By Lloyd Schwartz
“IT’S GOING TO BE GOOD,” a passer-by remarked as I was looking at the poster outside Jordan Hall for the Chorus pro Musica’s concert performance of Verdi’s Nabucco (“Nebuchadnezzar”), under music director Jeffrey Rink (“Boston’s pre-eminent Verdi conductor.” L. Schwartz, Boston Phoenix,” the CpM flyer quotes me — accurately — as having written). Performances of Nabucco, Verdi’s third opera (and first major success), are rare, but last season we got a lively production from Teatro Lirico d'Europa and a live Met broadcast on WHRB. Now Rink, who has already led two of Verdi’s three Shakespeare operas, Otello and Macbeth, has tried his hand.
The libretto for Nabucco is hardly Shakespearean. It’s an over-the-top political melodrama whose famous and moving chorus of exiled Jews, “Va pensiero,” Verdi’s plea for the unification of Italy, became the theme song of the Risorgimento. The King of Babylon is stricken mad by a thunderbolt. His stepdaughter, Abigaille, born a slave, is one of opera’s most conniving and ferocious villainesses.
So subtlety is not a major concern. The principals poured it on and the audience ate it up. Soprano Joanna Porackova (Abigaille), baritone Roy Stevens (Nabucco), and tenor Noel Espiritu Velasco (as Ismaele, and one of Sarah Caldwell’s Opera Company of Boston regulars some decades back) went into overdrive — as they should, but not to the point of vocal strain and wavering tonality. Their voices couldn’t sustain their effort. You couldn’t say any of them sang beautifully. I was impressed with the quietly efficient way, without stage action or costumes, Stevens suggested the difference between Nabucco’s madness and his final return to control: when he went cuckoo, he turned his feet in, pigeon-toed; as the commander, his heels were close together and feet splayed for stability. He’s apparently about to give up the baritone repertory for tenorhood, but the top of his voice was not its securest part. All the soloists sang from memory, which certainly added to the power of the event. Russian bass Mikhail Svetlov warmed up to the part of Zaccaria, the Hebrew high priest, so that by the second act, after a very rocky start, his resonant bottom-of-the-well low notes were really on target.
The most beautiful, consistently full-bodied singing came from the young Armenian mezzo Victoria Avetisyan (who impressed me last year in a small role in the Boston Lyric Opera’s production of Tod Machover’s Resurrection), as Fenena, the beleaguered ingenue, Cordelia to Abigaille’s Goneril. And excellent in smaller roles were baritone Philip Candilis (a researcher with the National Cancer Institute, who sang the High Priest of Baal), soprano Julianna Dempsey (who will take on Donna Anna this summer in Opera Aperta’s Don Giovanni), and German tenor Vince Wolfsteiner (as a Babylonian officer).
What made Nabucco most impressive, though, was the precise articulation and consistent tension and sweep of Jeffrey Rink’s conducting, and the vivid response from his superlative orchestra, which included gorgeous playing from cellist Ronald Lowry (fronting an ensemble of six cellists as Zaccaria receives the tablets of the law), flutist Julia Scolnik, oboist Barbara LaFitte, clarinetist William Wrzesian, and a vibrant quartet of horn players. Anyone who thinks early Verdi has to be coarse hasn’t heard this combination of elegant and vigorous playing. Rink built each section to a powerful climax (as in Verdi’s extraordinarily complex finale to the second act), just as he built the entire piece. And the Chorus itself was in spectacularly good form for one of the most richly choral of all Verdi’s operas (this is a work about the effect political leaders have on a suffering community). Of course, “Va pensiero,” with its flowing and breathing lyric line, had to be repeated.
Next year, Rink and CpM are doing much subtler Verdi’s La traviata. I can’t wait.
By the way, the enthusiastic passer-by in front of the poster turned out to be the Jordan Hall stage manager, whom I saw setting up the music stands for the YPO concert. He’s probably someone not easily given over to superlatives.
by T.J. MEDREK
A spectacular performance by soprano Joanna Porackova, sonorous ones by baritone Roy Stevens and bass Mikhail Svetlov plus the powerful leadership of conductor Jeffrey Rink all came together to make Verdi’s opera Nabucco crackle with excitement yesterday afternoon at Jordan Hall.
Under Rink’s direction, the orchestra in this co-production by Chorus pro Musica and Concert Opera Boston played with exceptional vigor and exquisite color. The chorus sang with beautiful, forthright tone and impeccable diction. And the principal singers gave international caliber performances in three difficult, demanding roles.
