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United States Bonds, Credo and Orff, Carmina Burana: Brandie Sutton (soprano), Joseph Tancredi (tenor), Ethan Vincent (baritone), Philadelphia Girls & Boys Choirs, Opera Philadelphia Chorus and Orchestra / Lina González-Granados (conductor). Opera Philadelphia, Academy of Music, Philadelphia, 5.2.2023. (RP)
This was a live performance supposed to showcase Opera Philadelphia’s Chorus and Orchestra. And what higher work to take action than Carl Orff’s Carmina Burana, with its mixture of hovering melodies, infectious rhythms and bawdy lyrics. Carmina Burana is a crowd pleaser – a full-house on the Academy of Music attested to that – stuffed with visceral musical thrills, and this efficiency delivered all of them.
The firm debuts of soprano Brandie Sutton, baritone Ethan Vincent and conductor Lina González-Granados added to the joy. There was additionally the drama of a last-minute substitute, with tenor Joseph Tancredi, a pupil on the close by Curtis Institute of Music, changing the indisposed Alasdair Kent.
The live performance opened with Margaret Bonds’s setting of American civil-rights advocate W.E.B. DuBois’s 1904 prose poem Credo for soprano and baritone soloists, combined refrain and orchestra. The DuBois manifesto on racial equality is among the nice American civil-rights texts, typically ranked second solely to Dr Martin Luther King Jr’s ‘I Have a Dream’ speech.
This was savvy programming as DuBois had robust ties to this metropolis. While a paid researcher on the University of Pennsylvania, he did analysis for his landmark research, The Philadelphia Negro. Published in 1899, it was the primary case research of a black group within the United States.
Most opera lovers know of Bonds for her association of spirituals for soprano Leontyne Price, however she was a prolific composer. Her friendship and collaboration with Langston Hughes, whom she met in 1936, led to a few of her most essential works. Bonds’s music has seen a resurgence lately, because the repertoire expands to incorporate works by composers ignored resulting from gender and race.
Even by Sixties requirements, Bonds employed a considerably conservative classical model in Credo. The music that she composed for the soloists and orchestra is proficient, however she invested her soul within the spacious and richly-colored choral writing. The Opera Chorus, ready by Elizabeth Braden, sang with majesty and honesty.
Hedonism, not social messaging, is on the coronary heart of Orff’s Carmina Burana. His creativeness was sparked by a group of medieval poetry that had been found in a Bavarian monastery a century earlier. The verses rejoice the needs of the flesh, which Orff captured in music that’s at occasions raucous and at others transcendent.
González-Granados, the resident conductor of the LA Opera, isn’t any stranger to audiences right here as she was a Conducting Fellow of the Philadelphia Orchestra. She counts Yannick Nézet-Séguin, whose contract with the orchestra has simply been prolonged by means of 2030, as considered one of her mentors. In each Credo and Carmina Burana, González-Granados crafted performances that had been as fulfilling emotionally as they had been musically.
Brandie Sutton’s luscious lyric soprano spun Orff’s melodies with astonishing ease. Her excessive notes, whether or not ringing out at full quantity or floating effortlessly like a cloud, had been ravishing. The sensuous vocalise in ‘Dulcissime’ was topped by an excellent excessive B.
Orff’s music for the baritone is equally high-flying, and Ethan Vincent met it head on. His vivid stage presence lent as a lot drama to the music as did his voice. Sparks flew when he sang of the villainous Abbot of Cockaigne, and hearts melted when he sang of romance.
Many a tenor’s goose has been cooked in Orff’s ‘Olim lacus colueram’, however Tancredi soared skyward together with his wings unsinged. His nonchalant pose mirrored the benefit with which he negotiated the aria’s excessive tessitura. (Of course, the fowl of which he sang is a roast swan mendacity on a platter.)
The Philadelphia Girls & Boys Choirs, standing in bins on both facet of the stage, seemed virtually angelic with voices simply as pure. Orff was not one to stint on piling one sonic thrill on high of one other.
On stage, moderately than submerged within the pit, the Philadelphia Opera Orchestra was middle stage. Under González-Granados’s baton, they performed with lightness, transparency and nuance. None of the joy was lacking, however this was a refined studying of Orff’s rating.
The Opera Chorus, nevertheless, was the star of this present. They sang with a menacing drive within the opening refrain, ’O Fortuna’, extolling a merciless goddess who brings pleasure and struggling in equal measure. The males’s diction was exemplary in each ‘In taberna quando sumus’ and ‘Si puer cum puellula’. When divided into double choirs, there was no diminishment of quantity or depth of tone.
Carmina Burana climaxes with a radiant outpouring of reward to Venus, the goddess of affection and sweetness, that rang out gloriously. In a heartbeat, the refrain once more sang of the malevolent wheel of destiny that dashes the hopes of all, ending the efficiency with a sonic punch to the intestine. Just because it ought to.
Rick Perdian