A MASTERFUL PRODUCTION, A TRIUMPH OF WORLD-CLASS VOICES!
LA Opera opened its 2012-13 season to an audibly enthusiastic full house September 15 with a new production of another belatedly acknowledged Verdi masterpiece. Opera connoisseurs agree that among Verdi’s neglected early works (Foscari is sixth), The Two Foscari is most deserving of that second good look that eventually leads to revival as a fully staged opera.
Opinions may vary as to the work’s musical and dramatic strengths just as they did with respect to Simon Bocanegra, another of Verdi’s initially failed masterpieces, which the composer completed more than a decade after Foscari. The title role of Bocanegra was the vehicle for Plácido Domingo’s incarnation as a baritone, a role he sung with LA Opera in February 2012. Simon Bocanegra has of course experienced a redemption, having seen several productions since the 1990s (when Domingo was singing the lesser tenor role of Gabriele Adorno). With Domingo’s assumption of the title role, it now appears to be making major headway into becoming part of the standard operatic repertoire.
Whether the same fate awaits The Two Foscari of course remains to be seen, although it is likely with Domingo’s star billing. This LA Opera production is the first in 40 years-it was last produced as a fully staged opera in 1972 as the Lyric Opera of Chicago’s season opener, and has since been offered on occasion only as a concert performance. This Foscari, directed by Thaddeus Strassberger, the young American winner of the European Opera Directing Prize in 2005, is a masterful production, as evident in the slideshow of scenes below.
Totally unexpected in this first installment of LA Opera's celebration of Domingo and his trio of 2012 milestones was the trio of world class voices--Domingo's and the awesome voices of Italian tenor Francesco Meli in his LA Opera debut as the unjustly convicted young Foscari and Russian soprano Marina Povlavskaya as his wife, Lucrezia Contarini, in her second appearance with LA Opera (following her 2009 portrayal of Violetta in La Traviata).
