opera

Pocket Opera Presents Donizetti’s ‘La Favorita’

A pocketful of love and tragedy

Donald Pippin’s Pocket Opera has come to the East Bay! It’s recently taken residence in the Julia Morgan Theater, starting in February with La Belle Hélène, the inimitable Offenbach’s own spin on the story of Helen of Troy, and last weekend with Donizetti’s La Favorita. Even more intriguing is the upcoming May 9 production of The Haunted Manor by Polish composer Stanislaw Moniuszko, who is the preeminent writer of opera in Poland, his music laced with Polish themes.

You won’t, however, have to take your Polish dictionary to the opera. Nor was it necessary to take an Italian (or French) dictionary to understand Donizetti’s rather glum—albeit tuneful—study of the foibles of crossing God and King in the name of love. Pocket Opera presents its programs in English, in charming and able translations by Maestro Pippin that rarely lapse into awkwardness. A skill he has developed over 50 years and almost 100 libretti. That’s an action-packed half-century.

Because accessibility has always been foremost in his intentions, Pippin also introduces the operas he stages. Beret-topped, he narrates each act’s synopsis with a slow and droll delivery before retiring to the piano where he leads his miniature ensemble of four strings and five woodwinds to accompany the singers.

Sets are also at a minimum. A single archway and a bench describe the monastery of La Favorita’s first act. Remove the cross, reposition it slightly, have the four-woman chorus deck it with flowers, and the arch becomes a garden pergola on an island where gentle zephyrs blow. In the highly decorative setting of the Florence Gould Theater at the Legion of Honor in San Francisco, such austere fixings work well, but in the more rustically cavernous Julia Morgan, the sets seem scanty, even with ensemble and pianist onstage.

This scantiness doesn’t work well in an opera like Donizetti’s, in which the action of the story begins slowly, its conflicts materializing and accumulating like dust. Fortunately, part of that gravely slow beginning is the melodic beauty of the early arias, which engage and hold the listener.

So it is the singers who make this production really worthwhile. Pocket Opera always strives to choose the finest singers possible for its productions, and La Favorita was no exception. As the story opens, Richard Mix as the Superior of the Monastery of St. James holds forth with his excellent bass, dropping now and then into immaculately placed low notes, and tenor Brian Thorsett, as the lovelorn young novitiate Fernando, sings the longingly gorgeous, “A virgin, an angel of God” (“Una vergine, un angel di Dio”). Thorsett, who projects a fresh and even innocent stage presence, is soon joined by Rachel Michelberg as Leonora, the object of Fernando’s passion and, unbeknownst to him, the unwilling mistress of King Alfonso. Michelberg has a beautiful mezzo sound, not a heavy or dramatic mezzo but one with wonderful timbre, graceful phrasing and no division between the upper and lower registers. Lee Strawn added his clear baritone to the mix as the King, cad and nemesis.

American taste v. the mezzo

I read the most bizarre article about this opera. The writer claimed that the reason La Favorita is not among the top 20 opera favorites is because American taste dominates the opera world and American audiences expect the hero to be a tenor and the heroine a “true” soprano. Mezzos just don’t cut it. No explanation was offered as to why Carmen is fourth and The Barber of Seville fifth in the American opera hit parade. Or why L’italiana in Algeri is one of Donizetti’s most popular operas. Where do people get these ideas?

What occurs to me, vis-à-vis the opera’s appeal is that La Favorita requires a very particular cultural understanding. Written by a 19th-century Italian and set in late medieval Spain, it builds its drama on a visceral understanding of Mediterranean Catholicism and the sexual politics of its times.

Even despite its cultural underpinnings, the opera’s ending scene is not only gripping but is also emotionally cathartic and deeply moving when filtered through such alluring voices as Michelberg’s and Thorsett’s.

—Jaime Robles

This article first appeared in the Piedmont Post