Girl meets boy. Instant attraction. Problems include disapproval from family, unforeseen complications, unhappiness of lovers. It’s a classic theater format that hasn’t changed in centuries, and the frothy romp that is Donizetti’s opera The Daughter of the Regiment is no exception.
Daughter is evidence that enjoyment of absurd humor hasn’t changed in 173 years. Seattle Opera’s production has been moved forward a century from the original, but it works just as well in wartime Europe.
At McCaw Hall, the young lovers, Tonio and Marie, are almost like Seattle Opera’s children. Tenor Lawrence Brownlee and soprano Sarah Coburn are both products of Seattle Opera Young Artists program, as is alternate cast tenor Andrew Stenson. While Brownlee was here at the program’s start, the other two are recent graduates. Brownlee is now in international demand, and judging by their recent performances, both Coburn and Stenson are heading that way also.
Making it even more familial, tenor Peter Kazaras, who has been artistic director of the Young Artists program and overseeing their development, is one of the senior generation of performers in this production.
Frothy it may be, but Daughter’s bel canto demands on the singers are considerable. Brownlee and Stenson had no problem with the vocal acrobatics, including the famous nine high Cs in their first aria, nor the emotion needed in their second. Coburn is singing all seven performances, on stage and singing continually, also with very high notes and runs all over the range. Her voice is just right for this, sounding fresh, young and agile. Even better, she looks the part, appearing no more than eighteen, slender and very pretty.
The story, briefly, has an abandoned infant, Marie, raised by an entire regiment of soldiers, all of whom she regards as her fathers. Typically of dads, they watch over her jealously. They disapprove of her young man, until he joins the regiment. Meanwhile, wartime has brought an elderly Marquise in contact with the soldiers, and she discovers Marie is her long lost niece. Niece goes regretfully with aunt to learn to be a lady, and aunt tries to marry her off to an even more aristocratic title. The soldiers arrive in the nick of time to rescue her.
The Marquise is a superbly comic role, marvelously inhabited here by veteran mezzo-soprano Joyce Castle. And equally comic is Kazaras in drag as the Duchess of Krackenthorp, the lady with a marriageable son. Considerably taller, thanks to heels and headdress, and twice the width of all the other ladies on stage, the Duchess dominates the scenery singing his/her own choice, a drunken Offenbach aria, accompanied by Castle at the piano.
However, the opera would be less successful were the other singers not up to the level of the principals. Baritone Alexander Hajek makes an excellent Seattle Opera debut as Sergeant Sulpice, perhaps the first of father to Marie and later confidant of the Marquise, while Karl Marx Reyes as her servant and Stephen Fish as a Corporal do well in their roles as does the strong chorus.
The acting is equally important in Daughter, and stage director Emilio Sagi has left no detail neglected to keep the emotions real and the laughs coming. There are several arias which are tearjerkers from Tonio and Marie, sung heartfelt by both tenors and Coburn, and many details on the funny side add immeasurably to the ambience, notably the Marquise’s houseboy, not to mention the maid.
Julio Galan’s design of the opera works seamlessly, with the sets, one a cellar bar in a wartime village, the other a gracious salon in the Marquise’s chateau, the date, about 1943, and costumes to match, plus Connie Yun’s lighting.
The whole production is a charmer, and runs until Novemeber 2.
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Mezzo-soprano Joyce Castle’s long career has, so far, spanned 43 years, and the opera star is not slowing down any time soon. She is here this month to sing the Marquise in Donizetti’s La Fille du Regiment, (The Daughter of the Regiment) presented by Seattle Opera October 19-November 2. It’s a lighthearted romp with the composer’s trademark enchanting music which, however, requires very talented singers.
Many mezzo roles are character roles, and this is no exception. “The Marquise is a lovely role,” says Castle. “She’s a very exaggerated person, happy and with a high opinion of herself. She’s of noble birth, but she has a secret, and therefore she has problems. She’s in a predicament, but she comes out of it all right.” Much of the operatic comedy revolves around the Marquise’s efforts to make her long-lost niece into a lady. “There’s a singing lesson where I try to teach her how to sing, and I play the piano for it.” Castle plays it herself, too — no faking.
She says she first sang in public at age three, in church with her mother accompanying. She was bitten already by music. She began piano at age six and has continued both ever since. She studied theater and voice at the University of Kansas, and sang some opera there; “small roles, because my voice wasn’t ready to go.”
She was drawn to opera as the most challenging option for a singer. “It asks the most, and there is so much unbelievably beautiful music in the opera world. My life is music.”
