Opera Baltimore's Lucrezia Borgia: Glorious Efficiency, A Particular Expertise

Opera Baltimore has been filling the opera void in Baltimore for 17 years this month.  It has grown from its starting as Baltimore Live performance Opera to its current format of presenting each staged and live performance operas.  Its live performance operas are held within the Engineers Membership in Mount Vernon.  I first realized of and wrote about Baltimore Live performance Opera in 2016 and attended my first opera there in 2017.  I grew to become a fan.  Opera Baltimore, particularly of their performances within the Engineers Membership, makes opera enjoyable – a pleasant, welcoming environment, palatial-in-appointments, a small-in-size live performance ballroom, drinks that may be consumed at your seats, and opera sung stay, only some toes from the viewers!  It’s a very particular expertise which explains why I’ve been attending and reporting on this firm’s performances ever since my first go to.  My attendance for Wednesday night time’s wonderful and enjoyable semi-staged efficiency of Donizetti’s Lucretia Borgia began with a particular feeling.  I felt like I had been away for some time and was returning residence.

Composer Gaetano Donizetti and librettist Felice Romani’s Lucrezia Borgia premiered in 1833.  The opera is produced a lot much less usually than Donizetti’s extra well-known bel canto operas, similar to Lucia di Lammermoor and L’elisir d’amore.   I stored considering that Shakespeare will need to have impressed this opera – so many individuals die- however the story is predicated on an eponymous play by Victor Hugo.  Past the truth that Lucrezia Borgia was an actual individual in a strong household in the course of the Renaissance, the plots of the play and the opera are fiction and do the lady a disservice, simply because the movie “Amadeus” unjustly impugned Salieri.  Historic data painting the true Lucrezia Borgia as a succesful administrator who grew to become a patron of the humanities.  She grew to become a topic of controversy as a result of she was the illegitimate daughter of Pope Alexander VI, and he was rumored to have engaged her in an incestuous relationship.  Reviews of her villainy as a assassin who favored poisons had been made as much as slander her and the household, after which grew to become fodder for sensational rumors and storytelling.  Hugo’s play about love, honor, and karmic villainy gave Donizetti and Romani the thought for a dramatic opera displaying a personality able to each nice villainy and nice love.  No huge deal in the present day, however then, it was scandalous, and the creators needed to joust with the censors.

The plot is price relating, starting with the prologue: (spoilers now) a younger man, an honorable warrior captain named Gennaro, sleeps whereas his buddies proceed to social gathering.  A lady comes upon him who clearly has sturdy emotions for him.  He awakes, and seeing her variety face, feels a deep attachment to her.  She doesn’t reveal who she is.  His buddies return and reveal she is the villainous, hated Lucretia Borgia.  She leaves as Gennaro stands vexed.  Act I: A couple of days later, again at her husband, the duke’s palace, she is demanding that he put to demise whoever had defaced the household identify on the palace, turning BORGIA into ORGIA, which means orgy in Italian.  He, figuring out of the time she has spent with the perpetrator and suspecting he’s a love curiosity, readily agrees.  When she is advised that the villain is Gennaro, she tries emphatically to retract her request, however the duke solely lets her select the tactic of execution (beginning to sound like “Recreation of Thrones”?).  She chooses poison over the sword, however then secretly slips the younger man an antidote, telling him to flee, which he does.  Act II: Gennaro’s younger buddies have been partying in a palace room and Lucrezia had them served poisoned wine.  She has the room sealed off and declares that 5 will die.  Gennaro has additionally had the wine and steps ahead saying it is going to be six as he chooses to die along with his buddies; he refuses her supply of the rest of the antidote.  Lucrezia reveals to him she is his mom simply earlier than he dies and he accepts her embrace; then she dies, grief-stricken.  But, for all its outrageousness, I loved this opera.  Shakespeare would have been proud, and Turandot would have claimed a sister.  My son as soon as advised me that, solely in opera can we get love tales about mass murderers.  Or in trendy terminology, it’s sophisticated.

The story advantages significantly from Donizetti being on the top of his inventive powers.  Lucrezia got here after L’elisir D’amore and earlier than Lucia di Lammermoor.  It comprises his lovely melodies and lovely bel canto vocals, and performing challenged by the tense drama introduced.  For this live performance model, the singing was accompanied by piano performed expertly by pianist and conductor Husan Chun-Novak.  The semi-staging, primarily directing interactions by the characters and including just a few props, was properly conceived by stage director and dramaturg Mary Elizabeth Williams.  For live performance opera, the plot’s visible cues from the setting and motion are omitted, so I learn the synopsis earlier than attending; the small print within the story may be higher made when totally acted, and I missed some on this efficiency, similar to whether or not the ending of Lucrezia’s life foretold in her ending vocal was actual or metaphorical. 

