The two must-sees this weekend: BLO's Flying Dutchman and Boston Ballet's Chroma

Chroma at the Royal Ballet - the Boston version may actually be a bit better danced!

The two current "must-sees" of the Boston cultural scene are The Flying Dutchman (at Boston Lyric Opera, see review below), and Wayne McGregor's Chroma (above) at Boston Ballet.  Chroma is all jagged, up-to-the-minute postmodern viscera, set to a strikingly sophisticated (though pounding) score by Joby Talbot and Jack White of the White Stripes (with orchestrations by Christopher Austin).   I promise you it will be the most-discussed dance of the season; and what's more, it's set in a program of Balanchine classics (Serenade and Symphony in C) whose austere lyricism somehow brilliantly sets off McGregor's extremities.  Full review to follow - but don't wait.

High on the dark wings of The Flying Dutchman

Soprano Allison Oakes and the chorus in BLO's The Flying Dutchman - Photos: Eric Antoniou

There is so much to praise in the singing, conducting, and design of Boston Lyric Opera's new production of The Flying Dutchman that Wagner fans are sure to flock to it - and leave flying high. Its success only reminds you that it has been far too long since a full-fledged production of Dutchman - or any Wagner for that matter - has docked at the Hub (his staging demands are often beyond our existing facilities, as I've argued before; we need a new opera house).  But honestly, for much of its length, this version is so compelling that you may almost feel the wait has been worth it (and it only runs through this weekend).

I have to say up front, however, that the brilliance of the music and design at BLO is sometimes occluded by directorial decisions that, in a seeming effort to "explain" the opera's psychological mystery, only frustrate its mythic drama. Wagner's libretto (as usual) is built on legend - that of the undead "Flying Dutchman," doomed to sail the seas forever for once invoking, while in a rage, the Devil himself. His only hope of redemption lies in winning the love of a faithful woman - who must love him, of course, even unto death (so you know where this is going). Alas, that archetypal set-up has sparked in director Michael Cavanagh an odd desire to analyze his heroine's psychology in terms that any myth worth its sea salt would leave unspoken. So unfortunately, this production's drama sometimes devolves into case study, which compromises it as a true Wagnerian Gesamtkunstwerk (or "total artwork"); in the end, it's only about two-thirds of one.

But as they say - two outta three ain't bad! So first the good news: a powerhouse cast; a brilliant abstract set; atmospheric projections; and real Wagnerian majesty (though not, perhaps, grandiosity) down in the pit.  Music director David Angus has made the intriguing decision to showcase the opera in its original, rarely-heard form; it's the work in which Wagner first found his operatic voice, but the composer tinkered with it repeatedly in later years to make it more symphonically epic, and even more "Wagnerian" than it already was. So some Wagnerites may be surprised to discover that the action is set in Scotland (rather than Norway), and some familiar passages have gone missing. For my part, I appreciated the streamlining of the score, and felt that hearing the work as it first appeared was of high critical interest. I was likewise intrigued by Angus's use of period brass; I only wondered at the elimination of the famous "redemption" motif at the finale (but more on that later).

Even those with quibbles regarding some of these decisions would have to admit, I think, that Angus has drawn a muscular, lustrous sound from his players. Which only threw into higher relief the powerful singing on stage. For BLO has assembled a cast of highly accomplished Wagnerians for what feels like Dutchman's Boston debut. Bass Gregory Frank was (unexpectedly) first among equals as the manipulative father of the heroine - his burnished sound came with a relentless forward thrust, and the jaunty, nearly-cruel opacity of his portrayal felt about right for the script's demands. Only a small step behind were soprano Allison Oakes as Senta, the woman willing to give her life to save her beloved, and bass-baritone Alfred Walker as that restless, damned mariner. Both were often riveting; Oakes has the power (and then some) required to cut through a Wagnerian orchestration, and there was a wildness to her top notes that was at times thrilling (no wonder she's heading to the Wagnerian Valhalla of Bayreuth later this year). Walker was more disciplined, and appropriately brooding; to be honest, at times I felt he lacked distinctive color, but his resonance and clarity more than made up for that.

The Dutchman descends from his haunted barque.

There was also remarkable singing in supporting roles - Alan Schneider made a piercingly lyrical cameo of the Steersman, Chad Shelton was subtly engaging as Senta's former suitor, and Anne McMahon Quintero was often moving as her nurse. What's more, the chorus sounded absolutely terrific throughout, and as some of Wagner's best writing in The Flying Dutchman is for the chorus, they sometimes seemed to be stealing the show right out from under its accomplished stars.

This was particularly true given their deployment on John Conklin's evocative, abstract set (perhaps the best we've seen from this distinguished designer in some time). Conklin suggested the grappling of Wagner's two frigates with moving rafts of metallic risers - while the sails of the Dutchman's death ship rose up from behind like a blood-red crucifix. Meanwhile Seághan McKay's projections seemed to bring the raging sea right down on our heads (at top). And when the chorus of the dead sang from the masts of the Dutchman's ship, they seemed to dangle from a catwalk high up in the flies of the Schubert - the spookiest moment of all in a compellingly eerie staging.

Given these many high points, it's just too bad that director Michael Cavanagh shifted so much focus to Senta's back story, and a series of invented traumas and daddy-issues (conveyed through dumb shows) which supposedly illuminated the reasons for her self-destruction. To be blunt, Wagner leaves all this out for very good reasons - the main one being that turning Senta into a clinical case history robs her of her mythic and spiritual dimensions. This kind of thing also inevitably undermines any sense of sublimated romance with the Dutchman - which may be why in Walker's portrayal this half-spectre seemed so very alienated. Which also ties into the one real argument I had with conductor David Angus - generally The Flying Dutchman ends with the dead Senta rising toward heaven with her redeemed lover; here, however, Wagner's redemptive motif was missing - as was the redemption itself.  I understood Angus's argument for the cut - you could even argue that it buttressed Cavanagh's irritating interpretation. But perhaps some revisions (particularly those very much in the spirit of the original vision) deserve to be preserved.  Either way, in the end such caveats amount to only quibbles against what will stand as one of BLO's most memorable recent productions.

Making the most of Mozart at BLO

Facing the facts of love: Caroline Worra, Thomas Allen, and Sandra Piques Eddy.  Photos: Eric Antoniou.

Sometimes, particularly when I'm watching his operas, I think Mozart's face (below) should have really graced the sphinx.

Take Così fan tutte, the last of his works with librettist Lorenzo Da Ponte, and the one with the most checkered performance history - indeed, the Victorians considered it so risqué they rarely staged it, or produced it in bowdlerized versions; Così only returned to the repertory in something like its original form as the twentieth century progressed.

This seems strange given the glittering surface of the opera, which appears to be merely a witty roundelay of temptation, and is obviously based on an ancient trope: the jealous lover who tempts his beloved (in disguise) to test her fidelity.  The theme had been previously treated by Shakespeare, Boccaccio, and even Ovid - but Da Ponte and Mozart added what would proved an epochal twist: their heroines not only eventually succumb to temptation, but more shocking still, they are forgiven for their lapse.  Love accommodates itself to its own flaws, and in the opera's finale - a Shakespearean double wedding - each bride marries the man she has betrayed with the other groom (who is also his best friend).

Even the Bard never went this far, and Mozart's worldly acceptance of feminine humanity has troubled opera lovers - and the public at large - ever since.  And amusingly, it bothers modern feminists as much as it did Victorian chauvinists; both camps, it seems, would like to keep the ladies on their pedestals (if for different reasons).  Even the opera's title has fallen victim to sexist polarization; its literal translation is "So do all," which many have twisted into something like "So all women do" - as the men of the opera sing - when rather obviously "So do all" implies the guys do it, too; a subtler reading would even hint at Mozart's true message, that infidelity is a constant of the human heart, and so all must come to terms with it.

