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Yeghishe Manucharyan (left) as Amenaide's conflicted, marriage-arranging, pregnant-lady-executing father, with Ewa Podleś as Tancredi.
But no throttling ensued: everybody sang so pretty. This Bostonist has never heard a contralto before (unless Toni Braxton counts, like Wikipedia says), so we've got nothing with which to compare Ewa Podleś, whose voice is a delightful freak of nature—rich and androgynous and sometimes abruptly deep—but know we're lucky to have heard her sing the part of Tancredi. We've heard Amanda Forsythe a few lovely times before, but we're still startled when she begins to sing and it's like molten sugar that's suspended in mid air. (Forsythe's visible, unscripted pregnancy made her vocal work all the more impressive, while enhancing her character's compromised reputation.)
The two had some incredible, ornate duets: you might say that, together, Podleś and Forsythe's voices formed Voltron. Some remarkable choral music blended the cast's male voices powerfully, providing an effective counterpart to the solos and constituting a continual reminder of the community's role in forcefully denouncing Amenaide.
Opera Boston tried out a new subtitle system at the Cutler Majestic, using flat screen monitors rather than projection. The words appeared at either side of the stage, rather than above. We liked it.
The sets eschew the usual operatic simulation of finery for a simple impression of a palace stripped down to its fortifications, with bars disfiguring a single window. The one piece of furniture in evidence is a fancy desk (to support one of those picture frames that characters in operas are always singing to; there's also some singing at a portrait in a locket).
We're in a stately home turned bunker, and the the good china has been locked away somewhere to make room for all these sandbags. A tarp is draped where once there might've been a tapestry. Except for one swoon-enabling slope, the high, straight walls cast tall shadows that make for some ominous entrances and a numinous backdrop for Isaura's prayers (sung movingly by Victoria Avetisyan). The shadows could almost be credited in the cast, as they lend silent drama to crucial moments. An opening to the back displayed blue washes of ocean-like color, reminding us of the endless expanses of space beyond the intensely localized struggle on stage.
The evenly wonderful cast, likewise, conveyed a sense of besieged city exhausted by war, revealing the shifting demands upon their (often conflicted) loyalties—believable even when the plot wasn't. Gaetano Rossi's libretto drew out another sort of weariness, though: smart design and Olympian vocal gymnastics didn't prevent the opening night audience from giggling in exasperation as our hero bemoaned Amenaide's alleged betrayal while he lay dying. Dude.
Amanda Forsythe, barefoot and preggers.
The last performance of Tancredi is tonight at 7:30. Tickets here. Kerry Skemp contributed to this post.
Photographs by Clive Grainger, except the one of the subtitle screen, taken by the author's iPhone.
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