NEW
YORK, NY -- Throughout my 10-plus years of concert- and
opera-going in San Francisco and elsewhere in the world, I have
heard singers young and old, big and small, famous and obscure, but
none has quite so consistently captivated me and held me spellbound
by his/her consummate artistry as Mariella Devia – a truly great
singing artist if ever there was one.
Two years after her triumphant Ilia in Chicago’s
“Idomeneo”, and 2,500 Frequent Flyer Miles later, I had the
opportunity to reacquaint myself with La Devia’s artistry last
Thursday night in one of her all-too-infrequent U.S. appearances.
And once again it proved to be a thrilling, cathartic
experience.
Kudos must first go to Eve Queler -- whatever
her shortcomings as a conductor (there were none in this concert) --
without whose wonderful OONY concerts the New York cultural
scene would be infinitely poorer. Donizetti lavished special care on this work, and even went
so far as writing his own piano arrangement for the vocal score.
It would potentially have been a great dramatic work on a par
with LUCIA or ANNA BOLENA had it not been for the
disfigurement of the third act by the Roman censors who would not
allow suicide on stage. As
it stands, however, ADELIA shines brightly in its splendid
new garb in the form of a critical edition by Roger Parker.
The score is brimming with pages of surpassing beauty and
delicacy (Adelia’s three cavatinas, and Act I ‘Preghiera’
finale) as well as moments of surprising power and dramatic tension
that look forward to the young Verdi (It even has a ‘Rataplan’
chorus in the third act. Speaking
of connections, the original Adelia, Giuseppina Strepponi, would
later become Verdi’s mistress and wife.)
The opera was presented as a taut, exciting drama under the
capable baton of Maestra Eve Queler, who suffered none of the
pedestrian tempi and wooden phrasing of which she is often accused.
From the opening drum rolls, through the symphonic grandeur
of the Act II finale, to the elegantly syncopated chords in the
final, rousing cabaletta, Maestra Queler and her fine Orchestra and
Chorus propelled the drama along with great zest and vigor as
befitting this basically martial score.
At the same time, the soloists were allowed generous freedom
to ‘live’ their respective roles through a finely judged series
of runs, leaps, roulettes, coloraturas that are the essence of
belcanto. Maestra Eve
Queler is a singer’s conductor in the best sense of the phrase.
In the role of Arnoldo, Adelia’s stern
military captain father with a hidden heart of gold, the ubiquitous
American bass Paul Plishka started off badly, producing wooly tone
and sounding under-pitched in his first aria “Era pura come in
cielo”. The voice
slowly found its center during the course of the evening, and rose
to powerful dramatic heights in Arnoldo’s exchanges with Adelia
and Oliviero. (Mr. Plishka would sing an equally imposing
‘Vendetta’ as Bartolo two nights later at the Met.)
In the more subdued moments, when Arnoldo finds himself
struggling with the conflicting emotions of military vs. paternal
duty, the voice poured forth affectingly (“Ah no, non posso, o
figlia mia”), showing a glimpse of luster like a welcome rush
of warm air on a cold wintry night.
This Arnoldo may be an old soldier, but he shows no sign of
fading away.
As the tyrannical Duke of Burgundy Carlo,
Ukrainian baritone Stephan Pyatnychko wielded a burly instrument of
menacing power and sang his big aria “Miei prodi” in a
confident and efficient manner.
Valerie Bernhardt as Adelia’s maid Odetta delivered the few
lines that are allotted to her role with an agreeable timbre and
much passion. Her leggiero
soprano voice blended in nicely with the female chorus in the
opening of Act II. The
young American tenor Justin Vickers, portraying the sympathetic
messenger Comino who carries out the Duke’s harsh decrees with
much reluctance, looked somewhat uneasy on stage but enunciated his
lines clearly and emphatically, if a bit lacking in resonance of
tone. In addition to
his messenger boy duty, Mr. Vickers was also understudying the role
of Oliviero, Adelia’s aristocratic lover.
Try hard as I may, and as much as I do not care for the
Oliviero of Mr. Warren Mok, I
simply cannot imagine this voice undertaking such a heroic
assignment at this stage of its development.
