Many Highlights in Florentine Opera’s Gorgeous Production

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Last weekend Florentine Opera opened small but stylish productions of two short French operas at Vogel Hall at the Marcus Center for Performing Arts. I saw the Sunday matinee performance. Excellent, consistent singing throughout the cast, paramount for any opera’s success, was a hallmark and set a high standard. 

Pauline Viardot (1821-1910) was a prominent figure of 19th century European music. A celebrated singer herself, she was a central part of the highest levels of Parisian culture. Apparently, she never intended to become a composer. Like all too many women composers of her period, she never achieved the success her talents deserved. Her chamber opera Cendrillon (Cinderella), for which she wrote her own libretto, was completed as early as 1869, but not performed until 1904. The original score was not orchestrated, but only written for piano accompaniment, making it a practical choice for a modest production. Viardot’s feeling for a singer’s legato line surely made the cast grateful for the vocal writing.

The simple set served its purpose. Set in the 1920s, attractive costumes by Brandon Kirkham, with women as dressed up flappers in colorful sequined dresses, became a substitute of sorts for the sets. Cinderella was sung by Kathryn Henry with a luscious timbre of sound. Carlos Santelli’s Prince Charming’s spinning tenor was a highlight. Jill Anna Ponasik’s direction was simple and straightforward, resisting adding any cynical edge to this fairytale. Unlike too many other directors, she curbs the urge to add unnecessary clutter to the action on stage. While my French is rusty at best, the cast made a convincing effort at the spoken dialogue in that language.

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Maurice Ravel’s Les enfants et les sortilèges (The Child and the Enchantments) presents production challenges for any company. As the naughty boy child (cast as a mezzo-soprano in a “pants role”) rips pages from his book, various characters from it appear. A teapot, a clock, two cats, a squirrel, a fire’s flame, an armchair, a tea cup, a tree, etc. It should be any costumer’s dream to design for this opera, and Kirkham’s witty and clever costumes were the star of the production, put to good use by Posniak’s insightful direction. All singing actors playfully threw themselves into their roles.

There are too many musical highlights to mention in this brief opera. The wordless duet for two cats stands out, sighted by many since its first performance in 1925. Coloratura soprano Juliet Petrus lit vocal fireworks with her fire aria. Mezzo-soprano Annie Rosen as The Child had good instincts for the character.

Ravel, known for his lush orchestrations, wrote the score for a large ensemble in the pit. While I missed hearing that, an arrangement for two pianos, flute, and cello sufficed. Both operas were conducted with a continual love of melody and singers by Robert Mollicone (also one of the pianists).

Besides being in the French language (with supertitles in English), what do these two operas, in completely different styles, have in common? They are both enamored, head-over-heels, in writing for the voice in rapturous line after line. If only the same could be said of every opera.