{"id":86925,"date":"2016-11-26T03:44:25","date_gmt":"2016-11-26T02:44:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.gbopera.it\/?p=86925"},"modified":"2016-11-26T03:44:25","modified_gmt":"2016-11-26T02:44:25","slug":"chicago-lyric-opera-don-quichotte","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.studioroldo.it\/gbopera\/chicago-lyric-opera-don-quichotte\/","title":{"rendered":"Chicago, Lyric Opera: “Don Quichotte”"},"content":{"rendered":"

Lyric Opera of Chicago, Season 2016 \/ 2017<\/em>
\n<\/em><\/strong>\u201cDON QUICHOTTE\u201d<\/strong>
\n<\/strong>\u00a0Opera in five acts.\u00a0Libretto by Henry Cain, after Jacques Le Lorrain\u2019s stage adaptation of the novel by Miguel de Cervantes.
\nMusic by Jules Massenet<\/strong>
\nDon Quichotte\u00a0\u00a0 <\/em>FERRUCCIO FURLANETTO
\nSancho\u00a0 <\/em>\u00a0NICOLA ALAIMO
\nDulcin\u00e9e\u00a0\u00a0 <\/em>CLEMENTINE MARGAINE
\nPedro \u00a0<\/em>DIANA NEWMAN
\nGarcias\u00a0<\/em>\u00a0 LINDSAY METZGER
\nRodriguez\u00a0 <\/em>\u00a0<\/em>JONATHAN JOHNSON
\nJuan\u00a0 <\/em>\u00a0ALEX CARLSON
\nFirst Servant\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/em>TAKAOKI ONISHI
\nSecond Servant\u00a0 <\/em>\u00a0EMMETT O\u2019HANLON
\nBandit Chief\u00a0 <\/em>\u00a0 BRADLEY SMOAK
\nBandits\u00a0 <\/em>\u00a0WILLIAM COMBS,\u00a0MATTHEW CARROLL,\u00a0JOHN CONCEPCION,\u00a0\u00a0RONALD WATKINS
\nOrchestra & Chorus of Lyric Opera of Chicago
\nConductor\u00a0Sir Andrew Davis<\/strong>
\n<\/strong>Chorus Master\u00a0Michael Black<\/strong>
\nDirector\u00a0Matthew Ozawa<\/strong>
\n<\/strong>Set Designer Ralph Funicello
\n<\/strong>Costume Designer Missy West<\/strong>
\nLighting \u00a0Chris Maravich<\/strong>
\n<\/strong>Choreographer August Tye<\/strong>
\n<\/strong>Chicago, 23 november 2016
\n<\/em>Lyric Opera has scheduled performances of two French operas for these weeks, and the contrast looks deliberate: Berlioz\u2019 Les Troyens <\/em>is a blockbuster, a work that only the grandest companies can do justice to. LOC, in giving the piece its Chicago premiere, casually underlined local claims to the proper grandeur. Massenet\u2019s Don Quichotte<\/em> is a contrast in every way, an op\u00e9ra-comique <\/em>with few grand effects and a human level of drama. You will mark the contrast in the gait of company music director Sir Andrew Davis, who bounds onto the podium for Quichotte<\/em> with a great grin for all the orchestra and all the house: He\u2019s having fun<\/em>! And LOC performs Massenet with elegance and panache.\u00a0Don Quichotte<\/em> is a diversion not a masterpiece. (Massenet called it a \u201cheroic comedy,\u201d and it was his last success.) There is no reason to perform it unless you have a star bass, heroic vocal glamour and adept at comic acting, who is looking for a proper star vehicle. Massenet created the title role for Chaliapin, and in Chicago in previous seasons it has been sung by Nicolai Ghiaurov and Samuel Ramey. That\u2019s the level you want to aim for.
