Double Shot of The Fray for Your Turkey Coma

The Fray, consisting of Isaac Slade, Joe King, Dave Welsh, and Ben Wysocki, wrapped up their 2016 tour in Colorado with two shows this weekend; Fox Theater in Boulder, and the 1st Bank Center in Broomfield. The sold-out Boulder show marked the 12-year anniversary of the Fray signing their record label. Says Slade, "We signed the thing right here on stage with our fans." All photos

© jennsphotos.com Happy Anniversary, boys!

Puccini’s La fanciulla del West—Opera Colorado, November 2016

(L-R) Mark Rucker [Jack Rance], Melissa Citro [Minnie] and Jonathan Burton [Dick Johnson].  PHOTO CREDIT: Opera Colorado

Opera Colorado opened its 33rd season with a first-ever presentation of La fanciulla del West (“Girl of the [Golden] West”) by Giacomo Puccini. Up until a few years ago this opera was rarely performed, due primarily to the need for a larger-than-normal orchestra, three top-notch singers to take on the main roles, and being overshadowed by other Puccini operas such as La bohème, Tosca, Madama Butterfly and Turandot. But these things seem to run in cycles, so just since January 2014 Fanciulla has been performed overseas at La Scala in Milan (recently shown in American movie theaters), plus Vienna, Zurich, and Frankfürt, as well as across the United States at Santa Fe, Omaha, Detroit, Minneapolis and Des Moines.

With this production, Opera Colorado has clearly assembled the best trio of singers within recent memory.

Minnie, the “girl” in the title (the story line suggests she’s in her early 20s), runs The Polka saloon in a mining camp during gold rush days. Melissa Citro (soprano) commanded the stage from the moment she entered, exactly the sort of woman Puccini envisioned to uncompromisingly hold her own in the company of several dozen lonely miners while also showing great tenderness for a man she comes to love over the course of a few hours of singing. Minnie is a many-faceted character, far from the typical one-dimensional female common in too many operas. Over the course of three acts she must spurn the advances of a lecherous sheriff, guard the miners’ gold until the Wells Fargo man comes to collect it, turn the attention of a man looking to rob her from avarice to love, and then rescue him as the opera draws to a close. Citro was equally engaging in the bolder elements of her role, as well as during the softer ones. One of the highlights of her performance was the duet with her budding paramour that ends Act One.

The baritone role of Sheriff Jack Rance requires someone with great range and vocal depth, plus better-than-average acting skills to avoid playing this role as a bad-guy caricature. Mark Rucker was everything one could hope for as Jack, from his resonant tonality to his commanding presence even when others were the main focus of the moment. He made you always want to know what the sheriff was up to, and the scene where he loses to Minnie in the card game intended to decide Johnson’s fate was incredibly well-sung and well-acted.

As the bandit Ramerrez, a.k.a. “Dick Johnson,” Jonathan Burton gave one of the best tenor performances Opera Colorado has seen in a long while. This is the second time Burton has been reviewed in this role; the earlier one with Des Moines Metro Opera can be found here. In the time between these two performances, he has only gotten better as a singer and an actor. Burton held the audience’s rapt attention with his closing aria “Ch’ella mi creda,” where his character pleads with his captors to let Minnie think he went away rather than succumbed to an execution.

There were really four stars in this production, because the video projection work by designer and filmmaker Greg Emetaz was brilliant. Opera Colorado has played around in the past with projected images that help alleviate the need for background scenery, which is expensive to build, heavy to move, and utterly static. Emetaz crafted multiple, highly believable snowbound backdrops that added to the action onstage while never distracting from it. The brief film excerpt that bridged the non-intermission break between the second and third acts helped make sense of the gap where librettists Civinini and Zangarini trimmed certain plot elements from the David Belasco stage play upon which this opera is based.

The Opera Colorado orchestra played to its usual level of near-perfection. Given the fact Fanciulla is scored for a much larger orchestra than nearly any other Puccini opera, the conductor is constantly challenged to keep them from drowning out the singers. The opening scene—a chorus of miners that features solo snippets from half a dozen individuals—was just such a passage, but music director Ari Pelto had everything under control the rest of the way.

Aside from the three principals, 15 other singers are granted individually recognizable roles. Notable among their peers was baritone Jared Guest as Sonora and bass Harold Wilson as Ashby (the Wells Fargo agent), both of whom have graced the Ellie Caulkins stage in past productions. We look forward to seeing more of both.  As Joe, newcomer Omar Najmi (tenor) was also a standout.

There were only a couple of minor annoyances worth noting. Stage designer Stephen Mazzeno could have made Minnie’s cabin a bit larger to contain the fireplace that figures prominently in the libretto. Alternatively, the opening act’s barroom layout was a masterful use of space, accommodating nicely the intricacy of the first act brawl artfully choreographed by stage director Emma Griffin. And speaking of stage directions, Puccini specifically calls out for Minnie to ride in on a stallion during the final moments of the opera. Striding purposefully through the clutch of miners who were gathered to see Johnson/Ramerrez be hanged was not nearly as dramatic an entrance. One can only presume Opera Colorado’s budget did not have room for an equestrian line item. And finally, the hype of changing the opera’s original California Gold Rush setting to a Colorado one was anticlimactic. The libretto was altered so Johnson could say he was from Central City rather than Sacramento—each place-name has the same number of syllables, so that worked out OK—and the two protagonists strolled off the stage at the conclusion of the opera by singing goodbye to Colorado rather than California, but neither mattered much in the grand scheme of things.

Additional performances of Fanciulla will take place on November 8 (Tuesday), 11 (Friday) and 13 (Sunday matinee). Tickets and additional information are available on the Opera Colorado website.

The 2016–2017 season continues with two additional operatic productions. A 75-minute chamber opera by Laura Kaminsky, As One, will have three performances in early March, while Gaetano Donizetti’s epic drama Lucia di Lammermoor opens for four performances on May 6, 2017.