From respectable to remarkable
Amahl and the Night Visitors from Atelier Lyrique worth waiting for
I arrived damp and girded for disappointment at Monument-National on Saturday night for Atelier Lyrique’s annual showcase.
This isn’t a chronic condition, whatever my friends say, and I’d give the Atelier better odds than the Opéra any night. But I expected half the evening to be bad because it was miscast. There were two operas on the program: The Old Maid and the Thief, and Amahl and the Night Visitors, written in 1939 and 1951 by Menotti. The second is based on the Adoration of the Magi and is the story of a crippled shepherd boy, Amahl, and his mother. While Menotti’s production notes make it clear that Amahl must be sung by a boy, it’s usually a female soprano in shorts.
I don’t venerate “authentic” staging, but I’ve listened to a lot of recordings and come to love the earnest tone of a boy in the part. There’s a lot of pleading in this opera. The child in you is supposed to identify with Amahl’s extraordinary view of the world, which his anxious mother dismisses as lies. But her practicality isn’t hateful; they are dirt poor, hungry and freezing. It’s a powerful work that’s as affecting as Menotti’s better known masterpiece, The Consul, and it completely depends on two singers: Amahl and his mother. Frédérique Drolet and Emma Char nailed it — Drolet somehow contrived a boyish edge for her soprano that was a sweet foil to Char’s poignant mezzo. Both had remarkable stage presence and their chemistry took the night from respectable to remarkable.
The first half would have lowered my expectations if the recordings hadn’t already. The Old Maid and the Thief is your great-grandmother’s comedy. It’s worth sitting through only to reach Amahl. The singers were very fine, glimmering with promise like we expect from the Atelier, and the production was as professional as anything the National Theatre School is associated with — but Old Maid won’t convince anyone about opera, and that remains the test.
The sets were better for Amahl, simpler and more beautifully lit; the costumes were plainer and yet seemed to glow; even the singers we’d just heard for an hour and a half in The Old Maid, like baritone Cairan Ryan, sounded more lush. It was as if everybody knew that the second half was a greater work of art, they all spent more time on it and they were all too polite to say anything.
One quality both shared was accompanist Jennifer Szeto at the piano. She made a compelling argument for the abolition of orchestras.
The evening repeats Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday, and you can go straight to Amahl if you arrive around 9. For more information, visit www.operademontreal.com.