Review: Talent shines in AVA's shoebox theater

Now that the Barnes Foundation has left its ancestral home, the award for most cloistered leading arts group in our city might belong to the Academy of Vocal Arts. Several decades of creating bespoke environments for experiencing art have not touched AVA's tiny theater - a cramped railway car-proportioned space of bourbon-colored walls, Arcadian murals and a grand hearth.

It's paradoxical that AVA prepares opera students for the real world by having them perform in a venue unlike any other they will ever encounter. These dynamics have only become more obvious over time, but seemed clarified Saturday night in the school's last production of its 80th season, a Gounod Faust that left you with the odd feeling that you had just had a bad trip in a small church. On the one hand, there is a certain frisson to the jockeying for seats and old-world sacrifices of comfort that come with being close to the action. On the other hand, the arrangement doesn't serve the best interests of the music.

Remember, just five blocks from AVA sits the Kimmel's Perelman Theater, which, though expensive to rent, grants some real advantages to opera. Sound tends to cramp up in the AVA's Helen Corning Warden Theatre when singers hit full volume. There is no orchestra pit, which means being able to fit only the smallest orchestra, where the string section must be shrunk, which upsets orchestral balance. The tight stage sometimes makes for buffoonish action, creative though it was, thanks to director Tito Capobianco.

Like the entire setup, the orchestra itself partially embodies a bygone time. It's admirable that AVA keeps stalwart freelancers working. And some of them are still making a wonderful contribution. Others, however, held the ensemble back. Gounod is sometimes thought of as frothy, but in fact, his concept of wind writing was particularly inventive and demanding, and his orchestral texture rather evolved. These effects were undermined both by the orchestra's size and specific players and sections. Cellos were weak, a clarinetist of flaccid tone, and a flutist inconsistent.

Not past his prime, however, was conductor Christofer Macatsoris, who has been with AVA since 1977. When his tempos were taut, he shaped phrases with terrific urgency, and relaxed with no less a sense of emotional purpose. Drama follows text in the most convincing way for Macatsoris.

If you view AVA's mission as serving students, there is work to do, and yet students of the highest quality keep coming in numbers. Several clearly stand on the verge of real careers (three casts rotate most roles in five remaining performances). Bass-baritone André Courville (Méphistophélès) had a rich, enormous sound, and was deliciously evil. Melinda Whittington (Marguerite) was especially marvelous in handling the rapturous jail scene music. Diego Silva (Doctor Faust) was of smallish voice, but what was there had great nuance.

The degree of promise was not necessarily proportionate to the size of the role. Mezzo Alexandra Schenck as the lovesick boy Siébel was spot on in "Faites-lui mes aveux," and, as Marthe, mezzo Kristina Nicole Lewis had complexities in her voice champing at the bit for a more demanding part.

If AVA sometimes runs the risk of seeming like a specimen preserved in amber, this kind of talent only highlights why the setting, as charming as it may be, cries out for progress unbound.

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