Supported by
Review: Vivaldi’s ‘Catone in Utica’ Gets a Rare Staging
Though Vivaldi has become a staple of what passes for classical radio these days, mainly through a handful of concertos, his operas remain rarities. So the chances of encountering one in two different — well, mostly different — productions mere months apart are minuscule.
Yet there it was on Tuesday evening at the Gerald W. Lynch Theater at John Jay College: Vivaldi’s “Catone in Utica,” in a staging by the Washington-based Opera Lafayette, a stripped-down version of a production seen in August at the Glimmerglass Opera in upstate New York. The conductor was the same — Ryan Brown, Opera Lafayette’s artistic director — as were the stage director, Tazewell Thompson, and the excellent lead singers, Thomas Michael Allen as Cato, and John Holiday as Caesar.
That Opera Lafayette called its production merely semi-staged mattered little, given the sketchy nature of the piece and the high quality of the performances. The characters wore modern-day civilian dress, and sets were almost nonexistent: a couple of shards of antiquity in the first half, nothing in the second.
“Catone,” in the truncated two-act form in which it survives (with the music for the first act missing), is all talk, as it were, and no action. Cato, a republican senator and the most honorable of men, as he never tires of pointing out, has left Rome for North Africa after Caesar’s latest power grab, and Caesar has followed him to try to make peace.
Cato suggests a duel, and knives are drawn, but the foes are interrupted. Emilia, widow of Pompey, who was vanquished by Caesar, is bent on revenge and finally has Caesar at knife point, but they, too, are interrupted.
Even Cato’s suicide, which was shown onstage at Glimmerglass, in line with Metastasio’s libretto, is here left to the imagination, as Cato simply flees the stage. (Vivaldi, for his part, eliminated the onstage death, he said, “to make the drama shorter and happier in the current spring season.”)
Still, there were threats aplenty. Vengeance and spite were everywhere, and few composers have written better vengeance arias than Vivaldi. Emilia, sung splendidly by the young mezzo-soprano Julia Dawson, lurked in the background through most of the first half, like everyone’s bad conscience, but suddenly turned into a spitfire before intermission, vowing to avenge her husband’s death.
As Caesar, Mr. Holiday, a robust and brilliant countertenor, had similar animated opportunities and made the most of them. As Cato, Mr. Allen, a strong veteran tenor, took his wrath out harrowingly on Marzia, his daughter, having learned of her secret love for Caesar.
Anna Reinhold, a mezzo-soprano, sang Marzia beautifully, and Marguerite Krull was effective in the thankless trouser role of Arbace, Marzia’s would-be lover. (Don’t you hate it when a Caesar gets in your way?) Eric Jurenas, another powerful and pliant countertenor, sang Fulvio, Caesar’s aide.
The orchestra, an aggregation of East Coast period-instrumentalists, responded eagerly to Mr. Brown’s knowing lead. But it was mainly the stellar cast that carried the day, dramatic gaps be damned.
Find the Right Soundtrack for You
Trying to expand your musical horizons? Take a listen to something new.
Will country music welcome Beyoncé? That’s the wrong question.
Vampire Weekend on its new album. (It’s not a “doom and gloom record.”)
The encounter that put the pianist Kelly Moran on an unexpected path.
Tyla avoids a bad romance, and 9 more new songs on the Playlist.
Advertisement