Of course, acceptance comes more easily when it is helped along by Mozart's ravishing melodies, with which Così is all but over-stuffed (and which conductor David Angus and his orchestra deliver nimbly from the pit).  And Boston Lyric Opera sweetens the amorous medicine still further with a production (through this weekend) that is consistently lovely, if somewhat unadventurous.  The silvery sheen of Così often glints with more rue and complexity than you'll find here - but perhaps after the rigors of Clemency, BLO felt like relaxing a bit with a sure-fire hit.

Phyllis Pancella's Despina just cannot deal right now, okay?

Not that I blame them; nor can I pretend it isn't wonderful to see and hear Così fan tutte again.  (It is always wonderful to see Così fan tutte.)  Still, in a way this is "gateway" Mozart.  If you've never seen a truly superb Così, it may stun you; if you have, however, be prepared to find the BLO version diverting, with gorgeous highlights, but perhaps not at the top of this company's achievement.

It is diverting, though, and craftily dodges the question of cynicism that sometimes dogs the opera, thanks to the knowing twinkle in the eye of Thomas Allen, the distinguished British baritone who not only directed, but also plays and sings Don Alfonso, the psychological Machiavel who stage-manages the deception driving the plot.  Don Alfonso wants to prove to the irritatingly naïve young soldiers Ferrando and Guglielmo that their fiancées are only human; and so he contrives (with the help of the ladies' lusty maid, Despina) to have them seemingly sent off to battle - only to reappear disguised as amorous "Albanians," who lay seige to their ladies' affections.

If you think you can guess the rest, be ready for a few surprises.  For of Mozart's two heroines, only one, the heartier Dorabella, succumbs to sensual temptation.  The more self-aware Fiordiligi surrenders to something subtler and more troubling - she actually falls in love with her new suitor, just as she once did with her betrothed.  This places Fiordiligi at the beginning of a new tradition of alienated psychological complexity, and lifts Così fan tutte out of its original era and into our own.

Perhaps that timelessness is what led designer John Conklin to turn this Così into a day at the beach, onto which he dropped - as is his wont - various portraits and props (the love seats with hearts built right into their backs were a nice touch).  Alas, Allen's Don Alfonso only occasionally took part in these scenic shifts, despite the fact that he was literally the director as well as a character - still, you could always feel him sizing up the audience just as he was his supposed comrades (and Allen's celebrated voice remains a burnished marvel).  The vocals from his young cohorts in crime perhaps weren't quite as strong - as Ferrando, tenor Paul Appleby boasts a warm lyric timbre, but at his high end seemed to still be fighting an earlier cold; still, his admission that his love has survived his fiancée's infidelity was (as always) immeasurably touching. Meanwhile, as Guglielmo, young barihunk Matthew Worth once again intrigued (we've seen him before) with vocal potential that hasn't quite come into its own.

Caroline Worra, Matthew Worth, Paul Appleby, and Sandra Piques Eddy before they all change partners.

The vocal news was better among the opera's women; local girl-made-good Sandra Piques Eddy stole the spotlight with a mezzo that's simultaneously pure, rich, and gloriously agile (it's no surprise she'll be making her debut at the Met shortly).  Her elegant, slightly distant persona suggested she might make an attractive Fiordiligi, but she also brought an appealingly sweet earthiness (and serious comic chops) to Dorabella's downfall.  Meanwhile, soprano Caroline Worra took the lead with her customary gusto and witty aplomb; I'm a big fan of Worra, but her natural heartiness sometimes worked against her here, and her golden soprano, though forceful, was never quite transfixing.  Still, she knew to pull out all the emotional stops for Fiordiligi's crisis of conscience; and while begging forgiveness for the sin she knew her love would compel her to commit, Worra was heart-breaking.

Rounding out the cast was the irrepressible Phyllis Pancella, whose Despina sang with a drop more malice than most, but whose witty timing was impeccable.  Pancella is clearly a comedienne who could make Così work in any language, but she got a little help from BLO's English adaptation, which was somewhat oddly accented in the arias, but was hilariously alliterative in the recitatives. Pancella and Allen together kept nudging this Così from the dark to the light; whether in the end it's a shade too light, you will simply have to judge for yourself. 

Madama Butterfly takes flight at BLO

The heart-stoppingly gorgeous first act chorus - photos by Eric Antoniou

Puccini's Madama Butterfly is one of the most oft-performed operas in the world - probably because it's among the most beautiful ever written.  From the title character's arrival in her new home in Act I, surrounded by a chorus of well-wishers (above) to the ravishing duet with her new "husband" that brings down the curtain, Puccini operates at the absolute peak of his powers; and his second act, though slightly more variable, is still studded with languidly stunning arias, including one of the most recognizable in the world, the haunting "Un bel di."

Yet surprisingly, Butterfly famously faltered on its first outing in 1904, and Puccini tinkered with it repeatedly (there are five versions!) before finally "getting it right" - if he did get it right, that is - in 1907.  Even before the composer had finished his labors, however, the opera had caught on around the world, and its popularity has never flagged since. It's a staple at the Met, we saw it in Boston just a few years ago, and now Boston Lyric Opera is presenting the final "standard version" in a simple, but sumptuous production at the Schubert (the last performances are Friday and Sunday, so hurry).

Now up front, I'll admit that BLO, and director Lillian Groag, haven't quite triumphed over Puccini's still-awkward structure (call it two-and-a-half acts) - and there are a few balance problems, and the scenic design feels mannered here and there.  Still, it's all held together by a towering central performance that no Puccini fan will want to miss: Yunah Lee simply is Cio-Cio-San, the eponymous "Madame Butterfly" who is faithful (to the suicidal end) to Pinkerton, the American cad who "marries" but then deserts her.

Yunah Lee and Dinyar Vania as Butterfly and Pinkerton.

Lee is blessed with a rich, flexible lyrical soprano, and a subtle sense of vocal taste; she never forces Cio-Cio-San's famous pathos on you.  Instead she inhabits the role with unusual dramatic force - she has played it more than once before (see Youtube below), and it shows in the concentrated detail of her interpretation; I've rarely seen an operatic performance as deeply and thoughtfully acted as this one.  Lee is simply as great an actress as she is a singer.

I'm afraid I can't shower the same praise on Dinyar Vania's turn as Pinkerton, however; this young tenor clearly hadn't a clue how to identify with the callow anti-hero he was playing.  And alas, his voice sounded a bit strained at its top - although to be fair, it bloomed gorgeously in its middle range, so that his duets with Lee in the first act were just as transporting as they should be.  In musical terms these scenes built so beautifully, in fact, that they left you a little weak.

There was fine singing elsewhere, too - Kelley O'Connor, whom we've heard in these parts before, brought her signature dusky tone, as well as a fund of heartfelt sympathy, to bear on the role of Suzuki, Butterfly's faithful (and worldly) servant.  There was also a solid vocal turn from local bass-made-good David Cushing as the uncle who denounces Butterfly's turn to the West.

But perhaps the finest singing of the night came from baritone Weston Hurt, who opted for subdued dramatic restraint as Sharpless, Pinkerton's hapless American friend, but whose confidently powerful vocal lines easily cut through even the richest of Puccini's textures.

Those textures were, to be honest, a bit overwhelming at times at the Schubert.  Conductor Andrew Bisantz led the BLO orchestra with passionate finesse - but often at slightly too high a volume; thus there were balance problems when a few of the supporting singers (though not the leads) were at the back of John Conklin's cavernous set.

That set, btw, sometimes enchanted - but also sometimes puzzled.  Conklin often cuts his naturalism with abstract strokes, and here he seemed to take a reference to the sliding doors of Japanese architecture as the cue to float all manner of design ideas on and off the BLO stage.   This aligned well, actually, with the static, nearly dream-like atmosphere of the opera - little actually "happens" in Madama Butterfly (which may be why Conklin had the newlyweds' little bungalow literally float over the stage until the curtain fell on the first act).

