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OPERA REVIEW
August 15, 2005
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By Michael Zwiebach
City Concert Opera
Orchestra is a
three-year-old group
which splits its time
between performances of
rarely heard 18th-century
and 20th-century opera.
It was founded and is led
by Thomas Busse, a recent
Berkeley graduate and
student of Jonathan
Khuner and David Milnes
in conducting. On Monday
night the group gave its
first Berkeley concert,
an enjoyable traversal of
Christoph Gluck's 1765
serenata Il parnasso
confuso (Parnassus
Confused) at St. Mark's
Episcopal Church. Busse,
a personable and
well-educated man,
displayed equally refined
musicianship in leading
the performance, and his
soloists gave a winning
account of an
unexpectedly challenging
score.
Gluck's serenata was an
occasional piece for the
wedding of Joseph,
Archduke of Austria and
King of the Romans (later
the emperor during
Mozart's years in
Vienna). It's a short,
festal work to a libretto
by the imperial court
poet, Metastasio, the
most famous opera
seria librettist of
the century. But the
serenata genre, though
cast in the prevailing
opera seria style,
is a dialogue, not a
drama. Il parnasso
confuso finds several
of the Classical muses in
a tizzy over how best to
commemorate Joseph's
wedding, their mildly
comic confusion moderated
by Apollo, leader of the
muses.
The conservative style of
the genre doesn't play to
Gluck's greatest
strength, the creation of
highly dramatic scenes;
but he was a composer of
many qualities, as the
music for this work
shows. The musical style
is galant as much as it
is Italianate, which is
not surprising given the
court's Francophilic
taste during this period.
The arias are nicely
contrasted and vivacious,
sometimes charming, as
they trip along over
dance rhythms. One of
them, "Di questa cetra
in seno" (With this
lyre, in a breast full of
sweetness) is strikingly
lovely, and Busse
repeated it as an encore.
Although it was first performed by the Empress Maria Teresa's daughters, the score features some demanding vocal writing, particularly in Apollo's first aria. Mitzie Kay Weiner plunged into the coloratura forcefully and managed the runs with a rich vibrato, although a lighter voice would perhaps have sounded more graceful and Olympian. Still, Weiner sang a controlled long line, showing impressive breath control in both her arias. As Erato, the muse who sings "Di questa cetra," Elspeth Franks gave another sterling performance, her vibrant tone matched by superb legato. She obviously enjoyed the give and take with the other characters. Rita Lilly, as Euterpe, muse of music, was equally stellar, her vocal quality pure and light but with plenty of color (and not at all boyish, like some early-music sopranos). Carole Schaffer, as Melpomene, muse of dramatic poetry, completed the quartet. She displayed a generous voice apt for the stormy music (with accompanying horns) of her first aria, on the tempest-tossed-boat simile so essential to opera seria. Here, of course, the simile aria is presented with a slightly arched brow, a facet that Ms. Schaffer also underlined in her second aria in which the muse (briefly) swears off writing poetry. If you find your scorecard getting full with the Bay Area's proliferating early-music groups, don't bother cudgeling your brains too much: the CCOO, like many other groups, drew its players for this concert largely from the Philharmonia Baroque and American Bach Soloists. Familiarity with the style and with each other is probably one reason that they played the score with such ease and polish. Aside from a couple of slightly loose down-bows in the overture and the first aria, the orchestra was perfect. In the live acoustic of St. Mark's, the horns were bound to be a little overweighted, but the balances were generally excellent. Gilbert Martinez and Scott Shubeck gave nuanced support in the recitatives, and Carol Panofsky contributed a beautiful oboe solo in Euterpe's aria. As for Mr. Busse, he showed a solid conducting technique, seemed to respond to what he heard, and controlled the performance without overt histrionics. More to the point, he is an industrious entrepreneur, an essential quality in any young conductor. You have to admire his ambition and confidence, which should serve him well in the future.
(Michael Zwiebach holds a
Ph.D. in music history
from U.C. Berkeley and
lectures on music history
at the San Francisco
Conservatory of Music.)
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Mitzie Weiner
Elspeth Franks
Tom Busse
