Glanni Schicci and La Rondine

Music by Puccini

At the Dunster House Dining Hall

8pm February 23-25

Tickets: $6 general/ $5 students/

$4 Dunster

Student opera--the phrase is enough to unnerve the most stolid opera lover. Yet this year's Dunster House production of Puccini's Gianni Schicchi and La Rondine proves a delightful exception. With gratifyingly competent singing and acting illuminated by two stellar performances, the Dunster House production is a rare musical offering.

The weight of the past anchors both operas. Born as an operetta and filled with nostalgia for the glorious frivolity of second Empire Paris, La Rondine at seems like a frothy escapist fantasy composed in the shadow of World War I. The opera's interest stems from the emotional counterpoint between the longing for an unattainable past and a deep melancholy about the possibility of translating this past into the future. A similarly valedictory sense marks the humor of Gianni Schicchi, which responds to the tradition of opera buffa and becomes, in a sense, the terminus of this tradition.

The two operas were composed within two years of each other toward the end of Puccini's career, and both exemplify his talent for making characters and emotions emerge from a complex musical tissue of motivic patterns. These pieces show Puccini at his most delicate, working with subjects that demand greater lightness of touch than the tragic loves of his better-known operas. The duster House double-bill, put together by an all-student cast and production team, is full of talent and enthusiasm. Even if it misses some of Puccini's subtleties, it amply conveys the charm of two lesser-known gems of the operatic repertoire.

The plot of Gianni Schicchi turns on the engaging protagonist, a wily peasant who thwarts the rapacious Donati, a family of Florentine landowners, in order to provide his daughter and her lover with the money they need to wed. All of the opera's characters are sharply delineated, with a delicate but mordant touch of satire--the greedy relatives (the Donati), the starry-eyed lover (Rinuccio), and the resourceful swindler (Schicchi).

To exploit the piece's full comic potential, a production must avoid the temptation to deflate the characters by making their irony too equivocal. In this, the Dunster House production is more or less successful, largely on the strength of Brain J. Saccente's performance in the title role.

Even so, the action is limp through the first ten minutes or so. While the house lights are still up, old Buoso Donati shuffles to his desk and conspicuously examines his will before collapsing into bed and dying, coughing and hacking exaggeratedly all the while--and inauspicious beginning.

This coarse pantomime misses the comic brio of buffa; instead we have the self-conscious and self-subverting irony of a "Saturday Night Live" sketch. The chaotic ensemble action of the first scene--where the various members of Buoso's family mourn his death only because they fear disinheritance--is only a slight improvement.

The production really hits its stride with the entrance of the protagonist. Saccente's magnetic presence and strong voice are enough to bring order to the haphazard bumbling of the Donati clan. He is a marvel to watch. Taking care to ensure his delivery is clear and comprehensible, he displays a range of gesture and emotion that transcends the handwaving and mugging of some of the smaller roles. Here, we have comic subtlety of the true buffa coin.

Most impressive of all is the way Saccente orchestrates the action of the entire cast (this is the greatest staging challenge in an piece where almost all the characters are present from start to finish). Moreover, he exhibits the same control in his own acting. In a role that invites excess, Saccente is all understatement. He achieves more with a grin or a wink than a lesser actor would with a flurry of gesticulations.

Christopher J. Crick is an awkward Rinuccio, gamely waving his arms. His roseate idealism is undermined by the outright mockery of his family. The production requires greater nuance here--the Donati should be skeptically indulgent of his lovesick earnestness. His paean to Florence, "Firenze e come un albero fiorito," is somewhat stilted, and his voice is strained in the upper register.

On the other hand, Jamila A. Roos's Lauretta is winsome. She draws the first spontaneous applause of the evening as her voice rises to the challenge of the opera's most famous set-piece, the aria "O mio babbino caro." Unfortunately, as she sings in Italian, most of the audience misses her tender appeal to her dear father, and her vow to drown herself in the Arno if her love for Rinuccio is thwarted.

The secondary roles are competently filled. Coventry Edwards-Pitt as the matronly Zita has a strong voice with just a touch of roughness. A hunched-over, finger-wagging Steven R. Bocchino plays an appropriately avuncular Simone.

A few of the piece's comic possibilities suffer. The performance does not include a potentially hilarious scene with the Bolognese doctor, and the satirically repeated invocation of Simone's gravitas because he "was once Mayor of Fucecchio" slips by unnoticed. In contrast, Gianni's fingerless salute is just as funny the thirdtime 'round as the first. In addition, thepresence of Buoso's corpse allows for a nicecoup de theatre during the confusion of thelawyer's visit in the opera's final minutes.

The opera's greatest musical surprise is thepiano accompaniment. While Musical DirectorJefferson Packer acquits himself admirably with adifficult transcription of Puccini's notoriouslytreacherous score, there are some serious losses,Important effects are lost, like the chirpywoodwind passage when Gianni dispatches Laurettato go feed the birds, or the pealing of the tocsinthat sends the Donati into a frenzy (the latter isespecially confusing since the characters refer toa bell while the audience only hear a note in thepiano's bass register).