This has been the thread which impels her and always has.
Castle has spent much of her career singing 20th century opera, plus late 19th century ones like Wagner, but she has also sung earlier works and those in a lighter vein, from previous performances of Fille, to some Mozart, Rossini’s La Cenerentola among others, and even some Monteverdi, plus some Gilbert & Sullivan. Much of it has been comedy. “Comic roles are often for mezzos,” she says. “Composers think mezzos and basses are older. I’m everybody’s grandmother, mother, aunt, not to mention prioress (In Dialogue of the Carmelites); even a man (Count Orlofsky in Johann Strauss’ Die Fledermaus).”
At least ten of those roles have been here in Seattle, most recently Marcellina in Mozart’s The Marriage of Figaro. And quite a few have had long-time Seattle opera favorite Peter Kazaras also in the cast, as does Fille, where he is performing as the Duchess.
“I’ve never had a Duchess in drag, I think it’s a wild idea,” says Castle. “Peter is a wonder, and I’m thrilled to be receiving him in my chateau. I think his entrance will be memorable, and we are going to have fun when he walks in.” Frequently working with a colleague in different productions is a good thing, she considers. “We trust each other.”
Despite her years, Castle has no problem memorizing scores. “I think if I stopped and then started again, it might be different, but because I’ve been continually working and also teaching, hopefully it keeps you very sharp. Even if it’s years since you sang a role it comes back very quickly. It’s in your DNA.”
She has kept her voice in good shape by singing in the bel canto style, which requires considerable vocal agility, clean sound and exact pitch, in her studio when she practices, and singing such composers there as Handel. The other part of keeping her voice in good shape she attributes to good health. She’s never had a catastrophic illness, bar a hip replacement, so she’s never had to stop.
“It all depends how much you love the music. And I love to sing.”
Castle sang for 25 years with City Opera of New York, where she performed in over 200 performances in 21 roles. Castle said it was sad to see it die, and she opined it has not been run well for a while, including the bad idea to leave Lincoln Center
However, here she is in Seattle. And, she says, “I love Seattle Opera.”
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Angela Davis-Gardner and Peter Kazaras in Seattle Opera's rehearsal studio
Last week, I had the privilege of interviewing Peter Kazaras, director of Seattle Opera’s Madama Butterfly (sold out opening & Key Arena simulcast tonight), and Angela Davis-Gardner, author of the book Butterfly’s Child. Or rather, I had the privilege of sitting in as they interviewed each other. Sometimes, as Kazaras says, you have to know when to get out of the way!
Peter Kazaras is both a singer–he’s a tenor–and a director, both the Director of Opera at UCLA and the Artistic Director of Seattle Opera’s Young Artist Program. Angela Davis-Gardner is the author of four books, and is quite knowledgeable about Japan, having taught there at the beginning of her own career. Butterfly’s Child is her second book set in Japan, and, as you may have surmised, is a continuation of the opera. It’s a study of familial relationships (for instance, what’s it like to raise the kid your husband had with another lady?), and is a well-told and richly imagined story in its own right. It’s a book well worth seeking out, especially if you enjoy the opera.
Kazaras and Davis-Gardner, who had previously never met, got on famously. That’s why they ended up playing the opera version of “Shoot, Screw, or Marry.”
PK: The book [Butterfly’s Child] just came out this year, right? ADG: It came out a year ago, 2011. PK: Is this the first production of Madama Butterfly that you’ve been involved with? ADG: Yes. I’ve listened to Butterfly over and over and over again since I was a teenager, and I listened all the time I was working, very intensely, to different productions, but yes, this is the first one. PK: We’re doing a production that we first did in 1995, but we’re doing our own thing with it–it is extremely spare. That’s its real strength, there aren’t a lot of bells and whistles. It’s about what the characters are doing, and I have to say, in my typical persistent, patient style–all the things I was not as a performer but you have to be as a director, you know–we’re really working with them on moment-to-moment-to-moment. What has he really said here, what has she really said here, why are you reacting that way? Not to say that doesn’t happen in other productions, but when that’s all you’ve got going on, you really want to make sure that stuff is clean.
