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October 6 - 20, 2018
TODD ROSENBERG
Erin Wall
, acclaimed internationally in a wide range of repertoire,
has been a Lyric favorite since her breakout portrayal of Marguerite/
Faust
during her third season in the Ryan Opera Center. The
Canadian soprano triumphed as a last-minute Donna Anna in
Mozart’s
Don Giovanni
to open Lyric’s 50th-anniversary season, and
returned for highly praised portrayals of Mozart heroines: Pamina/
The Magic Flute
(2005/06), Fiordiligi/
Così fan tutte
(2006/07), and
Konstanze/
The
Abduction from the Seraglio
(2008/09). She’s also
been featured here as Helena/
A Midsummer Night’s Dream
(Lyric
premiere, 2010/11) and Antonia/
Les contes d’Hoffmann
(2011/12).
Mozart bringsWall back to Lyric this fall in a role debut: Elettra
in
Idomeneo
, a character with a harrowing back story. Traumatized
by the murder of her father, King Agamemnon, by her mother and
her mother’s lover, Elettra plotted vengeance, which was carried
out by her brother Orestes. In the Strauss opera
Elektra
, returning
to Lyric in February, she dances herself to death. In
Idomeneo
, she’s
a royal refugee on Crete who covets the love of Idomeneo’s son
Idamante, who loves Ilia, a royal captive. It’s complicated.
“Elettra is intensely focused and relentless,” Wall notes.
“She’s dramatic, and very intent on vengeance when she doesn’t
Danielle de Niese
first rocked the Lyric Opera House 11 years
ago as a sensational Cleopatra in an exuberant Bollywood-inspired
production of Handel’s
Giulio Cesare
. Her saucy Susanna in
Mozart’s
The Marriage of Figaro
(2009/10) won all hearts, and most
recently she created the transformative role of opera singer and
hostage Roxane Coss in the 2015 world premiere of Jimmy López’s
Bel Canto
.
Surprisingly, de Niese had never portrayed Musetta until a few
months ago in London, in the coproduction of Lyric, the Royal
Opera House Covent Garden, and Teatro Real Madrid.
De Niese admits that in all the
Bohèmes
she’d ever seen, “I never
really liked the person this character is – attention-seeking, petulant,
possessive, flimsy, who then turns good in the end.” She notes that
with director Richard Jones there’s been an exploration of backstory
for all the characters. “Musetta looks at her assets as a woman, and
thinks, ‘With what I have to give, I should have lovely clothes and
a comfortable life.’ But she fell in love with a poor artist who can’t
provide for her. Before we meet Musetta, she’s extracted herself from
her fiery relationship with Marcello and turned practical” by taking
up with the wealthy, older Alcindoro. “I think she’s incredibly strong
to make such a practical decision.” Indeed; “the boys” (as de Niese
calls Marcello and his broke Bohemian buddies) “are ill-equipped
for life’s realities. They smoke their own fantasies and live off the
fumes. It’s a juvenile approach to life. Musetta is a pragmatist and
that’s why she’s gone off with Alcindoro, but that doesn’t provide her
certain comforts of the heart.”
Which explains Musetta’s somewhat manic state of mind when
she makes her big Act-Two entrance: “It’s so much more than frivolity
and laughter and shopping. What’s happened to her? What’s led her
to drink so much? What would really happen if you weren’t so happy
in your life, and you came across an old love?” De Niese relishes
“finding the real person, rather than falling into the well-worn treads
of archetypal characters and clichés.” Achieving naturalism in opera
is challenging “because everything is so heightened and dramatically
extended. It’s what we do vocally – we extend emotional thought.
Richard is trying to juxtapose that with natural human behavior,
and it’s hard. Puccini wrings it out of you.”
The soprano notes that because
La bohème
is about young people,
it expresses the shared experience of performers and audiences alike:
“When you’re young, everything is dead serious. Everything you feel
feels
so dramatic. Everything is totally, genuinely felt, and the ability
to cope with situations and see them in a mature way” hasn’t yet
developed. Coming to the role in midlife instead of her early twenties
gives de Niese the perspective to dig deeper into the character.
“Musetta’s understanding and humanity thread through
the opera,” de Niese declares. “I’ve enjoyed finding those human
moments – why does she sing this? What happened before she
got into this scene? What is she feeling about her life that makes
her overdo it in Act Two? She’s made the right, practical decision,
but she’s still not happy, and it ricochets her back to Marcello. The
push-pull of relationships feels so dramatic when you’re in love.
La bohème
is authentic to the spirit of what love is.”
L Y R I C O P E R A O F C H I C A G O
Danielle de Niese
at Lyric as Roxane
in
Bel Canto
.
CHRIS DUNLOP