I likewise found the Rothko-like panels of color that sometimes descended from the flies intriguing (Rothko, after all, committed suicide too), as well as the blue "horizon line" that bisected the set's paneled "frame"; but a few other flourishes, like the bouquets that briefly drifted over the action, felt forced.  Meanwhile director Groag interlarded the action with her own abstract ideas; at the opening, for instance, we saw Butterfly's father commit seppuku in a Noh-style mask.  This was quite effective, but other gestures were less persuasive - and in the end, Conklin and Groag didn't seem to be on the same page, and at any rate their separate stylizations were a world away from what most of the singers were doing.

Still - do Lee, O'Connor, and Hurt make up for a slightly fudged concept?  In a word, yes - in spades.  At its best, BLO does Puccini proud; indeed, at some particularly ravishing musical moments, you'll wish this Madama Butterfly could float on forever.


Yunah Lee in a previous performance as Butterfly.

Don't misunderestimate The Inspector

"I am not a crook!" - the political rogues' gallery of The Inspector. Photos: Erik Jacobs.

I know, I know - the words "opera" and "laugh riot" rarely meet in the same sentence.

But Boston Lyric Opera's The Inspector, the new work by composer John Musto and librettist Mark Campbell, might make you re-think all that.  This is simply one of the funniest shows of the year. Actually, it IS the funniest show of the year, period.  Boston Lyric Opera always knows how to throw a hearty comic punch (last year's Agrippina proved that), and they land so many this time around that I and my partner were practically on the floor at some points.

Of course if you think, as some local critics do, that an opera should be thought of as a concert in which the performers happen to walk around, then this kind of praise is almost a liability.  An opera shouldn't be just a good time, they insist; it shouldn't be a whip-smart satire of the Bush administration.  Lord, no - operas shouldn't be that!

Indeed, some people at opening night seemed to agree about that satire of the Bush administration (some of the most expensive seats were empty after intermission).  Perhaps more than any of the arts, opera depends for its funding on finance execs and white-shoe law partners (at least the "Log Cabin" partners, if you know what I mean) and I felt BLO was taking a big risk with the openly blue-state cast of Campbell's razor-sharp libretto (which was inspired by Gogol's ageless satire of small-town corruption, The Inspector General).  Technically Campbell has shifted the scene to Sicily (which allows for more bel canto) - and there were, indeed, a few broad, affectionate Italian jokes - but obviously the script was really set in the various South Texas, South Florida, and South Alaska burgs where numbskull Bush scions and Republican stooges are blighting the landscape in their "exile" from the White House.

So - if you're a Republican, beware this horrifying partisan screed!  But if you're a thoughtful person with a moral center, you are inevitably a Democrat, and so you should run out and buy a ticket immediately.  (Because the show only runs through this weekend.)

There is some bad news, though - John Musto's music isn't as challenging or as rich as it might be;  I can't refudiate that.  The score is certainly pretty, and even quite witty - in fact, it's almost too much of a sophisticated, Broadway-style pastiche; by the end of the first act, you might be forgiven for thinking the composer had set his sights on operetta rather than opera.  But fear not - from the start, the second act is far stronger musically (it opens with a melancholy trio for mandolin, accordion - and tuba!) as Campbell's text begins to limn the sad awareness of universal corruption that undergirds Gogol's  original scenario.  (So in the end, I think Musto should not be misunderestimated.)

The ruling class shows just how classy it is in The Inspector.

And it's in the second act that the performances, which have been funny throughout, begin to open up into something deeper, too.  Soprano Meredith Hansen sounds great as the Mayor's daughter (she's the one sweetheart trapped in this lousy town) - but it's her acting performance that is almost heart-breaking in its mix of comic smarts and tragic feeling; our best dramatic actresses couldn't do better.

Hansen is all but upstaged, however, by mezzo Victoria Livengood as her crass, calculating mama; Ms. Livengood is a world-class comic talent as well as a Met-level mezzo, and she expertly crosses Imelda Marcos with Carol Burnett to create an indelibly, almost brutally hilarious performance as, in her husband's words, "the shrewdest of shrews - who'd screw for new shoes."  In fact, I'll call this one right now - there will be no one, and nothing, funnier than Ms. Livengood on a Boston stage this year.  (And she's a terrific mezzo to boot.)

Although to be honest, this crowd is crowded with good singing and clever comic turns.  As the genially corrupt mayor of "Santa Schifezza," ("schifezza" is Italian for "filthy," btw) Jake Gardner (at top) knows just how to hang onto our sympathy by making his sleaze almost sweetly naive.  And from the moment Dorothy Byrne launches into an aria with a cigarette dangling from her mouth, you know she's something special, too (she's a Minister of Health who moonlights at the local funeral home!). But there are still more comic cameos sharper than the point of a satirist's quill: David Cushing all but beams stupidity as the torture-happy chief of police, who's "as dim-witted as he is sadistic," while Michelle Trainor nails the Montessori-addled educator who insists "Kids learn bestest when they teach theirselves!"

If you haven't noticed yet, there is a slight gap in the cast - as "Tancredi," the likably opportunistic Inspector General himself, Neil Ferreira is appealing, but hardly compelling, and the usually reliable David Kravitz sounded fine as his sidekick, but didn't seem to have found his comic groove by opening night.   But down in the pit, conductor David Angus did well by the clever fizz of the score, and stage director Leon Major always kept the production light on its feet.  You left the The Inspector thinking it may be no great contribution to the musical repertoire, but that it might open up a new angle on how we think about contemporary opera in general.  For why shouldn't up-to-minute, bare-knuckle satire be a commonplace on the operatic stage, particularly when it's as close to comic perfection as The Inspector?

Boston Lyric Opera's The Barber of Seville

Jonathan Beyer and Steven Condy in The Barber of Seville.  Photos: Eric Antoniou

People are always asking me, "What should I see right now?" And I'm always happy to answer: what you should see right now is The Barber of Seville at Boston Lyric Opera - a big, blooming bel canto extravaganza that you can only catch through Sunday.  This is Rossini as it was meant to be heard and seen - with ripe voices, bold colors, a high musical finish, and a frisky sense of fun.  Premiering just weeks after the brooding chamber opera The Lighthouse (itself a triumph in its own way), Barber offers proof positive that BLO, always Boston's leading opera company, is now ready to step up to the plate as its only opera company, with an artistic reach that convincingly stretches from the esoteric to the populist and back.  Although all that aside, this Barber is just a great night out - and trust me, we won't hear bel canto like this, with voices like these, for some time to come (or at least not until BLO returns to the genre).

If this sound like I'm purring, well I am - this is the kind of production you can sink into confidently; it's a big plush easy chair of memorable melody (you already know the whole overture, in fact) and rollicking comedy.  I suppose you could sniff at the fact that this is a "traditional" rendering, and nobody involved is trying to subvert Rossini's sturdy commedia structure with some intellectual agenda or other, to prove they went to Columbia or Harvard.  But what can I say?  If that's the way you think, well, you know where you can go (and it ain't Columbia or Harvard, much less the opera house!).  I know, I know, people want to drag into Barber something of the complexities of The Marriage of Figaro, the second play in the Beaumarchais trilogy which, of course, inspired Mozart's revolutionary opera of the same name.  But I'm afraid that wider intellectual dimension isn't really to be found in Rossini's source - and me, I'll take this composer straight, with his sunny melodies, lusty sense of romance, and yes, weakness for slapstick, any day.

The slapstick's about to start!  Pass it on!