ADG: And the spareness allows more of that to come through. Also it feels very Japanese, and contemporary. PK: That’s right. I wanted to complement you on one thing about the book. A lot of people have said, “Oh, it’s like a page-turner,” and I have to say I found it exactly the opposite. I made it take me a long time, because I found it sort of like a picaresque novel– ADG: Yes, it is–- PK: And it’s Dickensian-– ADG: Thank you! PK: I mean, I wouldn’t dream of speed-reading Bleak House, and with this, it wasn’t like I had to finish it all in one night. I made it last a good long time. ADG: I’m so glad, that’s a great compliment. And that you thought it was Dickensian is great. PK: Well, it came from the era. ADG: Yes. And that was one sort of novel I read so much when I was young, and it was sort of an instinctive feeling to write that kind of book.
PK: Do you know the game shoot, screw, or marry? ADG: No, I don’t. PK: You have to be careful in how you describe this to someone…There are many metaphysical implications of this game. For instance, well, name three classic male movie stars. ADG: Jack Nicholson, Paul Newman, and Clint Eastwood. PK: Okay, shoot, screw, or marry? Which one do you shoot because you don’t need him? Which one do you want to have a passionate affair with-– ADG: Oh, Nicholson. I’ll s-sh-– PK: Shoot. ADG: Well–hmm… PK: Oh, there you go! Do you really want to wake up every morning with that next to you? That’s the thing! ADG: All right, I guess I’d shoot him. PK: You know you’d screw Clint Eastwood and marry Paul Newman. You had to marry Paul Newman! All right, so you then could say, okay, Wagner, Verdi, Puccini–very interesting. ADG: Right. What do you say? PK: I don’t know, that’s a hard one for me. ADG: You love Wagner–you’re about to do The Ring. PK: Yes, I know, but the thing is–in terms of personality? Shoot Wagner. Without question! Puccini, affair; marry Verdi. ADG: Me too! PK: Because he was a great guy. And Puccini was sort of tormented, but darkly sexy…So. If I were playing shoot, screw, or marry with the big three Puccini operas, there’s no doubt in my mind that I would shoot Tosca, because–give me a break. On the other hand, [La] Bohème is a part of one’s life because it is just in one’s DNA, it is perfect, it is great, and you have to live with it. But man, do I want to screw Butterfly.
PK:…I just have to say, you are also Dickensian in the way that you allow for the possibility of redemption [in the book]. ADG: That was really important to me. When I got to the point in the story where I realized that the opera is sweeping the country in 1906, 1907– PK: Brilliant! ADG: I thought, well, what am I going to do? It was a real problem for me as a novelist. Here are these Pinkertons, walking around, and surely someone would go to the opera and say, “Hey!” PK: So was that based on the actual Chicago premiere? ADG: It was. I found out when the actual premiere was at the Met, and then it swept the country– PK: So when was the first production at the Met? ADG: 1906, with Geraldine Farrar. PK: And [Enrico] Caruso. ADG: Right. So I got [to this point], and I thought, “My novel is either over, or I’ve got to incorporate this.” So that was the hardest part of the novel–what to do? PK: Brilliant. And it also gave you a great reason to get them out of where they were. ADG: Get them out, and also give Pinkerton a chance for redemption. And that was my favorite scene to write, with him at the opera, seeing the opera. PK: Fantastic. It was great. Brilliant scene. ADG: I’m so glad you liked it. Thank you. PK: How did you get the big idea? ADG: There was a performance of Madama Butterfly at North Carolina Opera, and I went with a friend of mine who also loves opera. She turned and said to me, “I wonder what happened to Butterfly’s child?” And I thought, “Oh my God, that’s my next book.” I had just finished a book set in Japan, I know the culture quite well, and it just fascinated me: the quest, the complications of the family. The first problem I had to solve was, what were Kate’s motivations? And Pinkerton’s? And how would it be to live in a family with your husband’s mistress’s son? As a novelist, my main interest is relationships between people, and in families particularly. And also, I was very interested in the opera: the genesis of it, and the story, and how I might tweak it a bit.
