San Francisco Opera 2018-19 Review: Roberto Devereux

Sondra Radvanovsky Reigns In Donizetti Masterwork

By Lois Silverstein

“I saw the Queen of England weep!”

It is true, at least in the brilliant portrayal of Elizabeth I by soprano, Sondra Radvanovsky, in the San Francisco Opera’s production of “Roberto Devereaux.” In Donizetti’s third and most popular Tudor Queen opera (“Anna Bolena” and “Maria Stuarda” being the other two), Radvanovsky sings with moving beauty as she dramatized the role of Elisabetta and electrified the entire opera. If Elizabeth herself had heard her sing, she’d have more than a double. This was Elisabetta I.

The opera sits squarely in the bel canto tradition, with its style of expression dedicated to vocal technique of its soloists. Rossini, Bellini, and Donizetti aimed for luxurious sound more than dedication to psychological subtlety as we have in Verdi. “Roberto Devereux” gives us this in full measure, although in Sondra Radvanovsky’s performance, we had more than our share. Donizetti and his librettist Salvatore Cammarano centered the opera on Elisabeth’s love relationship with the Earl of Essex, Roberto Devereux, a young and dashing courtier; his betrayal of her; and her role in his punishment and her despair. In the opera, Elisabeth is queen at her most passionate and complicated. In fact, Donizetti wrote to Salvatore Cammarano, his librettist, “this opera was to be of his [my] emotions” and no question that the rise and fall of feeling figures big throughout the score, already rich and ample in subject. From the overture, complete with rendition of “God Save the Queen,” it moved from tuneful to dramatic to soaring, and, especially in Radvanovsky’s performance, the shifts were more than majestically handled.

Fully In Charge

The opening Aria told you from the start who was in charge. Here, Donizetti aimed to transcend coloratura soprano limits, and Radvanovsky sang with transparent high register and dark and penetrating lows. Granted, at the outset, some notes seemed tight, and, in the last act, occasionally shrill: however, her easy reach up and down arpeggio after arpeggio, trills, and overall vocal flexibility showed beauty and mastery. Subtle thought satisfied too with the range of idea and  feeling Radvanovsky wrang out of the libretto. At moments, Act three for instance, in her miraculous final aria, we gasped in awe. Words alone would never do. That, coupled with her flexible movement – her shifting postures, her bends and gait, her call for physical support from her maids-in-waiting, her playful fencing with Essex’s sword, her flirtatious wiggles following; plus her eloquent facial flexibility, brought us to new and further doors of expression. She was expert, probing, intense. We could well ask whether there was room on the stage for anyone else with her majesty.

Lady-in-Waiting

Jamie Barton as Sara, Duchess of Nottingham, came the closest, singing with gusto, beauty and sheen. Although less sparkly, less masterful than her Queen and confidante/rival, she performed the poignant role of Essex’s lover with aplomb and beauty. Her mezzo rose and fell in her opening Romanza, “all l’afflitto è dolce il pianto… È la gioia che gli resta… Una stella a me funesta anche il pianto mi vietò,” as she read of the lost Rosamund in a text, although a bit slow and monochrome, but poignant and melancholy all the same. She sang with conviction, particularly in the duet with Essex in Act one. Their sweet and plaintive song resounded with ease and genuine beauty. The staging for this loving duet undercut some of the tenderness with the two of them sitting at the front edge of the stage and inching toward each other as they commit their feelings. Cute, but not weighty enough with the stakes as high as they were. Barton can sing with the best of them whether cast in the role of second best lover/court person or not, and when she confronted her selfish, hurt husband, the Duke of Nottingham in the scene when all she wanted to do was save Essex from the axe, she was more than moving, trapped, frustrated and victim. In no way did she deserve even fictional-queenly chastisement; after all, she did get to the queen, albeit too late.

Growing Into Essex

Tenor Russell Thomas came to life in Act two. Nerves or timidity seemed to cover his sweet and plaintive tone at the outset, especially when pitted against the regal and righteous queen. Elisabetta didn’t stint from flaunting and flirting with her wayward lover and established again  who was boss! Witness her almost girlish donning earrings and painting cheeks with rouge, surrounded as she was with mirrors,  swaying of  hips and waving her feather fan – as if to remind him that she was a woman and one he’d once loved. Here he seemed like a wax record more than a stormy and tempestuous partner to her passion.

Eventually, Thomas sang with ardor, climbing beyond somewhat colorless beginnings and in the duet with Sara/ Barton, he showed the sonority of his voice – clear, clarion, warm with genuine tenderness and pathos as well as conviction. Nothing he sang matched the final aria before his execution when, “caged” behind prison bars, he sings, ballad-like, the haunting , “Oh, reo destin crudel!… Questo addio fatale, estremo è un abisso di tormenti…i.c. I mie lagrime cocentipiù del ciglio, sparge il cor.  Heartfelt, plaintive, moving, he more than held his ground, singing with full authentic feeling.

