Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, May 21, 1994 TAG: 9405230122
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: B-12 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: By SETH WILLIAMSON SPECIAL TO THE ROANOKE TIMES & WORLD-NEWS
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
It is a visually exciting, musically solid and funny show that would be a feather in the cap of cities whose opera companies have budgets five or 10 times the size of Opera Roanoke's. Thursday night's nearly sold-out premiere at Olin Hall at Roanoke College was the best opening night for this company since its smash version of Rossini's ``Barber of Seville'' in 1991.
In fact, this production has the strongest overall cast for any Opera Roanoke production in my memory. Up and down the line, from minor characters to stars, this ``Figaro'' has beautiful voices and engaging actors.
Especially the funny characters. Stage director Craig Fields assembled a sitcom-quality set of character actors for this show. There's Elizabeth Huling's blowsy Marcellina: loud, painted up and powdered up, sashaying around with her cigarette and itching for her wedding night with Figaro. There's her smarmy, aging boyfriend, Bartolo, sung by David Ward as a kind of operatic Mr. Drysdale (from ``The Beverly Hillbillies'').
And most of all, there's Dean Anthony as Basilio and Curzio! This guy stole every scene he was in, either as the sleazy music teacher Basilio, cigarette dangling from his mouth, or as the senile Curzio, stumbling about in training wheels for Alzheimer's disease with his baggy brown suit and foot-long George Burns cigar. Good singer, hilarious actor, audience favorite.
On the other hand, let's face it. Any Opera Roanoke production containing Beaumarchais's Figaro character will ever hereafter be haunted by the ghost of Nicholas Loren. The young New York baritone has been the only Opera Roanoke discovery who can easily be envisioned as a star at the Met, and Thursday night it was hard not to make invidious comparisons with his 1991 ``Barber.''
Bass-baritone Rod Nelman has a big trombone of a voice, but he lacks Loren's magnetic stage presence. He is a serviceable actor and a powerful singer, but his Figaro lacked the sly humor of Loren's unforgettable character.
By the way, is it my imagination or has Nelman's voice gotten bigger in the two years that have passed since his Leporello with Opera Roanoke? Nelman's instrument sounded huge Thursday night and ready for any big Verdian dramatic role he could choose.
Craig Fields' staging of Mozart in a rich Long Island mansion in 1930s America works. Yes, I did overhear a teen-ager during one intermission insisting to her mother that ``people didn't sing like that in the '30s.'' But you've gotta work with the show at least a little. Suspend disbelief long enough to imagine a Noel Coward farce in Italian, and the notion of Almaviva as a randy capitalist pig out to seduce his maid is no problem.
Brian Davis, tall and imperially slim, is Almaviva, dressed to the nines in smoking jacket and ascot or yachting outfit. Soprano Jean Braham is the neglected Mrs. Almaviva (the Countess in straight productions), whose lament ``Porgi, amor'' was very fine.
Mezzo Amy Johnson was the love-struck teen-age boy Cherubino, carrying a tennis racket and looking as if he just came from a Princeton eating club. Soprano Anna Vikre, a working-class Susanna with a tight permanent wave, turned in a gorgeous ``Deh vieni, non tardar'' in Act IV.
This ``Figaro'' is visually striking. Frank Ludwig's sets are lush, full of marble walls and Art Deco accents - even down to a sepia-tone portrait of Franklin Delano Roosevelt to establish the period. (Nagging question: Why would a presumably conservative capitalist like Almaviva allow a picture of FDR in his house?)
Costumes have sometimes been a weak point in Opera Roanoke productions. Not this time. Necia Evans must have watched a lot of '30s films, because she has the period down cold.
Another thing. One operagoer put it in a single word: ``tight.'' The cues, the stage business, and especially the big ensembles that end each act, were together. Victoria Bond's music direction and Craig Fields' tactical deployment on stage gelled Thursday night in a series of moments that balanced in that happy region between spontaneity and over-rehearsal.
Don't worry if you can't understand Italian. Paul Zweifel's supertitles, though they needed to be brighter, are funny and idiomatic. (Almaviva to Cherubino: ``I'm sending you to VMI - it's OK because you're not a girl.'')
One caveat: clocking in at not much less than four hours (with three lengthy intermissions), this is a long show. Younger kids with a TV attention span may find it interminable, but if you're ready for a solid night's entertainment for your ticket price, this one's for you.
``The Marriage of Figaro'' continues tonight, Monday night and Wednesday night at 7 p.m. Tickets are $25 and $12, with seats still available for all shows.
by CNB