Opera Review: Music so pretty you’ll lose your head

Now in their eighteenth season, Winter Opera St. Louis’s founder and general director Gina Galati proudly emphasizes that the company has avoided repeating a work. This represents a refreshing approach in an industry that recycles titles such as “Carmen” and “The Barber of Seville” with such frequency that syndicated episodes of “Friends” on television groan somewhat less under the weight of overexposure than opera’s ceaselessly flogged top ten. For Winter Opera’s second show this season and 49^th complete opera overall, they corralled a celestial body from the penumbra of the standard repertory, Gaetano Donizetti’s 1830 firecracker, “Anna Bolena.”

Our fair city on the muddy Mississippi enjoys an unusual arrangement for bringing opera to audiences. Rather than one larger [grand] opera company, as many major American metropolitan areas host, we tend a garden of one medium-sized company, Opera Theatre St. Louis, and three petite-but-mighty organizations in Winter Opera, Union Avenue Opera, and, over the river and through the woods, Opera Edwardsville. The chief virtue of this arrangement is to expose residents to a much wider array of repertory than a single company in a mid-level metropolis could possibly stage in a year.

Everybody lines up some of those overperformed works—five stagings of “La Bohème” between them in fifteen years—but, as OTSL has locked down contemporary works and English-language modality, and Union Avenue admixes Broadway, Winter Opera serves different niches: operettas, and less-performed standard rep works. Refreshingly too, the company doesn’t shy away from the bel canto catalogue, which in recent decades lost market share to Baroque and contemporary works. Your reviewer still raves about their 2019 production of the apex work of the genre, Bellini’s “Norma,” featuring the exquisite singing of soprano Christine Lyons as the titular druid priestess. Winter Opera has already checked off Donizetti’s four most-performed operas, the tragedy “Lucia di Lammermoor,” and his three heavily rotated comedies, “L’Elisir d’Amore” “La Fille du Régiment,” and “Don Pasquale.” “Anna Bolena” resides in the next tier of performance frequency, along with its Tudor Queen trilogy siblings, “Maria Stuarda” and “Roberto Devereaux.” This week’s performances mark a local premiere of “Anna Bolena,” which debuted in Milan the day after Christmas, 1830.

The plot of “Anna Bolena” looks about how you’d expect of 19C Italian artists relating 16C English history. Felice Romani’s libretto moves with a relatively swift pace for a bel canto opera. Anna’s lousy husband, England’s most infamous King, “Enrico VIII,” has tired of her in but three years, placing Anna’s handmaid Giovanna Seymour in his predatory crosshairs. Conflicted, Seymour returns his affection with generous helpings of regret. Everybody except the King loves Anna, including her ex-boyfriend Percy and an adorable lutist, Smeaton, making it easy for Enrico to frame her on charges of treasonous adultery. A series of machinations lead to his catching half the cast in Anna’s chambers during a banger of a concertato to close Act I. With a clean structure, Act II depicts the consequences of Act I’s events, leading to a series of death sentences, including Anna, whose dignified ascent to the executioner’s block closes the opera.

So far, so good. But “Anna Bolena” contains intricacies that allow for a wide variety of interpretation. Should the Queen consort weather events more passively, or get in the King’s face? Does Giovanna Seymour actually love him, or does she claim to because she fears reprisal? And why does anyone even think about appearing to cross this terrifying king? Donizetti mixes this into the sort of stew only opera can cook, penning several ensembles that anticipate the multiplexity you’ll find in Verdi’s great duets, trios, quartets, and concertatos.

To house the drama, Scott Loebl designed one of Winter Opera’s most visually impressive sets yet, simple but imposing. A wing-to-wing and floor-to-catwalk stone wall stretched the entirety of the stage’s rear, into which a broad arch was cut behind symmetrical staircases. Centerstage, a small turntable swiveled away the first scene’s two thrones to reveal a door. These features funneled principals and choristers alike efficiently about the stage. Anna’s trial took place in the wings stage right, and she sang her big aria, “Al dolce guidami” seated upon a tree stump downstage left, referencing a pastoral setting long gone.

Jen Blum-Tatara’s costumes gave Renaissance finery, not least to Natalie Conte’s Anna, a black and white first act costume which looked specifically modeled upon the well-known, posthumous portrait of Boleyn dating to 1550. She lost some of her bling once imprisoned in Act II. Courtney Fletcher’s Giovanna Seymour sported a delightfully ostentatious gable hood atop her dome, and a lovely red and black gown beneath. The men wore a spectrum of breeches and tights. Emily Hughes’ Smeaton, the pants-role mezzo-soprano, arrived with golden leggings, armed with a lute. Winter Opera makes a dollar go far, and this visually pleasing production appeared to have separated them from a few dollars more than usual.

But, even past other operatic genres, bel canto is all—truly all—about the singing, and the drama locates itself there. Technique must meet spec and breath control must flow from a bottomless well. Though some singers gave stronger performances than others, the entire cast won the evening. (Too, consideration must be offered the performers, as your reviewer attended the final dress rehearsal).

