NEW YORK — This summer’s iteration of Will Crutchfield’s training program Teatro Nuovo presented two highly worthwhile evenings July 15 and 16 at Rose Theater Jazz at Lincoln Center honoring an important anniversary. Italian opera in New York began in earnest 200 years ago with a visit by the company of the great Spanish tenor-composer Manuel García (1775-1832). Teatro Nuovo performed two of the nine works given at that eventful season at the Park Theatre: Don Giovanni and Il turco in Italia.
Rossini, then just 34, dominated the world’s Italian repertoire at the time, and García (who’d created the roles of Count Almaviva in Il barbiere di Siviglia and Norfolk in Elisabetta, regina d’Inghilterra) presented five operas, two of his own stage works, 1796’s Giulietta e Romeo by Niccolò Zingarelli, and, a comparative antique, Mozart’s 1787 depiction of the notorious libertine. The company included García (singing both tenor and baritone parts), his wife, Joaquina Briones, and two of their historically important offspring: teenage superstar soprano Maria, who was to add the married name “Malibran” during her stay in New York, and decent baritone son Manuel Jr., who would become one of opera’s leading pedagogues. Little sister Pauline, later known as Viardot-García, a musical multi-hyphenate in every sense, was, at four, doubtless at play, listening in the wings.
Remarkably, the inclusion of Don Giovanni was cemented and shaped by the residence in New York of the work’s much-traveled (and much-exiled) librettist, Lorenzo da Ponte (1749-1838). The shape-changing, Jewish-born Venetian former Catholic priest, brothel denizen, Viennese Court librettist, and Philadelphia grocer had founded Columbia University’s Italian Department. He shaped the edition of this masterpiece that the García troupe performed to great success; da Ponte’s son Luigi furnished a translation.
For the Teatro Nuovo performance on July 15, Teatro Nuovo used the title Il Don Giovanni, in line with 1826. Beside the 1826 libretto, Crutchfield scoured press clippings, private accounts, and the musical examples Manuel Jr. included in his treatises to get maximal information about structure, cuts, ornamentation, and other aspects of performance practice to use as a basis for his troupe’s preparatory work on the revised score.
The use of projected titles of Luigi da Ponte’s libretto, crowded with British spellings, archaic usages (“Zounds!”), and often cloying rhymes wandering from literal meaning, was one misstep in pursuit of the 1826 audience’s experience. That text might have been best posted online. One pitied first-time hearers of the opera, though the semi-staged action (and the score’s genius) made the plot clear enough. Another throwback was probably merited: Elizabeth Novella took an out-of-character bow after Anna’s fiendishly difficult “Non mi dir.” Surely 1826’s Clorinda Corradi did so, too!
From its very first season, the opera posed edition problems as the Prague (October 1787) and Vienna (May 1788) premieres — both Mozart-led — featured considerable differences: Each had a different Ottavio aria, Vienna’s Caterina Cavalieri, singing Elvira, merited an additional solo scena, and Mozart added a second-rate Leporello/Zerlina buffo scene. It’s unclear whether the final, post-apocalyptic finale — with direct address to the audience, as in the other Mozart/da Ponte works — was played in Vienna, but early on most productions dropped it, leaving Giovanni’s death as climax; that practice endures sporadically today.
Da Ponte left that sextet out, plus “Dalla sua pace” and “Metà di voi”; he moved Elvira’s “Mi tradi” to where her “Ah, fuggi il traditor” usually occurs and made snips in some ensembles, eliding repeats. Also, instead of the usual second tune played for Giovanni’s dinner (from Giuseppe Sarti’s 1782 I due litiganti), we heard a musical citation from Rossini’s Barbiere. Plus, Crutchfield and his colleagues, doubtless including conductor Geoffrey Loff and his recitative team, instilled the cast’s vocalism with any number of ornamental flourishes — appoggiaturas, trills, and cadenzas. By and large extremely well performed, it made for an experience at once highly instructive and very enjoyable.
Loff’s instrumental forces — largely young, with a few veteran ringers — were not always beyond reproach in pitch or execution, especially the brass section, but the vital woodwinds delivered the goods and overall the music flowed organically. The AI projections actually did a pleasing job of setting the traditional scenes, but surely the initial episode needed to be in early-morning darkness for the onstage and offstage action’s mysteries of identity to make sense.
Baritone Ricardo José Rivera, whose Teatro Nuovo career has been brilliant and whose HD-shown emergency Metropolitan Opera debut as I puritani‘s Riccardo this year has opened international vistas, made an excellent Giovanni. In historicizing a “bel canto” rather than a “High German Romantic” Don, Crutchfield downplays any emphasis on the character whose demonic, toxic-masculine aspect here is dealt mainly with charm (and who even crossed himself at the Commendatore’s demise). Rivera sang resonantly and fluidly throughout, with due agility and timbral finish. Cadenzas led upward, perhaps a legacy of the tenor García having assumed the role in New York. Already far more assured as Giovanni than the recent Met HD’s Ryan Speedo Green, Rivera will, with more performances, acquire fuller mastery of all the subtleties the libretto demands (as the current Met production has witnessed from Peter Mattei and Kyle Ketelsen).
