Gay City News

GAY CITY NEWS PERFORMANCE/REVIEW

Premieres and Prioresses The Met's Carmelites, Dicapo success, and a Messiah

By David Shengold

Dicapo Opera scored a coup in presenting the U.S. staged premiere of Edgar, Puccini's second opera. A compendium of dramatic clichés, its character's have no inner life or inherent interest; but stretches of the music are very compelling and suggest both the composer's familiarity with French grand opera of the Meyerbeer/Gounod model and the seeds of Turandot, three decades in the future. Great singing can occur in Edgar, as Eve Queler's Sony recording with Carlo Bergonzi and Renata Scotto in thrilling form attests.

The valiant Dicapo troupe double-casts its shows. Tenor Drew Slatton (seen December 14) seemed to view his profession as that of Loud High Note Producer and did not tax himself with such frills as acting or producing a single legato phrase all night. Far more presentable an interpreter, Rosemary Musoleno as Fidelia fielded an average-sounding "red sauce" lyric soprano, though her high pianissimi were impressive. Tigrana, a slattern "Moorish gypsy" who is one part Abigaille, one part Carmen and one part Venus (and thus an ideal Grace Bumbry role!) traffics in enough racist clichés to render the piece unstageworthy even if the plot weren't so silly; with a churning sound, Lori Brown Mirabal proved spirited if vocally uneven. Easily the best of all was baritone Gregory Keil, a Dicapo stalwart with a fine dark baritone and good presence of which the Lincoln Center companies might take notice. Conductor Louis Salemno knows the idiom but the orchestra was not especially together; the chorus, unusually large for Dicapo's stage, proved more impressive, a good thing in this piece with its Ponchiellian ensembles. To note: Dicapo tackles Sondheim's Passion April 25 through May 4.

David Shengold (shengold@yahoo.com) writes about the arts for Time Out New York, Playbill, Opera News, and other venues.
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