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by Gioacchino Rossini, directed by James Robinson

Canadian Opera Company, Hummingbird Centre, Toronto

January 22-February 3, 2002

"A Journey of Pure Delight"

Rossini's "Il Viaggio a Reims" ("The Journey to Rheims") is a huge musical feast.  For three hours you are served one exquisite confection after another so cleverly ordered that the palate never tires.  The opera may have only the bare bones of a plot, but the variety of Rossini's musical invention and of James Robinson's witty staging are so delicious you may not even notice.  The word on everyone's lips at intermission and afterwards was "fun" and that's just what this opera dishes out in abundance.

"Viaggio" is Rossini rarity only recently uncovered.  Rossini wrote it to celebrate the coronation of France's Charles X in 1825 with no intention that it would live beyond that specific occasion.  That's why he immediately mined it for music used in later operas, most notably "Le Comte Ory" (1828).  The work languished for almost 150 years until Janet L. Johnson and others assembled a performing edition in the 1970s leading to a revival at the Rossini Festival in Pesaro in 1984.  Claudio Abbado's recording, taped during the run, was Gramophone's recording of the Year in 1986 and brought the work to a larger audience.  "Viaggio" is now regarded as one of Rossini's masterpieces.  One reason why it is still seldom performed is that it requires a cast of 18 soloists, ten of whom have virtuoso bel canto arias, plus a chorus. 

The prime concern for librettist Luigi Balocchi was not plot but rather manufacturing situations to showcase the talents at the Théâtre Italien in Paris then headed by Rossini.  As a result he gives us a day in the life of Il Giglio d'Oro ("The Golden Lily"), a fictional spa in France, where aristocrats from all over Europe have been stranded on their way to Rheims for the coronation.  We see various struggles among the staff, difficulties between the staff and the guests and rivalries and love affairs in progress among the guests.  In many ways, Balocchi's avoidance of the typically complex plots of the day, not to mention the theme of waiting for something which never takes place, makes "Viaggio" feel more modern than many of Rossini's other operas.  The personalities of the 18 named singers are so vivid one can easily miss the fact, admirably elucidated by Janet L. Johnson in her programme note, that the action of the opera is also a clever allegory of international relations in 1825,.

Richard Bradshaw has assembled an excellent cast featuring a large number of young Canadian singers and several Eastern European singers making their COC débuts.  Among the women Russian soprano Elena Voznessenskaia (Madama Cortese, the Tyrolian-born owner of the spa) is a constant delight both as singer and actress.  Ukrainian coloratura Ekaterina Morosova (the Contessa di Folleville) is hilarious throughout as an egocentric, fashion-mad Frenchwoman.  Despite a tendency to go sharp on sustained high notes, her power, vivacity and great abilities as a comedienne are sure to make her name better known.  Hungarian mezzo Viktoria Vizin (the Polish Marchesa di Melibea) uses her velvety voice to give us a comic portrait of a seductive woman who enjoys playing off a doting Russian and Spaniard against each other.  Statuesque Henriette Bonde-Hansen (Corinna, a Roman poetess) is an expert actress and has a rich, clear soprano voice that makes the long, harp-accompanied ode to Charles X the most beautiful passage in the opera. 

Canadian tenor Michael Schade (the Russian Conte di Libenskof) outshines most of the other men in the detail of his acting and singing, making comically believable this aristocrat as obsessed with Melibea as with his hobbyhorse.  Former COC Ensemble member Michael Colvin (the French Cavaliere Belfiore) gives one of his best performances ever.  His comically overconfident pursuit of the poetess Corinna won him well-deserved bravos.  American bass-baritone Patrick Carfizzi (the German Barone di Trombonok) gives us a winning portrait of this genial, peace-loving major who loves his tuba above all else.  Present COC Ensemble member Olivier Laquerre (the Spanish Don Alvaro) is vocally confident but paints his character in broader strokes than the others.  In contrast, Armenian bass Ayk Martirossian (the English Lord Sidney), though powerful of voice, never bothers to create a character at all, maintaining a blankness of expression no matter what the situation.  Slovak bass Gustav Belácek (the Italian antiquarian Don Profondo) has an unusual timbre and captures his character's eccentricity but he certainly does not make as much of his big catalogue aria as Ruggero Raimondi does under Abbado. 

       

Standouts among the supporting roles include Alain Coulombe, hilarious as the Molièrean doctor Don Prudenzio, Sonya Goss as the demanding hotel housekeeper Maddalena, Gregory J. Dahl as Antonio the maître d'hôtel and Roger Honeywell in fine voice as Zeferino the courier.  The performance I attended was the only one where Sandra Horst replaced Richard Bradshaw at the podium.  Horst's tempi were always crisp and and her pacing precise.  Somehow it seemed appropriate to have a chorus master in charge of this opera where the competing individual voices must be kept in line for the frequent choral sections like the wonderful a capella "Ah! A tal colpo inaspettato" for 14 voices.

James Robinson's production (originally created for the New York City Opera) is the wittiest production of a comic opera the Hummingbird stage has seen since Stephen Wadsworth's "Xerxes" in 1999.  Robinson has made life as the Giglio d'Oro vivid by bringing out innumerable details implied by the historical and physical setting.  Complex actions are timed precisely to the music whether it is Don Prudenzia's examination of the guests' chamberpots in the morning, the duel between Libenskof and Don Alvaro first with toy ships then with toy soldiers or the setting out of the guests' trunks for Don Profondo's inventory.  He also requires the kind of detailed, individualized interaction of characters one seldom sees in plays much less in operas.  Allen Moyer's sets both conjure up the tiled rooms of the spa and are humorous in themselves, presenting us with a wall with nine numbered doors for each of the star guests/singers and painting the walls with admonitory Latin phrases like "Mens sana in corpore sano".  Anna R. Oliver's imaginative costumes carry us from the starched black-and-white of the staff uniforms and guests' dressing gowns at the beginning to the colourful national outfits the guests don at the conclusion.  Mimi Jordan Sherin's non-naturalistic lighting underscores the artifice of the work by changing abruptly as we move from number to number.  In one inventive move she has three spotlights wander off on their own after the singers finish the magnificent Sextet.

After the Contessa di Folleville has a fainting fit, the Barone di Trombonok observes "Ma ognun nel mondo ha un ramo di pazzia" ("But everyone in the world has a touch of madness").  This really could serve as the motto both for "Viaggio" in particular and for Rossini's opere buffe in general.  His driving rhythms and pyrotechnic vocal writing suggest a world where the energy of egocentric humanity is ever ready to go out of control.  In an excellent production such as this, the energy from stage and pit spills out and invigorates the audience.  This feast will leave you giddy with delight.

©Christopher Hoile

Note: This review is a Stage Door exclusive.

Photo: The cast the conclusion of Il Viaggio a Reims. ©2002 Michael Cooper.