When Love Wins the Hand: Nashville Opera’s La fanciulla del West
As I walked into Belmont University’s Fischer Center, I noticed that it was one of those weirdly quiet nights when you can feel the barometer shift as a huge winter storm was blowing into town. In fact, it was a perfect night for a performance of Giacomo Puccini’s masterpiece La Fanciulla del West (the Girl of the Golden West) by Nashville Opera, and the production didn’t disappoint!
Soprano Kara Kay Thomson gave an outstanding interpretation of Minnie’s part. Her voice was powerful and well appointed. A touch shrill at the heights, but these are the same heights at which Puccini placed her character’s most terrifying moments—her instrument’s timbre matched the dramatic situation. Puccini’s vocal lines have always, despite the silly allegations, been subject to the dramatic expression. Thomson’s “Laggiù nel Soledad” was magnificent. How one can sing that enormous role against that huge orchestra and still sound vulnerable? Amazing.
As for the men, something occurred to me about Puccini and more broadly verismo-related opera (Fanciulla is NOT verismo) in this performance. When there are two men competing for a woman’s affection like Dick Johnson and Jack Rance here (or Scarpia and Cavaraodssi in Tosca, or Turriddu and Alfio in Mascagni’s Cavalleria Rusticana), the opposition tends to fall into the ancient mythical terms of Apollo and Dionysus. Jack Rance’s demands for Minnie’s love are not based on her emotions but what she can do for him. His cynicism and greed, characterized as “Amaro, avvelenato, Che ride dellámore e del destino” (“Embittered, poisoned, which laughs at love and destiny”) can only be healed by her kiss. Social order, and his position within it, being his station as Sheriff, position him as Minnie’s primary courtier in the opera’s first scene, reminding all that his love is transactional, where “Di Jack Rance finora nessuno, intendi, s’é mai preso giuoco” (“no one has ever dared to trick Jack Rance!”).
Here, Kyle Albertson’s imposing presence and respect-demanding instrument was dominant in volume yet exacting in its intonation and declamation—it was wonderfully scary. In the second act, as Minnie and he gamble for the destiny of Dick Johnson, it occurred to me that Minnie had to cheat at cards; Jack Rance had never lost a bet fair and square and never will. The parallel with Scarpia and Tosca’s bargain at the end of Act II of that opera is quite strong here.
Meanwhile, Jonathan Burton’s tenor was as delicately burnished as his emotions, walking the tightrope between his (Dick Johnson’s) love for Minnie and his heroic interest in stealing the gold. The entire performance was carefully measured until act three when he lets it be known that Minnie’s love is his priority in the beautiful “Ch’ella mi creda” at the dénouement. Burton pulled all the stops and let it rip. A delightful moment!
As always, Dean Willimason provided an admirable read of the score. I still think his greatest interpretations lie with the classical and early romantic—the Mozart, the Rossini, et cetera, (I can’t wait for Nashville’s Barber later this spring!) but here he articulated Puccini’s sophisticated and quite modern score well in its lush and continuous texture. In many ways the supporting cast carried the day. Gregor Sliskovich (a wise and hustling Nick the Bartender), Ryan Bede (a Sonora always disfunctionally crushing on Minnie) and Jordan Mathis (a sweet yet passionate Joe) deserve special mention for memorable performances as did Harold Wilson (the minstrel Jack Wallace) and Hailey Cohen (a fetching Wowkle).
The staging, at least the aspects that were on the stage were done well. It was nice to see the poker match set up in the traditional way, with the two singers across from each other with Dick Johnson lying subconscious at their feet—simple yet effective and powerful. The big video screens in the background could, unfortunately, be distracting and unnecessary—the mountain-sized Minnie was a little heavy handed.
All in all, it was an excellent production. As I left—with little sense of the impact the approaching ice storm would have, or of the citywide shutdown that would follow over the next week—I thought this opera was the event of the season. At the time, I felt sorry for those who stayed home out of fear of the storm. In hindsight, I understand—but I’m still sorry you missed it.
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Joseph E. Morgan is a father of two, husband, teacher and recovering guitarist in Middle Tennessee.
I am disappointed to read the very brief mention of the use of the massive LED screen in this article. It was not just “distracting and unnecessary”, but quite awfully implemented and lacked artistic integrity.
This was not the first time this season that excessive projected graphics were used. “The Shining” production was replete with them. The mysterious hooded figure, the small group of stale party goers, and even a video of Danny running all detracted from the performance. Worst of all was the Grady twins being murdered by their machine gun wielding father. What the audience saw projected was a video of one girl copied and pasted to make her twin, then instead of having them act is if they got shot, the editor just rotated their pictures horizontally. It was so shockingly amateurish that the audience erupted in ironic laughter. A moment that narratively and musically were designed to show us the horrors of the Overlook Hotel instead was reduced to chortles.
With that audience reaction I was sure that the projection experiment would be laid to rest, but “Fanciulla” proved me wrong. Admittedly, Fanciulla was much better than “The Shining” in this regard, but the same problems persisted. If you didn’t see the show, picture a stage with several set pieces that were quite good, but the backdrop of every scene was a giant LED screen filling the stage. The background of the scene was projected onto it (think a saloon scene, a snowy mountain cap) and then other images would be superimposed on top of them.
The first gripe is that the graphics were not well done. There were images of the main cast members that were cropped poorly, showing the edges of the green screen where they took the photos. And when the graphics were shown they were shown as if the audience had no understanding of the plot. For Minnie’s entrance Puccini writes a great crescendo and the whole cast shouts “Hello, Minnie!” and John Hooms stages Minnie shooting off a gun inside of her own establishment. If you weren’t realizing what was happening, we also got a giant image of Minnie holding two guns as the background. Every time this was done for a character your eye was drawn away from the stage and towards the screen. Life is already full of enough disrupting screens.
Most damning though was the constant use of generative artificial intelligence for the backgrounds. Minnie’s saloon had candles floating in mid-air and other spots had light emanating with no visible source. Act 2 showed Minnie’s house at the summit of a mountain with a constant, disrupting, looping blizzard of snow. Perhaps at one point this would have been impressive visually, but these graphics aren’t anything that any audience member couldn’t see by pulling out their phone. It didn’t look impressive, it looked rather cheap.
Beyond all this, is it not insulting to the art form to have a computer generate the stage product? An orchestra full of professionals that have mastered their instruments, singers onstage that trained for decades, and then two minutes on ChatGPT generating an image. One of these things is not like the other. After all, if we are going to outsource some of the production, why stop there? Are Wowkle and Billy Jackrabbit problematic characters? I bet Grok can write a better libretto. Puccini died before completing Turandot, perhaps we can get Microsoft Copilot to finish the music?
All this to say, I did thoroughly enjoy the production. The orchestra played so well, and Kara Shay Thomson and Jonathan Burton brought the house down. I just hope that the production of Barber coming later this Spring will be better.
Sincerely,
Nashville Opera Supporter