Opera Southwest does ‘Tancredi’
Opera Southwest’s ‘Tancredi’ features vocal acrobatics
Set to the political thunderbolt of the Crusades, “Tancredi” was the most popular operas of its time. Gioachino Rossini wrote it in 1813 when he was barely 21, and it became the most performed opera in the world. Competing composers made parodies of its opening aria. Opera Southwest will present Rossini’s masterwork beginning today at the National Hispanic Cultural Center. Despite that initial burst of acclaim, “Tancredi” remained an obscurity for decades. Tastes changed, new composers surfaced and Rossini became more closely identified with comic operas such as “The Barber of Seville.” But recent years have brought a revival of the composer’s dramatic works. The Santa Fe Opera staged “La Donna del Lago” in 2013, a production repeated by the Metropolitan Opera in 2015. “Tancredi” marks the sixth time Opera Southwest has performed a Rossini opera, said artistic director and conductor Anthony Barrese, a Rossini scholar. “It’s simply a great vehicle for a fantastic ensemble,” he said in a telephone interview from Baltimore, where he was conducting a co-production of the piece for the Baltimore Concert Opera. “You need a great mezzo to sing ‘Tancredi.’ It combines real vocal acrobatics with a real historic telling of the story through music.” Mezzo-soprano Heather Johnson will provide those vocal gymnastics in the traditional “pants” role of the title character — a male role played by a woman. Johnson also performed in Opera Southwest’s 2011 staging of “The Barber of Seville.” Since then, she has joined the Metropolitan Opera. She called her second appearance here “a labor of love.” “In all honesty, I love Anthony Barrese,” the Minnesota-raised singer said. “I think he’s a wonderful musical genius. I thought, ‘I’m never going to get a chance to sing this again’. The opera is not done that frequently. Also, I love Albuquerque and I really love the people there.” This isn’t the first time Johnson has played a man. “The thing about being a woman playing a man on stage is you can’t think too much about it,” she said. “The more I think about it, the more caricature it becomes.” Tancredi is an exiled nobleman who returns home in disguise as a nameless warrior. He’s in love with
Amenaide, the daughter of the Syracuse senate leader. “He will do anything for her,” Johnson said. “He thinks he’s been betrayed by her when really she’s doing her duty. He’s very steadfast and committed and heartbroken.” Unfortunately, Amenaide’s duty is to marry someone else. Rossini based the libretto (penned by Gaetano Rossi) on Voltaire’s 1760 play “Tancrède.” The city-state roils with political turmoil amid the Turkish wars. Tancredi has been stripped of both his inheritance and his estate. When Amenaide’s letter to Tancredi is intercepted and misunderstood, officials sentence the innocent maiden to death for treachery. Its Voltaire source may provide a key to the opera’s latter-day obscurity. In 1813, everyone in the audience would have read the poem providing the context for the action on stage, Barrese said. The text offers a choice of two endings, with a double or single death. Patrons are already pressing Barrese to reveal the body count. “I’m telling people they should come and see for themselves,” he said.