CHICAGO — Chicago just might be the busiest and most exciting opera city in the U.S. Significantly bolstering that claim is the 15-year-old Haymarket Opera Company, one of just three companies in North America that present Baroque operas with both period instruments and period staging. This once-scrappy start-up has evolved into an established, nationally known player in its specialized field, a transition marked in 2023 by its much-praised, world-premiere recording of Joseph Bologne’s only surviving opera, L’amant anonyme, on the Cedille Records label.
Its ambitions only growing, Haymarket unveiled another major project June 27 with the first of three performances of a fully staged production of Artaserse (1730) by Leonardo Vinci in DePaul University’s Jarvis Opera Hall. The Italian composer, who died the same year this work premiered, is not to be confused with the great Renaissance painter and inventor Leonardo da Vinci, who lived more than two centuries earlier. In his four-decade life, Vinci managed to write some 40 operas, of which Artaserse was his last and most admired.
Although popular for a while following Vinci’s death, the opera eventually fell into obscurity and has only been rediscovered in recent decades. In 2012, the Opéra national de Lorraine in Nancy, France, presented a groundbreaking revival that included countertenor Philippe Jaroussky in the title role. This French production kept the single-sex casting of the premiere — with women banned from Italian opera stages in the 18th century, all the roles were taken by men (five castrati and one tenor) — using countertenors for the two female roles.
Haymarket’s first-rate production, which is also being recorded for Cedille Records for a 2026 release, provides another important boost to the 295-year-old opera’s continuing comeback. Although this work is arguably not on the same plane with, say, Handel’s best operas such as Giulio Cesare (Julius Caesar), which debuted in London six years earlier, it has a good deal to offer both dramatically and musically. This performance ran four hours, and, though the plot could be a little convoluted and puzzling at times, it never felt overly long or drawn out.
Vinci and Pietro Metastasio, the most sought-after librettist of his time, worked together on six operas, helping to develop the opera seria style, which dominated European opera from 1710 through 1770. (Mozart used Metastasio’s librettos for his operas La clemenza di Tito and Il re pastore.) This story is set in fifth-century B.C. Persia and is loosely based on Xerxes the Great, who was assassinated along with his heir, Darius, by Artabanus, the commander of the royal bodyguard.
Vinci’s opera is set in motion when the power-hungry, deceitful Artabano kills King Serse of Persia and gives the bloody sword to his son, Arbace for safe-keeping. But Arbace is caught with the sword and, having said some inflammatory words earlier about the sovereign, he is assumed to be guilty, which causes his sister Semira, his close friend Prince Artaserse, and the woman he loves, Princess Mandane, Serse’s daughter, to all turn away from him, even as he maintains his innocence.
Most of the action takes place outside of the frame of the story, and the surrounding royal court is only hinted at. It is possible to imagine a production that suggests some of that larger world, but director Drew Minter, the distinguished countertenor, maintains the opera’s essential, closed-in intimacy.
The set, by Wendy Waszut-Barrett, is modest and workable, with painted panels in the Baroque style that vaguely suggest a palace courtyard but also serve, with slight modifications, as the royal court and the prison where Arbace is being held. More important to the overall visual effect are the spectacular costumes by Stephanie Cluggish, each with a highly distinctive look that helps define the characters and set them apart, and the elaborate wigs and make-up by Megan Pirtle.
There is nothing revolutionary or unusual about Minter’s staging, and there is little room for either within the conventions of opera seria. Baroque staging calls for elaborate use of gestures, and Minter makes sure that those in this production mean something and serve as important ways for the singers to project emotions and convey relationships. In the second half, Semira walks back and forth across the stage and finally spins in a circle, visually conveying how lost she feels as she contemplates in the aria “Se del fiume altera l’onda” what all seem like bad options in her life.
The top-flight pit orchestra consisted of 21 musicians, including several standouts — trumpeters Ryan Berndt and David Kjar, harpsichordist Matthew Dirst, and Brandon Acker, who doubled on lute and Baroque guitar, providing some wonderfully expressive, delicate playing. Craig Trompeter, Haymarket’s founder and artistic director, who is also a sought-after cellist and viola da gamba player, has become a probing and insightful conductor. He brought out the best from this group of musicians, adroitly supported the singers, and never let momentum onstage lag.
It was a fine cast overall, with a mix of veterans and emerging talent, and Vinci’s score allowed all of them to have their moments in the spotlight. The evening’s clear standout, as Arbace, was countertenor Key’mon Murrah, who made his professional debut in 2019 and has since performed with such major companies as the Los Angeles Opera and Bavarian State Opera in Germany.
His acting is a bit stiff, but that is quickly forgotten with his vocal delivery. He offered some of the production’s most transporting singing with his agile, compelling countertenor, making the most of every big opportunity, notably Arbace’s culminating aria in Act 1, “Vò solcando un mar crudele,” in which he laments all he has lost. Murrah alighted on the character’s high notes with grace and adroitly handled the often complex ornamentations.
Male soprano Elijah McCormack impressed as Semira, Arbace’s sister and Artaserse’s betrothed, with his airy, floating voice. He drew forth some lovely tonal nuances in Semira’s first-act aria, in which she laments her fate and calls on the gods for support. As Mandane, mezzo-soprano Emily Fons, a Haymarket regular, was at her best in moments of anger. At the end of Act 1, she spit out the words, “I cannot feel pity for a traitorous murderer,” with punch and fury when she believed Arbace had killed Serse. Her fury drew cheers from the house.
Kangmin Justin Kim’s countertenor might be a bit light for Artaserse, a prince who is the heir to the throne. But he poignantly conveyed the anguish and conflict of this character who mistakenly orders the killing of his brother, Dario, who he initially believed was the assassin, and later struggled to accept the apparent guilt of his friend Arbace. Kim showed a particularly good feel for Baroque gestures, effectively using them to amplify his character’s emotions.
Villains in opera are often baritones or basses, but here that distinction went to the lone tenor, Eric Ferring, an alumnus of the Lyric Opera of Chicago’s Ryan Opera Center, who earlier this season performed with Le Concert d’Astrée in France. He ably conveyed the treachery and malevolence of Artabano.
There is one remaining performance at 6 p.m. July 1.
