Among Giuseppe Verdi's greatest hits, classical music announcers tend to favor the lilting beauty of his gorgeous "Chorus of the Hebrew Slaves." But it's rare that operagoers get to see the breakthrough work, "Nabucco," from which this famous chorus is taken.
Well, now's your chance. Director Lofti Mansouri's staging at the San Diego Civic Theater possesses a numbingly static pictorial quality that's a throwback to the 19th century, an approach that robs the San Diego Opera production of the urgency built into its potboiler of a plot.
And for much of the opening night performance, key soloists were only adequate to their parts. But the choral singing for which the opera is known proved powerful and emotionally stirring here, and the orchestral playing under the baton of Edoardo Muller was rhythmically confident and musically strong. And though the spectacle remained dramatically inert, unoriginal in particulars of performance and production, having a full-scale "Nabucco" here at all is something of a miracle in this perilous-for-opera economy.
"Nabucco" is a biblical epic about the Babylonian captivity of the Jews, and the intervention of the one God they worship, Jehovah. Through the divinely induced madness and personal change-of-heart of the crazed tyrant of the title, the enslaved people are (suddenly) restored to their homeland. With four major and three smaller soloist roles, and yard after yard of irresistibly melodious choral music, "Nabucco" is something of a musical feast and a theatrical head-scratcher, contradictory qualities that this production doesn't attempt to resolve.
The action opens in the temple of Jerusalem. At the Civic Theatre, during Saturday's opening, it was here that we were introduced to the production's most consistently strong voice and dramatically ardent performer, the agile bass Raymond Aceto as the high priest Zaccaria.
By contrast, the supposedly fearsome entrance to the temple of the victorious Nabucco lacked conviction. Baritone Richard Paul Fink, unfortunately arrayed in red leather pants and boots, showed neither deep-toned vocalism nor commanding presence in these opening scenes. This was more probably nerves ---- opening night was his debut in the role ---- rather than a deeper unsuitability to the multilayered role. And Verdi's not much more help early on than the costume designer; Nabucco's violent threats are pretty often set to music so rhythmically jaunty, it would make a light and entertaining ballet.
After that first impression, Fink grew in artistic command as the evening proceeded. His Nabucco moved through nightmare, mad wanderings, and imprisonment toward several tenderly sung, lyrical arias in which he pleaded for the life of his beloved daughter Fenena and transformed himself convincingly from power-monger to peacemaker. He seemed so vocally sensitive and dramatically human by the end, you wanted him to be able to try his earlier scenes over again.
The powerhouse singing in "Nabucco" comes from Abigaille, the warrior woman thought to be the king's elder daughter. With some apparent effort, Sylvie Valayre negotiated the demanding range and zigzagging styles of this tremendously difficult role. The character is even more fragmented than Nabucco ---- veering in a single scene at the opening of Act II, for instance, from tender lyricism and coloratura highs in her remembered love for the Hebrew ambassador Ismaele, to vengeful, declamatory insistence that she will usurp the throne and rule Babylonia.
Too often, Valayre seemed to be singing about the character's emotion, not embodying it. And like Fink's entrance, her first appearances smacked of camp, with costumer Jane Greenwood and Marie-Louis Waleck dressing her in a hideously fitted silver breastplate and headgear beneath which she swaggered, sword in hand, mouthing rather than singing what should be big, fearsomely toned threats. Still, her death aria with its plea for forgiveness made even this Abigaille a plausible participant in the general conversion.
As Ismaele, isolated, then embraced by his fellow Jews, Arthur Shen displayed a bright, weak tenor and a youthful infatuation with Fenena, a role sung more maturely, and in the fourth act, with persuasive spiritual ardor, by Susana Poretsky.
Michael Yeargan's massive unit set wasn't much help in distinguishing the homeland from various sites in the Babylonian exile. Only in the plaintive scene on the banks of the Euphrates, when the sorrowful, gray-clad chorus raised its impressive, massed forces for the great "Va, Pensiero" chorus did the music, setting, drama, and emotion coalesce. When Aceto's authoritative Zaccaria joined the Hebrews, first upbraiding them and then restoring their hope, the opera took on gravitas and grandeur.
For a moment you could believe that this was a Moses figure, and though he might not part the waters of the Euphrates to lead his people home, you shared his faith that they would get there ---- and that this production would find its way home before the run ends on Sunday.
"Nabucco"
When: 8 p.m. Friday; 2 p.m. Sunday
Where: San Diego Opera at the San Diego Civic Theatre, Third Avenue at B Street, San Diego
Tickets start at $35
Info: 619-533-7000
Web: www.sdopera.com
