James Gill
The Mozart opera featured an excellent cast and dazzling set and costumes.
Winter woes were easily forgotten, thanks to Madison Opera’s production of Mozart’s Abduction from the Seraglio.
The pseudo-Turkish comedy, performed Feb. 9 and 11 at Overture Hall, had a text full of stage opportunities and a score full of lyric marvels. Both were handsomely realized.
The cast was a splendid one, with two perfectly contrasted female leads. As Konstanze, the captive Spanish woman, Amanda Woodbury was a tower of vocal strength with the technique to handle the coloratura demands of the role with aplomb. And Ashly Neumann was delightfully spunky as Blonde. David Walton played the Spanish nobleman Belmonte, who is in search of his captive beloved. He has a clear and lovely tenor voice, though it has a bland quality that does not contribute much to the character — not that much can be done with the role anyway. Eric Neuville was full of fun as his sprightly servant Pedrillio, but quickly became a bit too clownish.
The show-stealer, perhaps, was Matt Boehler as the self-important palace overseer, Osmin. His strong, deep bass voice is impressive, and his comic acting adept. This opera has a curiosity of a role for a non-singer, Pash Selim, whom actor Brian Belz portrayed with consistent and benevolent dignity.
As with many operas or operettas that have sung music amid spoken dialogue, a common practice has been to perform the music in the original language (German) and the dialogue in the audience’s tongue (English). The problem with that approach is that few singers speak as strongly as they sing. That was the case here, with a lot of the dialogue being quite difficult to hear (and the audience did not have the benefit of the subtitles used for the music).
Also, the decision to place the orchestra at the rear of the stage, behind the action, dimmed a lot of Mozart’s wonderful writing. A pantomime during the Overture quite covered up its delicious “Turkish” effects, while the playing of the concertante solo parts in Konstanze’s great aria of defiance at the end of Act I was mostly lost. What could be heard of the orchestra, though, was solidly performed under the direction of John DeMain.
Stage director Alison Mortiz included comic touches throughout, and the visual dimensions were handled brilliantly. The set was lovely and the costumes were quite dazzling. Despite my quibbles, this was a thoroughly delightful production, another plume in Madison Opera’s chapeau.
