Dicapo in the News

Francesca da Rimini & The Bells
Dicapo Opera Theatre, 12/17/05

Tenor Aleksey Gavrilov, soprano Inna Dukach and baritone Anton Belov with the orchestra and chorus of DiCapo Opera. Pacien Mazzagatti conducts.

Courtesy of Dicapo Opera Theatre

Dicapo Opera, New York’s valiant, ambitious “third” company, sometimes bites off more than it can chew. Not so on December 17; the troupe brought off to resounding cheers a daunting gamble, a double bill of two Rachmaninoff works involving massive forces. Di Capo has a fine, intimate theater beneath the handsome Église Saint-Jean Baptiste on Manhattan’s Upper East Side. Once a year the troupe performs in the impressive Sanctuary of the church itself; offerings have included the first act of a Tosca that continued in the theatre below, works in concert and oratorios. This year’s bill joined the 1904 one-act opera Francesca da Rimini and the choral symphony The Bells, premiered nine years later. The success of both owed something to shrewd casting, but above all to conductor Pacien Mazzagatti, all of twenty-seven and clearly a name to watch. He kept his large, very capable forces (a fifty-five piece orchestra, six soloists, and a huge, healthy-sounding chorus composed of Di Capo’s Resident Artists, The Fairfield Chorale and the Amor Artis Chamber Choir) admirably organized in the exciting but overresonant space.

Francesca da Rimini, Rachmaninoff’s third and last try at the operatic form, is a curate’s egg dramatically: it begins and ends with frame scenes in Hell, where the Shade of Virgil and Dante encounter the famed adulterous lovers, recalling happiness amidst sorrow (the choral wails marking the Damned). The central section flashes back to events known from Zandonai’s opera: the jealous rage of the ugly Malatesta prince ( here “Lanciotto”), who had sent his handsome brother Paolo to woo the beautiful Francesca in his stead; Paolo and Francesca’s yielding to passion while reading Arthurian legends; and Lanciotto’s vengeance. There is much accomplished orchestral writing here, and the lovers’ duet rises to a stirring climax. Young Bolshoi Opera soprano Olga Chernisheva made an impressive Francesca, her dark lyric voice focused and alluring, her platform manner subtly expressive. The Met’s musicianly Adam Klein coped well with Paolo’s range but his tenor seemed bottled up. Oziel Garza-Ornelas unveiled a potentially major instrument in Lanciotto’s monologue; if he can get the top under tighter control, he’ll be a verismo baritone to reckon with. Tenor Aleksey Gavrilov (Dante) and bass Anton Belov (Virgil), with little to sing, showed stylistic competence. Lead cellist Tawnya Popoff merits special commendation.

The Bells, based on Poe, is more familiar and perhaps less interesting musically — but a crowd-pleaser. Gavrilov, making his professional debut, showed a light, attractive, classically Russian lyric tenor rather overwhelmed by the huge ensemble. Soprano Inna Dukach, a DiCapo Mimì and Marguerite, brought charm of presence, utterance and timbre to the second song. Belov’s fine voice shone in a beautifully sung fourth movement.

– David Shengold

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