Scott Suchman

The first, New York City Opera’s 2007 production headlined by Lauren Flanigan, left an impression of a work with worthwhile musical moments and a certain camp charm that was perhaps destined to remain a dated curiosity. Few of those reservations remained after the second, a concert presentation this past Thursday from the National Symphony Orchestra that reinforced just how effectively Vanessa uses operatic forms to extend the themes and devices of midcentury melodrama and how deserving it is of a bigger place in the repertoire.

To briefly recap on the particulars, Vanessa has sequestered herself in petrified luxury awaiting the return of lover Anatol, attended by her estranged mother and niece Erika. (The Vanessa/Miss Havisham comparisons seem unfair as she is only supposed to be in her late 30s, unless oh god is Miss Havisham supposed to be like 45?) Anatol turns up in Act I but he is actually the former lover’s son. He promptly seduces Erika, but when Erika won’t accept his offer of a loveless marriage, he blithely moves on to Vanessa to secure the bag. The opera ends with a haunting bit of symmetry as a broken Erika is left to assume Vanessa’s watch.

Words like “turgid” and “purple” have been thrown around to describe Menotti’s libretto, but those accusations may at least partially miss what makes Vanessa tick, the discord between the libretto’s surface of stunted connections and cloying social trivialities and Barber’s surging score. There is the surface world of artifice that surrounds the characters–the social expectations, the catalogue of French menu items, the major-domo’s paean to his mistresses’ furs–but artifice, too, in the stilted, circuitous dialogue the characters use to communicate. (Please take the hint when your fiancé tells you “Love has a Bitter Core.”) While these elements distance us from the characters and the mechanics of the melodrama, they leave room for Barber’s magnificent score, like the expressionist coloring of a Douglas Sirk frame, to complete the crushing portrait of repression and longing.

Scott Suchman

Maestro Gianandrea Noseda seemed intent on wringing every bit of grandeur out of that score for Thursday’s performance. Orchestral interjections had a ferocity that deliciously skirted the line of movie score shock, while the NSO rendered Barber’s quietly anxious textures with color and clarity. Presiding over a huge mass of NSO forces, Noseda built ensemble climaxes, whether in the Act II finale or the piece’s famous quintet to a satisfying pitch, though had trouble balancing those forces with the singers at times.

Nicole Heaston, who stepped in for the originally announced Sondra Radvanovsky several months back, assumed the title role here. Heaston’s bright, tenacious soprano brought a consistently attractive sound to Vanessa’s music, with buttery top notes and controlled despair in moments of crisis like her Act I response to the revelation about Anatol’s identity or tenderness in Vanessa’s Act III plea for Erika’s recovery.

Yet Heaston’s performance also demonstrated how Vanessa is at risk of being sidelined in her own opera. While Erika gets to experience at least some catharsis and moral clarity, Vanessa’s willful blindness is never redeemed and the character must make up the deficit through sheer tragic presence. Heaston’s Vanessa could not quite close the gap, lacking the vocal edge necessary to totally assert herself in the music — she also bore the brunt of the balancing issues with the orchestra — and too often defaulting to playing Vanessa as simply an oblivious scold.

One had to squint a bit to believe J’Nai Bridges, resplendent in a shimmering golden gown, as unassuming co-shut-in Erika. Bridges’s performance took a moment to come into focus, Erika’s reticence in the first Act registering as largely inert and delivering a “Must the winter come so soon” that was pretty enough but little more. Bridges was in firm control from Act II on, however, bringing a rich rounded sound and glamorous vocalism to Erika’s desperate music. Her Act II climax, with Erika’s refusal of Anatol set against infernal offstage hymns (sung by the University of Maryland Concert Choir), was perhaps the emotional highpoint of the evening.

Scott Suchman

Matthew Polenzani exuded sociopathic charm as Anatol, one of the work’s most memorable characters and opera’s most intriguing cads. (His farewell line to Erika, “When I see you again, perhaps you will have learned to smile,” is surely worth a bout of cringe villain-booing at the curtain call.) Anatol’s malign presence is tempered by his (selective) bouts of honesty and genuine pity for Erika’s plight (that he caused), demanding a singer who can both make the character alluring and effectively bring out these nuances. Lightening his lyric tenor to produce a sound of fleeting sweetness, Polenzani captured all of these facets in beguiling renditions of Anatol’s paper-thin proposal to Erika (“Outside this house…”) and description of finding her in the ravine after she flees the house in an attempt to lose the pregnancy (that he caused).

Thomas Hampson and Susan Graham provided familiar names to round out the cast in the roles of the Old Doctor and the Old Baroness. (Nothing advertises a third career part quite like “Old” right there in the character name.) Hampson thoroughly enjoyed himself as the Doctor who helps to keep the house’s secrets while supplying comic relief. His recognizable sound is well preserved, that slightly wooly quality and his penchant for affectation, while divisive in other music, nicely suits a character role like this. Susan Graham perhaps didn’t lean into affectation enough, delivering a generally pleasant Baroness that lacked notes of haughtiness or severity.

Noseda opened the program with Barber’s “Adagio for Strings” in a touching tribute to the victims of the mid-air collision that had taken place in DC the previous night.

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