Moreover, the effectiveness of the opera'srecurring motives is dulled. The whole score isassembled form a few thematic cells, such as themockplaintive descending second that suggests thefeigned lamentation of the Donati. The pianotranscription removes perhaps the most importantelements in this mosaic: Puccini's richorchestration.

The stripped-down accompaniment soundrepetitive, and the occasional thinness ofPuccini's idiom, denuded of its instrumentalsparkle, is betrayed in passages such asRinuccio's aria--eerily reminiscent of Sir ArthurSullivan--or Gianni's unveiling of his plot, whichsmacks of cabaret music.

These cavils aside, the choice to use pianoaccompaniment is perhaps inevitable, given theproverbial difficulty of the score for even thebest professional orchestras. Better to cut one'slosses with a solid piano accompaniment than torisk the mangling that could have been perpetratedby a student orchestra with a limited pool oftalented players and little rehearsal time.

Overall, the piece is a delightful success.Under the sure guidance and light touch ofSaccente's Gianni Schicchi, the opera rises to acomic crescendo. When Saccente appears alone onstage to beg forgiveness (and applause)--after hehas evicted the avaricious Donati from the housethey have unwittingly willed to him and united thehappy lovers--the audience is only too happy toenter a plea of "not guilty."

The intermission takes us from the Florentinepeasantry to the Parisian demi-monde, fromthirteenth-century buffa to nineteenth-centuryjoie de vivre.

The performance history of La Rondinehas been vexed by doubts about the dramaticeffectiveness of the third act. Ostensibly, thereversal that separates the erstwhile star-crossedlovers is insufficiently prepared in the first twoacts. Perhaps the Dunster House production'ssuccessful truncation of the opera lendsplausibility to this reading. The resulting story,however, is almost empty of intrigue, a pallidromantic cliche.

When performed whole, the opera probes the lossof illusions, both the romantic aspirations ofMagda and the career ambitions of her servantLisette. By removing the third act, where thepiece's complications emerge, the Dunster Housecrew leave us with a thinly equivocal presentationof the illusions themselves, devoid of theundercutting irony that lends depth to Puccini'sconception.

Nonetheless, the decision to spare the leads ofthe vocal rigors of the last act is wise, and theextra attention available for the remaining hourof music drama is well used. The quality of bothsinging and acting is more uniformly high in theevening's second offering.

Catherine E. DeLima is a sweet-voiced anddemure Magda, gradually giving herself over firstto nostalgia, then longing and finally abandon.Her young lover Ruggero (Joel L. Derfner) iswinningly earnest in both voice and appearance.Saccente puts in another solid performance asMagda's "gentleman friend" Rambaldo. Themephistophelian poet Prunier (Michael J. Olbash)is affably effete, but perhaps a bit stiff as theadvocate of love's "dread disease."

The real show-stopper, however, is Jessica S.Semerjian as Lisette, Magda's maid. She radiatescharm, alternating between comic verve andsilken-voiced seduction, and turns her soubretterole into the production's pivot.

The addition of the orchestra is a qualifiedboon. While the full richness of Puccini'sinstrumental color heightens the opera's dramaticeffectiveness, the playing is unforgivablyunkempt. The score's dense texture of overlappingdance rhythms is frayed by sloppy articulation.Some highly suspect intonation adds extra spice toPuccini's already piquant harmonies. Inparticular, the exuberance of the dance scene inthe second act is somewhat dampened by theconfusion in the pit.

But the playing doesn't get in the way of theopera's highlight, the quartet with chorus, "Bevoal tuo fresco sorriso." Here is Puccini at hismost clever, weaving together melodic strands anddance rhythms to create a sense of luxuriantebullience. The quartet is such a climax that italmost undercuts the conclusion of the opera whichfollows a few minutes later.

Both operas are helped by solid productionvalues. The costumes and props are effective,achieving a maximum effect with minimal means. Thespatial organization of the stage is intelligent.In La Rondine especially, the dual centersof action reinforce the parallel plot development.

The decision to performs both operas in Englishis commendable, and the translated texts are clearand effective. Jefferson Packer's lively renderingof La Rondine--done, presumably, for thisperformance--is a bit prosaic at times, perhaps inan attempt to temper the sentimental excess of theoriginal.

The limits of translation appear, however, inthe decision to leave Lauretta's famous aria inGianni Schicchi, the vocal gem of theevening, "O mio babbino caro" in Italian.Understandably, the translators have balked at therisk of mangling an operatic favorite, but thisentails a sacrifice of clarity and dramatic unity.As a result, the character of Lauretta remainsopaque.

Producing an opera is a formidable task evenwith the most ample resources. In tackling twopieces that are musically challenging,dramatically intricate and relatively obscure, theDunster House Opera Society reaps an impressiveharvest. Capped by the bravura performances ofSaccente and Semerjian, Gianni Schicchi andLa Rondine offer an evening of comedy andromance, well-sung and strongly acted