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OPERA REVIEW
March 6, 2005
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By James Keolker
Our greater Bay Area continues to be culturally enriched by a number of small opera companies: Festival Opera, Opera San José, Livermore Opera, West Bay Opera, Cinnebar Opera, and North Bay Opera are a few that come to mind. Yet it is their choice of material that is the key to their success, considering that much of bel canto, Verdi, Wagner, and even most of Puccini are beyond their stylistic, vocal, and budgetary resources. That is what made North Bay Opera's recent production of Gian-Carlo Menotti's The Consul in Fairfield such a success, for Menotti's edgy score and plaintive characters can make for easy mastery.
Menotti wrote his opera in 1950 during the bitter division of East and West Germany, the Berlin blockade, the newly formed People's Republic of China, the communist siege of Czechoslovakia, and apartheid in South Africa. The result of these events was a surge of emigration into neighboring countries. The only legal way out for most people was through their local Consul, however, and their cries for freedom were often strangled by bureaucratic red tape. Menotti's opera about the distinegration of an entire family while awaiting their visas was most timely.
Now over fifty years later, with the rise of terrorism and the shifting politics of the Middle East, emigration is once again in the public consciousness. And certainly the villainy of a faceless bureaucracy not helping people in their time of need has not changed.
Lisa Marie Bolin (Anna) Paula Goodman Wilder (Foreign Woman) Soprano Jillian Khuner was featured as the victimized Magda Sorel, a woman who loses her child, her mother, her husband, and in the end, her life while waiting to see the elusive Consul. Miss Khuner softened her voice in the opera's happier opening scenes, then gave it dramatic intensity for her centerpiece aria, “To this we've come...” while at the crowded Consulate, and then dulled and flattened it for her tragic finale. It was a most effective musical characterization. Magda's nemesis is the chief of the secret police, whose ominous appearances Menotti punctuated with a brass theme much in the manner of Scarpia in Puccini's Tosca. John P. Minágro was suitably menacing, his bass resonant, his manner sensuous, his stalking sexual. To balance this was the watchful Mother of Valentina Osinski. A tall, youthful performer, Miss Osinski darkened her soprano and bent herself with an arthritic walk. Her lullaby to her infant grandchild, “I shall find shells and stars...” was lovingly sung. And she was most moving in the trio, “Now, O lips, say goodbye.” The officious secretary to the ever-busy Consul was sung by Jennifer Palmer Boesing. A fine singing actress, she added a number of details to her character's constant shuffling and filing of papers, singing in mock-sprightly tones while looking severely administrative in her dark suit and sensible shoes. The soprano also showed the secretary's hidden side in her plaintive aria, “All those faces!” We come to realize she has been made a victim, too.
Baritone Todd Donovan sang an intense John Sorel, the man hunted for his politics. Among those kept waiting for their elusive visas were baritone Martin Bell as Mr. Kofner, a kindly fellow who translates for an aged Italian woman, poignantly sung by soprano Paula Goodman Wilder. Sopranos Raeeka Shehabi-Yaghmai and Lisa Marie Bolin individualized their impatient characters, one desperate, the other haughty. And baritone Axel Van Chee was the gruff and frightened point man, Assan. Tenor Ross Halper gave the long-suffering Magadoff-the-magician a jaunty, comic air and sang his patter song like an aging Dr. Dulcamara. Mr. Halper also served as stage director, and it is to his credit this Consul was given the requisite gritty style that such a verismo piece requires. He wisely cut Magda's nightmare scene in Act Two but left in the ghostly visitations in Act Three, musically interesting but dramatically flat before Magda's searing finale. Ken Rowland designed the alternating settings of an apartment and a Consulate waiting room in an indeterminate country, lit by John Deards. And while the opera was sung in English, the text was also projected above the stage, an excellent idea when Menotti's poetic words come so quickly. (His text won the New York Drama Critics' Award for best musical play and his music won the Pulitzer Prize in 1950.) John Kendall Bailey conducted this score of agitated strings, pronounced brass, chordal piano, and harp accents with verve and intensity. However, he frequently let his orchestra overplay, forcing the cast to oversing, unfortunate in such a small theatre. Menotti's orchestral interludes were well played. The prolonged applause Sunday indicated that North Bay had chosen and produced its opera well.
(Dr. James Keolker is a frequent lecturer on opera, and is the author of Last Acts, the Operas of Puccini and His Italian Contemporaries, available on Amazon.com.)
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John P. Minagro
Jillian Khuner (Magda)