Teresa La Rocca
Roger Knight – Bel Canto Opera Company: Lucia di Lammermoor
05 December 2005
The signs were not good. A suburban Town Hall on a Saturday night seemed an unlikely venue for Donizetti’s Lucia di Lammermoor. My hear sank a little further when I saw members of the audience going into the auditorium – set out with tables as for cabaret – with platefuls of food. Mastication and Mad Scene has never been quite my thing.
In the event, I need not have worried. The organiser of the event, the Bel Canto Opera Company’s redoubtable William Snell, had assembled a very fine cast. It was headed by a glorious-voiced soprano, Teresa La Rocca, who not only bore a striking physical resemblance to the young Tetrazzini but at her best moments – and there were plenty of them – even sounded rather like her. As if that wasn’t enough, the performance got off to a crackling start with a turn from a fine young and resonant baritone, Andrew Jones, that immediately made it clear that ‘semi-staged’ as the production was, it was not going to be short on dramatic or vocal impact.
After that, it never looked back. Lucia is one of my very favourite operas. As a schoolboy in deepest rural England, I still remember sitting absolutely entranced one evening back in 1959 to the relay on the BBC of Joan ‘La Stupenda’ Sutherland’s sensational debut in the part at Covent Garden – the event that launched her to international stardom. And even after that, the Bel Canto Company’s performance still held its ground.
Sung in Italian with good surtitles, and played in a reasonably small hall that boasted, heavens be praised, a real proscenium arch to its shallow stage, the production made a considerable impact. There was never any feeling that the big numbers – the Fountain Aria (complete with harp), the beautiful cadences of the duet for Lucia and her tenor beau that follows (Jamie Allen, singing with an indisposition but to great effect), the heavy interview with the heavy brother, the incomparable sextet, the most famous Mad Scene in all opera, the tenor’s plangent farewell – were in any way hand-me-downs. Quite the contrary, for they were delivered with both élan and gusto that also owed something to the musical direction of a small band of choice ASO players under David Sharp and the self-effacing work of the artistic director Juha Vanhakartano.
Rather less self-effacing was the Lady presenter, Catherine Campbell (who gave a fine imitation of being tired and emotional), but I suspect that her post-modern antics – and, in truth, she did know when to shut up – did a lot to explain the story to an audience that quickly forgot the food and drink and settled in to enjoy a remarkably fine night at the opera.
- Roger Knight
More Information
Lucia di Lammermoor by Geatano Donizetti.
26 November 2005
Norwood Town Hall Concert Hall, Adelaide
Performed by the Bel Canto Opera Company.
Website: http://www.entertainment.on.net/
