 |
| Lawrence Jatayna, Dingdong Fiel, Elaine Lee, and Ivan Nery |
Featuring:
Elaine
Lee, soprano
Ivan
Nery, tenor
Lawrence
Jatayna, baritone
Dingdong
Fiel, piano
Programme:
Wolfgang
Amadeus Mozart
Overture from Le Nozze di Figaro, K.492
Cinque, dieci, venti... from Le Nozze di
Figaro, K.492
Ein Madchen oder Weibchen from Die
Zauberflöte, K.620
In Uomini from Così fan tutte, K.588
Deh vieni alla finestra from Don Giovanni,
K.527
Papageno/Papagena duet from Die
Zauberflöte, K.620
Giuseppe
Verdi
Mini Overture from Rigoletto
Questo o Quella from Rigoletto
Signor ne principe from Rigoletto
Caro nome from Rigoletto
Cortigiani from Rigoletto
Mio Padre...Tutte le feste from Rigoletto
Si
vendetta from Rigoletto
La donna è mobile from Rigoletto
V'ho ingannato from Rigoletto
Addio del passato from La Traviata
In
the opera show Seasons of Desire, plot
lines and devices regularly seen in popular television series were interspersed
with various arias by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Giuseppe Verdi to make opera more
accessible to a broader audience. Some opera purists would’ve raised their
eyebrows with this treatment, but I opted to view this production that was staged at the Abelardo Hall Auditorium at the College of Music in UP Diliman, with an open
mind to see if such approach would indeed work.
Featuring
a small, tight cast made up of three singers (soprano Elaine Lee, baritone
Lawrence Jatayna and tenor Ivan Nery), two narrators moving the story in English (Jacqui Amper) and in Filipino (Ruth
Alferez), and a lone pianist (Dingdong Fiel), Seasons of Desire put into the fore the rather silly plotlines
found in current television series and how the operas from centuries ago also
featured almost the same inane plots. As director Nazer Salcedo put it, opera is one
grand telenovela. And it did make me wonder again how on earth did the audiences back then approved of such plots. But then again, I also wonder why modern day viewers don't complain about the nth time the heroine gets kdinapped in telenovelas.
The
story weaved by Vladimeir Gonzales follows a simple story of the boy, the Farmer played by Jatayna meeting a girl, the Baker played by Lee, and they fall in love. The first tragedy strikes when the girl dies during childbirth. Years pass by and the
child, Angela (Lee), has grown into an adult woman. She is seduced by her scheming
employer Angelo (played by Nery) and eventually kidnaps and violates her when
her father refuses to sell her out to him for one night of romance. The father
then tries to avenge his daughter by abducting Angelo himself but Angela frees
him since she is clueless as to the true identity of her assailant. This act
proves to be fatal as Angela becomes the tragic victim of the scuffle between
her father and her one time lover. Telenovelas often end happily with the heroine
in her true love’s arms but this time around, the tragedy of the opera won the
day.
One
who clearly won the audience during the show was Ivan Nery as the hopia magnate
Angelo. His performance as the devious and scheming bastard bordered on being
camp but his Questo o Quella and La donna è mobile, among the main
highlights of the entire show, proved that he’s one of the country’s up and
coming tenors. Lawrence Jatayna gave a solid performance shifting from the
oblivious and then love struck farmer, to a doting and later on vengeful
father. But what caught me off guard on this night was
Elaine Lee, especially on her Caro nome,
wherein she shifted an octave lower in some parts. It made me wonder if
she was having an off night or if her vocal range wasn't a match for the aria. She fared better though towards the end with her V'ho ingannato and Addio del
As I’ve
mentioned earlier, a show formatted like this could’ve not sat well with
conservative purists now. But this is nothing really new since opera pastiches that
used music from different operas into a single show, which I think what Seasons of Desire is, were in fashion
back in 18th century. I wouldn’t have any reservations with how this was conceptualized and constructed for in the end, no matter what the show
is, it’s the vocal performances that will matter. And in this show, the vocal performances were uneven. The production also encountered some technical kinks that should be smoothed out in succeeding efforts. Overall, these kinds of shows can indeed bring opera closer to the mainstream audience. I also think that this could also serve as a launching pad for young, upcoming opera singers as well.
