Susanne Mentzer
Shakespeare's couples tend either toward the romantic, like Romeo and Juliet or Antony and Cleopatra, or the combative, like Katherina and Petruchio in "The Taming of the Shrew" or Beatrice and Benedick in "Much Ado about Nothing." The latter are reincarnated as the battling principals of Hector Berlioz's opera "Béatrice et Bé nédict," given its first-ever New York Philharmonic hearings at Avery Fisher Hall, on April 9, 10 and 12, as part of the ongoing celebration of the bicentennial of the composer's birth. The singing was in French and the opéra comique dialogue replaced by lines from the play, spoken by Shakespearean actors. Dual language and dual cast performances can be disconcerting, but conductor Sir Colin Davis and director Edward Berkely made this "Béatrice et Bénédict" flow naturally.
Davis and the orchestra began the evening with spirited overture. Their no less rousing entr'acte separated the two acts. Berlioz's charming comedy also boasts particularly striking numbers—arias, duet and trio— ;for women's voices. Mezzo-soprano Susanne Mentzer made a sparkling, tender then ebullient highlight of Béatrice's gentle, pulsating "Il m'en souvient," in which she realizes she loves Bé nédict after all. High soprano Susan Gritton, as her cousin, Hé ro, saluted her love, Claudio, in a bright "Je vais le voir," capped with a fluent coloratura cadenza. Gritton and mezzo-soprano Nancy Maultsby, as Héro's attendant, Ursule, blended beautifully in a haunting " Nuit paisible et sereine!," the nocturne concluding Act One. The three women harmoniously anticipated Héro's wedding in "Je vais d'un coeur aimant," in Act Two, with Béatrice voicing her final opposition to love and marriage for herself.
Mentzer's Béatrice and high tenor Gordon Gietz's Bé nédict bickered amusingly and lyrically at first sight in "Comment le dédain pourrait-il mourir?," but collaborated, finally, on a joyous scherzo-duettino, "L'amour est un flambeau." Gietz' s Bénédict swaggered as he condemned marriage in "Me marier! Dieu me pardonne!," the trio with baritone Kevin Phares, as his friend, Claudio, and bass-baritone Alfred Walker, as the Prince, Don Pedro, with Bénédict as perplexed by his companions' " matrimonimanie" (matrimonimania) as they are by his " matrimonophobie" (matrimonophobia). Gietz soon changed his tune, limning a buoyant romantic rondo, "Ah! Je vais l'aimer," about his love for Béatrice.
In a break from its customary melodiousness, Joseph Flummerfelt's Westminster Symphonic Choir produced a cacophonous shriek in preparation for singing pompous chapel-master Somarone's (bass-baritone Carlos Condé ;) "Epithalame grotesque." The choristers began the second act with a comic brindisi, accompanied by, among other things, guitar and clinking glasses. They ended the work with quiet, then exultant wedding music and the dramatic pronouncement, "Ici l'on voit Bénédict l' homme marié" ("Here you see Bénédict, the married man)," words Bénédict never thought he would hear.
Actors Harriet Harris, as Beatrice, and David Hyde Pierce, as Benedick, affectingly conveyed the title characters' changes of heart, assisted by colleagues Philip Bosco (Leonato), Linda Powell (Hero), Kristine Nielsen (Ursula), Joel de la Fuente (Claudio), Tom Hewett (Don Pedro), and Brian Hutchison (messenger and priest). In the finale, Gietz and Mentzer addressed some lines respectively to Harris and Pierce, which helped knit matters together.
Avery Fisher Hall, 10 Lincoln Center
Tickets $25-88 212/875-5656