Musical heroines who meet a bad end were in plentiful supply in Chicago over the weekend.
No sooner had Lyric Opera unveiled its production of Donizetti’s “Lucia di Lammermoor,” starring the astonishing Natalie Dessay as the mad Lucy, when conductor Jane Glover presented an imaginatively conceived program, titled “Tragic Heroines,” with her Music of the Baroque orchestra and chorus on Sunday evening at the new Joan W. and Irving B. Harris Theater for Music and Dance.
Glover is using her inaugural season as MOB music director in part to expand the organization’s repertoire into selected works of 20th Century music that reflect back on the Baroque and Classical repertoire that has long been its bedrock. Sunday’s concert, which marked MOB’s full-evening debut in the auditorium at Millennium Park, proved how effective such cross-pollination can be when the performing forces are as expert as these.
The British conductor, who was taking time out from rehearsals for Chicago Opera Theater’s upcoming production of Monteverdi’s “L’Incoronazione di Poppea,” brought us music for three mythic women betrayed by false lovers or their own heedless passions–Purcell’s Dido, Haydn’s Berenice and Britten’s Phaedra.
All three pieces were indelibly associated with the great English mezzo-soprano Dame Janet Baker, for whom Britten wrote “Phaedra,” his last major vocal work, in 1975, a year before his death.
They were sung here on Sunday by Catherine Wyn-Rogers, a gifted young English mezzo who should be considered an heir to Dame Janet’s mantle. With her full, rich sound and keen expressive intelligence, the singer gave each heroine her own distinct musical color and dramatic weight.
This was the first major test of the Harris Theater’s acoustical adaptability to different combinations of voices and instruments. I found the sound pleasing, direct and well-balanced, flattering to Wyn-Rogers’ ravishing timbre and scrupulous concern for clear word-projection. Playing within an acoustical shell, Glover’s chamber orchestra had a warmer tonal finish and much better definition than one hears in the churches where MOB normally performs. It augurs well for Chicago Opera Theater’s maiden season in the Harris Theater.
Wyn-Rogers’ absolute technical and musical security throughout her wide range was apparent in her stylish renditions of Haydn’s “Scena di Berenice” but was particularly impressive in the Britten “Phaedra” and Dido’s Lament, from Purcell’s “Dido and Aeneas,” to which she brought an intensity that was all the more affecting for its lack of exaggeration.
“Phaedra” concerns an illicit love that must not be acted upon, a theme that pervades Britten’s late masterpiece, “Death in Venice,” which the Opera Theater will perform in May. Wyn-Rogers sang off the words, which Britten treated as musicalized speech, floating them over the strange and spare harmonies of strings, harpsichord and percussion.
Glover had the felicitous notion of linking the vocal works with Britten’s arrangement of Purcell’s Chacony and Haydn’s Symphony No. 44, the “Mourning” Symphony. The Purcell-Britten piece glowed with the soft timbres of a Baroque consort of viols.
Glover made much of Haydn’s dynamic contrasts, phrase shapes and passing dissonances in her polished reading of the symphony. She and the orchestra have a real flair for Haydn, and I hope they bring us more of him.
The chorus acquitted itself nicely in its brief assignments.
