In La rondine, Pérez flies excessive, hovering to crisp, dreamy notes and plunging to emotional depths this previous Sunday at Washington Live performance Opera’s presentation of Puccini’s oft-forgotten La rondine. The second Puccini in WCO’s forty-year historical past, La rondine is a triumphant preview of what could possibly be if Pérez is given a full staging within the U.S..
We meet this Magda in her salon the place the poet Prunier – an aptly pretentious Jonathan Johnson – declares that romantic love is again and higher than ever. A trio of Magda’s associates tease him, as does her maid (and his lover), Lisette, however Magda takes him severely. Prunier declares that nobody can save themselves from this epidemic of affection, even Doretta, main us to the signature aria of the piece. Pérez doesn’t squander a second of her flip as Magda, ascending the climactic minor third intervals and floating her voice gracefully to the aria’s apex. Although vocally excellent, it’s her performing – imbued with the nuance of a saved lady dreaming of real love – that makes her “Canzone di Doretta” so magnetic and arresting. Sunday’s viewers couldn’t be tamed when she completed, erupting into mid-performance applause.
Rambaldo, Magda’s sugar daddy performed by a refined Javiery Arrey, presents her pearls that completely complemented Pérez’s couture scarlet gown. Monochromatic and accented with artwork deco-inspired beadwork and a wonderfully matched daring lip, this primary robe and capelet encapsulate what Rambaldo offers Magda – stability, wealth, extravagance. Her gaggle of ladies are gagged by this present, remarking, “Nobody’s lucky as you!”
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“Who cares for fortune!” Magda replies in her lavish Paris salon, thus main us to, “Ore dolci e divine,” full with its signature waltz that reprises each time Magda is in her extra reflective moments. She finds herself so tempted by this excellent of romantic love that she modifies into a less complicated, however nonetheless divine, silk gown full with one flower in her hair to disguise herself at Bullier’s, the place faculty boys apparently hang around to choose up chicks. Pérez, in all her charms, asks the viewers if she appears to be like okay as she leads us proper into Act II.
WCO Inventive Director and Conductor Antony Walker brings vigor to the rostrum – a lot so {that a} relatively endearing leap in Act II had me fearful he’d tumble into the violinists. He brings a deep understanding and familiarity to the piece which some soloists appeared to lack. The advantage of Washington Live performance Opera is within the alternative for creativeness it offers to its audiences – with WCO, we are able to challenge the staging we wish to see on the planet, however the Washington Live performance Opera Orchestra and Walker carry out the textual content to depart no ambiguity – this opera is “worthy of an everyday place within the operatic canon” as Walker writes in his message from the Inventive Director.
Giusseppe Adami’s libretto – primarily based on Die Schwalbe by Alfred Maria Willner and Heinz Reichert – works extra time to place a value on love, for Magda and for the opposite characters, together with Lisette and Prunier, whose love affair is examined by her activate the stage. Prunier needed to rework Lisette – a savvy and hilarious Deanna Breiwick – into the perfect lady, however she can’t reside as much as his expectation of her. Breiwick – whose excessive notes are as dynamic as her comedic timing – brings a frantic vitality to Lisette that works in distinction with Pérez’s grounded Magda. As Lisette settles again into the lifetime of a maid after her dramatic flip, Magda witnesses her comfortable return to established order, and she or he too begins to contemplate if her new life on the riviera is definitely worth the sacrifice of luxurious. In Act III, Pérez has donned a turquoise robe with earrings to match that ripple like the ocean, signifying her stark flip from the scarlet lady of Act I. Can this lady, now modified, marry harmless Ruggero, as performed by a candy and durable Mario Chang?
No. However it’s neither riches nor disgrace that finally stop Magda from marrying the standard Ruggero: it’s the motherhood he asks her to tackle with out a lot thought to the way it would possibly have an effect on her. La rondine units itself aside from the group of dreary endings for heroines, letting Magda reside after leaving her romantic fantasy with Ruggero. Whereas Chang and Pérez have a vigorous, plausible chemistry, it’s not sufficient to make me root for her to surrender the life she has in-built Paris – the job safety, the mental pursuits, the liberty her swallow craves. Although typically in comparison with Verdi’s La traviata, La rondine makes it potential for this model of Violetta to reside and to reside freely as an alternative of being a mommy-girlfriend to a man and not using a job.
As Chang sings of Magda-as-mother, the panic appears to set in for her: this isn’t the life she needs. Chang’s bel canto tenor has a delicate richness that gained in urgency as his Ruggero begs Magda to remain, however the romantic excellent is just not sufficient for Magda. Although it could have one thing to do with him not figuring out her true previous, it’s also clear that Magda doesn’t want or dream of the motherly life Ruggero describes. As she prepares to depart him, she comforts Ruggero, saying, “Let me converse to you want a mom to a pricey son…you come to your peaceable dwelling, I return to my flight of ache.” Positive, the swallow flies away to be a courtesan, however at the very least she doesn’t have to vary diapers or undergo life-threatening childbirth earlier than epidurals. It’s a heartbreaking ending, however for whom?
Pérez stakes a declare on Magda and makes the character’s journey her personal: her determination, her life, her flight again to Rambaldo. Due to her brilliant vocals, the journey of Magda’s musings is supported by a readability that lends itself nicely to the textual content: it is a lady who is certain, who is evident in regards to the path she needs to absorb abandoning Ruggero on this heartbreaking, however gratefully not deadly, ending.
Puccini reportedly struggled with this ending and wrote two extra earlier than his loss of life, however this primary ending is highly effective and consultant of the troublesome decisions girls face on a regular basis: between finance and love, between sexual exploitation and poverty, and between a scorching, penniless man and an previous fogey with a 401k and inventory choices.
For the centenary of Giacomo Puccini’s loss of life, WCO will convey us extra Puccini this fall with the announcement of Manon Lescaut to observe in November. Their 2024-2025 season will even function Mozart’s La clemenza di Tito and Verdi’s Luisa Miller that includes the Met’s present Magda, Angel Blue.
Pictures: Caitlin Oldham