Stepping In Big Time

Nottingham, less so. Romanian-American baritone, Andrew Manea, second year Adler Fellow, performed a yeoman’s job with a complicated set of emotions and role despite a voice that was low on power and volume for a 3100 seat opera house. He made a good appearance on stage, however, despite the vocal and dramatic stretch. He was, after all, the lynchpin for so much of the plot. When he confronted his wife, Sara, preventing her from getting to the queen with the “safety” ring, he succeeded in conveying dire menace. The vocal strength of the chorus complemented his efforts, despite occasional blurred articulation and sustained the turn of the action with good effect. Other roles played by tenor, Amitai Pati, Lord Cecil, and bass-baritone Christian Pursell as Walter Raleigh rounded out the whole.

Riccardo Frizza conducted with “eclat” and energy. Never did we lose track of the Donizetti sound, complete with the um-pah pah intros and the subsequent melodic richness. Almost a contradiction, such music that we associate with band-stand today, was not only conventional in early and  mid-19thcentury music, but gave notice that something more intense was to follow – cavatina and cabaletta, duet, trio and quartet. Donizetti excelled here and what we discovered at the Finale, was how moving it was.

Shakespeare’s Globe

The production itself is a revival of a Canadian Opera Company production and is directed by British director Stephen Lawless. Late Belgian set designer Benoit Dugardyn first premiered it in Dallas in 2009, modeled on Shakespeare’s Globe Theater, with its multiple levels and moving parts, exits and entrances, and aptly conveyed time, place and circumstance with effect. The stage within a stage device amplified the historical point of view aptly reminding us that the action, occurring in the 16th England, also fit in the larger timeline of history, with its recurrent betrayals and competitions. The chorus arrayed around three levels above the central platform, further amplified this, keeping the idea of hierarchy that prominently figured in that period.

The central velvet and gold-trimmed panel, serving as rectangular curtain, rose and fell as each situation and scene required, setting the tone of pomp and circumstance of the Elizabethan court. Donizetti and Cammarano wrote the score for three acts, but many productions rearrange it for two with multiple audience-seated pauses, which in some ways, SFO did. Dramatically this did not satisfy, especially when historical information seemed “crammed in” rather than unfolding from a central source: e.g. Henry VIII, Anna Boleyn and Mary Stuart, set into niches upstage, and then a headless Essex, and aged Elisabetta dethroned at the end and set into glass niches as well. Idea yes, museum-ish,  yes: don’t forget time and its ravages as well as “reasons.” But once again we have reflection, perspective more than passion.

So too, the scooting across stage of model sailing ships and descending greenery during the overture seemed cartoonish more than charming, and the fairy-winged ballerinas were more Disneyesque than witty. Such touches detached and reified the subject rather than invited us to identify and savor the dramatic conflict, as did the dumb-show approach in the overture. Nowadays, it seems de rigueur to couch overtures with a preview of coming attractions; it is more than clunky. Do we the audience need to be engaged before we partake of the drama itself? Do we need teasers even to stay around? Yes, character development in bel canto relied less on psychology than complex musical and technical effects, but we may not need to be seduced into believing good things are coming. We may step into the world without such tidbits.  Leave things alone, some could say; let the audience imagine as the music itself unfolds. Donizetti himself apparently aimed to reform aspects of conventional opera styles but when he used conventions, he infused these with vigorous and dramatic effect. Let us savor them. In “Devereux,”the intensity of the situation is enhanced by his juxtaposition of characters singing to the heights and moving an audience with sound and its glories. That could very well be all we need.

Costume design by Ingeborg Bernerth was glamorous and artful as far as Elisabeth was concerned; Sara, not so much. It was more like an Elizabethan -“OKLAHOMA” pinafore it seemed, complete with nice-girl white blouse, not as provocative as perhaps she might have looked considering her role; so too, embroidery hoop and sewing, cast her less into rival than young girl. Of course, she most likely was. Costumes for the Chorus and the other characters blended in muted color with ease and set the heroine in her scarlet into relief.

The theme of recurrence that an historical drama earmarks as crucial, –  the past modeling the present  – stood out in the SFO production as a driving concept and surely satisfied; but more so, the singing and acting of one of best “queens” of the operatic world today. As Elisabetta, as she has done in Anna Bolena and Maria Stuarda, Radvanovsky reigned here among the pantheon of divas who prompt us to sit at their feet.

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