Whether or not the message of human complexity, that even a villain could be a loving mom, is healthier served by totally staged or live performance opera, let’s take into account that the main focus of live performance opera is the voice.  Relieved of detailed performing wants, the singers can focus extra on their vocals, although within the semi-staged variations, they sing from reminiscence with out the rating on stands in entrance of them.  Right here is a component of the enjoyable half offered by Opera Baltimore:  the singing was actually good!  For Lucrezia, there are 4 principal roles, and OB stuffed them with 4 wonderful singers.  The position of Lucretia is taken into account a star car for a soprano, and OB’s selection soprano, Caitlin Crabill, didn’t disappoint.  She is an completed younger artist whose trajectory is ascending; she has already appeared with a number of regional opera firms, together with a job in OB’s Maria Stuarda final yr.  Her method to the position emphasised the dramatic and emotional richness of her singing relatively than frequent bel canto gildings.  One among her arias close to the top displayed probably the most fireworks vocally, and he or she delivered it superbly.  It was an affecting efficiency general. 

Gennaro was performed by tenor Hayden Smith.  The standard of his voice pleasantly stunned me.  He was a Studio Artist with Wolf Entice Opera and has appeared in a number of regional productions so far.  He gave a efficiency that was pleasing all through, with passionate singing and a compelling portrayal of Lucrezia’s perplexed son.  Samuel Weiser, who sang the position of the duke, has been praised for his stentorian bass-baritone voice, together with by me, for his portrayal of Leporello in final season’s Don Giovanni from Annapolis Opera; he additionally spent three seasons as a Cafritz Younger Artist with Washington Nationwide Opera.  He sang properly and gave us a regally assured duke imposing his punishment on his spouse.  The singer who sang the position of Orsini, Gennaro’s closest good friend and ally, a pants position was mezzo-soprano Megan Marino.  Once more, it was a sit-up-and-take-notice efficiency from her entrance down the aisle, singing all the way in which.  Her singing and the standard of her voice had been spectacular.  I took particular word of the smoothness of her singing in her decrease register.  Her portrayal was so convincing it took me a couple of minutes to determine if the lengthy hair was signaling a feminine within the position. 

Opera Baltimore’s group of principal performers was remarkably proficient.  They had been aided and abetted by a proficient supporting solid, together with Zinnia Frank, Timothy Kjer, Norwood Robinson, Benjamin Ross, and Peter Juengs, who all added to the standard of the efficiency, particularly the pleasing vocals.  The opera additionally benefited noticeably from a fifteen-member refrain that sang superbly.

My backside line – This efficiency was lifted by extraordinary singers.  I favored it and would take pleasure in seeing and listening to this efficiency once more.  I’m now additionally focused on seeing a completely staged model of Lucrezia Borgia, which had little curiosity for me earlier than Wednesday night time.  Opera Baltimore desires their live performance opera performances to be a gateway drug.

Baltimore Opera’s backside line, from President and Normal Director Julia Cooke in her program notes: “To collect for stay music, to decide on magnificence and emotional honesty, shouldn’t be indulgence: it’s affirmation.”

The Fan Expertise: Performances of Lucrezia Borgia had been scheduled for March 4, 6, and eight within the Engineers Membership.  The opera was sung in Italian with supertitles proven on a display overhead.  The opera lasted about an two hours and a half, together with a fifteen-minute intermission.

Dr. Aaron Ziegel, OB’s Scholar-in-Residence, gives a pre-opera discuss one hour earlier than every efficiency.  He additionally gives three or 4 one-hour, extremely informative Zoom lessons known as Opera Perception for ticket holders on every upcoming opera, that are later posted on YouTube.  These not solely talk about the opera to be introduced but additionally supply a deeper dive into opera itself.  Within the collection for Lucrezia Borgia, I particularly loved listening to his clarification of Donizetti’s use of double arias. 

Opera Baltimore has another opera this season, one other live performance opera within the Engineers Membership.  Pelléas et Mélisande is scheduled for April 22, 24, and 26.  Their web site, operabaltimore.org, may be very detailed with helpful info for planning your go to, together with parking choices.  The open bar serves a wide range of beers and cocktails, which may be taken into the theater.  I don’t often have alcoholic drinks when attending operas I’ll report on, however for this opera, I might have beneficial they provide a cocktail named Toxic Wine. 

Additionally on the web site, take a look at the big vary of group outreach applications that OB presents for Baltimore and the big variety of different opera-related choices, similar to Thirsty Thursdays.  A comparatively new program that caught my eye was their Technology Opera program, whereby you sponsor a pupil to attend an opera, and they are going to be seated subsequent to you on the efficiency.