From the start, frankly, I knew this production was in clover; even as the pleasingly rambunctious stage business began, conductor David Angus was drawing a rich, elegant sound from the pit.  Likewise the drops and costumes, by Allen Moyer and James Scott respectively, appropriately evolved from a warm romantic realism to a sense of heightened satiric sketch (as the pratfalls piled up around the characters), and stage director Doug Varone proved he knew just how to shift that balance, too - even if his inventiveness flagged slightly before the final act was over, we didn't really mind by then.

And the voices!  As was the case with Agrippina last spring (another big, bold comedy - BLO has a feel for this kind thing), the world-class warbling just keeps coming in The Barber of Seville.  As the eponymous hairdresser himself,  Jonathan Beyer deployed a rich, resonant baritone that seemed warmed from below with sun, and he beamed with just the right mix of lustiness and fey wit, too.  Believe it or not, however, he may have been slightly out-classed by Sarah Coburn's Rosina, and Steven Condy's Dr. Bartolo.  Coburn's flexible mezzo (as is often done, the role was transposed up slightly from its original range) is dazzlingly pure, and she has startling reserves of power; plus she, too, is no comic slouch.  The comedy laurels, however, have to go to Condy, who as Rosina's would-be suitor/captor expertly teased both our ridicule and sympathy in about equal measure; and as an added bonus, his deep baritone is tinted with an intriguingly dark, individual color.  Indeed, the only (slight) vocal gap among the leads lay in tenor John Tessier's turn as Count Almaviva.  Tessier has a flexible lyric tenor, with a radiant bloom in the middle of its range; but it's perhaps slightly too light for what it has to accomplish here, and Tessier was showing signs of strain by the finale; which is too bad, because he looks just right, and has a sweet way with romantic comedy to boot.

But then he had stiff competition from what amounted to a talented squad of hammy farceurs, including the memorable Judith Christin, whose bug-eyed servant drew laughs every time she entered.  Alas, local bass David Cushing (with Christin, above) eschewed his big aria as Basilio, the music master, as he was suffering from a head cold on opening night (just like, ironically enough, his character supposedly is) - although honestly, he managed pretty well in his ensembles.  The chorus, which we only heard from occasionally, was likewise in strong form - there was a palpable sense from everyone onstage, in fact, that this was a production to be proud of; somehow they all knew they were giving The Barber of Seville a classic cut.

John Tessier and Sarah Coburn are finally wed, with a little help from the infantry.

Boston Lyric Opera lights up The Lighthouse

Alone in The Lighthouse - photos: Erik Jacobs

Opera is meant to be a synthesis of every art form, but most opera lovers care about one thing and one thing only: the star voices at the center of the whole shebang.  I've had more people than I can count swoon over the evocative power of a particular larynx, but then stare at me in incomprehension when I offered my thoughts on the production in which that larynx was embedded.

Which isn't to say that Boston Lyric Opera's current production of Peter Maxwell Davies' celebrated The Lighthouse (today is the last performance, so hurry) doesn't offer some fabulous singing; it does (although nobody in the show is yet a star).  No, what instead distinguishes this version is its conception, its physical production, its landscape, if you will - for as part of its new "Annex" program, BLO has set up digs in a conference room at the JFK Library, out on the rocks of Columbia Point, before a giant window with a sweeping view of the harbor.

So yes, BLO has literally put us in a lighthouse for The Lighthouse.

I suppose on paper that sounds crushingly literal, but in performance the effects this inspired setting allows the BLO production team are nothing short of astounding.  Before this vast view, director/designer Tim Albery and set designer Camellia Koo have built the skeleton of the title sentinel - which appropriately enough recalls a scaffold, and which is "haunted" by the reflections the players cast in the glass behind it.  What's more, they've built up their own evocation of the rock on which the light is planted, as well as the mizzenmasts of the ships that visit the forlorn outpost of Davies' scenario.  There's even a searchlight rotating outside the hall, which conjures a moment of musical (and dramatic) "time travel" that's pure genius. To be blunt, this isn't a "set," it's a geography as well as a state of mind.

But then if you know something of that previously mentioned scenario, you may already have some idea of just what a conceptual bull's-eye all this represents.  Davies based his best-known opera on a famous incident recorded in 1900, in which a ship discovered the lighthouse on Eilean Mor in the Outer Hebrides (below) had been abandoned, and seemingly in a hurry - beds were still unmade, and there were dishes on the table.  But where its three keepers had gone - indeed, how they had gotten off their remote island - has remained a mystery ever since.

The lighthouse on Eilean Mor endures, as does its mystery.

Now this is agreeably spooky stuff, but Davies is after far more in The Lighthouse than some operatic Twilight Zone episode. He both imagines a plausible explanation for the disappearance of the keepers, and at the same time conjures a powerful statement about the entwined nature of paranoia and hostility - and how we humans try to stave off, through art and artifice, "the beast" that lurks within us.

For in his frame story - the questioning of the three sailors who discovered the empty light - Davies has settled on a dissonant chromaticism somewhat in the mode of late Britten, only without the dreamy, glittering eroticism; the score is not actually "atonal" (as many in the audience I saw the show with seemed to think; why do people always imagine challenging music is atonal??), but it's unsettling and unstable; its tonal center moves around - something frightening always seems to be looming out of it, before disintegrating.  In short, it's paranoia in musical terms.

This metaphor is clever enough, but director Albery embeds it in another brilliant stoke of staging: his three sailors -  tenor John Bellemer, baritone Christopher Burchett, and bass-baritone David Cushing - are "interrogated" by a mournfully officious horn at the back of the house; under its cross-examination, they re-live their terrible discovery, entering via three separate sailing rigs before creeping up a dark "path" toward the lighthouse itself.  Once their tale has been related, however, it's barely probed; the investigation abruptly closes down with a verdict of "death by misadventure" for the lighthouse's vanished occupants.

But then Davies turns back the clock - as the lighthouse's "robot lantern" silently rotates, its ghosts all "shut tight inside" its tower; his three rescuers are transformed into the doomed trio themselves; and we discover exactly what happened on the fateful night of their disappearance.  Here Davies turns to another wily compositional technique - as the men of the lighthouse battle off madness, they sing one form of sentimental (completely tonal) music after another; but their songs all disguise sinister undertones, and the piano accompanying them is (intentionally) out of tune; Davies is parodying their taste, as well as pitying it.  He knows that the dissonance of "the Beast," as one of the men puts it, can't be denied in the stifling isolation of their prison.

The Beast attacks its keepers.

But it's here, I'm afraid, that BLO falters - not musically, but dramatically.  Albery's cast, at least on the night I attended, were all convincingly stolid as the first trio of sailors, but they couldn't quite pull off the psychological breakdown that the second trio must undergo in the final scene.  Bass David Cushing in particular sounded wonderful, but acted too woodenly, particularly at the moment of his crack-up, when alone up in the tower, "the Beast" at last takes over.  The singers' renditions of their respective favorite tunes, however, were quite amusing, and often suitably desperate, with Christopher Burchett and John Bellemer getting close to the right kind of rising hysteria.

Ironically enough, this dreadful climax was the only memorable moment from the 1983 Peter Sellars production, which I caught years ago at the Boston Shakespeare Company (which Sellars was then in the process of wrecking).  Sellars relied on a rather cheap trick to help along the transition - as his characters sang of "the Beast," one of them revealed that his hands had been transformed to claws; talk about The Twilight Zone!  Still, like a lot of cheap effects, the trick was pretty damn effective.

