Operaworld

The Academy of Vocal Arts Giargiari Bel Canto Competition  Oct. 4 in the Perelman Theater was particularly impressive because of the number of singers just starting their residency and performing with such skill and seasoned stage presence right away.

(photo: Paul Sirochman)

One of the best things about the competition is the camaraderie and the attitude among the singers that though it is an important award, it’s still just one performance, not a make or break proposition.

The pressure to success is on though with the panel of judges (and presumed scouts) this year were Jonathan Friend, artistic administrator at The Metropolitan Opera, Eve Queler, artistic director of Opera Orchestra New York and Charles Mackay, director of Santa Fe Opera.

The singers could not have had better accompaniment than to have Danielle Orlando, master vocal coach at the piano. There should be a whole separate article.

my disclaimer for this competition is – In my book they were all winners, even if there were off moments, at this caliber, it is really just being picky.

Here are a few notes on each performer in order of their appearance~ all are in their 1st year as AVA resident artists unless noted otherwise.

Michael Adams, baritone, stepped lustily into Come paride vezzoso  from Donizetti’s with rich tones and fine pacing, he hammed it up a bit to put over a showy character, but the radio broadcast confirmed this was indeed, a fine technical performance.

Galeano Salas, tenor, put too much pressure on himself with Che gelida Manina from Puccini’s La boheme. He seemed tentative and it was heard in his voice, and the control in the upper notes fell apart. He pulled in together in the back half, with attack and fine phrasing. His vocal crash did unfortunately, sound even worse over the radio.  (Remember that rule about one performance).

Julia Dawson, mezzo-soprano, had no trouble with the timbres of Meyerbee’s Nobles Seigneurs, Salut! (Les Huguenots) aria floating those waltzy French scales breezily showing her technical prowess and lustrous theatrical presence.

Jorge Espino, baritone, takes on the Ah! per sempre from Bellini’s I puritani in dramatically heavy baritone and very silky passagio, and an effective   reading, though his phrase finish articulation could improve.

Anush Avetisyan, soprano, melodramatically tackled Le come voi piccina io fossi from Puccini’s Le villi. Avetisyan has a powerful voice, but she performs with a studied manner that distracts from her artistry. Still, vocally, she was damn near flawless.

Alasdair Kent, tenor, played to humor, slinging those roulades and trills in Principe plu non sei…Si itrovaria to gluro from La Cenerentola. Kent dispatches Rossini with winning character flair. In fact, he could be the next Rossini tenor around town (the last was Juan Diego Flores, who trained at Curtis).

Andre Courville impressed with a mercury smooth bass-baritone singing Vi ravviso.. Tu non sai from Bellini’s La Sonnambula, his dramatic pacing brought the scene immediately to life.

Sydney Mancasola (3rd yr.), soprano sings C’en est donc fait…Salut a la France from Donizetti’s La fille du regiment and as elegant she is in her opera gown here , you have no trouble believing she is playing this rough and tumble and valiant Daughter of the Regiment. She sings this with such soul and as she has shown time and again, technical clarity.

Jared Bybee, baritone, sings Avant do quitter cos lieu from Gounod’s Faust with an ironic nobility and fine line technical skill.

Jessie Nguenang, singing Sombre foret from Rossini’s Guillaume Tell displays a shimmering lower soprano, technical clarity compelling interpretation.

Mackenzie Whitney, tenor, seemed timid, almost distracted at first, but none of that was reading in his voice, (confirmed during the WRTI broadcast) in an otherwise full- throated performance.

Chloe Moore, soprano (4th yr.) has both regal and earthy presence, not to mention vocal clarity with Berlioz’s Entre l’amour from Benvenito Cellini.  Moore only has to watch some too sharp spikes riding those topnotes.

Armando Pina, baritone, chose Leoncavallo’s Il Paggliaci, not the famous tragic aria, but this was perhaps overly coy, but he shows incredible presence and has silky baritone-tenor passagio, but he should watch the vibrato.

Shelley Jackson, soprano (2nd yr.) sang Je dis que rien ne m’epouvante from Carmen so completely, so enticingly, that you just make a mental note that when she does it at the Met you will be there.

Patrick Guietti, bass (3rd yr.), also gave a fully realized performance of Simon Boccanegra, triumphantly it turns out, and it seemed like he would definitely put his vocal stamp on this role. One thinks of Domingo and other greats that his name will be added through this part. His voice never bottoms out or hits evaporation- his is an oceanic basso.

Marina Costa-Jackson, soprano (2nd yr.), vocally luminous in her reading of In quelle trine morbide from Puccini’s Manon Lescat. (the qualities onstage were equally radiant on the radio as that audience registered)

Diego Silva, tenor (3rd yr.), sang Donizetti’s Angelo casto e bel from Il duca d Alba, which such lyrical power and subtle characterization that the soul in this song just soared.