Porackova triumphed in the next-to-impossible role of Abigaille. Her voice’s bronze-tinged timbre and seemingly limitless power guaranteed that her portrayal of the power-hungry slave adopted by the Babylonian king Nabucco would be a dramatic force to reckon with. But what particularly astonished was the way she sang —beautifully and with impeccable technique — a role that, with its wide range, fearsome leaps and rapid-fire scales, is often just approximated. Porackova delivered a truly golden age performance.
Stevens could have employed a little less snarling to indicate the warlord Nabucco’s forcefulness. But he easily filled the role’s vocal requirements — this is the first of a long line of great Verdi baritone roles — with a lean and attractive sound that projected real command. Where it truly counted, Stevens didn’t disappoint.
And it was easy to be seduced by Svetlov’s sonorous, rolling tone (even when a bit wayward in pitch) and forthright delivery in the Opera’s remaining lead role, Zaccaria, the leader of the Israelites at war with Nabucco.
The plot’s love triangle — a low-wattage one with Abigaille and Nabucco’s other daughter, Fenena (mezzo Victoria Avetisyan), both nominally pursuing the Israelite warrior lsmaele (tenor Noel Espiritu Velasco) who loves only Fenena — is never convincing. Verdi gave lsmaele and Fenena so little to do it’s easy to forget all about them. In lsmaele’s case here, that was a good thing, since Boston opera veteran Velasco sounded even more uncomfortable and distressed than he looked. But Avetisyan offered creamy tone and just the right woe-is-me demeanor.
Baritone Philip Candilis, tenor Vince Wolfsteiner and soprano Julianna Dempsey (making her operatic debut), were uncommonly fine in the opera’s smallest roles. Dempsey, who displayed serious vocal potential backed up by striking looks, is definitely a young singer to watch for.
by Richard Dyer
There was some robust and rowdy singing in the Chorus Pro Musica’s concert performance of Verdi’s Nabucco Sunday afternoon, but the stars of the show were the chorus, the orchestra, conductor Jeffrey Rink, and Giuseppe Verdi, whose youthful genius burst into flame with this piece.
Verdi was all of 29 when he wrote this opera, based on the Biblical story of Nebuchadnezzar. The music is vigorous, violent, sometimes coarse, but few composers before this had written anything surging with this kind of energy, this flowering of melody — the chorus “Va, pensiero” almost immediately became an unofficial anthem for the Italian nation that was coming into existence. The huge crowd that surrounded Verdi’s funeral 60 years later spontaneously burst into this melody.
On Sunday, it was nobly and sympathetically sung by the Chorus Pro Musica under Rink, and the conductor (like James Levine at the Met and the touring Teatro Lirico dEuropa in the Emerson Majestic last season) permitted an immediate encore.
Verdi’s whole score was vigorously and sensitively played by the classy little orchestra, and there were outstanding solo contributions from flutist Julia Scolnik, cellist Ronald Lowry and his section, and English hornist Barbara LaFitte. Rink once again proved himself an expert and stylish Verdi conductor — propulsive, yet also supportive of his cast and at home in the world of give-and-take.
The four principal singers might have sounded better 15 years back, but if they had sung Nabucco a lot then, they wouldn’t be singing it much now — these are roles that require uninhibited use of young voices full of sap; they also require advanced professional savvy. Rink opted for experience. In the title role of the blasphemous Babylonian king, Roy Stevens sounded a bit hoarse and wayward until some sensational top notes sailed out; he acted with intensity but lacked majesty. Joanna Porackova sang the villainous Abigaille unevenly, with a biting low register, a heavyweight middle voice, and a narrow top, but she brings fiery and generous emotion to all she does, and she fearlessly roared around the hairpin turns without braking or squealing. Bass Mikhail Svetlov, who sang in the Chorus Pro Musica “Turandot” a few years ago, poured out a big, rough sound that he was able to smooth out as the performance advanced; the nice word for his acting is “expressionistic,” the candid word is hammy. Tenor Noel Espiritu Velasco, a longtime favorite of Sarah CaIdwell’s, retains his vigor, musicality, and unusually clear top notes, though his middle register can no longer take the pressure he puts on it.
The younger singers were all interesting. Victoria Avetisyan’s ripe-plum mezzo was in luscious shape, and two singers who make their careers doing other things, Dr. Philip Candilis and Vince Wolfsteiner (who worked in advertising in Germany) are vocalists of professional caliber. The superior quality of Julianna Dempsey’s soprano was evident even in a small role. This was her operatic debut, yet her radiant top notes dominated the first-act ensembles. A recent honors graduate of Harvard in social anthropology, Dempsey is now seriously pursuing opera, and opera has begun to pursue her.
The audience responded to the proceedings with clamorous enthusiasm. Rink has rebuilt the audience for concert opera in Boston. He plans a “Madama Butterfly” with the Newton Symphony next season, and “La Traviata” with Chorus Pro Musica.