Alongside Rivera’s portrayal the starriest singing came from Novella’s gorgeously sung Anna, needing only more facial mobility to complement her musical and linguistic engagement. Dead on pitch throughout, she gave a laudable master class in tapering dynamics within phrases. Mezzo-soprano Sedona Libero’s impassioned Elvira — not always dulcetly “Viennese,” aptly fiery yet capable in Act Two’s sublime “Ah taci, ingiusto core” of refined singing — gave the most complete characterization onstage. Capable tenor Martin Luther Clark found more dynamic nuance as Ottavio than as last summer’s Macduff; the voice lacks the “float” we associate with a Léopold Simoneau or Stuart Burrows (possibly no one expected that in 1826!). He sounded happiest in “Tergi il ciglio,” a passage in which Ottavios announce their readiness for heavier assignments.
Kevin Spooner made a forthright, droll Leporello, with a bass-baritone able to assume the elegance of a Liedersinger. But someone should have told him not to laugh at the end of musical lines — almost always a mistake. Simona Genga’s mettlesome, still-gelling dramatic mezzo seemed an odd choice for Zerlina, not in range — Maria García, 1826’s Zerlina, was after all a mezzo, and Rosalind Elias and Patricia Kern onstage and then Marilyn Horne on records revived a tradition of mezzo Zerlinas 60 years ago — but in vocal scope, limiting precision.
Accomplished bass Daniel Mobbs, a style-imbued veteran of many Crutchfield endeavors at Caramoor, appeared as the Commendatore, singing and acting very well, not the massive “Wagner bass” we’re used to, but such basses were not part of Mozart’s (or the García family’s) arsenal. At both the Prague and Vienna premieres, the bass singing that role also took on the (in current practice) lighter-sounding Masetto. Resident artist Noah B. Rogers made an appealing peasant fiancé, sensitively phrased; his aria vanished in da Ponte’s revision. The Crutchfield-trained choristers, in formal wear for Mozart and business casual for Rossini, excelled throughout both performances.
Il turco in Italia rather tanked in 1826 when Maria García pulled out of performances. The score has some of the virtues and also some of the longueurs of Rossini and an interestingly self-conscious meta-theatrical libretto by Felice Romani. In his remarks, Crutchfield accentuated Turco as a riposte to the Mozart/da Ponte Così fan tutte; the performance July 16 also made plain its musical and dramatic influence on Don Pasquale, Gaetano Donizetti’s supremely elegant 1843 comedy.
Teatro Nuovo’s semi-staged presentation — with well-chosen projections starting with Vesuvius seen from the Neapolitan beach and in modern dress — made sense, certainly improving on New York City Opera’s ghastly 1978-79 production (redeemed only by Donald Gramm’s Selim and Alan Titus’ Prosdocimo) and Juilliard’s solidly cast and played but rather lazily updated (pool, sunglasses) 2014 stagin
Unfortunately, the three leads satisfied the least. Vincent Graña acted well as the titular Selim but was disappointingly blunt-toned and imprecise of voice throughout. Kresley Figueroa worked the flashy good looks for the flirtatious mean girl Fiorilla, but her rather acidulous soprano (with old-school vibrato evoking the Catalan soprano Mercedes Capsir) lacked tonal beauty, though she grasped the style and had bravura moments, putting across the performative nature of Fiorilla’s big final set piece, “Squallida vesta e bruna.”
Crutchfield veteran Hans Tashjian, though stylistically knowledgeable, simply lacked the volume to be heard over the orchestra in this middle-sized room. He fared better in recitative, though both register extremes grew pale. Prosdocimo, the piece’s interactive onstage librettist, is a very tough part to direct or play. Though parts of the crowd ate it up, I found the self-delightedly smiling characterization here rather a trial.
The evening’s breakout stars were the resonant, vocally flexible, and comically resourceful Don Geronio of Mattia Venni — his projection of text and music a joy — and dark-toned resident artist soprano Sabatina Mauro as a feisty, timbrally arresting Zaida (Fiorilla’s eventually triumphant rival for Selim’s affections). Both tenors did well. Narciso is a tough, not very gratifying role, but Max Alexander Cook handled the high tessitura with aplomb. Albazar’s aria is a classic “aria di sorbetto” — something skippable — but tenor David Freides lent it beauty and charm. Concertmaster Elisa Citterio and fortepianist Derrick Goff brought energy to their joint leadership of the orchestra, which featured some brass accidents but very reliable percussion and timpani.