In every other way, however, this is by far the superior production, and I'd be lying if I didn't admit it often gave me chills - and that in its conception and design it seemed to almost perfectly channel Davies' intents.  Be warned, of course, that the conference room setting has a few acoustical issues; some things seem to carry extremely well - too well, perhaps - others not so much.  Conductor David Angus has ameliorated much of this through subtle "voicing" of the orchestra (the players all turn in highly committed performances, by the way), but I admit there are still a few gaps.  But then again, if you're going to take opera out of the concert hall, do you really have a right to be surprised if you have - well, taken opera out of the concert hall?  I don't think so.  In its "Annex" productions, Boston Lyric Opera has been rolling the dice on big gambles - and the previous two, The Turn of the Screw and The Emperor of Atlantis, have both been triumphs.  We can add The Lighthouse to that distinguished list, I think; it sets a standard for opera in found spaces that I believe few other local productions will ever match.  To give you some idea of the intellectual depth of its design - when I looked more closely at the "path" leading up to the lighthouse/scaffold, I realized it was made of heaps and heaps of sailor's coats.  This story, the designers were telling us, had happened before; indeed, it had happened over and over again; the "island" itself was built of the remains of similar deaths.

And it was then that I thought to myself - you know, in the old days, BLO was the big, soft-headed suburban opera company; but all that has completely changed.  Honestly, these Annex productions are the smartest opera that Boston has ever seen . . .

Titania in her bower in A Midsummer Night's Dream.

Right now Hub audiences have the unusual chance to take in the second of two genius-on-genius Midsummer Night's Dream mash-ups: after Boston Ballet's splendid mounting of Balanchine's version last month, we can now savor Benjamin Britten's gorgeous response to the same masterpiece at Boston Lyric Opera (through this weekend at the Schubert).

It's pretty much agreed that both these derivative works are masterpieces in their own rights - and what's more, they serve as conceptual bookends for their expansive source. Balanchine stresses the romance and structure of Shakespeare's mother of all romantic comedies (and all but ignores its goofy "mechanicals"); Britten, meanwhile, emphasizes the work's infinite variety rather than its unity - musically, he conjures a different sound-garden, in fact, for each "cast" of characters.  And surprisingly he punches up the comedy, particularly the baggy-pants stuff; indeed the mechanicals are all but center-stage much of the time, and their travesty of the "tragedy" of Pyramus and Thisbe becomes the opera's hilarious climax.

It's here that the BLO soars to the same brilliant level it achieved in recent productions of Agrippina and The Emperor of Atlantis (it occurs to me that comedy may be their strong suit). But at first it seems director Tazewell Thompson and set designer John Conklin are a little lost in the woods themselves, and it takes the production a long time - indeed, the entire first act - to come together. The singing, however, is first-rate throughout, and Britten's instrumental writing is so lustrous that classical fans may not mind the conceptual confusion unfolding on stage.

No doubt Thompson and Conklin thought they were simply taking a note from Britten's own approach: just as the composer devised individual sound-scapes for Midsummer's different characters, so Conklin and Thompson seem to have concocted a separate look for each as well.  (Perhaps they also think that the "contradictions, confusions, and disguises" that afflict the play's characters should afflict the audience, too.)  Thus the lovers are roughly Edwardian, while Oberon and Titania seem more historic and fanciful; meanwhile the fairies look to be modeled on the Boy Scouts.  Odder still are the many design gambits Conklin offers and then discards: the general mood is mod and coolly geometric, but sometimes the furniture grows or shrinks like decor from Alice in Wonderland, and when the mechanicals wander through the forest, the trees are labeled "TREES" (apparently because Bottom and his crew are so literal-minded).  The moon remains an organizing motif, at least - but when things grow more surreal after Bottom's transformation, even it gets tricked out with a Man Ray photograph - again, just in case we don't "get it." 

A few of the contradictions and confusions in A Midsummer Night's Dream. Photo(s) by Erik Jacobs.

These ideas aren't "wrong," exactly, it's just that they keep calling attention to themselves, and begin to seem too clever by half - and that makes the opera feel disjointed and slightly incoherent, when actually Shakespeare's complex text and Britten's delicately ambiguous music are both highly unified beneath their surface effects.  (For the record, the opera's underlying style is something like Purcell gone modern - and it's worth noting that this is a rare case in which a Shakespearean opera is based on Shakespeare's own text, a stunning achievement in and of itself.)  There are some lovely vocals to savor, from the sweet countertenor of John Gaston's Oberon to Nadine Sierra's languidly plush turn as Titania, to Andrew Shore's robustly rendered bully of a Bottom.  And the children of the PALS Children's Chorus charmed whenever they sang.  Still, the performances somehow couldn't make much headway against a persistent sense of conceptual drift; and it didn't help that stage director Thompson and new music director David Angus both favored a very measured pace - which only gave us plenty of time to wonder what, exactly, they were getting at.

A heartbroken Thisbe (Matthew DiBattista) mourns the fallen Pyramus (Andrew Shore).

Luckily, things turned a corner at intermission; Britten's music gathers more dramatic momentum, and Conklin settled on a design motif, and the lovers got a wonderfully punchy scene to strut their stuff (that's Chad A. Johnson, Heather Johnson, Susanna Phillips, and the clarion-voiced Matthew Worth, above).  Best of all, the mechanicals did a boffo job with "Pyramus and Thisbe."  It's a little surprising to realize that Shakespeare actually invented "camp" some four hundred years ago with this little skit (it even includes what may be the stage's first drag queen), but Britten understood its true nature all too well, and offers up a hilarious parody of classic bel canto opera, complete with a mad scene out of Lucia di Lammermoor (above left), in which Lucia is a brawny lad with a mop on his head (played originally by Britten's lover/librettist, Peter Pears).   Here the whole sequence was pure perfection - balancing beautifully Shakespeare's point about perspective being everything in romance with his deeper affection for the faith that makes all romantic (and artistic) feeling possible.  And thus somehow Britten and Boston Lyric Opera brought off the depth of this great work as few theatrical productions do, making this Midsummer something of a dream in the end.

David Trudgen faces down Julius Caesar as Nero. Photos by Jeffrey Dunn.

You leave Boston Lyric Opera's Agrippina a bit winded, I think: it's so good in so many ways you can't quite believe it.  Or perhaps you're just winded from laughter; for this Agrippina is not only exquisitely sung, and brilliantly acted and designed, it's also screamingly funny, in a go-for-broke pop style that many local productions have attempted but few have brought off (the only competition I can think of was Opera Boston's La Grande-Duchesse de Gérolstein, but that's a far lesser opera).  Perhaps the shortest, punchiest review for Agrippina would be: Big voices, big laughs = grand opera, or something like that.  BLO has always specialized in opera as popular entertainment (just as Handel did); with Agrippina, they've practically perfected it.

Although I can already guess what some will say: "It's too funny."  Right.  Too funny.  I know you won't believe me, but I was doubled over with laughter at some of Agrippina (and I thought my partner might have a seizure).  I guess you're not supposed to do that at Handel.  But I'm not sure why - at least when not only the singing and music are first-rate, but the concept and direction are, too.  And incredibly, somehow Agrippina hangs onto its sense of grandeur despite its many pratfalls - and when the libretto spins on a dime in the second act and turns tragic, believe it or not, the production does as well.  In short, you'll laugh and you'll cry.  You could argue whether the BLO cast finds a synthesis of these opposed styles for the opera's final act; I mean, you could if you wanted to.  I'd had so much fun by then that I really didn't care.

I admit, though, that I wasn't sure the BLO could pull off a satire quite this brazen in the opening scene (when a bored Nero almost set his mother on fire).  But I soon realized just about everyone on stage had not only operatic pipes but crack comic timing, too; and at any rate, it became impossible to ignore the tone of Cardinal Vincenzo Grimani's blackly comic libretto (widely viewed at the time as a parody of Vatican politics).  You probably know the basic plot from I, Claudius or L'incoronazione di Poppea: the ruthless Agrippina schemes, well, ruthlessly to place her son Nero (here Nerone) on the throne in the waning years of the reign of Claudius (here Claudio).  Incredibly, Handel and Grimani transform these Roman power plays into a kind of quasi-romantic roundelay, with only the occasional hint of the disaster that Nerone's impending reign would become.