~Diego Silva won the 1st prize judges award. Sydney Mancasola and Shelley Jackson tied for second place. Patrick Guietti took the audience award.  

~Audience winners based on the WRTI Broadcast- Sydney Mancasola (1st place) Marina Costa-Jackson (2nd); Mackenzie Whitney (3rd)

Stage

 

Parade
Arden Theatre Company

Arden Theatre Company  director Terry Nolen is an expert at smoothing out the thorniest musicals, but even he can only streamline so much in the1998 Harold Prince docu-musical Parade. It dramatizes the infamous trial in 1913 Atlanta of Leo Frank, a Jewish businessman, accused of killing a 13 year old girl factory worker.  Murder, sedition, anti-Semitism, rape, racism, pedophilia, and lynch mobs are just some of its weighty themes.

Pulitzer Prize winning playwright Alfred Uhry’s script juggles two dozen characters, ambitiously, to show the story more than tell, and equally impressive is Jason Robert Brown’s score, with non-showy styles of  styles in of ragtime, blues, country and traditional Americana. But the book-music dynamic is very heavy going in several of the scenes, and the pacing is jarring.  Adding to the freight, this being is a true crime murder mystery, begs for a certain rhythm that isn‘t there. Nolen and video designer Jorge Cousineau devise a visual framework of period film projections midstage, that distracts from the gluey structure.

Brown’s expositional lyric writing reaches great heights right out of the gate with the opening number, a bittersweet Civil Wartime ballad to ‘The Old Red Hills of Home‘ with the powerful voice Michael Philip O’Brien singing about his lost love at home.

Fast forward 50 years with Atlanta getting ready for the Civil War Memorial Day Parade to celebrate. Leo Frank, a pencil factory supervisor, grouses to his wife, Lucille, about southern customs and why anyone would want to commemorate losing a war. Frank is an unpopular figure around town, for starters he’s a Yankee and he pays 10 cents an hour for child labor.

Meanwhile, before the parade, teen lothario Frankie Epps is trying to get 13 year old Mary to go to the movies with him that night, but Mary puts off his advances and says  has to go to the factory, which Frank runs, to pick up her pay first. She never returns. The next day when her dead body is discovered in the factory. Frank is accused of the crime and thrown in jail, put before a court and summarily, with little defense,  convicted on circumstantial evidence and a string of paid off witnesses who lied about his actions on the day of the murder.

Frank languishes in jail condemned to die. But the already rocky marriage between Leo and Lucille, is strengthened through adversity. Jennie Eisenhower and Ben Dibble believably portray their complex relationship mostly through two exceptional duets, “This isn’t over Yet” as Lucille puts things in motion to give Frank hope that he will be exonerated. Later, when Lucille has a conjugal visit they sing “All that Time Wasting“ with its soaring pathos.

Not all of the numbers are as successful. The first act finale, is a sweaty courtroom scene with everyone’s testimony in songs that gets very clammy. Even Dibble couldn’t rescue “Come Up To My Office“ a fantasy sequence out of nowhere, in which he plays himself as if he were the man the prosecution is painting him out to be.  There are several suspects and even though Frank is being railroaded, he was the last known person to have seen Mary alive.

Uhrey makes several characters look suspicious- Derrick Cobey as the black cleaning supervisor Jim Conley, certainly plays it as a deceptive villain. He sings the torturous heavy handed number ’Blues: Feel the Rain Fail‘ is one of  the weakest numbers at an otherwise climatic point in the story. Cobey’s electric performance rescues it from coming off as a parody of a chain gang song.

Among the other standouts in this large cast with many of the actors playing multiple roles are many Arden favorite.  O’Brien sang three roles with distinction. Tony Lawton played the gentlemanly but slimy DA Tony Dorsey.  Lawton was in great voice in ‘The Glory‘ a duet with Dennis Holland who plays the even skeevier Judge Roan.

Sarah Glinko gives a subtle and witty performance as the nobody’s fool wife of the Georgia governor Staten, played by Scott Greer. Greer charms in the party scene dancing the fox-trot in the Sondheim-esque number ’Pretty Music.‘ Jeffrey Coon is the pumped up, self-parodying yellow journalist selling it to the back row in a razzy show number called ‘Real Big News.’ Robert Hager as Epps, gives a haunting vocal performance as Mary’s enraged boyfriend who vows revenge against Frank.

Parade could easily loose 30 minutes from, but Nolen’s strong directorial and great singing by the whole cast makes it worth those run on scenes, and credit the solid accompaniment by music director Ryan Touhey and the musicians backstage.