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"It was the second outing for this valuable, spunky group, whose purpose under its founder, the conductor Neal Goren, is to mine a repertoire that is unsuitable for the Met's and the City Opera's large auditoriums--small-scale, perhaps unfamiliar chamber operas that require relatively modest forces and flourish best in halls the size of Henry Street's 350-seat jewel box of a theatre. Both productions, which were directed by Laurence Dale, showed the virtue of minimal means. The Milhaud, a goofily haunting updating of the Orpheus myth set in the 1920's was done, appropriately, as a jaunty pop-up book. The Purcell production cleverly made the most of its monumental Dido, the opulent-voiced Camellia Johnson, by turning the Empress of Carthage into a totemic Easter Island-type goddess...The full house, which included quite a rew regulars from the big-league uptown venues, cheered the intrepid young singers and musicians as though we were all at the dawn of a bright new era, and-who-knows?- maybe we were." Charles Michener - The New York Observer
"The Henry Street Chamber Opera created an immediate buzz
when it announced itself with Mozart's youthful "Sogno di
Scipione" last April. The work, if not top-drawer Mozart,
was unusual enough to catch the attention of operatic
novelty seekers, and it was professionally staged,
performed by good young singers and supported by a lively
chamber orchestra led by Neal Goren, the company's founder.
The troupe's home, the Playhouse at the Abrons Arts Center, was a draw as well: a beautifully
refurbished, 350-seat theater with good sight lines and
fine acoustics, it lets opera be an intimate experience
rather than an impersonally distant spectacle.
In the company's second production - a double bill of
Milhaud's "Malheurs d'Orphée" and Purcell's "Dido and
Aeneas" that opened on Monday evening - it maintains the
promise of freshness and excitement that was implied in its
auspicious debut.
The two works do not immediately suggest themselves as
partners. The Milhaud, written in 1924 and rarely played,
is a modern transformation of the story of Orpheus and
Eurydice, set in a vigorous, faintly jazz-tinged language.
Its obvious companion is Stravinsky's "Histoire du Soldat"
or possibly "Renard." The Purcell, composed around 1689 and
justly famous, is couched in the French style that
17th-century English composers favored. Its logical
companion, for reasons of both internal textual reference
and musical style, is Charpentier's "Actéon."
Mr. Goren maintained the musical distance between the
works: the Henry Street Chamber Opera Orchestra, playing
modern instruments, accompanied the Milhaud, and the
Concert Royal Baroque Orchestra, a superb period instrument
ensemble, supported the Purcell.
Still, the suggestion in the program notes by Laurence
Dale, the stage director, that both works are about people
who love too much (and die as a result) seemed as good a
connection as any, and as it turned out, the juxtaposition
was not particularly jarring.
Mr. Dale also made some connections directorially. In the
Milhaud, Orpheus is a peasant who has healing powers;
Eurydice is a Gypsy. Both the villagers and Eurydice's
family raise xenophobic objections to the union, and when
Eurydice dies of a disease that Orpheus cannot heal, her
sisters return to kill him.
Mr. Dale and his costume designer, Fabio Toblini, made the
elder sister (Tiffany Regal) into a flamboyantly malevolent
black-clad matron. Ms. Regal returns in the same costume in
the Purcell to sing the Sorceress who puts Dido and Aeneas
asunder and causes Dido's death.
The sets by Dipu Gupta make economic use of scrims - one
spattered with drops of paint in the Milhaud, gracefully
etched translucent ones in the Purcell - and rely heavily
on Allen Hahn's thoughtful lighting. Mr. Toblini's rag-tag
modernist costumes hold the eye as well.
But it was the cast that really brought these works to
life. David Adam Moore's solid baritone enlivened Orphée
and made for an unusually decisive, powerful Aeneas.
Patricia Johnson, a lyric soprano, sang Eurydice's music
gracefully and with the low-key ardor that the score
demands. She was also an energetic Belinda in the Purcell.
The knockout performance of the evening, though, was
Camellia Johnson's Dido. Except for a moment in the hunt
scene, she is set on a pedestal that makes her tower over
both Aeneas and her subjects. But the suppleness she
brought to her arias - particularly her closing lament -
had a melting quality that magnified the character in a far
more touching way.
The singers in the smaller roles - Talise Trevigne as the
Second Woman, Julie Baron and Sarah Blaze as the witches
and William Ferguson as the sailor - also made important
contributions to the Purcell, and the company's nicely
polished chorus was crucial in both works.
Mr. Goren drew beautifully shaped performances from the two
orchestras as well, and if some of his tempos in the
Purcell seemed idiosyncratic at first, he was generally
able to make them seem persuasive in the context of the
production.
The bill runs through Tuesday." Allan Kozinn - The New York Times, January 19, 2002
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