The American-trained Chinese tenor Warren Mok
offered the least successful singing of the evening in the role of
Oliviero. Throughout
the evening, he hardly produced a phrase that gave one the
impression that he was operating through a natural singing
instrument. Listening
to Mr. Mok, I was reminded of Rossini’s famous remark when asked
about a certain tenor’s high C from the chest, “like the squawk
of a pig having its throat cut.”
To his credit, Mr. Mok produced some ardent, attractive
singing in his mid- to upper-mid-range, and he declaimed his
recitative lines with impetuous zeal, even managed a couple of
surprising mezze voci. It
was his general lack of technique and taste that proved most
troubling. A case in
point is the Act II love duet with Adelia “Nelle tue braccia
vivere”, Mr. Mok punched out his lines in a forceful, ungainly
manner, and punctuated them with crude sobs and glottal attacks.
(Perhaps Mr. Mok forgot this was belcanto, not belt canto.)
When the same lines were taken up by Adelia moments later,
they were magically transformed into finely-spun seamless strands of
silk, meltingly tender and beautiful, full of poetic resonance.
The difference was like heaven and earth.
The greatest feature of the evening was the
Adelia of Mariella Devia in a role that she was born to sing. In fact, Donizetti fans had to wait more than 150 years after
the opera’s premiere to hear it sung once again as the composer
had intended, when Ms. Devia starred in the Genoa revival last year
(A souvenir of that happy occasion was preserved on BMG/Ricordi CD
2029.) and again at Carnegie Hall last Thursday night.
As devotees of this superb but elusive artist well know,
every concert/stage appearance of Ms. Devia is an important artistic
event, and calls for a major, often distressing, re-assessment of
the current state of operatic singing in general.
Let me start by examining the role of Adelia itself, which
constitutes over 80 minutes of continuous singing in this
120-minute opera. The
daunting task of getting through the 3 dazzling showpieces alone,
one in each act, would be enough to scare off all but the best
singers. That Ms. Devia
was not only able to do that, and additionally carry through all the
duets and ensembles with voice to spare, and do so with a loveliness
of tone and a complete naturalness and responsiveness to the words
and music, is an amazing testament to her fabled technique and to
her status as today’s reigning priestess of belcanto.
Adelia suffers from the same mental anguish as
Lucia – both in love with men whom they cannot marry for
societal/family reasons – and would have suffered the same fate as
Lucia had the Roman censors not intervened.
In her first-act aria “Fui presaga” and the
subsequent cabaletta, sung as Ms. Devia did in an agitated but
refulgent tone, we see a beautiful young woman in great mental
distress who resolves to tell her father the truth about her
forbidden love for a nobleman.
“Gli diro’ che l’amo ancor” (I will tell him I
still love him) – sings Adelia.
Here Ms. Devia gave a more desperate emphasis at each long
pianissimo repetition of the word “ancor”(still), aided
by a rallentando from the orchestra.
It was both pitiful and heartrending.
Later, in a duet with her father Arnoldo, Adelia proclaims
her love, “Amo, ed amata io sono del piú innocente amore.” that was
made all the more palpable by a breathtakingly executed messa di
voce on the word “AmoooOOOOooo”.
In the gripping Act II finale, when Adelia must postpone the
wedding because she believes Oliviero’s life is in danger, Ms.
Devia added to the pathos of the moment with her delicately-spun
trills that resembled cascades of crystalline teardrops.
The effect was emotionally shattering.
Finally, everything ends happily in the Clemenza di Tito fashion
and, as if galvanized by the evening’s proceedings, Ms. Devia rose
to heights of lyrical delirium with an ecstatic rendition of the
final cabaletta “Se mai sogno é questo mio” amid
brilliant fireworks of coloraturas, runs, trills, scales, and
roulettes that culminated in a glorious fortissimo high E-flat.
This is truly great singing. It comes our way very few times in the course of a lifetime,
and I feel blessed to have experienced it in its full splendor.
At the same time, I feel resentful at the stupidity of opera
and record companies for hiring artists on the basis of their highly
biased commercial models of what will and will not sell.
Ms. Mariella Devia effectively demonstrated through her
singing that the essence of great singing lies not merely in the
production of beautiful tone, but acting through the voice – a
lesson that today’s singers would do well to take to heart and to
the new Millennium
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