"The sheer visceral
wallop and power of opera in an intimate production." 184 East 76th Street New York, NY 10021 (212) 288-9438 e-mail Dicapo Michael Capasso General Director Diane Martindale Artistic Director 
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Gay City News, 2002 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. The Theatre Scene.net12/10/2002 Edgar: A Puccini Rarity 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. Dicapo's season continues with Leoncavallo's "I Pagliacci," plus excerpts from other verismo operas, on February 21-23 and 28 and March 1 and 2, and Sondheim's "Passion," on April 24-27 and May 2-4. December 6, 7, 13 and 14 at 8 pm, 8 and 15 at 4 pm also "Pagliacci" February 21-23, 28, March 1 and 2 and "Passion" April 24-27, May 2-4 at St. Jean Baptiste Church, 184 East 76th Street tickets $45 212/288-9438 http://www.dicapo.com By: Bruce-Michael Gelbert/The Theatre Scene.net Opera News2002 Opera News Review of Edgar Puccini's second opera, Edgar (from 1889, revised 1892), is performed only rarely, but the score is a honey. Recorded a quarter-century ago during a concert performance by Eve Queler's Opera Orchestra of New York (Sony 34584), the music bubbles over with promise: harmonies, textures, orchestration, melodic invention all point to the great works to come. What the thirty-one-year-old Puccini hadn't quite mastered, however, was the hit tune that elevates a bad libretto, and Edgar's is a clunker. Ferdinando Fontana, working from a justly neglected verse-drama by Alfred de Musset, depicts a high-born hero torn between a good girl and a bad girl. That the bad girl's badness is entirely the hero's fault goes unnoticed; she is repeatedly abused, all because she's done what Edgar and his friend Frank asked. Puccini had better luck with heroines who remain basically good despite their fallen or compromised states; the virtue-vice schematization here, exacerbated by the women's names (Fidelia and Tigrana), is dramatically unsatisfying. New York's enterprising Dicapo Opera Company mounted what is believed to be the first professional staging of Edgar in North America (seen Dec. 8), directed by the company's general director, Michael Capasso. Perhaps unsurprisingly, Capasso couldn't get much dramatic fire going, even in the finale of Act I, when Edgar (inexplicably) puts his house to the torch; but conductor Louis Salemno elicited an alert, propulsive performance from an ensemble of twenty-five players, with especially fine brass-playing in Act III. Choral contributions (under chorus master Pacien Mazzagatti) nearly blew Dicapo's tiny basement theater to the roof. Good-girl Fidelia has little to do beyond a pretty aria in Act I and a lament in Act III, attractively sung by soprano Rosemary Musoleno. The sultry Gypsy Tigrana proved congenial casting for mezzo Lori Brown Mirabal, and she brought velvety, rounded sound to a compelling musical characterization. As Edgar, tenor Drew Slatton lacked presence and Puccinian ping; baritone Gregory Kiel (Frank) offered stalwart support. John Farrell (sets) and Renata Podolec (costumes) provided simple designs. by WILLIAM V. MADISON /Opera News TheatreScene.net 04/27/2003 Passion, Dicapo Opera Theatre 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. By: Bruce-Michael Gelbert/ The Theatre Scene.net Curtain Up2003 by Elyse Sommer Passion, Dicapo Opera Theatre The passions aroused by the 1994 Broadway production of Stephen Sondheim and James Lapine's adaptation of Ettorae Scola's film Passione d'Amore, which was in turn an adaptation of I.U. Tarchett's novel Fosca , were as often negative as positive. Though it won four Tonys (best musical and score for Sondheim, best book for Lapine and best performance for Donna Murphy's Fosca), critics and audiences found its s libretto too dark and operatic for a Broadway musical, and its score too challenging. Yet, like all of Stephen Sondheim's work it has stood the test of time and deepened the richness of Sondheim's music and revealed the brilliance with which he and Lapine refined a nineteenth century gothic character into a woman who's obsessed yet heroic and whose love has a transforming effect on the object of her obsession. While the televised version of the original production starring Murphy, and co-starring Marin Mazzie as Clara and Jere Shea as Giorgio, is preserved as a video any live performance of Passion is a not to be missed opportunity for anyone who appreciates what musical theater can be. That opportunity came for Philadelphia theater goers a couple of seasons ago courtesy of the Wilma Theater and more recently for DC residents and visitors during the extended Sondheim birthday celebration at the Kennedy Center. And now New Yorkers have through May 4th to catch a very fine production at the charming Dicapo Opera house which miraculously remains an undiscovered treasure to many otherwise savvy music lovers. The story is a mid-nineteenth century romance. The affair between Giorgio, a dashing army captain, and Clara, his lusty married mistress, is interrupted by an assignment to a desolate army outpost. The love affair is kept alive through passionate epistolary exchanges. Complications set in when Fosca, the strange and sickly niece of the company commander falls madly in love with the young officer. It is a love as incurable as her unspecified but serious ailment. Fosca's affection puts a tremendous strain on Giorgio but even as he tries to escape her attentions there is something about the intensity and sincerity of this plain young woman's love that makes him realize that something is lacking in his relationship with the more attractive and robust Clara. Admirable as Lapine's ability to give a modern psychological sensibility to a gothic tale and let true love triumph -- albeit very briefly-- Passion's claim to being a masterpiece comes from the music. The melancholy mood of the lush score and emotionally charged lyrics is smartly offset by brief , tempo changing military interludes sung by Giorgio's fellow soldiers. In Bes Morrison Dicapo director Michael Capasso has found a marvelous Fosca. The attractive Ms. Morrison manages to look plain, without any extreme makeup tricks. She captures Fosca's frailty and sadness but also her dignity. And, of course, she sings beautifully, especially the gorgeous "Loving You is Not a Choice-- it's who I am." Paris Cheffer is tall and handsome as Giorgio should be. He makes the journey from sexual adventuring to understanding true love quite convincingly and, like Ms. Morrison, does full justice to songs like "No One Has Ever Loved Me." Amanda Winfield, who I liked very much as Rose Maurant in last season's Street Scene acquits herself well even though she didn't quite banish my memories of the Broadway version's Clara of Marin Mazzie. The three main performers are well supported with the entire twenty-one member cast assembled on stage for the finale. The same team that so aptly staged Street Scene is again on hand. Set designer John Farrell's props for the various scene shifts -- Clara's bed, Fosca's bedroom, the officer's dining room, a garden, -- are rolled on and off stage with a minimum of fuss and noise. An impressionistic wall of steps surrounds the main playing area and works well for the story telling structure, especially for the scenes where Clara sings her epistles in Milan while Giorgio is reading them in the army dining room and the flashbacks to Fosca's earlier years with her parents. My one quibble with an otherwise well-acted and sung production is that the twenty-one piece orchestra plays a bit too loudly. If you've never been to the Dicapo, this last offering of their season may well arouse your passion for small-scale, reasonably priced, high quality operas and musical theater. ©Copyright 2003, Elyse Sommer, CurtainUp. Information from this site may not be reproduced in print or online without specific permission from esommer@curtainup.com |
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