time for the express purpose of having their picture taken with the enthusiastic audience members who had appeared in evening wear and elaborate masks for the occasion.
No comments:
Post a Comment