Boston Classical Review

“[Bleeping] family,” Jeff Goldblum’s Zeus mutters in an early episode of Netflix’s Kaos. He could easily have been referring to the dysfunctional brood at the heart of Wolfgang Amadé Mozart’s Mitridate, re di Ponto, which opened Boston Lyric Opera’s season Friday night at the Emerson Cutler Majestic Theatre.

Based on Jean Racine’s 1673 play Mithridate, Mozart’s score concerns itself with the eponymous king of Pontus, who is presumed dead after a battle with the Roman army. His sons, Sifare and Farnace, are at odds, politically and romantically: the former is allied with his father’s enemies and also has eyes for dad’s fiancé, Aspasia. She, however, is in love with Sifare.

On Mitridate’s surprise return home, expected complications ensue. There are conspiracies, intrigues, double-crossings, and an invasion that seals the kingdom’s fate. Still, before the night is over, the siblings are reconciled to each other and their love interests – Sifare and Aspasia, Farnace and Ismene. As the curtain falls, the ensemble extols the virtues of forgiveness and swears to bring down the hated Romans.

Mozart, who was fourteen when he penned Mitridate, responded to its narrative with music of astonishing facility and expressive depth. Though hardly an accomplishment on the level of Le nozze di Figaro or Don Giovanni, his command of the conventions of opera seria—florid vocal lines, showpiece arias, and the like—is the picture of assurance. For thematic invention, too, this is an opera that is rarely at a loss for fresh musical ideas.

Friday’s season-opening production, conducted by BLO music director David Angus and directed by James Darrah, offered a welcome break from the company’s recent habit of heavy-handed Puccini updates. Nothing was presented backwards and no plots were awkwardly hauled across an ocean a century or so into the future.

Even so, Darrah’s realization of Mitridate couldn’t leave librettist Vittorio Amedeo Cigna-Santi’s concept of the story well enough alone. His approach seemed, at times, to be trying to be all things to all people, sometimes all at once.

Its two most egregious shifts involved the sons. In the normal course of events relayed by Racine and Cigna-Santi, Mitridate takes his own life—singing about dying by his hand plenty before expiring. On Friday night in an Oedipal twist, Farnace kills his father.

Likewise, Sifare went from being Mitridate’s son to becoming his daughter. This change isn’t so great a stretch as it sounds: both sons’ roles were originally written for castrati and a certain ambiguity is already built into the parts. Still, the addition of a Sapphic subplot smacked of a transparent urge on BLO’s part to assure newbies that Mozart is, in fact, “relevant.”

Throughout, the sense that more is better—and even more, better than that—prevailed.

To wit: Hana Kim’s projections onto Adam Rigg’s Minimalist sets—a wall in a palace hallway or garden, with five busts installed on one half, white stucco on the other— were, especially in Act 1, distractingly busy, riddled with allusions to everything from M. C. Escher abstractions and James Bond movies to Götterdämmerung and Hamlet.

Literal illustrations of the bonds of love and fate abounded, from the pink ribbon Ismene used to bind Sifare and Farnace to the blue cord ensnaring Aspasia during her big Act 1 aria. There was also the long blue veil she and Sifare found themselves tangled in during their unexpectedly homoerotic Second Act duet.

More problematic was the production’s overriding tone, which couldn’t seem to decide whether it should be camp, tragic, comic, or maybe all three. There was silliness galore, especially between the siblings, who smacked, kicked, and swatted at each other like the couple of juvenile delinquents they really aren’t. Before the denouement of Act 3, Sifare, Arbate, and Aspasia sashayed off to battle in a manner reminiscent of the witches out to collect souls in Hocus Pocus.

At the same time, the distress of various characters was often undercut. Mitridate’s furious Act 3 aria, in which he rages at the betrayals of his children and his betrothed, was, oddly, accompanied by the sight of Ismene picking up a teddy bear and waving its arm at the bound and blindfolded Sifare, Farnace, and Arbate.

In a welcome change, Ismene radiated defiance rather than woe-am-I, spurned-fiancé vibes. At one point, she defaced the palace walls with spray paint and, at another, teased Farnace while frolicking around him in her undergarments. But in all of this, coquettish Ismene came across more as an ornamental court jester than anything more substantial. Especially with that bear.

What a teddy bear was doing onstage in this opera was anyone’s guess; to judge from the steady stream of titters from Friday’s chuckle-happy audience, nobody else knew–or was really bothered by it. Thankfully, the night’s goofy production issues were largely overshadowed by the staging’s casting strengths.

By any measure, Lawrence Brownlee’s Mitridate overflowed with charisma and musical excellence. Returning to BLO for the first time in two decades, the star tenor took a moment or two to find his footing but then was off to the races, melismas tripping and high notes popping.

His agitated numbers—Act 1’s “Quel ribelle” and Act 2’s “Già di pieta mi spoglio”—were rightly thrilling. Yet Brownlee is such an authoritative dramatist that even in recitatives he compelled, as in the dying king’s “Figlio, amico non più,” which rang with pathos.

Brenda Rae’s Aspasia sounded a bit underpowered when singing upstage, but her pitch was constantly true and her chemistry with Vanessa Goikoetxea’s Sifare genuine. The pair’s navigation of the swirling, echoing melismas in Act 2’s “Se viver non degg’io” was among the night’s exquisite moments.

As Farnace, countertenor John Holiday proved a commanding presence, his high notes and the intensity of his instrument fully equal to Brownlee’s, especially in his culminating “Già degli’occhi il velo è tolto.” Angela Yam’s Ismene, despite being undermined by a staging that was clearly meant to empower her character, brought fiery precision to her role.

Charles Sy navigated the small part of Marzio with brightness and energy, while Alexis Peart’s statuesque Arbate focused the eye even when she wasn’t singing. When she was, her voice evinced a Jessye Norman-esque opulence.

From the pit, conductor Angus drew crisp, stylish playing from his forces. Mitridate is not an opera that regularly points to where, a lifetime later, Mozart’s mastery of the form would lead him. But, on Friday, those spots that do—like the stately progressions and pungent woodwind dissonances that underline Aspasia’s “Pallid’ombre” in Act 3—emerged beautifully.

Keeping with the night’s theme of everything goes, Molly Irelan’s costumes ran the gamut from ‘30s gangster suits for the men to Disney princess frocks for the women. Sifare, alone among the latter, got a pantsuit.

Ultimately, this production leaves more than a few unanswered questions. Why the accumulating clutter onstage in Acts 1 and 2? Why plop intermission in the middle of Act 2 instead of at the end? Why is the skull in center stage during the night’s first half and absent over its second? The last had the unexpected benefit of calling to mind George Bernard Shaw: if you can’t get rid of the family skeleton, the Irish wit once offered, you may as well make it dance.

Better yet, make it sing. And as this cast proves, good singing will carry all else before it.

Boston Lyric Opera’s Mitridate will be repeated 3 p.m. Sunday at Emerson Cutler Majestic Theatre. blo.org

Posted in Performances

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