by Jeff Dunn
The two leading women in Festival Opera’s latest double bill have anguish in common — they both lose their lovers. Yet their stories couldn’t be further in style and emphasis. The 1958 La Voix Humaine (The Human Voice) by Francis Poulenc is an expressionistic tour de force for solo soprano, while the 1688 Dido and Aeneas by Henry Purcell is a Baroque, group-effort mosaic featuring 20 captivating chorus members, two dancers and eight soloists.
Nevertheless, the extreme contrast between the two operas works, thanks to some fine individual performances combined with superb direction, choreography, production design, and projections.
La Voix details the morning a Parisian woman, “Elle” (“She”), has telephone calls with her lover, who is about to marry someone else. Elle tried to kill herself with pills the night before but was rescued by a friend. The calls don’t go well, as Elle, impressively portrayed by soprano Carrie Hennessey, wanders about her littered room in various states of dress and undress and displays every emotion imaginable.
” … Whether you prefer a dive-in-the-brain character study, or a fly-with-the-mob ensemble extravaganza, you can get both thrills at Festival Opera …”
Peter Crompton’s projections reflect her moods, from a Pink-Panther cheeriness of bright pinks and greens of decor and in giant cell phones to darker hues as Elle eventually chokes herself in telephone cables. With his on-stage piano instead of an orchestra, conductor Robert Mollicone sensitively rolled with Elle’s emotions from moment to moment.
Utilizing the recently authorized piano-only version certainly makes economic sense today. Yet, for this reviewer, the lack of Poulenc’s lavish orchestration considerably reduces the musical, if not dramatic pleasures to be found in this work. One main melody does come through near the end, a fateful reference to Chopin’s “Winter Wind” Etude, op. 25, no. 11.
Dido is the title character in Nahum Tate’s adaptation of the fourth book of Virgil’s Aeneid, but in Festival Opera’s spectacular concept of Purcell’s setting, the chorus is no stand-and-deliver entity. It is a murmuration, ever swarming around Dido as courtiers, or around the Sorceress as witches and demons, or carousing as sailors.
There is a lot of work for a lot of people besides singing, and director Céline Ricci and choreographer Fiona Hutchens deserve a Trojan boatload of credit for their contributions here. Mezzo-soprano Kindra Scharich handled the role of Dido well, but the strongest impression was made by contralto-profundo Sara Couden as the Sorceress. Tenor Taylor Thompson also contributed a lovely voice to his role as the Sailor, and the rest of the cast, for the most part, performed with distinction. Again a wide range of projections, some of which appear AI-generated, periodically absorbs viewer interest.
Special credit needs to go to conductor, General Director, and harpsichordist Zachary Gordin, who assembled a Baroque orchestra of only seven players that filled the hall and perfectly balanced the voices on the Purcell stage. I could not miss the playing of Richard Savino, whose huge theorbo (brontosaur lute) lofted lovely bass notes to my attention.
Whether you prefer a dive-in-the-brain character study, or a fly-with-the-mob ensemble extravaganza, you can get both thrills at Festival Opera.
-30-
ASR’s Classical Music Section Editor, Jeff Dunn, is a retired educator and project manager who’s been writing music and theater reviews for Bay Area and national journals since 1995. He is a member of the San Francisco Bay Area Theatre Critics Circle and the National Association of Composers, USA. His musical Castle Happy (co-author John Freed), about Marion Davies and W.R. Hearst, received a festival production at the Altarena Theater in 2017. His opera, Finding Medusa, with librettist Madeline Puccioni, was completed in January 2023. Jeff has won prizes for his photography, and is also a judge for the Northern California Council of Camera Clubs.
| Production | La Voix Humaine* / Dido & Aeneas |
|---|---|
| Based on the play by | Jean Cocteau |
| Directed by | Céline Ricci |
| Producing Company | Festival Opera |
| Production Dates | Thru July 14th |
| Production Address | Hoffman Theatre, Lesher Center for the Arts, 1601 Civic Dr, Walnut Creek, CA 94596 |
| Website | www.lesherartscenter.showare.com |
| Telephone | (925) 943-7469 |
| Tickets | $55-$110 |
| Reviewer Score | Max in each category is 5/5 |
| Overall | 4.3/5 |
| Performance | 4/5 |
| Music | 4/5 |
| Libretto | 4.5/5 |
| Stagecraft | 4.5/5 |
| Aisle Seat Review PICK! | YES! |