| . | 07/28/2009
L’ELISIR D’AMORE
By: Eugene Paul
Lawrence Brownlee photos by Gabe Palacio
Seventeen hundred music lovers filled the storied Venetian Theater, a soaring, dappled tent set deep in the luscious grounds that make up Caramoor, Walter and Lucie Rosen’s gift to music and the arts. This is the thirteenth season of Bel Canto at Caramoor, and with L’Elisir D’Amore, Donizetti’s comic opera, so popular it has always been in repertory for 177 years, serving as lure and excitement for a rapt crowd dressed for the summer night in everything from long gowns to short shorts, blazers to tee shirts, all touch the common threads: the promise of revelations as well as the pleasure of the familiar. The night’s singers – the opera was to be performed in concert – clearly enjoyed devotees. Heavens knows, they weren’t there for the story.
The story? Nonsense, serving as the framework for Bel Canto style: aria after aria, opportunities for singers to demonstrate their vocal gymnastics as well as qualities. And quality and gymnastics there were aplenty. Bel Canto is often defined by its translation,”beautiful singing”. Authorities over the long years have tried to compound this with more precise definition: smoothness of sustained vocal line combined with flexibility of tonal range, trills, frills, cadenzas and other intricate vocal elaborations, all to be performed with the graceful appearance of effortlessness. Needless to say, every note is scrutinized by 1700 pairs of eyes and ears.
The current infatuation is a rebirth. Although Bel Canto held sway – in Italian influenced operatic circles, while Europe’s northern climes preferred more rugged, forceful voices –for much of the nineteenth century, it went into decline after the stronger, more dramatic demands of Verdi pushing Bel Canto aside, but it never disappeared. The shimmering tones achieved by great Bel Canto singers were too seductive. Of course, there was a great rebound when twentieth century singers, Callas, Sills, Horne, Sutherland, expanded their dramatic repertoires to include these tempting roles that showed off their incredible prowess and gifts. Now, at Caramoor, Bel Canto has inspired Caramoor Bel Canto Young Artists, a program which cossets as well as rigorously trains new singers in the style, giving them room to study and to perform.
L’Elisir D’Amore, ( L’Elisir D’Amore, ( The Elixir of Love) takes place in a little Basque village where Nemorino, a country peasant lad, has fallen madly in love with Adina, the village reigning cutie. To win her, he buys a love potion from Dulcamara, a traveling quack peddling his brew as a cure for everything from bedbugs to bed yearnings. Meanwhile, boastful, bumptious Belcore, a swaggering army sergeant, sweeps Adina off her pretty feet. Drunken Nemorino—the potion is only cheap wine –joins the army in despair. Nemorino’s uncle dies leaving him a fortune and all the girls in town want to marry him. Everyone, including the peddler, is convinced the potion has worked. Comic arias abound. Of course, Adina dumps the sergeant, latches on to Nemorino. On this skittish framework, Donizetti has hung aria after aria but by some marvelous stroke of fortune or genius, he has added the sad plaint, “Una Furtiva Lagrima”, which is perhaps his most famous aria, beguiling enough to have had two hundred tenors record it, none more renowned than Caruso. Since Bel Canto is designed for musical improvisation, Caruso added his own cadenza at the end and it has become a tradition. But—not at Caramoor, where continual research has found Donizett’s original ending, thanks to the indefatigable musical expertise and direction of conductor Will Crutchfield. And that is what tenor Lawrence Brownlee sings superbly, bringing down the house. Donizetti, not knowing he had written an aria of such reclame, proceeded to write an even more elaborate show stopper for Adina to follow “Una Furtiva Lagrima” which may be awkward dramaturgy but Georgia Jarman, as Adina, sank her teeth into it and got her own roar from the crowd, a small miracle.
Markus Beam and Georgia Jarmen
Caramoor’s and Crutchfield’s emphasis is on music and its production, which leaves a significant void when it comes to acting and characterization. Because the opera is presented in concert form, acting and characterization are doubly difficult to achieve. The singers are dressed in evening attire, not as Basque bumpkins. Further, they sing in the limited space standing before the rich sonority of the orchestra of St. Luke’s, conductor Crutchfield in their very ranks and a step higher. Illusion is impossible; they make the merest attempts at characterization, occasionally; there is no willing or unwilling suspension of belief. True, an audience accustomed to such paucities as long as the music is good, gives the performers much loving leeway. Even so, Lawrence Brownlee, an obviously hard working, gifted tenor, needs a drama coach sorely and, please, a good tailor, as well. Georgia Jarman is a wonderfully accomplished, graceful soprano, in splendid voice, on the verge of a great breakout. Markus Beam has delightful presence as well as a rich baritone. And Marco Nistico, in excellent voice as Dulcamara, the quack, knows what he’s doing so expertly I’d like to see him in full performance. Dana Schnitzer, one of Caramoor’s Young Bel Canto Artist company, shows much promise. The audience retreated, all smiles.
at Caramoor, Katonah, NY
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