Cape Town Opera’s current triad of productions proves the splendid calibre of our indigenous vocalists
Guy Willoughby
It has always satisfied me greatly, as a determined critic of educational institutions, to note that Guiseppi Verdi outstanding genius of Italian opera was tossed out by the Milan Conservatory in 1831 ”on the score of lack of musical talent”. How those learned fools would cringe to know that, many lifetimes later, Cape Town Opera (in concert with opera houses everywhere) is marking the centenary of Verdi’s death with a buoyant spring season drawn from his extraordinary repertoire.
I say ”extraordinary” advisedly: Verdi’s first crowd-pleaser, Ernani, debuted in 1844, and his last, Falstaff, almost 50 years later (1893). In between Verdi’s output fell like so many great European artists into three periods, during which he transformed Italian opera from a prettily insubstantial artform into a vehicle of complex emotional expression.
Cape Town Opera’s current triad of productions matches the high demands Verdi makes on his principals’ voices and proves the splendid, world-winning calibre of our indigenous vocal work.
The first production in the season is at once the least known and has proved the most popular: Macbetto, Verdi’s version of Shakespeare’s dark tragedy of a tyrant’s bloody rise and downfall. Asking audacious director-writer Brett Bailey to direct was a bold stroke, for this young practitioner has pushed indigenous stagecraft in new directions and this production is one of his triumphs.
Arranger Pieter Louis van Dijk drastically reduces Verdi’s grand opera to a lean one-acter, concentrating on the moments of greatest drama, and astutely blending Verdi’s richly emotive orchestration with African percussive motifs.
Bailey relocates Shakespeare’s tale ”in some backwater wasteland of post-colonial Africa” (director’s programme note), and his evocation of some Rwanda- or Sierre Leone-type hellhole, mixing primitive icons and up-to-date technological detritus, is grimly convincing.
Chief glory, appropriately, are the young singers of the University of Cape Town and Cape Town Opera’s choral training programme: among much robust and sinister playing, the combination of two Macbeths and Lady Macbeths Simphiwe Qavane/Ntsikilelo Mali and Ntombizodumo Mboniswa/ Tina Mene is electric. No wonder crowds have flocked in droves to see this invigorating Shakespeare/Verdi/ Van Dijk /Bailey fusion.
While young talent has been bursting out in Macbeth, the big stars were out in force in Un Ballo in Maschera (”The Masked Ball”), a sumptious, full-throated production of Verdi’s middle-period grand opera (prmire: 1859). This rather tortuous version of the classic ill-fated triangular love story has had a rather contested history in the repertoire, ever since its troubled origins it was first set, improbably, in colonial Boston, United States, to avoid upsetting political sensibilities in mid-19th century Italy.
The story is laden with sensational incidents, but in the hands of this cast it became a triumph of soaring vocal excitement. The local principals are, in my view, at the top of their powers right now: Cape hero Sidwill Hartman arrests with the searching, plangent power of his tenor’s upper register as Riccardo, conscience-stricken king, and his musical and emotional encounters with Virginia Davids as his tortured beloved, Amelia, are ravishing.
Offsetting them both is the marvellous soul-sweeping contralto of Sibongile Khumalo, whose cameo as Emelia, the witchy soothsayer who predicts the hero’s tragic end, is an awe-filled delight.
Yet all these impressive principals are in some sense matched by the power, energy and sustained vocal precision of the chorus drawn from the Cape Town Opera Vocal Ensemble and the Sanlam Choral Training Programme forcibly reminding audiences of the wealth of glorious voices we have in this country. Director Angelo Gobbato deserves a vote of thanks for a fine, bravura production.
Third item in the triad is also the most tried and tested Rigoletto, ”The Fool’s Revenge”, Verdi’s enduringly popular adaptation of Victor Hugo’s tale of a hunchback jester’s ill-fated love for his daughter. Michael Williams reworks Gobbato’s 1998 production, now starring Hartman as the wickedly debauched Duke of Mantua, with Fikile Mvinjelwa as Rigoletto the jester and Hanli Stapela as his daughter, Gilda.
Hartman is in swashbuckling form as the smooth-tongued womaniser, but the evening belongs to Mvinjelwa as Rigoletto: he brings his wonderful vocal resources and much psychological acumen to this haunted character, at one a repulsive, snake-tongued toady and a loving father. It is safe now to predict a great future for this charming performer, who recently created the memorable role of Toloki in Love and Green Onions.
Hanli Stapela, now based in New York, was intensely moving and in that fine, shimmering vocal form that Verdi invites for his soprano leads all of which helps one rise above designer Peter Cazalet’s cramped, distractingly industrial and (after three years) increasingly tired-looking set.
Surveying this richly action-packed spring season, I can end by happily conflating the language of Guiseppi Verdi with that of the local genius, and say: Viva, Cape Town Opera, Viva!