Venice meets Rome meets modernity: Kathleen Kim's entrance as Poppea.

Director Lillian Groag leans heavily, then, on screwball antics, and lets just about everybody chew the scenery.  The amazing thing is that the cast is so strong - and Groag's clever stage business so artfully  intertwined with the music - that it all works, even when it gets a little hammy.  Soprano Caroline Worra makes a kind of mad stage mother of Agrippina - she seems to be devouring the role as we watch; but she's also in glorious voice, and when the empress is suddenly struck by guilty doubts (see masthead photo), suddenly Worra is dramatically riveting, too.  She's matched, however, by Kathleen Kim's piping pepperpot of a Poppea (above), who not only soars dazzlingly through several demanding arias, but has major bedroom-farce chops, too.  But then I can't forget baritone Christian Van Horn's horny Claudius - another amazing match between a voice to die for and bedroom moves that leave you in stitches.  Perhaps not quite as compelling vocally was countertenor Anthony Roth Costanzo's Ottone.  Costanzo seemed to have breath control trouble in his big Act II aria, but dramatically it was heart-breaking anyway, and somehow Costanzo's characterization wound up being very endearing.  The other big counter-tenor role was handled more consistently, by David Trudgen (at top), who brought a nicely spoiled spin to the proceedings, but from whom I hoped for a bit more dark twistedness here and there.  There was also very nice work around the edges of the production by bass David M. Cushing, a local boy who has never sounded better.

Caroline Worra and Christian Van Horn.

Meanwhile, down in the pit, Gary Thor Wedow conducted with both sensitivity and muscular feeling - although he wasn't working with period instruments, but rather something like a hybrid modern orchestra with a continuo section.  This bolder sound matched the bold stage business, however, and that sense of a "hybrid" modern/baroque aesthetic played out elsewhere, too  - the houselights were half-dimmed (in Handel's day, they wouldn't have been dimmed at all), and the orchestra pit was lifted to almost audience-level (again, there would have been no break between audience and players in the 18th century).  Even the stage design hinted at an overlay of eras - the cast was clad in a range of modern duds, from Mussolini to Swinging London, but they plotted and schemed among moving chunks of ancient Rome (bisected occasionally by abstract stairs and thrones - often the color of Agrippina's gown, at left).  The great John Conklin was responsible for this layered, ever-shifting vision - constantly re-configured by Venetian courtiers from Handel's day - and it was lit with startling imagination by Robert Wierzel (who I'm beginning to think, after seeing this and Idomeneo, may be the most talented lighting designer alive).  Alas, opening night featured its own bit of stage drama, when two moving columns crashed into each other.  But something tells me they've taken care of that by now - because frankly I'm beginning to wonder if there's anything BLO can't do.  Agrippina marks their third hit, out of three productions, this year.  With their upcoming Midsummer by Britten, they may just go four-for-four.

Life and death in the Third Reich

Kaiser Überall in his bunker in The Emperor of Atlantis.

Okay, folks - this one is important.

If you care about twentieth-century opera (or opera in general); if you care about Jewish history and the Holocaust; if you care about World War II; hell, if you care about the old "human spirit," then you must see Viktor Ullmann’s The Emperor of Atlantis, which is currently holding court in a mostly brilliant production from Boston Lyric Opera, only through this weekend at the Calderwood Pavilion.

The big news here is simply the opera itself, which feels like an incredible discovery.  Even though most opera buffs have at least heard of it, few have seen or heard it (myself included) - due to its short length, fragmentary nature, and curiously whimsical tone, it has rarely been seen in the United States, or indeed anywhere.

Yet it's certainly one of the major cultural documents of the Holocaust, and perhaps one of the major operas of the twentieth century.  I know, I know - you think I'm hyperventilating.  Just go see it and then tell me I'm hyperventilating.  (I don't think you will.) [Update - unfortunately, the production has completely sold out.]

First, though, a warning - you may want to come late.  As if the first New England production of this rarity wasn't challenge enough, BLO has also commissioned a companion piece to fill out a full evening of performance (Emperor reigns for only about an hour). The idea - a very worthy one - was to add to the marketability of the opera by creating a handy companion piece for it.

But alas, the evening's prologue, Harvard composer Richard Beaudoin's "The After-Image," though pleasant enough in an earnest way, is a bit attenuated and tedious. The piece is a meditation on the meaning of a photograph, and as it's based on texts from Rilke and Rückert, it hints (or half-hints) at all sorts of intriguing intellectual issues regarding history and the transmission of meaning. But somehow this "tableau for two voices" never quite coheres; if you can imagine Susan Sontag warbling along to the Quartet for the End of Time,  you've got roughly the idea. And things weren't helped much by silly performance art flourishes from director David Schweizer that obscured, rather than illuminated, the overall arc of the evening.

Still, I suppose there's no use crying over spilt Rilke, and once the far-more-robust opera proper gets going, everything is suddenly imbued with the strange fire of a wild poem written in one's last hour, in which one attempts desperately to convey everything one knows about life and love before the final curtain falls.  That sense of poetic urgency is so palpable because the composers of The Emperor of Atlantis were, indeed, facing annihilation: Ullmann and his libettrist, Petr Kien, composed it from behind the barbed wire of the Terezín concentration camp, which was the "showplace" of the Nazi work camps (designed to fool the Red Cross into believing the camps were habitable). At one time four concert groups operated within the walls of Terezín, and Ullmann composed some twenty works during his time there; he never saw Emperor of Atlantis performed, however. Sensing its piercing allegory, the authorities shut it down during rehearsals, and Ullmann and Kien were soon transported to Auschwitz, where they were quickly murdered.

The dance of death in Emperor of Atlantis.

This was the official reaction to the brilliant allegory at the heart of Kien's witty book, in which the mad Kaiser Überall (that's him up top, mustache, epaulets and all) has declared a war to end all wars - indeed, its only real purpose is to kill every single person on the planet.   The carnage becomes so great, however, that Death himself is affronted, feeling he is being treated like a kind of mechanical lackey - and soon he's on strike, leaving the Emperor practically apoplectic as more and more people are unable to expire on schedule.  Executions grind to a halt - they're pointless - and on the battlefield, soldiers lay down their useless weapons and begin to sing to each other of love.  Clearly this can't go on; but Death only relents, and agrees to pick up his scythe, on one condition - that the Kaiser be the first to fall to it.

You appreciate immediately, I imagine, the genius of the libretto.  And Ullmann's music is barely a step behind; perhaps it's a pastiche, but what a pastiche - in Atlantis, snatches of Weimar cabaret bump into “Deutschland, Deutschland, Über Alles,” bits of Bach, and even a melancholy reworking of "A Mighty Fortress Is Our God" (that most Germanic of hymns), as the Grim Reaper returns to his work.  The ironic mood reaches its highest, sweetest peak in the lovely aria granted to the Kaiser at his death - it's really the most beautiful music in the entire opera.  And at moments like this The Emperor of Atlantis seems to sail beyond the normal bounds of irony and into some sublime new sphere - this is irony that can break your heart; the humanity of Ullmann and Kien's conception - their almost whimsical portrayal of their own killers - stands as one of the noblest artistic gestures of all time.

All this found its fullest form (and force) in a galvanic central performance by Kevin Burdette as Death (combined in this version with the associated role of "The Loudspeaker"). Burdette is blessed with both a commanding bass and hilarious comic chops, and in this dazzlingly manic tour de force, he seemed at times to all but personify the opera. Almost as good were baritone Andrew Wilkowske (another inspired clown with a great voice) as the Emperor and tenor John Mac Master (above, with Burdette) as a harlequin who's nearly as bitter about how things are going as the big guy himself.

