Opera review by Alex Brooks
Last year when it was announced that Alix Jones was stepping down as the leader of the Hubbard Hall Opera, there was uncertainty about whether Hubbard Hall’s annual opera productions would continue, and if so, whether they could live up to the high standards set by Jones. Now that this year’s Opera at Hubbard Hall has opened, Donizetti’s The Elixir of Love, such questions have been answered. The production is brilliant, and Opera at Hubbard Hall is better than ever. Building on Jones’ formula of importing rising stars from regional opera across the country and supplementing them with local talent, and making an enormous asset out of the intimacy of the venue, Hubbard Hall offers an opera experience as good as or better than any.
This opera, which premiered in Milan in 1832, was immediately popular, and has become one of the most frequently produced of Donizetti’s many operas. It is a simple story – a humble peasant falls in love with the beautiful, sophisticated, and wealthy woman who owns the estate on which he works, and what seems a hopeless love eventually triumphs over his rival, a handsome but vain and shallow soldier, without much help from the elixir of love sold to him by a traveling quack doctor. There is a lot of music along the way, and a lot of laughs as well – but in the way that opera can reach through a silly story and end up being beautiful and moving, this story becomes powerful.
This production, directed by Andrew Nienaber, purposely builds on the intimacy which is the great strength of Hubbard Hall Opera. By seating some of the audience onstage in the middle of the action, it has not only brought the audience close to the singers, but enabled a lot of amusing stage business in which the actors interact with these audience members. The cast is always stealing flowers off their tables, or grabbing their drinks, or pushing the things on their table aside so they can sign a contract on it.
There was probably not a single person in the audience who didn’t at some point in the show have a singer singing directly to them from a few feet away. When Nemorino was in despair because he thought Adina was going to marry the soldier, he sat down on the risers near us, and an audience member sitting in the aisle seat patted him on the back to comfort him, and then he sang much of his next aria to us. Things like this were constantly happening, and it added much to the show.
The leading singers in this show are absolutely beautiful singers. Christopher Lucier as Nemorino inhabits a role that has been played by the greatest of tenors, from Enrico Caruso to Luciano Pavarotti, and holds his own with a beautiful voice, a musicality and expressiveness that really draws us to his apparently hopeless cause. Soprano Lindsay Ohse plays the shapely Adina with verve and power, with a voice that can be anything from powerful to comic to delicate and vulnerable. Bass Patrick McNally has a wonderful tone, full of vibrato that is very pleasing to listen to. His Belcore is attractive and fun despite his vanity and his self-involved outlook.
There is a full orchestra and subtitles so that those of us who don’t speak Italian can tell what’s going on. The whole thing is really an extraordinary accomplishment, which ought to give us all new respect for Hubbard Hall Artistic Director David Snider, who has somehow marshaled the resources to keep this wonderful tradition of first-rate opera in a tiny town not just alive, but vibrantly thriving. This weekend is the last for this show.
Remaining performances are Friday August 18 at 7 pm and Sunday August 20 at 2 pm.