Review: Verdi’s little-known ‘Foscari’ gets a vibrant production in Palo Alto

Nathan Granner (left) and Christina Major  in Verdi’s “I Due Foscari” at West Bay Opera. Photo: Otak Jump

Verdi’s early opera “I Due Foscari” was premiered in Rome in 1844, and hasn’t been heard much since. Why would it, when opera companies have the pick of the composer’s works of mature genius to choose among?

That attitude isn’t wrong, exactly, but it’s short-sighted, as the West Bay Opera’s fine new production of “Foscari” demonstrates clearly. Even in embryonic form, Verdi’s burgeoning artistic mastery — his theatrical flair, his harmonic ingenuity, his ability to craft a vocal line that is at once conventional and appropriate to the dramatic situation — is something to witness.

And when a company can muster a cast of singers able to do justice to the score’s demands, as West Bay Opera has largely done, then the results are of more than merely historical interest. The production that opened a four-performance run on Friday, Feb. 15, at the Lucie Stern Theatre in Palo Alto under the baton of General Director José Luis Moscovich makes a vivid and compelling case for this little-known work.

At least, it makes a case for the piece’s musical virtues. From a dramatic standpoint, “Foscari” is something of an uphill climb.

Based on a play by none other than Lord Byron, it’s a murky tale of power struggles and miscarriage of justice in 15th century Venice. The two Foscaris of the title are the doge, Francesco Foscari, and his son Jacopo, exiled from the city on a dubious murder charge; what little drama there is revolves around the father’s inability to use the levers of power to spring his son from legal jeopardy.

If that struggle between honor and self-interest sounds quaint in the context of our Machiavellian day, it rings no truer against a backdrop of the city-states of Renaissance Italy (Verdi had gotten a surer hold on these issues by the time he returned to similar turf in the mature opera “Simon Boccanegra“).

Christina Major in Verdi’s “I Due Foscari” at West Bay Opera. Photo: Otak Jump

The soprano role belongs to Jacopo’s wife Lucrezia, who basically does little more than bemoan the cruelty of fate. A last-minute written confession serves as a deus ex machina that is both unconvincing and useless, since the opera ends tragically anyway. Even the composer later acknowledged that the gloom suffusing nearly every scene in the opera was a miscalculation.

But if the plot is cut-rate stuff, it’s also largely beside the point. The excitement of “Foscari” is the chance to hear Verdi — in the sixth of his more than two dozen operas — continuing to turn the conventions of Italian opera in the direction of greater depth and expressive intimacy. Whatever the piece’s overall weaknesses, there’s no denying the resourceful brilliance of individual scenes.

Friday’s opening brought its own joys as well, chief among them a bravura performance by soprano Christina Major as Lucrezia. Major has been a welcome presence on Bay Area stages for years now, but I can’t recall hearing her sing with the kind of expressive verve and technical command she displayed here.

Again and again she unleashed powerful, perfectly placed high notes and athletic passagework that underscored the vitality of the vocal writing. She brought beauty and pathos to Lucrezia’s Act 1 aria “Tu al cui sguardo onnipossente” — a formalized aria type known as a “preghiera” or prayer — and railed against her father-in-law with unbridled ferocity that never wavered in pitch or rhythm.

She was well matched by tenor Nathan Granner as Jacopo, singing with sinewy, ringing tone and a splendidly flexible approach to the role’s challenges. Baritone Jason Duika, as Francesco, had the misfortune to be hit with a severe allergy attack just before curtain, but soldiered on through the evening with admirable perseverance. Bass-baritone Benjamin Brady, as Jacopo’s implacable nemesis Loredano, was a robust and villainous presence.

The production, staged by director Richard Harrell, seemed wisely ready to accept the opera’s blood-and-thunder follies at face value, leavening the action with some handsome visual projections by Frédéric O. Boulay and the entertaining frolics — during the Act 3 ballet interlude — of dancers Hien Huynh and Nathaniel Moore. Moscovich, presiding over a reduced orchestra, brought out the main flavors of Verdi’s score, from the ravishing viola-cello duet that begins Act 2 to the ominous shadows of the lower brass.

There’s a perilous tendency, when thinking about the early efforts of established composers (or any creative artists for that matter), to view them exclusively through the lens of the mature work — as though they conferred aesthetic value only by their promise of greater things to come. Yet a piece like “Foscari,” delivered with this sort of conviction, is perfectly capable of standing on its own. The foreshadowing of operas we know better and love more may provide a little thrill, but the pleasures of this production require no excuse.

“I Due Foscari”: 8 p.m. Saturday, Feb. 23. 2 p.m. Sunday, Feb. 24. $35-$85. Lucie Stern Theatre, 1305 Middlefield Road, Palo Alto. 650-424-9999. www.wbopera.org

  • Joshua Kosman
    Joshua Kosman Joshua Kosman is The San Francisco Chronicle’s music critic. Email: jkosman@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @JoshuaKosman