PK: You really did try to make all the details of this as accurate as possible, it seems. What sorts of research did you do? ADG: In Nagasaki, I talked to a man who’s written a history of Butterfly, and what’s accurate and what’s not. Of course I did a lot of research about the genesis of the opera. I had a Japan Foundation research grant to go there, and my former students guided me around and interpreted. They arranged a geisha party, where I was the guest of honor. Now, this is quite unheard of, for a woman to be the guest of honor at a geisha party. One of the geishas spoke fluent English, and I was able to ask her any question at all about geisha life. PK: This is not a Japanese production, but it’s very important to me, in terms of the way some of the music is composed, that there is a movement vocabulary that needs to be observed. A certain serenity and joy that you need to start with. But I’m wondering, did you ever have the moment where you asked a question and a room full of people suddenly turned away from you [as happens in Act I of Butterfly]? ADG: Yes. PK: Oh my goodness! ADG: Yes, well, the first question I asked like that was to my students–I went to Japan loving the opera, and we were sitting around one day, and I thought, “Well, this will be a good question,” and I said, “Have you seen the opera Madama Butterfly? What do you think of it?” One of them later said, “We don’t like that opera.” They love the music, but hate the story. PK: Do they hate the story because of cultural inaccuracies? ADG: I think it has to do with the power between Japan and America, for one thing– PK: Especially in Nagasaki. ADG: And our history. That’s a big part of it. But also, it was the characterization of Butterfly, which offends them. Because she’s presented as a geisha, and a geisha would not fall in love with Pinkerton. A courtesan might have fallen for him and taken advantage of him, but a geisha wouldn’t have put herself in that position. Not unless Pinkerton had been in the city for a long, long time, and had a real sense of the culture. PK: Fascinating.
ADG: Did you internalize your first experience of Butterfly [as a tenor singing the role of Pinkerton] in your directing? PK: I did internalize some experience, and that’s the experience of the music. For me, body plastique is extremely important. The way you use your body, your body language, the way you mould your body to the situation, and when it is appropriate to go with the music, and when it is sometimes appropriate to resist the music. …I’m always dealing with how people hold themselves. When you direct, your job is to get everyone on the same page. I’m not particularly interested in dictating every move. I want to see what they’re going to do, and then we’ll find the things that are right. ADG: What alterations or considerations do you have to make [for the simulcast]? PK: Here’s the thing. My job as a director, as I said, is to get everyone on the same page, and then to know when to get the hell out of the way. We’ve thought about times when it would be nice to get everyone lined up in a shot, but mostly I haven’t done anything that I wouldn’t do [otherwise]. The one thing that doesn’t work is a blank screen, and there’s that 8 and a half minutes at the beginning of Act III. If you’re doing an intermission, you can come back, start with the curtain down, and raise it when the sun comes up, as Puccini indicates. But we are doing Act II and Act III together – ADG: That’s how it originally was. PK: Exactly. So I thought, What are we going to do? …And we actually have a whole choreographed thing for [Butterfly], and it really goes by fast, and it’s beautiful. It’s character-driven. It’s movement, based on her emotion, and the story, and what we’ve seen. She does certain things that we’ve seen happen to her. ADG: You can’t imagine how thrilled I am to see it. It’s like I’ve been dropped into the middle of a novel that I didn’t even imagine could have happened. Thank you.
Donizetti’s Don Pasquale (at Meany Theater through April 7; tickets: $55 adults, $20 students) is a couple of hours of lightweight froth, very amusing in the right hands. Luckily for Seattle Opera Young Artists Program, it has those hands in charge. Artistic director Peter Kazaras is a master of detail who can flesh out the slimmest of stories and make it fun to watch as well as hear.
Essentially it’s the story of the old man who thinks he’s wed young woman: She leads him a merry dance until he is delighted to be rid of her, when his long-suffering nephew (who is the girl’s real love) gets her instead.
The Young Artist’s spring performance moved this year from Bellevue’s Meydenbauer to Meany Theater, and has two more performances next weekend. Saturday’s opening night saw bass Michael Uloth in the title role, with tenor Andrew Stenson as his nephew Ernesto, baritone David Krohn as Dr. Malatesta, Ernesto’s friend and Don Pasquale’s doctor, and soprano Amanda Opuszynski as Norina, the girl in the middle.
Fine singing from them all throughout was highlighted by a rare patter song for bass/baritone duet, with Uloth and Krohn aquitting themselves at full speed.
However, the opera story is so slight that it needs plenty of help from the acting and visuals to keep it alive and here the young singers excelled, particularly Uloth and Opuszynski, who have the lion’s share of the funny side of things.
The youthful Uloth portrays a creaky-jointed septuagenarian with a little pot belly and a long skinny face, topped by wisps of grey hair around a long visage adorned with rimless glasses. His mannerisms fit the picture, especially his efforts to sit down and get up again.
The pert and lively Opuszynski, the center of the action, has a blast pretending to be a shy, demure, virginal girl, dressed to match, until the pseudo-knot is tied when she turns into a virago. Krohn, whose character masterminds the plot, deftly keeps things going, feeding the old man pills and water when it all seems to be getting too much for him, while Stenson, the straight man in the story, doesn’t have much to do except be upset at the start until he’s let into the plot, and then ardent towards the end.
