Sarasota Opera Concert Performance: The Music of Giuseppe Verdi

The Music of Giuseppe Verdi – Victor Starsky Sarasota Opera (Photo: Sarasota Opera)

Verdi: excerpts from La forza del destino, Aida, Un ballo in maschera, Attila, La Traviata, Don Carlo, I Lombardi alla prima crociata, Rigoletto; Rochelle Bard, Young Bok Kim, Virginia Mims, Jean Carlos Rodriguez, Victor Starsky, Sarasota Orchestra, Victor DeRenzi; Sarasota Opera at Sarasota Opera House
Reviewed by Robert J Carreras, 15 November 2024

Having become the only opera company in the world to have presented every work by Verdi, Sarasota Opera continues its exploration of his music. In his latest Letter from Florida, Robert J Carreras reports on Sarasota’s concert, The Music of Giuseppe Verdi

Maestro Victor DeRenzi has Giuseppe Verdi right where he wants him. The conductor’s world is inching closer and closer to Verdi’s world, creating an intimate bond across time and musical language. Some eight years after completing (2016) Sarasota Opera‘s endeavor to play every note Verdi wrote for opera, now DeRenzi manages to collect a set of complete-package singing-actors to further express the composer’s intentions. With lots of space and the necessary tools to grow, each of these has the chops to one day be their generation’s Verdians.

More and varied hearings of tenor Victor Starsky from Queens will bring to light whether he is on track to write his own ticket. In theater, Starsky’s burnished, round, and ear-catching overtone series turns more compact into the passaggio, then blooms with enough brass to make things interesting in the higher reaches. It is a sizable tenor, the kind for which the more florid singing required in the bel canto repertoire is not ideally suited. Such roles hover with cantabile lines right at the break of the voice. No matter, Starsky will have wide access to a plethora of roles he is well-suited for, like Radames. After the finely sung passages of “Celeste Aida,” the tenor took the last phrase (before repeating sans high note as Verdi wrote) “un trono vicino al sol” in one breath. Word has it he has a high C too. Victor Starsky will be returning to Sarasota Opera for the Winter season as Stiffelio, Verdi’s opera of the same name.

Rochelle Bard of Massachusetts first appeared with Sarasota Opera in 2019, as Abigaille in Nabucco. Ms. Bard understands bel canto; her repertoire includes Bellini, Donizetti, and yes, much Verdi. Bard also understands her lyric instrument, with its well-developed lower register she delivers in an array of sizes (modulations), shapes (lines), and shades. “Morro ma primo in grazie” was sung with all manner of graces, with a depth of feeling spinning a long line and climbing poignantly at, “dell’ore mie fugaci.” Bard appears to have this sort of singing mellifluence at her beck and call, and that will get noticed by the truest of bel canto intelligentsia. Verdi looks good on Rochelle Bard stylistically.

The Music of Giuseppe Verdi – Rochelle Bard Sarasota Opera (Photo: Sarasota Opera)

Dominican naritone Jean Carlos Rodriguez appears in four selections of this concert at the Sarasota Opera House on November 15, 2024. For the grainy quality of his voice there are many operatic roles, for its patrician quality there are many more, particularly in Verdi. Jean Carlos Rodriguez will split his time on stage as Alfio and Tonio in Cavalleria Rusticana and Pagliacci when he is seen again with Sarasota Opera in 2025.

Just when you’d thought the concert had tapped its measure of vocal largesse – enter Virgina Mims. It remains in question whether Ms. Mims’ effects were transmitted to all those in attendance, but they were most definitely felt by Maestro DeRenzi and orchestra. The conductor appeared so moved by her singing that he turned back to the orchestra with sweeping gesture, as in disbelief, and as if to match Mims’ passion in closing “Si vendetta, tremenda vendetta” the final scheduled selection of the concert. Mims’ voice has size and shape, agility and temperance, plus, the timbre to bring it all together. Sarasota Opera Studio Artist Virginia Mims is the company’s Susanna in Mozart’s The Marriage of Figaro next season.

Young Bok Kim‘s has been an enduring presence in Sarasota – twenty years and counting with the company. This is his first time though as Don Carlo‘s Fillipo II. In this concert performance of the epic “Ella giammai m’amo,” as DeRenzi tells us, “This is a chance to see a new side of him.” Kim conveyed well Fillipo’s meditations on the passage of time, and love.

Is it too much to ask that a conductor know all the poetry set to libretto in Giuseppe Verdi’s operas? Apparently not. Not in Victor DeRenzi’s case. Not only could he not help but demonstrate appreciation for fine singing, but he did so while mouthing every syllable uttered, as if part-time prompter. Sarasota Orchestra sings with DeRenzi’s lead – in the space and silence between the chords and entrance of woodwinds in the Forza overture, in its cultivated and assured carrying of the melodies in early and middle Verdi, in its generally prepared and pointed reading of the composer’s musical language.

There are worlds within worlds in opera. Among those are worlds with specialized interests in discovering specialized interpreters for the musical language of composers like Giuseppe Verdi. There is a special place for artists who present with the natural gifts and inclinations to speak these musical languages, and more so the desire to create such a bond with a composer. Sarasota Opera offers a unique place and a unique environment to make good on the promise of getting close to Giuseppe Verdi.

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La forza del destino
  Sinfonia (Overture)

Aida
  “Celeste Aida” (Victor Starsky, tenor)
  “Ritorna vincitor” (Rochelle Bard, soprano)

Un ballo in maschera
  “Morro ma prima in grazia” (Rochelle Bard, soprano)
  “Eri tu” (Jean Carlos Rodriguez, baritone)
  “Ma se m’e forza perditi” (Victor Starsky, tenor)

Attila
  “Tardo per gli anni, e tremolo” (Jean Carlos Rodriguez, baritone, Young Bok Kim, bass)

La Traviata
  “Ah, forse lui…Sempre libera” (Virgina Mims, soprano, Victor Starsky, tenor)

Don Carlo
  “Ella giammai m’amo” (Young Bok Kim, bass)

I Lombardi alla prima crociata
  “Qual volutta trascorrere” (Rochelle Bard, soprano, Victor Starsky, tenor, Young Bok Kim, bass)

La forza del destino
  “Pace, pace mio dio” (Rochelle Bard, soprano)

Rigoletto
  “Tutte le feste al tempio”
  “Si, vendetta, tremenda vendetta” (Virginia Mims, soprano, Jean Carlos Rodriguez, baritone)

Sarasota Opera House, late March 2008, (Photo: Viva Verdi / Wikipedia)

Sarasota Opera began attracting international attention with the Masterworks Revival Series, which presents neglected works of artistic merit and made history in 2016 by completing the Verdi Cycle, a 28-season effort to produce every work written by Giuseppe Verdi. 

Sarasota Opera is now the only opera company in the world to have presented every work, in every version and Maestro DeRenzi is the only conductor to have conducted all the composer’s works. Sarasota is widely considered Verdi’s home in the United States, second only to Busseto, Italy. As destination-opera par excellence, people from all corners of the world come for Sarasota Opera’s Winter season, with its world-class productions that range from early Italian Bel Canto to contemporary American opera. 

After the $20 million-dollar historic renovation and restoration of a 1926 building in 2008, Sarasota Opera House has been described as “a delightful 1000 seat art deco Opera House, whose acoustics are superb (Opera magazine).”