Merola Finale; all participants
Photo by Kristen Loken
Last Saturday, August 15, was the Merola Finale, a concert with orchestra given by this year's young singers of the Merola Opera, who've spent ten weeks working very hard at their art and craft. They've given concerts and an opera and they're a talented bunch.
That said, I was less happy this year than I was last year, and I'm going to chalk it up to conducting that I felt did not adequately support these singers. Numbers that should have sparkled didn't; numbers that needed lilt or charm didn't have it. The duet "Parigi, o cara" from La Traviata was taken at a tempo I found bizarre, though my notes don't indicate whether it was too fast or too slow (probably too fast).
I own that this is a difficult assignment – there were many numbers on the program and a lot of gear-switching – and also that the second half seemed better than the first, but I've heard it done better and I thought the singers deserved better.
I can't say how many of the numbers that fell flat for me would have been better with a different conductor; I do not know whether some singers needed more coaching. I do know that in June's concert by Kyle Ketelsen, with Carrie-Ann Matheson and and a Merola participant as collaborative pianists, the young singers on that program all sounded good.
I do think that there was some miscasting: with several excellent lyric tenors in the mix, somehow the Duke of Mantua, in the Rigoletto quartet, was sung by a budding spinto tenor. In that, he felt miscast; as Dick Johnson in a duet from La Fanciulla del West, he shone.
So let me name this fine young tenor: Chester Seungyup Han, who sounded terrific in the Fanciulla duet with soprano Charlotte Kelso. She has a voice that is both beautiful and characterful, a big, dark-toned, vibrant instrument, which she wielded with great skill: great control of dynamics and color.
Han was also the tenor in the Faust finale, with the excellent soprano Anna Thompson and bass John Mburu. The latter made a big impression in Kaspar's aria "Schweig! Damit sich niemand warnt," which I will bet he got to coach with Ketelsen, whom I heard in that very role in Munich last month. Mburu has a good, solid sound and good interpretive instincts.
There's been some excellent Berlioz at both Merola and Adler concerts over the last five or ten years, and this program had another installment: a beautiful traversal of "Nuit d'ivresse," the love duet from
Les Troyens, by mezzo Theo Claveles and tenor Matthew Sink. These two have very distinctive voices that blended well, and yet you could hear the play of the lines against each other. You bet that I'm sorry to have missed them in
Ariadne auf Naxos, as the Composer and The Tenor/Bacchus, respectively.
Baritone Enes Pektaş stood out for his crisp delivery of "Şeyh Bedriddin Destani," by the Turkish composer Murat Cem Orhan, and Paul Jang showed off a beautiful bass voice in "Yearning," a setting by DongHwan Kim of a poem by KiChul Lee. I enjoyed tenor Logan Wagner's suave "On the street where you live," from Lerner and Lowe's My Fair Lady.
Perhaps the most dramatic number of the evening was tenor Ryan Bryce Johnson's electrifying delivery of the "Aria of the Worm" from John Corigliano's The Ghosts of Versailles, which really made me sit up and take notice.
Claire Choquette’s direction worked well both in terms of interactions among the singers and how it took advantage of the two-level Manon set.
As always, a skilled and talented group of singers, all hoping to join the Adler program. Best of luck to them all; I look forward to hearing these young singers again, whether as Adlers or elsewhere.
Elsewhere:
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