Maazel’s renown is such that the quality of musicians is high. Saturday’s “Boheme” offered a strikingly sound young cast, and a full orchestra that with a combination of nervousness and ardor, augmented by the poured-concrete floor in the new “opera house,” often threatened to drown them out.
Castleton’s hallmark is its juxtaposition of the world-class and the homemade. One of the world’s greatest conductors is in the pit, but the “opera house,” from outside, looks like a farm building: a low-slung structure with white, tentlike walls.
Inside, it has a full-size stage and orchestra pit (no more reduced scores this summer), and enough lights to illuminate the Metropolitan Opera, but the audience sits on metal bleachers. The food is catered by Chef Gerard Pangaud, formerly of the Blue Rock Inn and Gerard’s Place, but on opening night the water concession stands were hastily set up at the last minute, and the guy who was supposed to bring the supply of small change was late, so some drinks were dispensed free.
The performance was not without its homemade touches, too, especially from the orchestra, which was audibly nervous at the start (with a couple of misplaced blats from keyed-up players). But it was also ardent and heartfelt — which are not adjectives one is used to pairing with a Maazel performance.
When I first heard Maazel conduct a Salzburg “Don Carlo” in the 1990s, I equated the experience to a BMW on Germany’s Autobahn: a piece of perfect engineering, sleek and smooth and ready to mow down anything in its path. On Saturday, his wonted technical brilliance was certainly all there, but in the service of a reading that was sometimes exuberant, sometimes heartfelt, sometimes out-of-balance and sometimes, from the brass, even raucous. (My proximity to the orchestra didn’t help; the concrete floor elevated the decibel level to rock-
concert status.) At Castleton, a conductor who was known for most of his career as something of a cold fish, brilliant but disliked by many musicians, seems to be learning, in his 80s, what it’s like to be loved.
This “Boheme” was centered on the Mimi of Joyce El-Khoury, who achieved the status of Castleton’s first homegrown star last year when she jumped in on opening night in Puccini’s “Trittico” as Suor Angelica. El-Khoury’s voice is a little light for these big Puccini roles — in last year’s “Trittico” she was originally cast in the ingenue role of Lauretta in “Gianni Schicchi” — but she compensates with outstanding acting ability. As Mimi, she shaded her voice with hints of breathiness to illustrate the character’s fatal tuberculosis, and she sang so as to bring across the meaning of every word.
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