Opera Colorado began its Saturday performance of “Aida” with some victorious news, then followed that up with a winning show.
The good word: After two years of financial struggles, the company has worked itself back to solvency, and will return to a three-opera season starting next year. And the just-announced lineup is on the ambitious side, with Donizetti’s popular “Lucia di Lammermoor” anchoring a pair of unique attractions: Puccini’s not-often heard “La Fanciulla del West,” to be set in Colorado, and Laura Kaminsky’s 2014 “As One,” a 75-minute chamber piece about a character named Hannah who starts her story as a man and finishes as a woman.
Talk about transformations. The company is getting with the times, staking a claim in a contemporary opera world that values new works and innovative approaches. “As One” will be staged at the L2 Church on East Colfax Avenue, a community setting considerably less formal than the grand Ellie Caulkins Opera House where the company usually works.
Of course, there’s still room for the warhorses in this scenario and that’s where titles like “Aida” come in. The current production is traditional by most measures, with big voices leading the way.
Alexandra LoBianco, in the leading role, went for every note with verve, her voice ringing out clearly over the efforts of a talented co-cast and an orchestra that gave her competition in terms of volume and energy.
She has an impressive and endlessly confident singing style, a likable and natural ease with difficult notes and phrasing — a requirement for both Verdi and this particular production, helmed by David Gately, that played the enslaved Ethiopian princess more as a cowering victim of bad circumstances than the proud daughter of royalty who, despite her situation, captures the love of enemy army commander Radames.
The singing was roundly aggressive and pin-point sharp in that way that plays up Verdi’s high-emotions. As Radmes, Carl Tanner met his doomed mate at full-throttle from the very first note. Catherine Martin, singing Amneris, the pharaohs’s daughter and Aida’s rival, balanced the love triangle with well-acted passion and warm, human tones.
Triangles were a theme in the sets, too, borrowed from the Virginia Opera. Three-sided panels, made of a corrugated material slid back and forth, up and down, framing an abstract landscape, appropriate for the land of pyramids. This isn’t the biggest “Aida” on the block, but it’s handsome and clever, and that’s more meaningful than big.
Now in its 33rd year, Opera Colorado has this sort of show down. It knows how to deliver solid work on a limited, mid-country opera company budget. It’s in a good position to move into a new era, where experimentation and artistic risk-taking are part of the equation.
With this crowd-pleasing production as a standard, and new adventures on the way, Denver’s opera community has a few solid reasons to be optimistic about what’s to come.
Three performances remain of Opera Colorado’s “Aida.” 7:30 p.m. Tuesday and Nov. 13; and 2 p.m. Nov. 11. Ellie Caulkins Opera House, Denver Performing Arts Center. $20-$200. For tickets: 303-468-2030 or operacolorado.org.
Ray Mark Rinaldi: 303-954-1540, rrinaldi@denverpost.com or @rayrinaldi
