For the Love of Gods

Glimmerglass Festival 2024 Dept.: We have four productions to consider in the coming days as the Glimmerglass Festival presents its 2024 season. The operas, in the order in which I’ll be seeing and reviewing them, are Cavalli’s “La Calisto,” Gilbert & Sullivan’s “Pirates of Penzance,” Kevin Puts’s “Elizabeth Cree,” and Leoncavallo’s “Pagliacci.”

                                                                                          

WE PREFER to space out our big emotional moments. The frenzy of infatuation, the despair over marital betrayal, the death of a loved one – too many of them in quick succession become a waking nightmare. But what if it’s all happening to someone else? You might be inclined to enjoy the schadenfreude aspect – or, if you’re in the land of Italian opera, gioia per il male altrui. Because that’s what Francesco Cavalli’s “La Calisto” is offering: heightened passions, from unrequited love to jealous despair, from egotistical aggression to that peculiar feeling you get when you realize you weren’t actually planning to lose your virginity but, well, there it went.

Emilie Kealani (Calisto) and Craig Irvin (Jove).
Photo by Sofia Negron

The work premiered in 1651, helping define, a generation after Monteverdi, the recitative-aria form of opera that has persisted ever since. Three love triangles anchor the plot of Giovanni Faustini’s libretto, drawing from Ovid’s “Metamorphosis,” among other sources. And a triangle outlined by color-changing light defines the stage on which this excellent Glimmerglass Festival production plays out.

For a piece like this to be effective, it needs top-notch voices. That’s pretty much par for the course where Glimmerglass is concerned, but Baroque opera also demands an ability to explore the nuances of those vocal demands through varied tone production, ornamentation, and other period techniques. And a commanding presence doesn’t hurt – after all, you’re probably playing a god. Thus it was that Eve Gigliotti, as Juno, dominated the stage, catching her errant spouse in an unfaithful act and punishing the victim. Yet, “Mogli mie sconsolate,” she sings in a virtuoso moment – “My disconsolate women,” noting that even when married, a woman ends up beside a man who’s irritable or exhausted.

It was a powerful aria, helped by the orchestral forces that gave remarkable color to the piece. Cavalli generally sketched out nothing more than lead sheets, so Festival Artistic and General Director Rob Ainsley has created an orchestration tailored to the talents of the players in the pit, assembling a Baroque ensemble that includes theorbos, harpsichord, and organ. He also trimmed the piece to run about two hours. And he conducted the piece!

Kyle Sanchez Tingzon (Endymion), Winona
Martin (Linfea), and Taylor Raven (Diana).
Photo by Sofia Negron

The cast includes many of the Young Artists who feature each summer in a robust program of training and performance. The three who sang the prologue – Namarea Randolph-Yosea, Amanda Sheriff, and Winona Martin – are part of that program, as accomplished as anyone else in the cast, and did extra duty as other characters in the piece. Martin returned as Linfea, an ascerbic but ultimately endearingly comic character whose search for a husband is reflected in “D’aver un consorte io son risoluta,” a well-sung aria of amorous frustration.

Charlie Corcoran’s set abstractly reflects the devastation wrought by Phaeton’s runaway chariot. The earth is burnt; rivers are dry. Jove and his son, Mercury (Craig Irvin and Schyler Vargas) are surveying the damage when Jove spots Calisto (Emilie Kealani) and falls for her. (“Oh che luci serene” – “I have never seen a look more serene.”) He’s picked the wrong woman, though, as Calisto explains: “I shall die a virgin” (“Verginella io morir vo”). This is a vow pledged to her goddess, Diana. Even worse, as Calisto confesses to us when alone, “Non è maggior piacere” –  “There is no greater pleasure than to run from the flattering requests of men.”

“Make use of deceit” (“Se non giovano”) urges Mercury, persuading Jove to transform himself into Diana, setting forth the mistaken identity that will propel this briskly moving plot. Jove-as-Diana seduces Calisto, to Juno’s distress; meanwhile, the peasant Endymion (Kyle Sanchez Tingzon) is in love with the real Diana, who seems to return his fancy. Taylor Raven created two distinct characters as Diana and Jove-as-Diana, and endowed them with powerful, effective voices. But Pan also loves Diana, and Randolph-Yosea returned to embody that hotheaded rascal.

Eve Gigliotti (Juno). Photo by Sofia Negron

Director Mo Zhou knows when her singers should scurry and when they should stand still, and creates compelling stage pictures that reinforce the social and emotional dynamics of these highly charged goings-on. Five dancers are credited in the cast, but everyone was called upon to offer rhythmic movement at one point or another. Choreographer Eric Sean Fogel, a Glimmerglass veteran, provided needed eye relief as dancers performed routines that ranged from classical ballet to hip-hop.

It spoils nothing to note that it doesn’t end well for most of these characters. Endymion refuses to give up his love for Diana and, Pan and his cronies notwithstanding, neither will she renounce him. They will travel to Mount Latmos to be alone, and they celebrate that plan with the gorgeous duet “Vivo per te, pietosa” (“I live only for you, my goddess”). But they vow to live there in chastity, which isn’t a popular formula for amorous success.

Meanwhile, Juna turns Calisto into a bear, a fate that Jove can’t directly countermand, but, as foreshadowed in the prologue, he can send her to the heavens to take her place among the stars as Ursa Major, and the piece finishes with Calisto disappearing into that familiar constellation.

Baroque opera productions rarely draw the crowds more recent works attract, but a piece like this, presented here with so much skill, has just as much to offer. Re-orient your expectations to a more deliberate pace, a somewhat leaner instrumental sound, and the glory of these exquisite voices, and you’ll have an extremely enjoyable time. Just don’t let yourself fool around with those fickle gods out there. Performances continue through August 17.

La Calisto
Music by Francesco Cavalli
Libretto by Giovanni Faustini
Rob Ainsley, conductor
Mo Zhou, director
The Glimmerglass Festival, July 26