An Offer You Can't Refuse: The Sopranos in Kentucky
- The Queen of the
Night in fire engine-red invoking the powers of hell.
Heather Buck
- Carmen in black velvet with everything but
castanets.
Stacey Rishoi
- The water sprite Rusalka pouring her heart
out to the moon.
Audrey Luna
- The Girl in 14G layering opera and jazz with hysterical humor.
Emily Pulley
It was quite a show Friday night (Oct. 16) in the new
Francis K. Carlisle Performing Arts Center at Notre Dame Academy in Park Hills (to be repeated at 8 p.m. tonight, Oct. 17, also at Notre Dame).
Four sopranos joined the Kentucky Symphony
Orchestra led by music director James R. Cassidy in an evening of great singing:
coloratura soprano Heather Buck, lyric sopranos Audrey Luna and Emily Pulley
and mezzo-soprano Stacey Rishoi. It was
pure luxury “casting” and a splendid start to the orchestra’s 18th
season.
The venue was new, the orchestra having moved
from its former home in Northern Kentucky University's Greaves Hall to test several
community-based sites, including Notre Dame, Highlands High School and Florence
Baptist Church at Mt. Zion.
The auditorium at Notre Dame is intimate
(about 500 seats) and comfortable, if a little unforgiving acoustically. The sound is true and even gives the
impression of having been amplified in some way on first impression. But with a “new” orchestra every season, the 2009-2010
free-lance KSO is getting its sound and ensemble together in addition to
adapting to new surroundings, so it was not surprising that balances and
ensemble were not always perfect.
With the sopranos in front, it was pure
delight, nonetheless. Their program was
a sampler of operatic and music theater favorites, from Bizet to Bernstein,
with a few lesser known gems from the soprano repertoire. It was fast-moving and with the help of
program annotator Tom Consolo’s explanatory notes, easy to grasp even without surtitles
or printed translations.
After the introductory Overture from Glinka’s
“Ruslan and Ludmilla,” Luna, a Cincinnati favorite, led off handsomely with
Violetta’s searching, affirmative “Ah, for’s e lui” and “Sempre libera” from “La
Traviata” (“Perhaps he is the one” and “Always free”).
She
was followed by Buck, Pulley and Rishoi in one show-stopper after another.
Buck’s "Der Hölle Rahe" from Mozart’s “The Magic
Flute” was incendiary in more ways than one.
In fact, a more complete performance of the Queen of the Night would be hard to find, with the
Yale graduate -- a stunning figure physically -- spitting out the Queen’s venom
in a sumptuous voice that demonstrated amazing precision as well.
Carmen, a mezzo role, more than met its
match in Rishoi, a University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music graduate who owned the biggest voice of the evening (she does Wagner
now). With height to match and attired
in black velvet, she made a gypsy to contend with in both the “Habanera” and “Seguidilla.”
Pulley’s “Song to the Moon” from Dvorak’s “Rusalka”
was beautifully, diametrically opposed, with its heart-wrenching, earnest
longing.
Other favorites included “O mio babbino caro”
from Puccini’s “Gianni Schicchi,” sung as tenderly as one could wish by Luna
and Buck’s sparkling “Ah? Je veux vivre” (“I want to live”), Juliet’s waltz
from Gounod’s “Romeo and Juliet.” Rishoi’s
powerful “O don fatale” (“O fatal gift”) from Verdi’s “Don Carlo” was quite
simply one of the “wow” moments of the evening.
There were some beautiful discoveries in the
mix. Buck’s “O luce di quest anima” (“O
star that guides my fervent love”) from Donizetti’s little known “Linda di
Chamounix” made a fine impression. Luna’s
spell-binding “Marietta’s Lied” from “Die Todt Stadt” (“The Dead City”) by Eric
Wolfgang Korngold (think all of his lush Hollywood film scores) made the case
for bringing his 1923 opera to Cincinnati as soon as possible.
There were some fine ensembles on the
program, too, and with scarce rehearsal time (two days?) one
wonders how they managed to give them such polish.
Rishoi’s big voice as Octavian did overwhelm Luna as Sophie and Pulley
as the Marschallin in the trio “Hab’s mir’s gelobt” (“I’ve loved him in the right
way”) from Richard Strauss’ “Der Rosenkavalier,” but that was a built-in
problem to some extent.
The Flower Duet from Delibes’ “Lakme” was
another story, with Buck and Rishoi warbling their mellifluous thirds like a
pair of golden-throated birds and walking hand-in-hand to the back of the hall
for the final reprise.
The operetta/music theater selections, sung
at the end of the program, brought the concert to a peak of sheer enjoyment.
“Letting their hair down” is how Cassidy
described it and they certainly did.
“Heiss” (“hot) was the right word for Pulley’s
“Meine Lippen die küssen so heiss” from Viennese Franz Lehar’s “Giuditta” (“My
lips they kiss so hot”). She enlivened
it even further by kicking off her shoes and taking a sprint through the hall before
singing her final, vamp-like verse.
Buck took things a step further by lifting
jewels repeatedly from her bodice during Bernstein’s brilliant “Glitter and Be
Gay” from “Candide,” sung with extraordinary presence and polish.
Pulley, a Metropolitan Opera regular, was Kristin Chenowith gone one better
in “The Girl in 14G,” where she segued with lightning speed from full-bodied opera
to jazz to the beleaguered apartment dweller’s pout, complete with
choreography.
The four singers joined in “I Feel Pretty” from “West Side Story” – with Luna as the love-smitten Maria – and “I Enjoy Being a Girl” from Rodgers and Hammerstein’s “Flower Drum Song.”
Cassidy
gave them time to rest with several orchestral excerpts during the
evening, including "Aragonaise" from "Carmen," "Arrival of the Guest"
from Wagner's "Tannhäuser" (if it's opera you have to have Wagner,
Cassidy said), "Polonaise" from Tchaikovsky's "Eugene Onegin"
and -- helping to drive the "Sopranos" point home -- the lovely
Intermezzo from Mascagni's "Cavalleria Rusticana."
This one is not to miss, so if your
Saturday night is up for grabs, take it in at 8 p.m. tonight at Notre Dame Academy.
Tickets are $23 and $28, $18 for seniors, $10 for students, at the door,
(859) 431-6216 or online at www.kyso.org