West Bay Opera Performance Reviews

Even as lightning, good opera can strike anywhere.

Even as huge productions in big opera houses can melt down suddenly, a community effort sometimes can make you feel good about being in the theater, even if the place reminds you of your high school auditorium—only smaller.

Several times on Sunday afternoon, especially during the Act II duet, the West Bay Opera production of A Masked Ball took flight. Barbara Divis’ Amelia and Gabriel Reoyo-Pazos’ Riccardo brought Verdi to life, with guts and gusto, passion and commitment. Singers gave their all, a small orchestra packed into a small pit sounded startlingly “Italian,” and on what must have been a pocket-change budget, Jean-François Revon built an intriguing set.

(Why there was much more dry-ice smoke swirling around the frozen tableau opening the court scene than in Ulrica’s swampland is a puzzlement, but Revon and stage director David F. Ostwald are my heroes for eschewing trench coats and not manhandling singers.)

After an excessively cautious overture, all performance long, Alexander Katsman conducted his singers and a minimally-configured orchestra (4/3/2/2/1 + one or two players in woodwinds and brass) in a consistent, forwarding-moving manner, hitting the many climactic moments just right, neither overwhelming nor coddling the singers.

Divis is an excellent soprano, new to me, but heard in many West Coast locations recently. She has a big, clean voice, reliable vocal and acting technique. Most importantly there is a quality of sincerity in her singing, she is believable, musically and theatrically, the kind of singer you’d like to hear in many other roles.

Reoyo-Pazos did very well with the king’s difficult role, going for the high notes bravely and making most of them, if not always comfortably. Still, he is a rare true tenor, not a high baritone, and he produces a consistent chest voice, without much audible effort. He must be a very amiable person, with a constant smile on his face—somewhat of a problem during the many bits of singing about conflict, agony and approaching death.

Donna Olson is a fascinating Ulrica, with a big voice that’s placed considerably higher than you expect in the role, a voice she often seems to hold back for some reason. The source of some of the fascination with this seer is the combined effort of designer Revon, director Ostwald, and Callie Floor, the costumer. When she approaches important parts of her prophecy, Ulrica begins to levitate, and ends up as a floating 16-foot specter, only to deflate between those peak moments. Has somebody been watching “The Fifth Element” too long?

Shawnette Sulker is Oscar, diminutive in figure and voice, but singing very well. In an appropriately stolid characterization, Roberto Perlas Gomez is Renato. The chorus, especially baritones and basses, acquitted itself well.

West Bay Opera is a plucky regional company, operating on a half-million dollar annual budget. It produces 18 fully-staged performances with orchestra for the money some big-city company splurges on brochures. In the Lucie Stern Theater today, the woman sitting behind me opened her program and exclaimed: “Everyone is begging for money these days!”

The shrill complaint was about a simple, straightforward flier from company director David Sloss, about the company’s “very difficult year,” in which ticket sales (which make up for half the income) dropped 20% while foundation support and the value of foundation assets both fell. With a substantial accumulated deficit, there is a “possibility,” the statement went on, that “our remaining reserves will soon be exhausted.”

In a rare flash of optimism, the request for help predicted that “This will not go on forever. We believe that there will be an economic recovery, and that there are brighter days ahead. But somehow, we must survive until then.” Amen.

Post Newspaper Group

Posted March 3, 2003, by .