My Second Encounter with Leonardo Vinci

Last night the ODC Theater provided me with my second encounter with the music of Leonardo Vinci. As might be expected, the first line on his Wikipedia page is “Not to be confused with Leonardo da Vinci.” As opposed to the quintessential Renaissance man, this Vinci composed roughly 40 operas during the early eighteenth century. However, my first encounter with Vinci was a cello concerto performed by American Bach Soloists featuring cellist Gretchen Claassen, who had received the 2015 Jeffrey Thomas Award.

Over half a decade later, Ars Minerva has provided the opportunity to experience one of Vinci’s many operas. This year’s production was the “modern world premiere” of the three-act opera Astianatte, which had first been performed in Naples in 1725. As I had observed in my preview piece for this production, the title is the Italian version of Astyanax, who was the son of Hector, the crown prince of Troy, and his wife, Princess Andromache. Astyanax was put to death by the Greek victors of the Trojan War, an episode best known from the play The Trojan Women by Euripides.

Vinci’s opera is about as distant from Greek tragedy as one could possibly imagine. The libretto is far too convoluted to summarize, but it may best be described as the turf bargaining that would have taken place during that same setting that Euripides chose for his play. Astianatte (silent role taken by Anthony Polakoff) is one of the bargaining chips; but he is a secondary character who is still alive at the end of the opera. The primary bargainers include his mother Andromaca (contralto Jasmine Johnson), Pirro (mezzo Deborah Martinez Rosengaus), King of Epirus and ally of the Greeks, Ermione (soprano Aura Veruni), daughter of Helen of Troy, engaged to Pirro, and Oreste (mezzo Nikola Printz), son of Agamemnon and Ermione’s cousin.

Note that all of the vocalists are women. As had been the case in past Ars Minerva productions, cross-dressing plays a key role in character identification and development. Indeed, in this staging by Founder and Executive Artistic Director Céline Ricci, the very action of changing clothes becomes a major dramatic device to provide settings for aria performances. The visual result is as dazzling as it is provocative, and it stands a good chance of being far more memorable than the original production in eighteenth-century Naples. Personally, I had to confess that it did not take me long to put aside my program book and efforts to identify who was who. This was a production of in-the-moment experiences. When strung together, all those many moments made for one hell of a wild ride.

If I am not mistaken, the production also involved the largest number of instrumental resources I have yet encountered in an Ars Minerva performance. This was particularly evident with the use of four first violins and three seconds. All other instrumental parts were solos, along with a pair of trumpets that were, sadly, ill-prepared. Matthew Dirst conducted from his harpsichord, from which he also provided continuo. It is also worth noting that the cellist was Claassen, who may well have been the one member of the production with past experience of Vinci’s music!