Ravel, L’Enfant et les sortilèges /Puccini, Gianni Schicchi:   Seattle Opera Young Artists Program, soloists, members of the Auburn Symphony, cond. Brian Garman, dir. Peter Kazaras;  Meydenbauer Center, Bellevue, WA, 6.4.2008 (BJ)

Cast  for L'Enfant et les sortilèges - Picture © Rozarii Lynch

I should have had more faith. The prospect of Ravel’s masterpiece of enchanted childhood set, not in a room and garden, but in a subway station was the reverse of alluring. How could it possibly achieve the ravishing effect of the transformation from room to garden, which I shall never forget from the first time I ever saw the piece staged, fully half a century ago, by the Oxford University Opera Society?

Well, Peter Kazaras, artistic director of Seattle Opera’s Young Artists Program, has worked magic before–in last season’s Falstaff, most notably – and he worked it again in this wonderful production. Eschewing the more obvious enchantments of Colette’s libretto, to focus instead on the surreal qualities of the story, he made L’Enfant more universal than ever, liberating it, as it were, from the outward trappings of one particular French-bourgeois context. The customary nursery-age infant was replaced by a rebellious teenager, and the putative animals by humans with mildly animal characteristics. It was the kind of directorial intervention that I usually find counter-productive. But Kazaras, it’s no exaggeration to say, is a genius of a director, and when he does it, it works.

A particular plus was provided by the fluid movements designed by Wade Madsen, always to the dramatic point, and often boldly athletic; Marcus Shelton’s Frog managed some especially daring leaps. And on Yoshi Tanokura’s set – like the production itself, allusive rather than literal, and atmospherically lit by Connie Yun – the program’s multi-talented young cast excelled both dramatically and musically. In the line-up I saw (the singers almost all swapped roles from one of the six performances to the next), David Korn starred as the Child, but this time I really do have to refrain from singling out any of the others, because a mere list of names would not do justice to the consistent conviction and brio of all the participants.

Cast  for Gianni Schicchi  - Picture © Rozarii Lynch

After intermission, Gianni Schicchi was no less delightful. Here designer Tanokura offered, in partnership with Daniel Urlie’s stylish and witty costumes, a more traditional stage picture. There were a few mischievous touches, such as the large-screen television set on which the squabbling Donati clan watched a football match, their raucous reactions reminding us that, with all their ancient culture, Italians can be as silly as the next nation. There was just enough stylized exaggeration in the cast’s gestures to bring out the satirical nature of the plot, without making too big a deal of it, so that when Ani Maldjian, as Lauretta, launched her seductive performance of O mio babbino caro, the lyrical beauty of the moment did not seem in any way incongruous. Another fine vocal contribution came from Marcus Shelton, this time in the un-froglike role of the ardent young lover Rinuccio, Leena Chopra was eye-catching as the shapeliest of vamps, and Joshua Jeremiah projected just the right combination of authority, humor, and slyness as Gianni.

Brian Garman’s conducting throughout the afternoon was highly skillful, and he drew some gleaming sounds from the string section, drawn from the Auburn Symphony, in Ettore Panizza’s orchestral reduction of the Puccini score. The Ravel did lose something of its allure by being heard in Didier Puntos’s chamber arrangement – the evocative orchestral writing of the original version was especially missed in that transformation scene – but flutist Alicia Suárez, cellist Virginia Dziekonski, and duo-pianists David McDade and Eve Legault played it with considerable artistry. And I should not wish my last words to be negative, in saluting an operatic double-bill that in every other respect was indeed both enchanting and, at the right moments, hilarious.

Bernard Jacobson


Back to Top                                                    Cumulative Index Page