Reviews 2018
Reviews 2018
✭✭✭✭✩
by Gaetano Donizetti, directed by Stephen Lawless
Canadian Opera Company, Four Seasons Centre, Toronto
April 28, May 3, 5, 8, 11, 16, 20, 24 & 26, 2018
Smeton: “Bella è la tua mestizia“
At the curtain call for Anna Bolena, Sondra Radvanovsky received one of the loudest and longest ovations this reviewer has ever heard. She had given an absolutely tremendous performance in the title role and the crowd roared its thunderous acclaim. It is a performance no opera-lover should miss.
Radvanovsky has a glorious voice capable of myriad colours over which she has complete mastery. Her technique is impeccable from exquisite pianissimi to spectacular passagework to fully secure top notes. Yet, what makes Radvanovsky stand apart is that she is also a consummate actor, fully immersed in her role, who uses her command of technique completely in the service of detailing her character’s thoughts from moment to moment. With Radvanovsky all the vocal pyrotechnics so associated with bel canto opera do not become bravura showcases for the voice in themselves as much as expressions of the heightened emotions of her character. So it is in Anna Bolena, where Radvanovsky beautifully charts Anna’s journey from fear to rage to acceptance of death.
The libretto for the 1830 opera by Felice Romani is based on two Italian plays rather than on history. Nevertheless, director Stephen Lawless gives us a quick historical background by means of a dumbshow with surtitles during the overture. Henry VIII comes to the throne in 1509 and marries Catherine of Aragon. When he tires of her and lusts after Anne Boleyn, he has his marriage annulled, incurring the wrath of the Pope and his excommunication. He marries Anne in 1533, and Anne bears him a daughter, Elisabeth, but not the son he desires as heir. Soon enough his eye has been attracted by her lady-in-waiting Jane Seymour and he seeks a way to discredit Anne.
In reality, Henry Percy, 6th Earl of Northumberland, had been engaged but never married to Anne Boleyn and was never exiled. Confessions of Anne’s adultery were obtained by torturing her musician Smeaton and questioning another serving-man, but Percy, far from being arrested, was actually one of Anne’s judges. There were claims that Anne had committed incest with her own brother George Boleyn, 2nd Viscount of Rochford. In 1536 four accused men and Anne were executed. Percy died the following year. Clearly, the opera’s plot, tying Anna’s former lover into Enrico’s schemes, makes for a tidier story.
The production of the current Anna Bolena is that created by Stephen Lawless for Dallas Opera’s staging of Donizetti’s so-called “Tudor Trilogy”, made up of Maria Stuarda (1835), Roberto Devereux (1837) and Anna Bolena (1830). Lawless locates the action of all three operas in Benoit Durgardyn’s three-storey wooden semicircle reminiscent of the interior of Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre. In Anna Bolena, Lawless makes much, largely unnecessary, use of moving the eight hinged walls on either side of the central entrance to suggest the various locations in the opera. As with the two previous instalments of the trilogy, Lawless’s direction is generally unobtrusive but does occasionally include distracting details. When Enrico VIII goes hunting, Lawless has him watch two shirtless men wearing stag’s skulls and antlers wrestle before him. When Anna sings her famous aria “Al dolce guidami castel natio”, Lawless decided to have it snow only on Anna and the square dais where she is standing. His best idea is to show Anna with her daughter Elisabetta, who will go on to be Queen Elizabeth I of England, and is a central character in the other two operas of the “trilogy”.
A performance of such magnificence as Radvanovsky’s naturally casts those of her fellow performers somewhat in the shade. All three of the other principals equal Radvanovsky in lung-power and volume but are given to a generic style of acting in stark contrast to the natural, highly detailed acting of Radvanovsky.
As Giovanna Seymour, Keri Alkema possesses a strong, bright mezzo-soprano married to a rapid vibrato that seemed out of control on opening night until somehow she reined it in by Act 2. She never, however, overcame a tendency to swallow her consonants so that her diction was never as clear as Radvanovsky’s. The highpoint of Alkema’s performance is her final scene with Enrico VIII culminating in a passionate account of “Ah! pensate che rivolti”.
As Lord Percy, Bruce Sledge unleashes his powerful, muscular tenor nearly always singing forte throughout Act 1. Only in Percy’s prison scene with Lord Rochefort in Act 2, does his forcefulness relent and he allows us to hear that his voice still possesses beauty of tone.
Christian Van Horn as Enrico VIII wields an immense but agile bass-baritone produced with seeming effortlessness. Luckily, costume designer Ingeborg Bernerth allows the towering Van Horn to act the role unpadded and to dominate every scene physically through his voice and height rather than his girth.
Allyson McHardy is very sympathetic in the trousers role of the young Smeton. Her creamy mezzo-soprano is a constant delight, especially in her most extensive scene “Tutto è deserto” when Smeton attempts to sneak into Anna’s bed chamber to return the locket he stole.
Thomas Goerz is a noble Lord Rochefort whose sonorous bass-baritone provided a fine counterpart to Sledge’s tenor in the prison scene. Both McHardy and Goerz acted with a greater degree of detail and intensity than Radvanovsky’s colleagues in larger roles.
Corrado Rovaris, who conducted Roberto Devereux with Radvanovsky here in 2014, returned to lead the COC Orchestra in a tremendously exciting account of the score. Both he and the orchestra seemed to relish the dark sonorities of Donizetti’s orchestral interlude In Act 2 before Anna’s mad scene “Piangete voi? donde tal pianto?” when she leaves prison to face execution.
Older Torontonians still remember the last time the COC staged Anna Bolena in 1984 when it centred on the thrilling performance of Dame Joan Sutherland in the title role. Sondra Radvanovsky’s performance will now join it as equally unforgettable.
©Christopher Hoile
Note: This review is a version of the review of Anna Bolena that will appear in Opera News later this year.
Photo: (from top) Sondra Radvanovsky as Anna Bolena; Keri Alkema as Giovanna Seymour and Sondra Radvanovsky as Anna Bolena; Bruce Sledge (kneeling) as Lord Percy, Christian Van Horn as Enrico VIII, Sondra Radvanovsky as Anna Bolena and Thomas Goerz (behind throne) as Lord Rochefort. ©2018 Michael Cooper.
For tickets, visit www.coc.ca.
2018-04-29
Anna Bolena