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Passion,
murder, betrayal - bravo!
Maritime Concert Opera brings power, discipline to seamy tale of
Cavalleria Rusticana
[ Saturday, November 20, 2004]
By STEPHEN PEDERSEN / Arts Reporter / Opera Review
The good news is that chivalry is not quite dead.
Rustic chivalry, at least, flourished last night in the Maritime
Concert
Opera's performance of Petro Mascagni's Cavalleria Rusticana.
It was a good show that cheered up a cool November night. Who could
fail to be roused by the glory of an operatic tenor and soprano
arguing at the top of their voices with all the passion of Sicilian
lovers, she betrayed, he refusing to abandon the wanton woman who
turns him on?
The tale is seamy. Turiddu the ex-soldier, driven by his passion
for Lola,
wife of Alfio the carter, forsakes his bride-to-be, Santuzza, even
though she carries his baby and has been excommunicated for her
sin.
Santuzza, the soprano (Dana Pardy), after being spurned by Turiddu
(Lenard Whiting) and mocked by Lola (Nina Scott-Stoddart), spills
the beans to Alfio (Jason Parkhill) and it's goodbye Turiddu.
This all takes place in a quiet little Sicilian village on Easter
Sunday.
Mascagni, in the thrill-seeking tradition of opera composers, thus
loads the dice.
His one-act opera, written in the late 1880s, is as dramatic as
The
Godfather and only a tenth as long. His tongue is not in his cheek,
but his opera is ironic and sardonic, almost a satire on opera except
that he, no more than Puccini, could resist the ultimate musical
release of soaring passion.
Whiting responded a little too passionately for his voice at the
climax of the opera, but the breaking note only made his emotion
more passionate.
The singing was particularly good from all the principals, though
you could argue till the crows wake up about personal taste. Dana
Pardy, dramatically convincing as Santuzza, had too much metal in
her vibrato for my ear.
But Parkhill as Alfio, sporting a huge black beard, sang with even
more
power and warmth than ever and Scott-Stoddart carried off Lola's
vocal challenges with panache. Lori Proulx as Mama Lucia, Turiddu's
mother, also sang well, and Megan Fischbach as the young peasant
girl who gets to scream at the villagers that Turiddu has been killed,
hit a convincing note of hysteria.
The chorus, under the direction of James Aulenbach were well-trained
and disciplined. There was a burr in their sound that perfectly
suited the villagers they were impersonating.
The projected side-titles worked brilliantly, deepening the experience
since you understood everything the actors were singing.
Pianist Tara Morton played the orchestral reduction simply and well,
and was particularly effective in the famous Intermezzo just before
the final scene, one of opera's prettiest moments.
Bravo, Maritime Concert Opera. Let's hear more from you.
MCO's production of Cavalleria Rusticana plays at the Pearl Theatre
in
Lunenburg tonight.
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Copyright © 2004 The Halifax Herald Limited
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