September 19, 21 & 22, 2024
Jarvis Opera Hall, Holtschneider Performance Center at DePaul University
Chicago, Illinois – USA
George Frideric HANDEL: Tamerlano
Craig Trompeter, conductor; Chase Hopkins, stage director; George Frideric Handel, composer; Nicola Francesco Haym, librettist. Cast: Ryan Belongie (Tamerlano), David Portillo (Bajazet), Emily Birsan (Asteria), Emily Fons (Irene), Kathleen Felty (Andronico), David Govertsen (Leone), Kali Page (Zaida), Jon Beal and Daniel Pyne (guards). Creative: Wendy Waszut-Barrett, set designer; Brian Schneider, lighting designer; Stephanie Cluggish, costume designer; Megan Pirtle, wig & makeup designer..
Michael Moore | 1 OCT 2024
For much of history since the mid-18th century, Baroque Opera has been either largely ignored or “modernized,” allegedly to create something “new” for audiences who had moved on to the great Classical and Romantic operas. Productions attempting to replicate the total experience that audiences in the 17th and 18th centuries greatly enjoyed became exceedingly rare, and musicians who specialized in virtually any music of the period tended to be amateurs and scholars.
But even as Baroque Opera went out of style, it never truly disappeared, and we are now in the golden age of revival for this beautiful and unique art form. This trend accelerated due to the groundbreaking trilogy of Monteverdi’s extant operas by Nikolaus Harnoncourt and the Zurich Opera in 1975 (DGG). They really did it right—from the costumes (even for musicians), sets, and performers who were masters of the style. Nearly all subsequent recorded productions have been stripped down and modernized, assuming that contemporary audiences would not wish to see the operas as originally performed!
One American opera company, the Haymarket Opera Company of Chicago, subscribes to the approach of transporting contemporary audiences into the halls where the great (and often obscure) operas of Monteverdi through Handel can truly be experienced as they would have been when the operas were new.
On September 22, I had the privilege of sitting on the front row of the Jarvis Opera Hall at DePaul University in Chicago for Handel’s 1724 masterpiece, Tamerlano. It was the sixth opera I had flown up to see them produce over the past few years and the company just gets better and better. They are truly “world-class” and have been for years. But this production took it to a new level.
Jarvis Hall is about the same size as one of the last remaining Baroque theatres in the world, like that in Český Krumlov, where perspective and even moving waves were illusions. The sets by Wendy Waszut-Barrett were varied, versatile, colorful, and nearly a character in their own right. The costumes (Stephanie Cluggish) and wigs & makeup (Megan Pirtle) were elegant and designed to be close to historical drawings from the first production at the King’s Theatre in the Haymarket district of London.
Stage direction by General Director Chase Hopkins was right on point, with very little “recital style” singing. The singers walked and sometimes crawled about the stage as the action dictated.
The musicians in the pit displayed total emergence into the style, as skillfully conducted by Artistic Director Craig Trompeter, himself a superb baroque ‘cellist and violist da gamba. The fifteen-piece orchestra of historically designed and produced instruments was near perfect in their execution of the score, as were all the tempi and ensemble with the singers. Tuning was to A=415. A couple of instruments were left out of the original orchestration, but they were not missed. The two baroque oboists masterfully doubled recorders, and there was good variety and improvisation in the continuo choices.
But of course, the biggest kudos go to the cast of this virtuosic work. The male lead was David Portillo’s Bajazet, the tragic tenor (one of the very first important tenor roles) who lost the battle of Ankara in 1402 to Ryan Belongie’s emperor Tamerlano, a very flamboyant countertenor, who demonstrated incredible vocal technique and often shared a comic approach, with quite humorous mannerisms. The third male role was Andronico, sung as a trouser role by mezzo Kathleen Felty in her Haymarket debut. Rounding out the male cast was David Govertsen’s Leone, bass-baritone with a very large voice.
The heroines in the story were Emily Birsan’s Asteria, the longsuffering daughter of Bajazet, who Tamerlano plotted to make his queen by attempting to pawn his betrothed, Irene, off to Asteria’s lover, Andronico. Emily sang with uncommon control, and her very difficult arias sounded breathtakingly easy. She also projected perfectly whilst singing on her back on the floor—amazing!
If there were a show stealer in this cast, it was Emily Fons, a Haymarket regular’s Irene who, while in disguise, all but made love to the throne while singing a beautiful aria about her desire to soon ensure that she would sit upon it. The audience could not conceal its giggling during that scene—some comic relief in this opera seria. Emily’s acting skills were perhaps the finest of a cast of excellent singer/actors. As you can tell, the plot was convoluted, as was often the case in the 18th century, for they had no soap operas to watch instead!
To me the highlight of the entire opera was the love duet (when they believed they would both die) by Felty and Birsan, “Vivo in te, mio caro bene,” an extraordinary duet ending the “A” section and da capo with one of the most perfect little chain suspensions into the cadence I’ve ever heard. It literally brought me to tears. (A good recording of this duet can be found in Arias and Duets, with Rinaldo Alessandrini and Sara Mingardo, Naïve Classique 2009.)
For more information about the Haymarket Opera’s Tamerlano, visit haymarketopera.org/tamerlano, where you can also see the beautifully detailed program, including the rich bios of the cast as well as those of Handel’s original cast. This company is the real thing, and I recommend flying to Chicago to enjoy these operas at such a high level. The company will announce its 2025 season soon. When that happens, get your tickets early, as Tamerlano sold out completely over a month before the run! ■
EXTERNAL LINKS:
- Haymarket Opera Company: haymarketopera.org
Read more by Michael Moore.
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