‘Veneziana’ was the title of this end-of-season show at the Royal Opera House, but its décorevoked Rome – or at least Act I of Tosca, due on stage a few hours later. It comprised six scenes with Venetian connections, three by Rossini and one each by Donizetti, Britten and Offenbach,all staged by the Jette Parker Young Artist Rodula Gaitanou. The majority of the conducting was in the hands of Paul Wynne Griffiths, though the Jette Parker Conductors Volker Krafft and Geoffrey Paterson were entrusted with a scene each, with Jean-Paul Pruna providing continuo inRossini and piano in Britten.
The afternoon opened with comedy – an episode from Il signor Bruschino gave Dawid Kimberg and his creamy baritone with its flickering vibrato the chance to make the strongest impression. An excess of comic business (including a painfully repetitive fart joke) left comparitively littlespace for the elegant, airy-voiced Ji Hyun Kim and the baritone ZhengZhong Zhou who (as his Yamadori the previous evening also indicated) has a warmly burnished voice full of potential.
A formulaic scene from Bianca e Falliero followed. The soprano Anna Devin and the mezzo Kai Rüütel displayed mutual sensitivity, with thrusting top notes and fluent coloratura, though Devin’s neat, bright tone and Rüütel’s soft-grained pliancy irresistibly suggested Sophie and Octavian.
The first half ended with a Rossinian bang as the fluid Otello of Steven Ebel confronted the Rodrigo of Kim, backed by the concerted forces of the entire company. As Desdemona, Madeleine Pierard gave notice of a future as a dramatic coloratura.
Though showcased here as a Mafia-moll Lucrezia Borgia (at home in Ferrara rather than partyingin Venice), Elisabeth Meister is probably more a natural for Wagner’s Elisabeth which she has scheduled for Santiago. She flung impressive top notes at the Alfonso of Lukas Jakobski, whose attractively grainy bass rose incisively to the bel canto challenge.
Imaginatively and kinetically staged, the opening of Act 2 of Death in Venice highlighted StevenEbel, eloquent as Aschenbach (the surtitles really were redundant) and bass-baritone Daniel Grice, darkly ironic and persuasive as the Hotel Barber and Leader of the Players. Tadzio, here a prowling hunk rather than a willowy adolescent, was embodied by Stergios Psifis.
Spurious though it might be, the septet from Les Contes d’Hoffmann, with its swollen reprise of the barcarolle, brought this afternoon in Venice to a surging close.’
