Tag Archives: Roland Wood

Puccini’s Il Trittico, WNO, a review by Eva Marloes

 out of 5 stars (5 / 5)

The Welsh National Opera delivers an excellent production of Il Trittico by Giacomo Puccini, where singers, chorus, and orchestra perform beautifully with skill and pathos. This is no small feat for a sophisticated and yet underrated work, consisting of three one-act pieces of starkly different registers. One only hopes that management will rethink the misguided cuts to the wonderful chorus and orchestra.

The night begins with Il Tabarro (the cloak), dark and intense, is perhaps the most refined musically of the three pieces. It tells the story of Giorgetta (Alexia Voulgaridou), dissatisfied with her life with Michele (Roland Wood) travelling from place to place on a barge. She falls for kindred spirit Luigi (Leonardo Caimi). Michele realises Luigi is Giorgetta’s lover, kills him, and forces her to look at her dead lover.

Roland Wood as Michele in Il Tabarro (photo credit Craig Fuller )

Contrary to Toscanini’s dismissal of the opera as grand guignol, Il Tabarro never indulges in sensationalism. Puccini’s mature music combines passion and restraint. Voulgaridou, Wood, and Caimi all deliver the haunting drama with great emotional depth.

A splendid Alexia Voulgaridou gives voice to the pain of Suor Angelica, the second piece. The story of a woman forced to become a nun after giving birth to a child. Her Princess aunt visits to tell her that her son is dead. Angelica kills herself in the hope of being reunited with him, then she despairs as she realises that her suicide condemns her to hell. In in her final moments of anguish, she experiences hallucinatory or mystical transcendence, and embraces her child. 

The subdue and soft music lets the tension between Angelica’s suffering and her hope unfold. Voulgaridou delivers Angelica’s irrational demise or transfiguration with striking pathos, doing justice to a much misunderstood Suor Angelica

Alexia Voulgaridou as Suor Angelica in Suor Angelica (photo credit Craig Fuller)

The night ends with the unadulterated fun of Gianni Schicchi, where a family is left penniless as the patriarch dies and leaves his fortune to a monastery. They engage the wits of peasant Gianni Schicchi (Roland Wood), who pretends to be the deceased and dictates a new will to the notary. As he does so, he makes sure the largest part of the family fortune goes to him. 

Haegee Lee as Lauretta and Roland Wood as Gianni in Gianni Schicchi (Photo Credit Craig Fuller) 

Roland Wood performs with humour and sagacity, Haegee Lee, as Lauretta, sings Mio Babbino Caro beautifully. The three pieces have an excellent cast all around, including Tichina Vaughn (The Princess in Suor Angelica and Zita in Gianni Schicchi), Wojtek Gierlach (Il Talpa in Il Tabarro and Simone in Gianni Schicchi), and Oleksiv Palchykov (Young lover in Il Tabarro and Rinuccio in Gianni Schicchi), who entertain and enchant the audience.

In the expert hands of Carlo Rizzi, the WNO orchestra brings together the three pieces giving them a sense of continuity. They excel at balancing the restrained with the emotional thus delivering the intensity of Puccini’s music and drama. As Puccini would have wanted.

Review La Traviata, WNO, Wales Millennium Centre, Cardiff BY Barbara Michaels

 

 out of 5 stars (4 / 5)

 

After the epic production of War and Peace, which opened Welsh National Opera’s 2018 autumn season, the ever-popular La Traviata – Verdi’s most performed and well-loved opera – comes as something of a relief. The fact that this is a second time round revival of WNO’s original co-production with Scottish Opera in 2009, with a more recent revival just four years ago, proves the point.

Basically a love story, with the doomed love of Parisian courtesan Violetta for the young bourgeois Alfredo Germont centre stage, the themes – thwarted love, duty and tragic death– are still relevant today, as they were back in the mid-nineteenth century, when the opera received its first performance in Venice. Wisely, McVicar has chosen to keep to the traditional, with a sumptuous period setting whose opulence fairly reeks of decadence, represented in voluminous black drapes sweeping across the stage at opportune moments. This effective device works well– unfortunately the same cannot be said of the onstage activity inserted before the overture.

With twos sopranos, both of whom are experiencded in the role, singing the role of Violetta on different dates sprinkled throughout the run, David Poultney, in his final year as artistic director of WNO, could hardly lose. Making her debut on the Donald Gordon stage at the Millennium, Armenian singer Anush Hovhannisyan, who previously sang the role with Scottish Opera, proved once again what a fine voice she has. Her pure soprano, coupled with her acting ability, makes her an ideal choice for the role – heart-wringing in the final scenes. Opposite her, as Violetta’s lover Alfredo Germont,.Australian-Chinese tenor Kang Wang, has a strong voice and, while needing to display a stronger persona in scene two of Act II, nevertheless shows empathy with the role, coming into his own in the tragic ending and in his duets with Hovhannisyan throughout. .Interestingly, both these singers represented their respective countries in the 2017 BBC Cardiff Singer of the World competition in which Wang reached the main prize final.

Roland Woods’ sonorous baritone lends gravitas to the role of Germont pater, while Rebecca Afonwy-Jones, who hales from mid-Wales, is appropriately lively as the party girl Flora. Conductor James Southall’s interpretation of Verdi’s wonderful score is magnificent, as is the choreographing of the masquerade,by Andrew George and revival choreographer Colm Seery with some wonderful jumps and grands jetės executed superbly by the dancers.

An opportunity for the always reliable WNO chorus to shine and for the ladies to enjoy wearing the elegant gowns of the era, with their low cut bodices and the bustles favoured at that time, although the latter was a somewhat over-generous embellishment to Violetta’s gown in Act I , while in the second half the trousers of Alfredo’s suit appear over-long. Minor details – but why not get them right?

Overall, though, a revival that has stood the test of time.

Run: Various dates throughout October and November, ending November 23rd.

Music: Giuseppe Verdi

Libretto: Francesco Maria Piave

Director: David McVicar

Revival Director: Sarah Crisp

Artistic Director: David Poultney

Reviewer: Barbara Michaels