JEFFREY RINK'S CHORUS PRO MUSICA, under the sponsorship of Concert Opera Boston, with Metropolitan Opera mezzo-soprano Victoria Livengood and New York City Opera tenor Michael Hayes, an excellent orchestra and supporting cast, and an inspired 128-year-old score by Camille Saint-Saëns, turned a respectable opera audience at Jordan Hall into a cheering crowd. Samson et Dalila is not performed very often, but it's even juicier than Cecil B. DeMille's Technicolor extravaganza on the same Biblical subject.
Saint-Saëns's Philistine temptress is not as torn with passion for her hirsute ex-beau as Hedy Lamarr was for Victor Mature; she's just out for revenge. But she gets to sing some of the most voluptuous music ever written for a mezzo — three arias you can't get out of your head — plus a powerful trio and a sensational duet. If there had been any scenery, these performers would have chewed it to bits well before the last act. Livengood's Dalila was the sine qua non. She has the vocal chops, from ringing high notes to a baritonal growl. Her campy performance — part Theda Bara (the rolling come-hither eyes), part Joan Crawford (the suddenly disappearing smile), part Bea Arthur (the ironic snarl of disbelief at Samson's stupidity) — undercut the seductiveness of her seduction arias: “Printemps qui commence” (“Spring is beginning”) and “Mon coeur s'ouvre à ta voix” (“My heart opens at thy voice”). The incomparable phrasing and warmth you hear on Maria Callas's recordings make any resistance impossible. Livengood was more commanding than insinuating, a powerhouse who exuded sex and malevolence — hilarious and frightening and riveting.
Hayes, short-haired to begin with, was a stolid but touching Samson with a heroic if not exactly beautiful tenor voice — the voice of a warrior — that got under one's armor. He more than held his own in the ensembles with Livengood. Baritone Peter Candilis, a physician/ethicist in his spare time and a student of Todd Duncan (the original Porgy) and Boston's beloved Robert Honeysucker, was superb as the Philistine priest. Bass John Ames (the Old Hebrew), who sings with the San Francisco Opera, has a dark, reverberating tone and all the low notes you can shake a stick at (if, as Groucho Marx used to say, you like that sort of thing) but a barely approximate sense of pitch. More on target were Boston's David M. Cushing (the Satrap of Gaza), baritone David Kravitz, and tenors Charles Blandy and Brendan Daly — luxury casting in cameo roles. Rink created a fast-moving and shapely performance. The familiar Bacchanale, the archetype of musical hootchy-cootch, was spine-tingling, a field day for the triangle, the timpani (the legendary Fred Buda), the bellowing horns, and the belly-dancing oboe (Andrea Bonsignore). Julia Scolnik's flute provided the erotic foreplay for Dalila's arias. The chorus has some of the best music in the opera (it shouldn't be surprising that this piece was conceived as an oratorio), and the group was spectacular in the dawn music welcoming Samson back into the fold, the elegant chorus of Philistine women, and everywhere else. Next year, CpM will present an even rarer work that might be even more fun: Verdi's Attila.