Last night the War Memorial Opera House hosted the Merola Grand Finale concert marking the conclusion of this year’s Merola Summer Festival. 23 vocalists participated, each given at least one opportunity to perform, either as a soloist or in a group setting. In addition, the entire production was staged by another Merola Artist, Anna Theodosakis. The “pickup” orchestra was conducted by Steven White. As usual, the entire performance (including one intermission) ran for somewhat less than three hours.
Given the Merola emphasis on training, I fear that last night was more than a little disappointing. Overall balance turned out to be an ongoing problem. This may well have been due to the fact that most of the performers were ill-prepared for the challenge of singing in a large-scale opera house. More often than not, diction was not quite up to the occasion (this from my vantage point of only a few rows away from the stage); and the configuration of flats on the stage did no favors to issues of balance. As a result, whether the dramatic setting was tragic or comic, the performances never rose to the level of being particularly compelling.
Hanna Cho’s performance of Richard Strauss’ “Der Rosenband” (courtesy of Merola Opera Program)
That overall difficulty was further stressed by the one successful offering on the program. Soprano Hannah Cho delivered a thoroughly engaging account of “Das Rosenband” (the garland of roses), a setting of a poem by Friedrich Gottlieb Klopstock by Richard Strauss as the first in his four Opus 36 songs for high voice and piano, which he subsequently orchestrated. Cho’s body comportment was sufficient to convey the semantics behind Klopstock’s text in her reflection on Strauss’ expressiveness. With her direct delivery from the stage and her razor-sharp diction, this was a performance that soared above the dramatic superficialities of the plethora of opera episodes.
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