It’s not something that many musicians in the history of Earth have been able to do but Plácido Domingo made it look relatively easy Saturday night at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, when Los Angeles Opera launched its 30th anniversary season with a double bill of “Gianni Schicchi” and “Pagliacci.”
Domingo, 74, sang the title role in the first (for the first time in his career), ditched the costume and conducted the second.
And this being Domingo’s L.A. Opera (he is general director), both operas were seen in productions credited to film directors – “Schicchi” to Woody Allen and “Pagliacci” to Franco Zeffirelli. “I am an unabashed film buff,” Domingo says in the program booklet.
There are objections to be made, of course. Some have suggested that Domingo – once a tenor, now singing baritone roles – should hang up his vocal cords. Certainly the voice isn’t quite the right character for Schicchi (it’s a tenor singing low, not a baritone), but it remains too fresh and agile and present for one to wish it would go away. The audience certainly wanted to hear him and why not?
His conducting has been criticized as well (I think it’s underrated) and this “Pagliacci” didn’t quite have quite the momentum and visceral power the opera can have. Blame it on Zeffirelli’s annoyingly overstuffed and antic production, with its cast of hundreds, cars, donkeys and acrobatics, etc., etc., and blame it on ringing tenor Marco Berti, who, as Canio, came on too strong too early, turning the vulnerable, vengeful clown into an unsympathetic sociopath.
Domingo was solid in the pit, finding intensity and grace, some lax moments notwithstanding. Ana María Martinez provided a darkly hued Nedda, George Gagnidze a formidable Tonio and Liam Bonner an uneven Silvio.
Directed by Kathleen Smith Belcher, “Schicchi” seemed a little less funny this time around than in 2008, though still funny. Allen has re-imagined the medieval Florentine clan as a modern dysfunctional Italian family and the fixer Schicchi as a Mafioso type in a pinstriped suit whom Joe Mantegna would play if this were a movie.
Domingo played and sang the role with nimble delight. Andriana Chuchman supplied a pretty Lauretta and Arturo Chacón-Cruz a lightweight, but ardent Rinuccio. The rest of the large cast was reliably batty. Not incidentally, Greg Fedderly was part of it, approaching nearly 700 appearances with the company. Grant Gershon conducted incisively.
Santo Loquasto’s set remains “a super-rococo etude in decrepitude,” but perhaps it’s a little too busy to focus the action. Allen adds his own (comedic) stabbing at the end as if to say you can’t have an opera without one.
Contact the writer: 714-796-6811 or tmangan@ocregister.com
