America's Next Opera Star

We’re only philistines, so we’ll be wrong, but nonetheless we would pick a few: the most mind blowing performance was also the most unexpected. Vince Yi came on stage with Jamie-Rose Guarrine. He looked a bit awkward, to be honest, far from the regal character he was giving life to. We were thinking of William Hung, for some reason we’d rather not explore. Jamie-Rose, who had sunged a lovely, delicate “C’est le Dieu de la jeunesse” earlier, was again a sweet-voiced young lady in love, as she kicked off the duet.

We had not seen Yi in the previous productions of the Merola program this year, and we were guilty of this thought: “Good they are giving this nerdy-looking kid a chance to come on the stage after all. He’ll have a memory for the rest of his life.” But soon after, he started to sing in the most crystalline counter-tenor voice, and we were floored. His duet with Jamie-Rose was The Highlight of the evening, literally two soprano voices meshing high above the staff, in an ethereal communion. Yi’s voice was a head voice, but did not feel strained or forced. We don’t know if the Adler fellows must have a counter-tenor among them at all times, but if they do, they found a natural! As far as Yi having other opportunities on the opera stage: hell yeah.

The man who stole the first part of the show was Sam Handley. We praised him in the earlier production of La Cenerentola, and he came back with a high-wattage, devilish performance of Gounod’s Le Veau d’Or aria, powerful and intense, which awed the audience, despite (or was it because?) is aria being the shortest. Being French, we’ll just say that his diction can be improved, but that’s the only fault we’ll find with the performance.

We payed attention to the diction only because Jason Plourde opened the show with the prologue from Poulenc’s Les Mamelles de Tirésias, and this baritone seems perfectly fluent (his bio says he is from Caribou, Maine, a name that means moose in French, and a city 30 miles from Quebec state). You have to kick off things off the right foot, and Plourde welcomed us with savvy, bonhomie and some jovially sung poetry.

Meredith Woodend, last seen as the new owner of the Hotel Casablanca, fixing cocktails and being light and witty, came back as the polar opposite as the Mother in an aria from Menotti’s Amahl and the Night Visitors: intense and brimming with emotions, managing to sing in a soft voice, but projecting it strongly in the whole house, she had us on the edge of our seat.

We liked the crooner-like rendition of Billy Bigelow’s Soliloquy from Rodger’s Carousel by Nathaniel Hackman. Hackman looks like he has no compunction being on stage in front of thousands of people, he exudes self-confidence and sung with the perfect amount of brash and cockiness.

Andrew Bidlack, last seen crowing that everything is bigger in Texas, now waxed elegiacs about New-York and the New-York lights. Andrew, just ask Tony where you should leave your heart, because your selection is not A-number-one, top of the list right now. Still, he has a nice tenor, full of color. Paul LaRosa was smooth, velvety and full of charm.

Rebecca Paul was another singer from the program we saw tonight for the first time, and we would have liked to see more of her. Her dramatic and thoughtful rendition of the “embroidery in childhood” aria from Peter Grimes had us wishing to see that opera again.

And Daveda Karanas offered the third high point of the evening (Yi and Handley being the other two). It’s hard to stand out, all the singers were so amazing, but she managed the feat. A big voice that fills the opera house effortlessly, she still sounded delicate and always accurate. She started a bit static, as if she was giving a recital, not acting a part, but we witnessed her acting chops in La Cenerentola anyway. Still, she could be immobile, with a voice like hers, she’ll convey the emotions of the part effectively, and she'll get people's attention.

The opera orchestra needed half of the overture to realize they were not on summer break anymore, and the limited staging was unobtrusive. The only edit we would suggest would be to cut the spoken intro of “Pain! Nothing but pain” from Weill’s Street Scene, which involved two non-singing characters and seemed to last longer than the song.