Productions

‘La Traviata’ dazzles ‘rock’ crowd
Toledo Blade

At student night on Wednesday the reception by a large, very young crowd in the Valentine Theatre was rock-star enthusiastic. Violetta’s extended death scene was graceful and believable. Alfredo was ardent, impulsive and sensitive. The chorus was an essential and energizing element. The very moving second act…the high point of the evening. Director Fenlon Lamb’s staging made the most of all the talent against a simplified yet evocative set.

Click HERE to read the full review.

Madama Butterfly Hits High Note
Bar Harbor Times

For two-and-a-half wonderful hours this year’s Bar Harbor Opera Theater production kept the audience thrilled, enrapt and finally heartbroken as the tragedy played out amid familiar and favorite arias and duets.

[In] the opera’s most heart-rending and poignant moment [Un bel di vedremo]…we could almost see the wisp of smoke rising from the funnels of the ship as it entered Nagasaki Harbor, hear the cannon blast announcing its arrival, and see his small figure start the ascent to the hilltop house they once shared and where Butterfly waits patiently and confidently for him to reach her door and start up their life together again.

Fenlon Lamb, who directed, also deserved a standing ovation for putting this whole thing together in about a week, with just enough costuming and set to make it all feel like the real deal.

In love with the Opera: “Elixir of Love” gets huge laughs
The Ellsworth American

Anyone who was home last Thursday night doing their laundry, watching “America’s Got Talent” on TV; reading the latest Vanity Fair, or even those who decided to go sing karaoke at their local bar, missed out on where the fun stuff was really happening that night. In fact, anyone who was not at the Criterion Theatre that evening attending the Bar Harbor Music Festival’s production of the opera “Elixir of Love” missed the boat (the love boat actually) altogether.

Oh my, this lighthearted, rollicking little opera, which followed last year’s intense and passionate “Carmen,” was just the thing to brighten yet another rainy night on MDI. In fact is was so fun, funny and beautifully acted and sung, I do believe it parted the clouds for a while—at least it wasn’t raining when we all left the theater with silly grins on our faces—or maybe we just didn’t notice.

First of all, major kudos to Fenlon Lamb who directed this delightful show. Not only did she gather together a terrific little cast—drawing them, literally, from coast to coast–she did not give them a second’s worth of down time while they were on stage—engaging them every moment with some bit of stage business, even when they weren’t singing. In fact some of the most hilarious moments were done in pantomime.

Angela Gilbert, who astonished audiences two years ago with her moving and thrillingly sung performance as the dying courtesan in “La Traviata,” demonstrated that she has some pretty well developed comic chops here as the fickle and flirty Adina—alternately luring and pushing away the men who swarm to her like hummingbirds to honeysuckle.

Ross Hauck as one of those helpless and hopelessly in love suitors, Nemorino, was totally adorable in his nerdy outfit, complete with taped glasses, too short pants and clunky shoes. In another life this curly haired, blue-eyed young man might have been swooning lasses singing Irish ballads and such. But his fine, pitch-perfect and lively lyric tenor is excellently suited for this sort of light opera fare and his spine-tingling rendition of the aria “Una Fortiva Lagrima” showed he could very well take on some weightier roles. As the dweeby Nemorino, though, he never broke character and was always making some foolish mistake or misstep — stepping through chair backs, knocking himself over with a beach umbrella and such—that got him in further trouble with his beloved Adina, but just made those of us in the audience with a shred of maternal instinct love him all the more.

As the bombastic, self-important military man Belcore, Ryan Taylor was also perfect, swaggering about the stage in his camouflage fatigues, rolling his “rrrrrrs” pretentiously in his rich and rumbling baritone, to great comic effect as he woos the unimpressed Adina.

And then there’s the wonderful Jason Hardy, who played the charlatan Dulcamara who comes to town selling his various elixirs and manages to convince the nincompoop Nemorino that a bottle of burgundy is actually a love potion. A bass voice normally gives its character a certain, well, profundity, and gravitas. But Hardy used his terrific instrument to sound unctuous and wheedling — just the opposite from what one might expect. To accomplish this he used his sinuous body language and suggestive facial expressions, often turning to the audience with a sly grin or wink to let us in on the “clever” scam he was pulling off.

Amy Mahoney, in a small singing role as Adina’s friend, Gianetta, was spot on and looked fetching in her 50′s-style peddle-pushers.

One character who never got to sing or open his mouth at all was Michael Mahoney who took on several roles and was simply hilarious in all of them — especially the disgruntled waiter and the assistant to Dulcamara — playing them with Buster Keaton-like panache. David Schildkret also ably filled a character role as a tight-lipped, straight-backed military man.

This little performance company, which once had heroines expiring on plastic lawn chairs, has come a long way in terms of production, too. Here they managed to do wonders with a few wooden chairs, some colored lanterns, a teacart and a beach umbrella to make the set festive and fun and believable as an Italian courtyard in the 1950′s. The period costuming was also terrific.