Jane Glover & Music of the Baroque
By Mark Thomas Ketterson, Opera News
October 16, 2009
Handel's Acis and Galatea was the composer's most popular theatrical creation during his lifetime, and there is little mystery why. The concise score requires only a limited cadre of musicians and boasts a seemingly endless profusion of accessible melody, while Ovid's pastoral tale of the half-divine nymph and her mortal beloved is sentimental simplicity itself. As with most things Handelian, Acis has endured copious revision—at the hands of Mozart and Mendelssohn as well as Handel's own—but has remained in the repertory since its
1718 premiere. Music of the Baroque joyfully reconfirmed the work's enduring appeal in a delightful concert mounting under the baton of Jane Glover, with choral direction by Julia Davids (seen Oct. 16).
Elizabeth Futral scored a memorable company début as Galatea. Although Futral has enjoyed great success in the dramatic bel canto repertory, she is arguably displayed to best advantage through the lilting cadences of the Baroque, as the writing allows her to float expressively without needing to to bulk up the sound. "Heart, the seat of soft delight" was ravishing, markedly in the passage "glide thou like a crystal flood," which found her voice delicately rendering an aural depiction of the rippling waters into which her lover has been transformed. Not that her performance lacked pyrotechnical flash; the finely calibrated trill with which she launched the da capo of "Hush, ye pretty warbling quire" literally knocked her sparkling tourmaline earrings off, an amusing happenstance the soprano handled with graceful aplomb.
Tenor Thomas Cooley's Acis commanded a formidable technical arsenal and proved particularly impressive with his skillful fining down of dynamics in the repeat of "Love in her eyes sits playing"; "Love sounds th' alarm" (which interestingly recalls the bravura writing
for bass in Handel's earlier Rinaldo) was conversely distinguished by a visceral ring above the staff.
Christòpheren Nomura reimagined the thrice-familiar "O ruddier than the cherry" with welcome spontaneity, and his resonant baritone underscored the Act II trio ominously. Benjamin Butterfield's charming Damon was graced by a creamily sweet timbre, responsive fluidity in passagework and all the requisite warmth of characterization this gentle
confidante demands.
Acis was originally presented in Cannons as a private entertainment with five principal singers (a fifth character, the shepherd Coridan, was later eliminated) who also voiced the choral writing. MOB's chorus is one of Chicago's musical glories, however, and while the Cannons edition is a captivating little bauble, their excellent contribution evoked gratitude that the editions used here was an amalgam of subsequent revisions requiring a full ensemble. Brief solos were crisply taken by choristers Amy Conn and Harold Brock.
Glover's briskly precise handling of the strings in the initial Sinfonia initiated a performance
of dramatic verve, with particularly lovely work from the woodwinds and a notably idiomatic refinement throughout.