Colorful costumes, designed with flair by the UW’s senior lecturer Deborah Trout, come from the 1950s post-war era, when dresses were full skirted and pretty.
Sets are minimal but Don Pasquale’s era show in the projected backdrops of heavy draperies and lots of gilded plasterwork, and Norina’s totally modern art choices come as a shocking departure. Clever touches abound, such as the moving laundry line in Norina’s sparsely furnished original apartment which brings in clothing, not to mention messages attached to a clothes peg.
Brian Garman conducted the orchestra with deft pacing in Donizetti’s charming music, and the whole is an evening’s humorous entertainment.
Performances of Seattle Opera Young Artists Don Pasquale are 7.30 p.m. on March 31 and April 6 and 7, matinée April 1 at 2 p.m. Tickets: $55 adults, $20 students.
“Anglo-Saxon fairy tales end with marriage and living happily ever after. Italian comedy begins there, and the woman outfoxes the man every step of the way.” So says Peter Kazaras, stage director for Seattle Opera Young Artists Program (YAP) production of Donizetti’s comedy Don Pasquale, which opens Saturday for two weekends at the University of Washington’s Meany Theater.
It’s the tale of an old man who plans to take a young wife, in order to teach his nephew and heir Ernesto a lesson. Ernesto is refusing to marry the girl of Don Pasquale’s choice. But Don P’s friend, Dr. Malatesta, foresees much trouble ahead, and organizes a fake marriage with Norina, the girl Ernesto wants to marry. Norina is meek until the fake ceremony is over and then proceeds to lead the old man a wild dance, making his life a misery with a sequence of—to us—extremely funny episodes, until finally everything is put right, the old man is relieved to be rid of his unruly bride and the young lovers are together.
Kazaras has set it in Fellini’s Rome of La Dolce Vita, the 1950s to ’60s, where fashion, and Norina, are forging ahead with post-war abandon, but Don P is stuck somewhere in pre-war style.
Every year the Young Artists Program brings in nine or ten promising young singers on the threshold of operatic careers. The 21-week program gives them coaching in all aspects of being an opera singer, from physical well-being to acting to the business side of things as well as lots of performing. The fall offering travels with minimal sets and costumes all around the state, and unitl now, the spring opera has been fully staged at the Theater at Meydenbauer in Bellevue. This year, with Don Pasquale, it has moved to Meany Theater.
“Meany has wonderful acoustics, but it’s frankly a challenge going into a space three times the size of the previous space,” says Kazaras.
The YAP budget has become more and more limited, and Kazaras and his design team have had to use their formidable imaginations to overcome this. Set designer Donald Eastman’s unerrring eye, Deborah Trout’s costumes, and Chris Reay’s lighting are combining to present something fresh and fun.
Just using projections is not the answer, as they often involve triple the rehearsal time, but they are one of many design choices which can be used to enhance the whole, as they are here. (Think: Norina’s redecorating scheme.)
How to choose the right opera for the young participants is a puzzle Kazaras cannot begin to put together until he knows who those singers will be and what their voices are like. It isn’t just a choice of soprano, mezzo, tenor, baritone, as one may have a Mozart or Handel voice, another clearly heading to Puccini or even Wagner eventually, and Kazaras must find an opera which will give the singers experience, suit their voices, and also nurture what are still young instruments, easily damaged by overloading.
Established artists have sung roles many times and know what they need to do to perform consistently throughout an opera. Young artists, says Kazaras, “don’t know yet what they can’t do. They are more willing to try anything. No one says ‘I don’t do this or I can’t do that.’ It’s at this point they find things they thought they couldn’t do and that they can do. It’s my job to make that process more manageable as they go forward.”
Since the inception of the program, the young artists have also found themselves cast in mainstage productions of Seattle Opera, though only in recent years have they been included while they are still in the program. This has made choosing them trickier, as Kazaras, with YAP director Aren Der Hacopian and music director Brian Garman must also think of the mainstage productions coming up where some of those voices will be needed. Young artists often return here for a second year, and it’s those, whose voices and capacities are better known, who are most often picked for the main stage.
“It’s one of the challenges of working with them,” says Kazaras.
Five of this year’s crop sang solo roles in the mainstage production of Carmen. “It didn’t sound like established artists up here and young artists struggling at the bottom” says Kazaras with satisfaction. Tenor Andrew Stenson, in his second year with the program, was the cover for Orpheus in the recent main stage production of Orphée et Eurydice. It so happened that he had to take over the role on March 4 for William Burden and did it well.