Director David Schweizer seemed to recover his sense of humor after the languors of "The After-Image," and generally delivered a defiantly witty take on the opera's action, although at times the staging was a bit generically Regietheater-esque.  At other moments, however - as in the funereal finale - Schweizer delivered delicately haunting moods and imagery. Designer Caleb Wertenbaker's set (left) was a grand post-industrial wasteland littered with technological junk, while the talented Nancy Leary's imaginative costumes evoked something of the desperation of life in Terezín (both Death and the Harlequin sported accessories made of barbed wire).   This, actually, was one of the few moments in which the production referenced the Holocaust concretely - something I felt it could have done more often; how even more piercing this gallant piece of modernism might have seemed! Then again, perhaps some distance on the work is what's required; otherwise this particular testament to humanity could be almost overwhelming.

The tables turn at the climax of Tosca.

The famous line that everyone quotes about Tosca is Joseph Kerman's snarky quip that it's "a shabby little shocker."  Well, as Boston Lyric Opera proved last weekend, the Puccini potboiler may be a shocker all right, but it's none too shabby.  Stripped down from a lugubrious, if well-crafted, melodrama by Sardou, the libretto plays like a taut thriller studded with lurid episodes and hairpin turns; this is the rare opera with a palpable sense of suspense (indeed, everything in Quentin Tarantino derives from, and is degraded from, Tosca).  And the score may simply be Puccini's finest.  It not only includes one of his loveliest arias ("Vissi d'arte"), but the second act in particular is (nearly) through-composed with startling sophistication and a superb sense of drama.  The composer relies throughout Tosca on a kind of semi-Wagnerian system of motifs - but unlike Wagner, Puccini doesn't spend time developing them in purely musical terms (while the action stiffens into stasis); instead, he weds his musical motifs almost seamlessly to the drama unfolding onstage.

The parapet in Rome from which Tosca meets her doom.

The plot itself is brazenly heartless; Sardou's constant advice to his protégées was "Torture your women!," and the eponymous Tosca, a vain but good-hearted opera singer thrust into  intrigues she can barely understand, endures one torment after another before a final blow that drives her to a plummeting suicide, from the parapet of the famous Castle Saint'Angelo (at left) - just as the curtain falls, too.  The opera was originally set amidst the battles over Rome between Napoleonic and Neapolitan forces - but the BLO production (borrowed from the Scottish Opera) updates the basic conflicts into fascist Italy: the chief villain, once "Baron" Scarpia, is here a jack-booted chief of secret police, while Tosca's lover, a painter who falls into Scarpia's clutches, is vaguely aligned with the Resistenza.

Not that actual politics matter much in the hothouse atmosphere of Tosca - they're just a means to highly dramatic ends; the final suicide only arrives after two murders, a near-rape, and several scenes of torture (below).  And fortunately, the BLO production doesn't push its "updating" to any obvious Peter-Sellars-esque political morals, either; director David Lefkowich often seemed happy to effectively block his action, then bask in the atmosphere provided by the funereal grandeur of Peter Rice's smashing sets, lit with the burnished rays of a perpetual sunset by Paul Hackenmueller (one glance at these designs, and you knew poor Tosca was doomed).

Even though, of course, she's innocent of everything (except a sudden, murderous impulse which you can hardly blame her for).  This nihilistic theme, of helpless innocence pointlessly punished, was a new one in opera - and a new one on the stage in general - and it still packs a punch, particularly in the moving performance of Jill Gardner in the title role.  Ms. Gardner possesses a rich, but not particularly individual, soprano, and her rendition of the famous "Vissi d'arte" was hampered by blocking (she was half-prone, "imprisoned," if you will, on a bed) that provided a striking stage image but must have given her very little room for breath support.  But Gardner is also a truly wonderful stage actress - one of the best stage actresses I've seen cross a Boston operatic stage - and her Tosca was always both amusingly vain and yet poignantly, vibrantly alive.   And her sudden killing of Scarpia - you could see the mad inspiration dawn on her - chilled just as it should, while the famously macabre, guilt-ridden scene that follows she played to the absolute hilt.  (In one of the production's few surprising flourishes, she threw away with a shudder the crucifix that Tosca usually places in penance on Scarpia's corpse.)

Tosca's lover, Cavaradossi, is brutalized by the minions of Scarpia (far right). Photos by Jeffrey Dunn

Her co-stars were no slouches.  With his hawk-like demeanor, Bradley Garvin looked the perfect Scarpia, and brought a cruel alacrity to the character's various predations - although the voice, though fine, was again not at the high level we've come to expect from such recent BLO productions as Ariadne auf Naxos.  The production boasted one true vocal star in tenor Diego Torre, who was a bit too earthy to be believable as the lover of a grande dame like Tosca, but whose singing was glowingly lyrical, if marred by a phlegmatic scratch (we later learned he took a few days off to battle a bronchial infection), and whose acting rose to a moving, if slightly withdrawn, intensity as he faced imminent death.  There was also a nice comic turn from Steven Smith as an easily flustered priest, and a sweet one from young treble Ryan Turner in the final act as the Jailer's Son.

In that last act the production seemed to stumble a bit - the blocking seemed more tentative, and Ms. Gardner didn't seem as shaken by her ordeal as she might be; moreover the music sometimes flowed over insufficient stage business. Nevertheless, the music was gripping all the same; the sound from the pit - under the baton of Conductor Andrew Bisantz - was always darkly robust (Bisantz did a similarly impressive job, in a very different vein, with last season's Turn of the Screw). It seemed that in this remarkably strong and solid production, any momentary weakness was balanced by a different strength; no wonder the crowd, clearly hungry for this kind of shot of pure operatic adrenaline, gave the cast a sustained standing ovation. A year or two ago, when I began writing that Boston Lyric Opera had turned an artistic corner and would (or should) become the dominant force on the operatic scene, I got several ridiculing emails. Now, after a series of productions as strong as Tosca, that seems to be the conventional wisdom.

A memorable Idomeneo

Neptune makes his presence known in Idomeneo, re di Creta. Photos by Charles Erickson.

It isn't often that a Mozart work feels like a discovery. But Idomeneo, re di Creta, his first major opera, feels a bit like one, as it's long been overshadowed by the later masterpieces, and has only slowly made its way into the standard repertoire. Indeed, what's more intriguing about Ideomeneo is that over its course, you can almost hear Mozart discovering himself. Written when the wunderkind was only 24, the piece opens as a lovely, but standard-issue, "opera seria" (the leading mode of Mozart's day), with that format's usual choruses, noble solos, and tragic tone.

But slowly Idomeneo - which is basically a variant on the Iphigenia myth - edges away from tragedy and toward something more like mournful comedy; and Mozart begins to spin more duets and quartets as a lighter, yet more mature moral sensibility seeps into the proceedings. And somehow a mysterious alchemy occurs. By the final curtain, we can tell we're listening to the revolutionary who would write Don Giovanni and Così fan tutte.

This sense of discovery is redoubled when one considers the recent history of Boston Lyric Opera, which is presenting a beautiful and well-sung (if slightly trimmed) version of the opera through this weekend: slowly Boston has been discovering it, too. I've been arguing for some time that BLO - long derided as a suburban upstart - is actually our next Boston-Ballet-like success story, and Idomeneo serves, I think, as a ratification of that claim, the capstone to a startling season which has included such memorable productions (and superb vocal ensembles) as The Turn of the Screw and Ariadne auf Naxos.

Although no, the production's not perfect; in fact, it has a weakness right at its center. As the title character, Jason Collins is vocally adequate but not much more - and dramatically he seems to lean more toward fits of pique than conscience-stricken remorse (to preserve his life in a violent storm, Idomeneo has promised Neptune to sacrifice the first person he encounters on shore; that person turns out to be his son, Idamante).