As our heroine, soprano Natalie Conte entered with regal affect, her choral retinue codependently monitoring her every emotion, especially the women. Though her low and middle registers emerged stronger than her high, she consistently nailed the show-offy high notes Donizetti demands of the prima donna at the close of ensembles. She executed this trick well in the gorgeous Act I quintet “Io senti sulla mia mano,” in which the soprano soars atop the men, who sing in close harmony. This extraordinarily effective quintet weaves all the characters’ emotions together in all their complexity, anticipating the one in Act IV of Verdi’s “Don Carlo.”

Conte’s resume defies categorization, some lyric rep, some spinto-adjacent, and a couple mezzo roles for good measure, but this night I thought her more of a full lyric than dramatic coloratura, which might be an artifact of my attending a dress rehearsal. Nonetheless, her instrument sounded larger in Act II than Act I, appropriate for her standoff with the King midway through. For a preview article, I asked for her favorite moment in this bewilderingly pretty score, and she answered as most fans of the opera would, Anna’s big hit, the aria near the opera’s close, “Al dolce guidami.” Atop her tree stump, she gave the aria with a couple nice trills and some delicate diminuendi. Shaken by the snare drums from her not-very-mad mad scene (it’s not “Lucia”), she saved her best for last, including the final high B♭, as Anna proclaimed her death the completion of a sacred rite of sorts. The famed McVicar production seen at the Met and elsewhere famously bade Anna enter a guillotine-like door and saucily raise her ponytail for the axman; our director at Winter Opera, Kate Slovinski, handled the curtain more simply and elegantly, Anna kneeling and facing the fourth wall, bloodied by a stark red spotlight and adorned by an Atwood-esque bonnet worthy of The Handmaid’s Tale. An apt comment on how women fare under tyrannical regimes.

Anna’s tyrant, “Enrico VIII,” received a dominant performance from bass Erik Kroncke, who seemed double his castmates’ age and tolerating the youngsters’ antics, from his perspective, little. Henry was but 44 when he offed a perhaps 30-ish Boleyn, but Kroncke was giving not-having-it Daddy, beneath some leonine hair, with an affect like the actor Ronald Pickup. And his voice! I’m not making this up—his timbre is reminiscent of recordings of the late Ezio Pinza, booming throughout the room with a quick vibrato. That’s probably easier to do in the thousand-seat Kirkwood PAC than the Met, but Kroncke provided an extremely authoritative foil for Anna vocally and dramatically. With Giovanna Seymour, he resolutely withheld sympathy for the other parties from whom she advocated. Opera is a funny place; when the villain sings that well, you nearly root for him despite his dastardly deeds.

Mezzo-soprano Courtney Fletcher’s Giovanna Seymour appeared to understand fully the danger accompanying the King’s present but contingent favor. Far from scheming to replace Anna, she sympathized with her in their sisterly duet, a highlight of the evening for them both, and she plied the king for mercy towards those he viewed as plotting against him. Fletcher sounded zwischy, even slightly sopranistic, with a sweet timbre. This works in most bel canto roles for mezzo, as the distinction between soprano and mezzo-soprano emerged more fully later in the 19C. Fletcher did deploy some rich chest voice in spots, for accent. Enrico gave her a scary look when his apparatchik Sir Hervey, ably portrayed by Thomas Taylor IV, reported the death sentences of half the cast. Now with queenly force, she reminded the King that God’s eyes were watching.

Simpin’ ain’t easy, and Anna received loads of attention from not one but two doomed young men apparently motivated solely by eros. Tenor Justin Kroll played her ex, Lord Percy, with monomania and a death wish. He gave a nice rendition of Percy’s aria “Da quel dì che lei perduta” in tenore di grazia mode. But the finest singing of all in this solid cast came from mezzo-soprano Emily Hughes, in the pants role of Anna’s page, Smeaton, a hapless lad with a knack for occupying the wrong place at the wrong time. Smeaton’s Petrarchan love gone wrong got off to a great start with Hughes’ interpretation of “Cinta di nubi ancora.” She exhibited a pliant but robust sound with healthy chest, and seamlessly integrated registers. At the top of the third verse, Anna interrupted, apparently oblivious to Smeaton’s woo, but one wished the serenade would continue. Smeaton is merely a supporting role, but Hughes stole every scene in which she appeared, with fine dynamic contrasts and flowy legato, so important in bel canto. Rounding out Anna’s crew, bass-baritone John Robert Green provided support as her brother Lord Rochefort. Green supplied a lot of nice overtones, with a sort of wheat colored timbre vaguely reminiscent of Renato Bruson.

Maestro Edward Benyas led the twenty-piece orchestra—even more spare than Winter Opera’s usual twenty-six—with reasonable mastery of bel canto style and a Rossinian flair in the overture. Some passages dragged a bit, and like a lot of two-act bel canto operas, Act I lasts quite a while. But Benyas consistently privileged the singers.

“Anna Bolena” remains a fantastic entry in Donizetti’s canon, and your reviewer finds its programming a relief after too many Elixirs and Pasquales. Three cheers to Winter Opera for serving it up, and for their intermittent but solid dedication to bel canto work. Their 2024-25 mainstage season concludes 28 February and 1 March with Mozart’s insuppressible fairy tale romp, “Die Zauberflöte.”