Thomas Wikman Reviews
Music of Baroque Exults In Rare Opera (cont)
Chicago Tribune Wednesday, April 17, 1996
by John von Rhein, Tribune Music Critic
Although the program annotations
ignored the tangled issue of
performance editions, Wikman's
account (heard Monday at Evanston's
First United Methodist
Church) was based on the Gian
Francesco Malipiero edition,
presented virtually complete except
for two scenes in the fifth and
final act. He employed a smallish
complement of strings and winds,
along with prominent pairs of
archflutes and the obos, harpsichord
and portative organ: a nice
compromise between authenticity
and modern practicality.
At the center of an opera that
boasts an unusual preponderance
of high male voices, tenor John
Horton Murray made a firmly
heroic, sometimes histrionic,
Ulisse. Gloria Banditelli, last
season's vocal discovery as Nerone
in "Poppea," took a less showy
part this time around but affectingly
evoked Penelope's anguish
and steadfastness with a darkly
lustrous mezzo and deep musicality.
Also admirable were Patrice
Michaels Bedi (fresh of timbre
and spirited in her handling of
ornamentation) and William Watson
as the lovers Melanto and
Eurimaco. Luxurious casting
brought soprano Brenda Harris,
in terrific vocal and expressive
form as Telemaco, the son of
Ulisse and Penelope.
Jeffrey Gall, Jan Jarvis and
Kurt Link were fine as the pompously
scheming suitors. Calland
Metts (Eumete) and Edward
Zelnis (in the abbreviated role of
the glutton Iro) supplied broad
comic relief, while Tina Currier,
Douglas Anderson and Peter Van
De Graaff acquitted themselves
solidly as the opera's resident
mythic figures.
