'Acis' is mostly aces in City of Chicago's annual free summer opera

By Andrew Patner, Thursday July 30, 2009 Chicago Sun-Times RECOMMENDED

Eleven years ago, Peter McDowell, a creative young programmer for the city's Department of Cultural Affairs, had the idea of presenting a free summer opera with young performers at the Chicago Cultural Center. His first venture, a rare production of Francis Poulenc's The Breasts of Tiresias, was a hit in 1999, and the concept became an annual event, largely showcasing lesser-known works and giving talented singers chances to appear in some repertoire standards as well.

After nine years with the city and two as program director for Opera America, McDowell is now a New York-based arts consultant. But he was in town Tuesday for the opening of the city's 11th annual summer opera, Handel's 1718 English-language pastorale Acis and Galatea, and with the department's Helen Vasey having ably picked up the series' reins, McDowell looked happy.

Chicago Opera Theater gave the last area production of this brief -- by opera standards: one hour and 45 minutes without an intermission-- frolic in 2001. This version has many parallels: an attractive young cast and a fresh, non-intimidating approach. The story is your basic boy meets nymph, boy falls in love with nymph, so does a cyclops who kills boy, nymph turns boy into a fountain so he might live again. Stage director Joanie Schultz set the mythological story in the Cultural Center's earlier incarnation as the central branch of the Chicago Public Library, circa 1950.

Designer Chelsea Warren had some lovely painted drops of book stacks and gave a terrific sense of the cast as a group of librarians and library students re-enacting Ovid's story. Schultz, though, seemed unsure how to move her cast about and often seemed to take the lyric "Heedless running to thy ruin" as a stage direction.

Chicago soprano Amy Conn created a delightful, even seductive Galatea, letting her hair down as only a librarian in love can and singing clearly, firmly, and beautifully. Tenor John Zuckerman, a recent arrival in Chicago, was an earnest but never overly serious Acis, and his voice matched Conn's well. Local tenor Robert Boldin was a stalwart Damon, friend to all.

Lyric Opera regular Wilbur Pauley had the character of the angry one-eyed giant Polyphemus down, but his voice grew woolly as he raged, melted, and burned. Susan Nelson, Caitlin McKechney, Scott Brunscheen, Brian Hoffman, and Brad Jungwirth comprised the superb and often hilarious chorus, and with the lead couple made the famous "Happy we!" all that it should be.

Music director Francesco Milioto, as ever, was the fine conductor, leading an orchestra of nine from the harpsichord.

Monday night the free production moves to the Jay Pritzker Pavilion at Millennium Park, making it the first opera to be staged at the five-year-old facility. The opera also repeats at 7:30 Thursday and 3 p.m. Saturday at the Cultural Center.

 

 

Nerdy librarians singing arias in the stacks? Hey, Handel can take it

John von Rhein Classical music critic

Chicago Tribune, July 30, 2009

Chicago doesn't send its opera on vacation just because it's summer. For more than a decade, the city's Department of Cultural Affairs has been offering free downtown performances of operatic rarities performed by Chicago-area professional singers in Preston Bradley Hall at the Chicago Public Library Cultural Center.

You could say they are bringing it all home with the 11th annual edition of the series, Handel's "Acis and Galatea." The show, which opened Tuesday and plays for three more performances (including an encore in Millennium Park), places the action of Handel's pastoral entertainment in the main branch of the Chicago Public Library, circa 1950. Yes, in the very space where the opera is being staged.

The director, Joanie Schultz, would have us believe the librarians are enacting this mythic tale of the tragic love of the shepherd Acis and the nymph Galatea for their own amusement. In so doing, they discover emotions buried beneath their nerdy, buttoned-up exteriors.

Even in this era of anything-goes Handel productions, the conceit makes no sense. Who knew that '50s librarians were free to gambol in the stacks, even in off-hours? Where was the head librarian to shush his noisy, errant employees?

Actually, the guy was nursing a bad case of the hots for the soprano playing Galatea in this improvised masque. Taking the role of his rival Acis' nemesis, the cyclops Polyphemus, gave him a convenient opportunity to win the leading lady for himself.

While the concept was preposterous, it did no violence to the text. You could easily tune out the silliness and concentrate on Handel's delightful music along with the admirable singing and instrumental work, which are equal to that of previous summer shows.

The voices were discreetly amplified, a regrettable necessity in the swimmy acoustics of the Tiffany-domed Preston Bradley Hall.

The packed audience clearly enjoyed seeing the four principal singers and the five-member chorus cavorting about the makeshift stage, lugging and stacking books when they weren't brandishing umbrellas like swords.

Chelsea Warren's set consisted of little more than a painted canvas backdrop with a table, chairs and book carts. Galatea awakened the supposedly dead Acis with a kiss, and the reunited lovers exited on a long blue cloth representing love's eternal river.

At the harpsichord, Francesco Miloto presided with stylish vigor over a solid ensemble of 10 members of his New Millennium Orchestra of Chicago. Even his decisive direction couldn't always assure invariably correct pitch, rhythm and clean coloratura work among the singers. Later performances should bring an improvement.

Soprano Amy Conn sang a fresh, agile, sweetly lyrical Galatea. She was the standout in a cast that also was distinguished by Robert Boldin as Damon, whose light, pleasing tenor made the most of the character's cautionary airs.

John Zuckerman, singing his first Handel role, began rather tentatively but once he got his vibrato under control, he gave a heroic accounting of Acis' air "Love sounds th'alarm."

Stuck in the director's unworkable conception of Polyphemus, Wilbur Pauley did what he could with music that requires a deeper, more rotund bass. He gleefully savored the opera's greatest hit, "O ruddier than the cherry."