\nFerruccio Furlanetto<\/strong> anchors the present revival in an attractive, realistic production borrowed from the San Diego Opera, which created it for him. He is rumored to be winding up his mighty career, but you\u2019d never know it from the gratifying floods of perfectly produced sound with which he easily fills the Lyric Opera\u2019s vast auditorium, the attention to detail, the touches of comedy and pathos he brings to this mightiest of character parts. All the varied touches of high comedy tinged with pathos are here: the yearning for Dulcin\u00e9e, the crotchety swordsmanship, the religious fervor of his \u201cmartyrdom\u201d by a gang of bandits who have stolen Dulcin\u00e9e\u2019s pearl necklace, the concluding death scene. It is a rare gift in the theater to have a comic role that ends in tragedy; audiences eat it up. Massenet, who accompanied Werther\u2019s suicide with Christmas carols, recognized such a gift.\u00a0Furlanetto\u2019s outsize talent is adroitly partnered. Nicola Alaimo<\/strong>, best known for Rossini buffo roles, is just the right sort of Sancho, comic, practical and nobly devoted, and he sings French the way he sings Italian, with precision and good line. Cl\u00e9mentine Margaine<\/strong>, who gave a dazzling performance as Donizetti\u2019s La Favorite <\/em>at Caramoor last year, her American debut, sings Dulcin\u00e9e with a smoldering near-contralto that gives me great expectations of her Carmen, Dalila, Charlotte and Didon, all roles she has sung in Europe. (She will sing Carmen at the Met this winter.) The Dulcin\u00e9e of this version of the story bears slight resemblance to Cervantes\u2019 na\u00efve farmgirl; she is a small-town diva, bored with her many suitors, attracted by the sheer novelty of the elderly knight who idealizes her. The original creator of the role, Lucy Abell<\/strong>, insisted on accompanying her \u201cSpanish\u201d song on guitar, but Margaine needed no gimmick to strum our hearts. She struck the notes of high spirits and a yearning for something unknown, and she was affecting and powerful as the dying Quichotte\u2019s ecstatic hallucination. \u00a0Director Matthew Ozawa<\/strong>, among much other cleverness, provided Dulcin\u00e9e\u2019s four suitors, Diana Newman, Lindsay Metzger, Jonathan Johnson<\/strong> and Alec Carlson<\/strong>, with distinctive gestures (arms crossed or pocketed or in prayer) so that we wouldn\u2019t confuse them with the rest of the crowd, and Missy West<\/strong> was similarly distinctive with the costumes. Bass Bradley Smoak<\/strong> was threatening and magnanimous as the bandit who captures Quichotte and is impressed enough to set him free. Ralph Funicello<\/strong>\u2019s sixteenth-century Spanish village might well pass for the real thing, and his runaway windmill, Quichotte trapped in one of its arms, was a proper treat. Photo Todd Rosenberg<\/em><\/p>\n

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Lyric Opera of Chicago, Season 2016 \/ 2017 \u201cDON QUICHOTTE\u201d \u00a0Opera in five acts.\u00a0Libretto by Henry Cain, after […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":499,"featured_media":86926,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[15260,15258,4674,15102,407,913,9354,15501,334,17499,17500,17496,15743,17498,1074,17497],"class_list":["post-86925","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-senza-categoria","tag-alec-carlson","tag-bradley-smoak","tag-clementine-margaine","tag-diana-newman","tag-don-quichotte","tag-ferruccio-furlanetto","tag-foreign-readers","tag-jonathan-johnson","tag-jules-massenet","tag-lindsay-metzger","tag-lucy-abell","tag-lyric-opera-of-chicago","tag-matthew-ozawa","tag-missy-west","tag-nicola-alaimo","tag-ralph-funicello"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.studioroldo.it\/gbopera\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/86925","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.studioroldo.it\/gbopera\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.studioroldo.it\/gbopera\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.studioroldo.it\/gbopera\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/499"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.studioroldo.it\/gbopera\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=86925"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.studioroldo.it\/gbopera\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/86925\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.studioroldo.it\/gbopera\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/86926"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.studioroldo.it\/gbopera\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=86925"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.studioroldo.it\/gbopera\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=86925"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.studioroldo.it\/gbopera\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=86925"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}