Dicapo in the News

Passion

By Bruce-Michael Gelbert
TheatreScene.net

This spring, Michael Capasso's Dicapo Opera Theatre, quartered in the basement of St. Jean Baptiste Church, on the Upper East Side, is giving "Passion," perhaps the most operatic of Stephen Sondheim's musicals, with book by James Lapine. This deeply disturbing, romantic theater piece, exploring both obsession and the titular emotion, concerns a handsome Italian soldier and the two very different women in his life. It won the Tony Awards for best musical, original score and book of a musical in 1994, but ran for just eight months. Although some scenes can still make one cringe or shudder, it deserves to be heard again and Dicapo has assembled an excellent company for this eight-performance run.

The sharply contrasting women are the soldier, Giorgio's beautiful, married mistress, Clara, and the sickly, needy Fosca, who manipulates and ensnares him with her desperate, demanding, often pathetic and burdensome love for him. The striking principals are mezzo-soprano Bess Morrison as an ultimately sympathetic Fosca, baritone Paris Cheffer as Giorgio, and soprano Amanda Winfield as Clara. The strong supporting cast includes Larry Raiken as Fosca's cousin, Colonel Ricci; Lou Tally as Fosca's physician, Dr. Tambouri, who brings Fosca and Giorgio together, for better or for worse; and Tim Norwood as Fosca's ne'er-do-well ex-husband, Count Ludovic, a bigamist (or polygamist?) who gambles away her dowry. Costumer Angela Huff has dressed Winfield, as the fair Clara, largely in pastels and Morrison, as the dark Fosca, in largely gloomy hues. Set designer John Farrell has bed, dining table, castle garden ruins, piano and so on brought on as needed. Under Capasso's guidance, Morrison plays Fosca as ailing and morbid, but not physically repulsive, as Tony Award winner Donna Murphy made her on Broadway, and this change is effective. Is "Passion" a musical or an opera (if it is necessary to categorize it at all)? The two leading women's roles lie somewhat low for operatic soprano and mezzo, as parts in a musical might, but Giorgio's music fits the classically trained baritone well. There is little dialogue. Long stretches are through-composed. Fosca and Giorgio's angry outbursts and later confessions--her "Loving You (is not a choice)" and his " No One Has ever Loved Me (as deeply as you)"—are arias. The duets, septet about Fosca's early life and unhappy marriage, and numbers for the full company are operatic ensembles more than a musical's songs, and conductor Mark Flint and the orchestra give them all operatic sweep.

In December, the Dicapo Opera Theatre offered the local premiere performances of Giacomo Puccini's little-known second opera, "Edgar." General Director Michael Capasso and Artistic Director Diane Martindale's small company deserves credit for airing this 1889 rarity and lavishing its limited resources on as persuasive a production as possible, double-cast with estimable young singers. A failure when new-but so, after all, were "Madama Butterfly" and many other now popular operas-"Edgar" does not, for all that, prove a neglected masterpiece, just awaiting rediscovery and appreciation.

An uneven work, still unlikely to enter the regular repertory despite some impressive moments, "Edgar" is set in Flanders in the 1300s. Like Wagner's Tannhäuser, Bizet's Don José, and a number of other traditional tenor heroes, Edgar vacillates between the love of a classic Madonna figure (like Elisabeth and Micaëla) and that of a Magdalene (like Venus and Carmen) and is plagued with guilt when he leans toward the latter. Although motivation is often sketchy in this heated verismo work, the two women are contrasted clearly enough. Virtuous Fidelia introduces herself singing about almond blossoms and bravely defends Edgar against slander at what purports to be his funeral. Her earthy foster sister, the gypsy Tigrana--excommunicated like Santuzza in Mascagni's "Cavalleria Rusticana," near contemporary of "Edgar"--sings a lusty love song while the villagers are at prayer and is successfully tempted, by Edgar in disguise, into denouncing him at the memorial service. Needless to say, the work judges her for her lapse, but not him for his duplicity.

"Edgar" anticipates lighter moments of "Manon Lescaut" (1893), Puccini's first success, in its more pastoral pages, but only a third act Requiem, for the chorus and Fidelia, truly dazzles. This selection so impressed legendary Maestro Arturo Toscanini that he chose to lead it to honor Puccini's memory at the composer's funeral in 1924.

On the night I attended, Drew Slatton sang the dramatic title role, substituting for the indisposed Benjamin Warshawski. Slatton had sung the premiere the previous evening and was scheduled to appear again the following day, which, in view of the role's considerable demands, cannot have been an easy or enviable task. Susan Foster was the lyrical, good as gold Fidelia, while Audrey Brutus limned a sultry, dusky-toned Tigrana. Baritone Gary Lehman contributed a polished, stoic soldier, Frank, Fidelia's brother and Tigrana's spurned suitor. Bass John Schumacher completed the cast as Fidelia and Frank's father, Gualtiero, who joins the others for a grand quintet with chorus-followed by a duel between Edgar and Frank and a communal curse on the errant lovers-to conclude Act One.

Kudos to conductor Louis Salemno, to Capasso, who devised the staging, and designers John Farrell (sets), Renata Podolec (costumes) and Susan Roth (lighting) for guiding this admirable probe of Puccini's early effort.

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