Westminster Choir College is not just for choirs anymore. Especially since the merger with Rider University, the Choir College has expanded its performance opportunities beyond the choral field. There is now a particularly strong emphasis in the vocal department on operatic training (especially under the leadership of current opera department head Daniel Beckwith), and some of the most recent crop of students had a chance to demonstrate their training this past weekend in a set of two operas by very different composers but both from the early part of the twentieth century. The central opera of the evening was Puccini’s comic Gianni Schicchi, usually paired with another of Puccini’s one-act operas, but in this production performed with a very unusual and difficult work.
The music of British composer Gustav Holst is hidden well enough in the repertory of regularly-performed music, but the fact that he composed eight operas is almost completely unknown by the average audience member. The chamber opera Savitri, composed in 1916 for the London School of Opera, plays on the turn-of-the-century operatic fascination with the Eastern world and draws its storyline from a simple Sanskrit tale. The opera is scored for only three characters, performed on Saturday night (the show was repeated Sunday afternoon) in the Westminster Playhouse by tenor Michael King, soprano Rachel Brook, and bass Jeffrey Gavett. The musical style ranges from a Weber fascination with the occult to Wagnerian harmonies to Britten-esque pointillism, with a tremendous amount of a cappella singing, but the three talented singers of the Westminster opera department were well up to the challenge.
A long unaccompanied introduction sung by Mr. Gavett set the musical scene that this was an opera that would require solid concentration by the singers to maintain pitch with no melody onto which to hang. A senior in the vocal performance division of the College, Mr. Gavett demonstrated a vocal maturity beyond his years, as well as an ability to convey the drama of his character, Death. The lighter lyric tenor Michael King, although a bit in trouble in some of the very high registers, provided an appropriately light-hearted character and voice to Satyavan, the woodsman whom is being pursued by Death. Standing in between these two characters is Satyavan’s wife, Savitri, sung by Master’s candidate Rachel Brook. Ms. Brook’s voice filled the space of the Playhouse well, with excellent diction and a very full and rich soprano sound.
Holst was fascinated with voices from afar, as can be seen in his symphonic work The Planets, and this opera also included a chorus of off-stage voices. The choral writing was among the most interesting of the opera, and the Westminster Kantorei, conducted on Saturday night by Madeline Tsai, was effective in the very dry and ethereal choral writing. The orchestration of a full production of this opera would have added to the musical color, but Mr. Beckwith capably held things together from the piano. Musically, Savitri worked almost without flaws, but the stage direction might deserve a few hisses for characterizing Death with a swastika on his forehead, a rather unfortunate bit of stereotyping.
As dark as Savitri was as an opera, Puccini’s Gianni Schicchi was lighthearted and comical. While the costumes of Savitri were stark and simple, the costumes and set of Schicchi were opulent and colorful. The opera plot was centered on the scheming character of Gianni Schicchi, who successfully deceived his neighbors and took the deceased Buoso’s fortune for himself. Master’s candidate John-Andrew Fernández may only be in his early twenties, but he was able to humorously convey an older man with a wide range of very funny (and vocally solid) singing styles and gestures. Mr. Fernández was surrounded by a full cast of talented and equally humorous singers, especially Matthew Knickman, playing the two roles of Maestro Spinelloccio and Guccio with a character reminiscent of television’s Darryl and his other brother Darryl.
In every Puccini opera there is one vocal showstopper, in this case “O mio babbino caro,” sung by senior Annie Leonardi with sensitivity and warmth as she cajoled her father (Schicchi) into letting her run off with her beloved. This production was concisely conducted by Daniel Beckwith, with Eldon Murray also superbly leading things from the piano.
Westminster Choir College now includes a full season of opera productions and scenes as part of its performing life. These productions may or may not move across the street to the new Princeton High School auditorium (it was hard for everyone to see the stage in the one-level Playhouse), but regardless of where these productions are, they will provide the students at the Choir College with solid opportunities to refine their operatic skills and try out new roles.
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