Copious Notes

Billy the Barber (Reginald Smith Jr.) is a key character in reminding Abraham Lincoln (Nick Provenzale) of his commitment to fight slavery. Photo from Sept. 29 rehearsal by Rich Copley, LexGo.com.

I’ve talked before at le blog about the challenge of reviewing University of Kentucky Opera Theatre productions because the collegiate company always double-casts shows due to singers’ needs for vocal rest — professional companies rarely put a show up on consecutive days for that reason — and to spread experience around.

It has its up sides, of course, but one downside is that only one cast gets reviewed by the paper. We simply do not have the time or space to review a show twice, and waiting for both casts to perform would hamper our efforts to deliver a timely review.

The same is true for UKOT’s world premier production of River of Time, which opened Thursday night at the Lexington Opera House. Nick Provenzale sings the lead role of Abraham Lincoln all three nights, but most of the primary singing roles are double cast. We reviewed Cast A (UKOT’s termionology) last night, which acquitted itself quite well in a new opera that had some big issues in story and pace.

Abraham Lincoln (Nick Provenzale) tries to comfort Ann Rutledge (Julie La Douceur) in her final hours in "River of Time."

That said, I did get to catch Cast 1, which performs tonight (Oct. 9), in a rehearsal last week, and if you are holding tickets for tonight’s performance or are thinking of going, I don’t think you’ll be shortchanged.

Among the standouts set to go on tonight are Reginald Smith Jr. as Billy the Barber and Julie LaDouceur as Ann Rutledge.

Based on what I caught that evening, some of the different performers will likely bring different vibes to their work. LaDouceur’s Ann seemed sweeter and more whistful than Amanda Balltrip’s more feisty, jocular take. And Smith, whose voice will always get your attention, put a lot of comand behind his version of Billy, performed with tremendous empathy by Mark Elliott Golson II last night and Saturday.

So the takes may be somewhat different, but either way, you should expect some terrific performances.

Ann Rutledge (Amanda Balltrip) and Abraham Lincoln (Nick Provenzale) at a town dance in New Salem, Ill., in the world premier production of Joe Baber's "River of Time." Photo by Rich Copley | LexGo.com.

Note: Space is finite in newspapers, really more finite than ever. This being a new opera, I wrote a bit longer than a usual review, and a little bit longer than the printed page in Saturday’s paper will hold. This posting of our River of Time review contains portions that will not be in the print edition.

No one in Abraham Lincoln’s home state has celebrated the bicentennial of the 16th president’s birth as well as the University of Kentucky Opera Theatre.

At the start of the celebration in 2008, the Opera Theatre teamed with the Kentucky Humanities Council to present Our Lincoln, a multi-faceted tribute to the Hodgenville native that eventually traveled to Washington, D.C.

Before that show was even conceived, UK Opera Theatre director Everett McCorvey had commissioned an opera about Lincoln from composer Joe Baber and librettist Jim Rodgers.

That opera, River of Time, had its world premiere Thursday night at the Lexington Opera House. It’s not the unqualified success of Our Lincoln, but there is much to like and even potential for Baber’s opera to endure as a portrait of the president before he was presidential.

River of Time’s story takes Lincoln from birth through the death of his first true love, Ann Rutledge. Along the way, he fights with his dad, becomes a bookworm, grieves the deaths of the three most important women in his life and even wrestles.

That story makes for some great moments, including a slave auction in New Orleans where Lincoln declares that if he gets a chance to fight slavery, “I’m gonna hit it hard.” The scene, with a heavy dose of spirituals, is the grand opera spectacle of the show.

But for the most part, this opera strives for a soothing — sometimes too soothing — Midwestern feel, in the spirit of Aaron Copland or Samuel Barber. That’s exemplified in a small-town dance scene in which Lincoln and Ann realize that regardless of whether she is engaged to another guy, they are in love. Read the rest of this entry »

• Here’s our slide show from the University of Kentucky Opera Theatre’s production of Lucia di Lammermoor. Mouse over the bottom to get controls. Click on the little comment cloud to the left to activate captions. If you click on a photo, it will take you to a larger version of it at Picasa, and you can click the link at the bottom left for a larger version of the whole show.

Raimondo (Mark Elliott Golson, center) referees a confrontation between Enrico (David Bellamy Baker, left) and Edgardo (Jeremy Cady, right) in UK Opera Theatre's production of "Lucia di Lammermoor." Photos by Rich Copley | LexGo.

Lucia di Lammermoor is an opera about a man who forces his sister to marry for money.

His sister is in love with another man — in her mind, married to him. But the brother tricks the sister into a miserable arrangement. By the time the final curtain falls, Lucia and both of the men who called her wife are dead, the husband she didn’t want dying in Lucia’s ghastly murder of him.

It’s an odd mix: bel canto singing — beautiful singing — with treachery and carnage.

The University of Kentucky Opera Theatre’s production of the Lucia, which opened Friday night at the Lexington Opera House and has three more performances tonight and next Friday and Saturday, had the bel canto part down.

But the show never felt dangerous, even as Lucia staggered around the stage with a bloody knife in her hand.

Darla Diltz as Lucia.

We are, of course, talking about Lucia’s mad scene, after she has stabbed her new, unwanted husband to death and comes into the wedding party with a blood-splattered white dress. It is a tough scene for a soprano as she has to navigate a treacherous vocal line while holding the stunned party-goers in horror for nearly 15 minutes.

Darla Diltz has one of the most beautiful instruments to come out UK’s voice school in years, her tour de force playing Violetta opposite star UK opera alum Gregory Turay’s Alfredo. And that voice is on dispaly again in the mad scene, particularly echoing Aaron Sexton’s flute. But, except for a moment where she raises the knife to one of the guests, there’s never a sense that she’s going to strike again or that the party guests are afraid of her.

And the scene is hardly set, as David Bellamy Baker isn’t convincing as such a meanie that he would force his sister to submit to a life of misery. He only really has a sense of urgency when directly challenged by Diltz.

He too has had great successes, such as an empathetic Schaunard to Jeremy Cady’s Rodolfo in La Boheme last fall. Now Cady, once again employing romantic lead sweetness as Edgardo, does fix Baker’s Enrico with a death stare that means business in their big confrontation. He also pulls off one the biggest challenges in the tenor repertorie: successfully following the mad scene.

There are some other outstanding performances from the supporting cast, including Mark Elliott Golson II as a commanding Raimondo and Luther H. Lewis II as a deliciously slimy Normanno. Gavin Wigginson is a strong and gregarious presence in his one scene as Lucia’s doomed groom.

Director Richard Kagey has designed a strong traditional setting for the show, and the UK Symphony sounded as sharp as it ever has in the pit. The chorus was also in top form, bringing some of the best moments of the show, including the scene where they are supposed to be celerating Lucia and Arturo’s marriage and instead see an ugly confrontation between Edgardo and pretty much everyone else.

The show just wasn’t a compelling package, and the lack of drama, of any emotional spark was surprising, considering one of the primary strengths of UK Opera during its ascendancy has been acting. It has been a company sending singers into the world with the knowledge that opera today needs more dramatic flair to draw in new audiences. It has been the company that brought us shows like Don Giovanni with the Giovanni-Leporello combo of Mark Huseth and Corey Crider, a Carmen that, by all rights, should be a precursor to Brandy Lynn Hawkins doing the title role again and again and again, and last fall’s total package Boheme.

This is a company that has always remembered theater was part of its name. Let’s not forget that.

This show was double cast, with the cast reviewed performing again March 13. The other cast performs March 7 and 14.

• Did you see the other cast? Tell us how it went by commenting below, or chime in on the performance reviewed.