Fortunately there's sterling work elsewhere in the cast. As Idamante (a breeches role), the lovely Sandra Piques Eddy struck just the right heroic profile, and what's more, her pure-tone mezzo proved luminously flexible, thanks to her utterly secure technique. Alas, as Idamante's love interest, Camille Zamora (at left, with Eddy) seemed slightly miscast, though she was generally appealing. Or perhaps the trouble was that she was simply upstaged by the great Caroline Worra as her rival, the spurned Elettra. Worra is blessed with a beautifully burnished timbre, and threw herself into her role with abandon, at times even teetering on the edge of comedy - she made Elettra's final meltdown one for the vocal and dramatic history books.

Elsewhere bass Craig Phillips offered a Neptune (suddenly revealed from the person of a pauper, at top) whose voice seemed as deep as the sea, and the chorus was in robust form throughout. In the pit, conductor David Angus led the orchestra with energy, although he had decided to mix a fortepiano (rather than a harpsichord) and period horns with a generally-modern ensemble. The results were not displeasing, although to an ear accustomed to period performance they sometimes sounded oddly mixed, neither fish nor fowl. But maybe that was the idea - to give this transitional opera a sense of musical transition, too.

Likewise, director Lilian Groag seemed to want to gently push the drama down the road we all knew Mozart would eventually go: toward a vision of gracefully balanced worldliness - toward the Enlightenment, if you will. Thus she framed the central drama of the opera as a play-within-a-play, put on by rustic villagers amid the ruins of a heroic past. Several reviewers didn't seem to get the point of this, but I have to admit, they had half a point themselves - Mozart puts this idea over just fine all by himself. Still, a few of Groag's interpolations struck me as truly inspired - having Neptune speak from the mouth of a pauper, for instance, summed up with beautiful economy a central tenet of Mozart's art: that the divine spark is in all of us. And at any rate it was wonderful to perceive in the direction an awareness of Mozart's larger political and dramatic meaning; would more local productions had this one's level of intellectual ambition. After all, Mozart (with his great librettist, Da Ponte) went further than Shakespeare ever did in transposing, and adjusting, our idea of nobility to the dimensions of actual humanity. This is the message of his life itself - that of a bourgeois genius who had to endure being literally kicked in the ass by various vacuous nobles - and you can feel its democratizing pressure in embryo, as it were, in Idomeneo.

But it must also be said that much of the power of this version derived from its physical production, including a truly stunning set by John Conklin (via a Glimmerglass production of, yes, Iphigenia), beautifully coordinated costumes by Constance Hoffmann, and even more evocative lighting by Robert Wierzel. I must say that after seeing his work here - and after last year's Rusalka - I'd have to rate Mr. Wierzel among the greatest lighting designers alive; his effects in Idomeneo seemed to literally radiate from the ancient columns of the set itself. Like much of this production, their luminous beauty lingered in the memory.

From the ridiculous to the sublime

Tragedy meets comedy in Ariadne auf Naxos. Photos by Jeffrey Dunn.

I wasn't surprised that Boston Lyric Opera's production of Richard Strauss's Ariadne auf Naxos (which you still have a little time to catch) turned out to be one of the best operatic productions of the season. But I was surprised (a bit) as to the reason why.

I had expected this version (imported from the Welsh National Opera) to be remarkable in its witty physical comedy, after visits to rehearsals and chats with its director; instead - and probably most opera lovers will be glad to hear this - it was carried by some truly sublime singing. Boston Lyric is becoming known for assembling strong ensembles (rather than showcases for star turns), as evidenced by last year's Don Giovanni and this winter's Turn of the Screw. I'm happy to report that Ariadne auf Naxos belongs in that august company - indeed, it may boast the strongest cast of the three. The Strauss score features four notoriously difficult parts - the Composer (a pants role), Ariadne, Zerbinetta and Bacchus, and it's common for one or another of these (usually Bacchus) to prove second-class. But in Edyta Kulczak (Composer), Marjorie Owens (Ariadne), Rachele Gilmore (Zerbinetta) and Brandon Jovanovich (Bacchus), BLO put together a quartet of powerhouses. This production will be remembered most of all as a night of glorious singing.

Indeed, if this Ariadne foundered slightly early on, it did so because of its stagecraft. Which is ironic, since the opera is so much about theatrical conventions and inside jokes. The famous set-up is that "the richest man in Vienna" has commissioned two works - a tragic opera (titled, of course, "Ariadne auf Naxos") and a baggy-pants comedy (performed by a visiting commedia troupe) - for the entertainment after a huge banquet. The trouble is that both pieces have to be finished by nine o'clock, when the fireworks are set to start. But the banquet drags, time runs short, and it's suddenly announced that the tragedy and the comedy will have to be performed simultaneously. You can guess what happens next.

This opening "prologue" (as it's called) depends theatrically on a sense of growing chaos as time ticks remorselessly away - and the theatrical side of things is important, because much of this sequence is recitative rather than aria. But in this version, things seemed far too calm backstage, with hardly enough frenzied rushing hither and yon (often you see both the banquet and the fireworks roll by), and little sense of an impending artistic car-crash. Oddly enough, the bemused tone of the proceedings was just about right, and mezzo Edyta Kulczak gave an impassioned reading of the Composer's dismay at what was about to happen to his/her beloved score. But the success of this kind of thing is, as they say, all in the timing, and the actor-singers just weren't clicking like a well-oiled machine. There were a few timing problems in the pit as well, where Strauss's subtle, shifting sense of ensemble seemed to fray at times under the baton of conductor Erik Nielsen (horns, that means you).

But Nielsen pulled his crew together once the "opera within an opera" began, and most of Ariadne's music (and particularly her transfiguring finale) sounded superb. Everything else about the production grew more original and intriguing, too. The tattered set (beset, despite its artificiality, by actual winds) was surprisingly evocative, and the sophisticated lighting, by Tim Mitchell, seemed to literally glow from the stage itself. As Ariadne, Marjorie Owens deployed a formidably Wagnerian soprano, but gave it haunting touches of mournful delicacy as she wept in her abandonment on her famous rock, and she nailed her diva-esque tantrums once the harlequins showed up, too. Her girl-group back-up (of Naiad, Dryad and Echo) likewise hit just the right tenderly droll notes. The commedia troupe proved not quite as rowdy as I might have liked, but this was forgotten once Rachele Gilmore launched into Zerbinetta's famous aria, a killer piece of coloratura in which the soprano explains that to get over one guy, you simply have to find another (as she has herself, over and over). It would be hard to think of a better Zerbinetta than Gilmore, with her ripe, lightly sensuous presence, and her deliciously pure and agile voice, and this set-piece almost couldn't have been more delightful.


The finale of Ariadne auf Naxos.

The big surprise of the evening, however, came with the arrival of Bacchus; from his opening bars, tenor Brandon Jovanovich let it be known that he had not only the range to hit the pitches (which climb into the stratosphere) but also the power to blow out the back wall, too, and his final duets with Owens felt like the promised series of (at least vocal) fireworks (Owens just won the Grand Finals of the Met auditions, and Jovanovich is off to the Met as well, along with Chicago and San Francisco, so this may be your last chance to hear these performers here in Mudville). Not that the final moments of Ariadne turned into a series of vocal guantlets; quite the contrary, in fact. If anything, the mood of the piece deepened just as it should, and with a little help from a truly inspired lighting effect from Tim Mitchell (which pulled together both those impending fireworks and Bacchus's invocation of the eternal stars), the final moments achieved something like transcendence. Out of a lifetime of theatre- and opera-going, this Ariadne's closing tableau will stick with me as one of the great stage images I've ever seen. If you catch the last performance, I'm sure you'll agree.