Four young artists appear in the upcoming production of Madama Butterfly, which Kazaras is also directing, including Sarah Larsen as Suzuki. Seattle Opera takes on a new venture with Butterfly. Opening night will be simulcast at Key Arena, free to the 8,000 people the arena will hold. Experienced video-director Frank Zamacona will be directing the multi-camera shoot, as he has done before for San Francisco Opera.
Kazaras then will have a short break before coming back for the summer opera, Puccini’s Turandot, when he is returning to his first career, as tenor. While nowadays he spends much more time directing and working with young artists—he is Director of Opera UCLA, and a professor there—he has sung on opera stages worldwide, and for Turandot he will take on the small role of the Emperor Altoum.
“When else am I going to be able to say I’m singing the same role with Seattle Opera as Giovanni Martinelli did in 1967?”
Fist, though comes Don Pasquale, which opens Saturday night. “This isn’t a show,” says Kazaras, “about people coming to see something opulent and old fashioned. This is sleek, witty, and very beautiful.”
Without backdrop, without anything but a suggestion of costume and set, without orchestra and no special lighting, Seattle Opera’s Young Artists Program has achieved a riveting production of Massenet’s Werther. After five performances around the state this month, the young singers came to Nordstrom Recital Hall for their final show Saturday night. (Sadly, if missed it, you now have to wait until March for the program’s next outing.)
The production has been abridged so that it only takes two hours with one intermission. It’s been well done, and condenses the story, making it stronger, to my mind. Goethe intended his late-18th-century tale to take a cynical view of an extraordinarily self-centered young man gone overboard with his inappropriate passion.
More than a century later, Massenet took the popular tale and wrote his opera, an overload of physical chastity combined with bursting romantic tension spiraling downwards to disaster. Lugubrious as the story is, Massenet’s music is gorgeous, played here by guest pianist/coach Stephanie Rhodes on stage. Rhodes became the whole orchestra, doing an excellent job and supporting the singers.
Five of the Young Artists took part, with the title role taken by tenor Andrew Stenson returning for his second year with the program. The opera might have been chosen for him and for mezzo soprano Sarah Larsen as his unattainable love, Charlotte. The two have the lion’s share of the singing and carry the action between them.
Stenson, although his voice is quite different, reminds the listener of another young artist here who has gone on to a stellar career, Lawrence Brownlee. Not everyone is suited to French opera, but Stenson’s voice is ideal for this role. It is strong from top to bottom, perfectly pitched, no breaks between registers–in short a beautifully trained lyric tenor voice with gorgeous timbre. He is also able to inhabit the role and even elicit some sympathy, not easy since this is an unforgiving role to act—it’s hard not to get exasperated with Werther as he mopes around and disrupts Charlotte’s family, who all seem to love him nevertheless.
Larsen also has a beautiful voice, her middle and lower registers particularly rich. She too has a difficult role to put across, the chaste, gentle woman doing her duty and concealing a love for this importunate young man, and she acts it well.
Stage director Peter Kazaras has done a stellar job in directing this with so little by way of props to help him and getting get the story across. While both acts are good, the second is completely absorbing from the start and builds to the climax. Massenet milks the emotion for all it is worth in the long-drawn-out death scene, and the two singers command the attention throughout.
Of the other roles, bass Michael Uloth has only a cameo role but it’s enough to make one want to hear more of him. He has the lead in the YAP’s spring production of Don Pasquale. Baritone David Krohn, another returnee, has the role of Charlotte’s long-suffering husband Albert. He sounded better last year as Don Giovanni and this opera may just not suit him particularly. Soprano Amanda Opuszynski, as Charlotte’s little sister, gave an excellent portrayal of a young teen, good in every detail, though she sounded better as one of the gypsies in the mainstage production of Carmen earlier this fall than she did here.
Nordstrom Recital Hall is not kind to high tones at volume, where the sound often becomes hard and shrill. There is little reverberation to soften anything. Violins always suffer here, and it seems likely that the quality of Opuszynski’s voice, the highest, was undermined by these acoustics. Larsen also, in her highest register, had the same problem.
The singers, who spend twenty-one weeks in the Young Artists Program, get training in every aspect of being an opera singer, from everything to do with performance to life skills and budgeting. They are halfway through this course, and you will be able to see their progress at the production of Donizetti’s comic Don Pasquale, the end of March and in early April at Meany Hall.
