Matthew Scollin / Critiques

Mezzo-soprano Corrie Stallings made for a charming, comic Jo, with a delivery as natural as conversation. While her voice wasn’t large, the venue didn’t require it; more important, she used every bit of that bandwidth to achieve a wide dynamic range, steady execution and sensitive phrases. At the end of the opera, Jo’s sisters joined her for a gorgeous quartet. Toward the end of the opera, Beth, lying on her deathbed, offers one of the opera’s key moments of insight, telling Jo to accept her younger sister’s inevitable death. Playing Beth, soprano Adelaide Boedecker captured this shift with a warm bold vibrato that deepened the otherwise simple character. mezzo-soprano Laurel Semerdjian had a fine, coppery voice, but her musical lines lacked connective tissue. Soprano Claudia Rosenthal brought bright vocalism to the role of Amy. The Laurie of tenor Adam Bonanni had an appealing tone, but his character merited more operatic fullness. The production contrasted Susan Memmott Allred’s excellent period costumes with Shengxin Jin’s three-dimensional set, complete with floating furniture and large books twisted into staircases. This creative and striking production, directed by Crystal Manich, revealed much about the characters and story, although some scenes had gratuitous staging.

Pittsburgh Opera's new production of Adamo's work opened Jan. 23 at CAPA and proved a compelling vision of the piece thanks to an excellent cast and chamber ensemble, superb preparation and conducting by Glenn Lewis, and imaginative staging by Crystal Manich. Adamo's musical score is individual and eclectic, employing various musical languages to suit the nature of the situation he's bringing to life. The music expressing the characters' feelings is apt to be mainly tonal. Narrative music, in which most conflicts occur, is well served by the composer's chromaticism and 12-tone harmonies. Best of all, the colors of character and narrative music are wonderfully fluid. Mezzo-soprano Corrie Stallings offered a thoroughly convincing and sympathetic portrayal of Jo, which was especially impressive because of the character's complexity. Stallings' singing easily encompassed not only the wide range of her notes, but also her character's strong will as much as her emerging doubts and personal growth. Baritone Brian Vu gave a strong performance as Brooke, handling high tessitura with assurance and finding the strength to deal with Meg's challenging family. Soprano Adelaide Boedecker's big moment is Beth's death scene, in which she must help Jo accept the unpleasant reality. Her line was finely drawn, and her acting conveyed Meg's generosity and weariness. Kara Cornell and Daniel Teadt were winning as the parents, while Leah de Gruyl was intense as Aunt Cecilia. The staging was mainly quite effective in adapting to the small space of the stage. The costumes were realistic to the time of the novel. Glenn Lewis led a confident performance of a score that is more difficult than it might sound. He was as attentive to indicating cutoffs as entrances, and balanced the singers and instrumentalists very well. His pacing felt apt at every moment. Overall, Pittsburgh Opera has a winner in its cozy yet intense production of “Little Women.”

“The Rake's Progress” was presented in the celebrated David Hockney production, which was created in 1975. Pittsburgh Opera acquired the production for merely the cost of trucking it from San Francisco Opera. Stravinsky and librettists W.H. Auden and Chester Kallman were inspired to create the opera by a series of engravings by William Hogarth. Hockney seized on that visual style to create his set, costumes and wigs with cross-hatching line drawing. Although more than 40 years old, Hockney's production belies its age. It's physically in great shape, looking bright, crisp and clean. Tenor Alek Shrader brought much more than good looks to playing Tom Rakewell. He developed the role with knowing details of characterization as it moves from a naive and self-centered young man to one who's beaten down by his follies and is ultimately a person whose fate moves us deeply. He sang with authority and admirably clear definition, as well as small modification of tonal color depending on the dramatic context. Soprano Layla Claire was the thoroughly winning Anne Truelove, who is left behind by Tom when he goes to squander an inheritance in London. She shaped her lines with a gloriously open and fluid top register, and in addition to the sheer beauty of her singing, Claire found ways to give her character more human dimension than it often receives. The three smaller roles were well handled, too. Wei Wu brought the right degree of stuffiness to father Truelove, although he was sometimes underpowered. Keith Jameson offered a well defined and well sung Sellem, who runs the auction when the property of Rakewell and his wife is being sold to pay off his debt. Finally, Matthew Scollin combined the wonderful depth of his voice with unflappable dignity as the Keeper of the Madhouse to which Rakewell is confined at the end of the opera and his life. Walker prepared the Opera Orchestra extremely well. Stravinsky's writing is tricky in many ways, but the musicians played it with surprising assurance, especially for a first performance. However, Walker chose to employ a more legato style than Stravinsky preferred, which is a separate issue from articulation in fast passages that will presumably tighten over the run of performances.

“The Rake’s Progress” is a product of Stravinsky’s “neoclassical” period, in which the composer assimilated older styles and made them his own. He used an 18th-century orchestra, including harpsichord, with clear divisions between musical numbers and recitative. But he didn’t limit himself to the 18th century. The heroine’s big scene is a Bellinian cavatina ending with a showy fast caballetta, while her lullaby to the dying Tom is cast in the form of a medieval motet. And Stravinsky liked to fool the listener by taking his melodies in unexpected directions, and placing accents on the wrong syllables, creating a topsy-turvy musical world to match the plot. On opening night, conductor Antony Walker kept his vocal and instrumental forces together with admirable proficiency, while stage director Roy Rallo elicited dexterous movement from the eager, animated cast. In the title part, Alek Shrader combined boyish naivete with a callousness that made his eventual plight appropriately inevitable. His smallish tenor, pleasant and well produced, did not, however, project consistently through the theater – often at the expense of the words (and the supertitles were not always in sync). Layla Claire was a spunky and physically beautiful Anne, though her warm soprano tended to turn strident on her top notes, and she seemed uncomfortable with the craggy coloratura of her virtuoso solo turn. The best singing, and also the most vivid characterizations, came from the two veterans in the cast. David Pittsinger used his resonant bass-baritone sound and seasoned stage skills to his advantage as the slimy Shadow. Jill Grove played Baba the Turk – the bearded lady at a glimpse of whom brave warriors swooned – with relish and braggadocio. She manipulated her voluminous deep mezzo-soprano for comic effect, adjusting her vocal coloration to affect sympathy when giving advice to the disconsolate Anne. In the briefer but still juicy role of Mother Goose, younger mezzo Laurel Semerdjian, a resident artist, sang strongly and played the madam of the brothel with a spirit of fun. Keith Jameson, whose pungent tenor had more carrying power than Shrader’s, delivered the delightful auctioneer’s scene with gusto and comic flair. Basso Wei Wu showed promise and comfortable stage demeanor as Trulove, Anne’s hapless father.