Review: Faust and La Cenerentola at Third Vancouver Opera Festival
On the giant stage of the Queen Elizabeth Theatre, Faust virtually defines big opera, with a large cast and impressive if austere sets originally created by Olivier Landreville for L’opéra de Montréal.
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From the evidence of the two main productions, Gounod’s Faust and Rossini’s La Cenerentola, it would be easy to argue that this is the best Vancouver Opera Festival yet. Both works are handsomely mounted, well cast and effectively sung.
On the giant stage of the Queen Elizabeth Theatre, Faust virtually defines big opera, with a large cast and impressive if austere sets originally created by Olivier Landreville for L’opéra de Montréal. Faust’s once-commanding popularity has ebbed in recent decades; indeed, it may be hard for some listeners to sort out its mishmash of lightweight licentiousness, love story, melodrama and sticky piety. Fans with long memories may recall VO’s last Faust in 2006, when director Nic Muni offered a strikingly fresh, postmodern perspective on the Victorian-era classic. By comparison, François Racine’s neo-traditional direction seems a bit perfunctory, even shallow.
Musically, however, all is well. Principals David Pomeroy, Robert Pomakov and Simone Osborne deliver highly individual performances yet are entirely complementary, impressive in vocal and theatrical nuances. Peter Barrett, in the subordinate role of Valentin, is also very fine indeed. The large chorus sings well; conductor Jonathan Darlington reminds us that Gounod’s orchestra “supports, enriches and colours” the score “without ever dominating it,” and that’s exactly what was delivered from the pit.
Opera conventions in mid-19th century Paris demanded extended scores with plenty of showpieces for individual singers and big set pieces lavishly spaced throughout five acts. I’m not convinced that dividing Faust into a longish first half and a shorter denouement works as well as the original multi-act pacing (with all that time between acts for socializing and a glass of bubbly), but Gounod’s gift for memorable melodies and a way with grand effects shines through in virtually any configuration.
La Cenerentola, staged at the intimate Vancouver Playhouse, couldn’t be more different. Here, at last, is a production that entirely validates VO’s new “go-small” practice of mounting pre-Romantic-era works in spaces analogous to those used by the likes of Mozart and Rossini. The small scale of the Playhouse enables the singers to project without forcing; the purity of their delivery emphasizes Rossini’s matchless ability to create captivating melody out of thin air, and do it over and over and over again. What an incomparable bag of tricks he possesses, and what effortless sophistication!
For Rossini’s take on the Cinderella story, director Rachel Peake has created a vital, engaged staging, swiftly paced and full of comic verve and what seems authentically Italian buffoonery. Indeed, she has done her job so well that it can be difficult, while you are laughing so hard, to remember that these are killer vocal parts being sung exquisitely. Mezzo Simone McIntosh wins over the audience with sheer vocal agility and a lovely rich sound. As her Prince Charming (Prince Don Ramiro in this telling) tenor Charles Sy is a delight. And if there is a baritone anywhere who can deliver the comic role of Don Magnifico better than Peter McGillivray, I’d like to hear him.
This is a young cast, with members of the Yulanda M. Faris Young Artists Program given supporting roles. As Tisbe and Clorinda, Gena van Oosten and Nicole Joanne Brooks are mean sisters straight out of Whatever Happened to Baby Jane, and their hideous tutti-frutti outfits by designer Sue Bonde are exactly right.
Festival 2019 offers a smorgasbord of add-on events, many free, over the next few days. But there are only eight more chances to hear La Cenerentola in the Playhouse, May 1-12, and just two more Fausts at the QET, May 2 and 5.
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