Opera review: 'Arabella'
A sweet treat - hard to resist

Richard Strauss’ opera “Arabella” might be likened to an overabundant feast of desserts: calorie rich and very sweet, just a bit too much to ingest, one realizes, as the intake builds across the span of an evening.

But the indulgence is hard to resist, what with the lush harmonics, tempting orchestral ingredients and soaring vocal climaxes that keep coming one’s way. Of course, preparation must have been of exceptional quality, too. And that the chefs at the IU Opera Theater took good care of in the current production of the opera, which opened with a pair of fine performances at the Musical Arts Center Friday and Saturday evenings.

An experienced visiting conductor, Klauspeter Seibel, had the IU Philharmonic sweeping resolutely and stylishly along through a score that often approximates in density, intensity and complexity the composer’s tone poems. One noted also that his blandishments also reached upward from the pit to guide his young singers through critical moments.

Stage director Vincent Liotta had trained the performers to become citizens of 1860 Viennese society, with the proper bearing and comportment. They walked and gestured and interacted in character and era, an ever-so-important factor in giving this flimsy, fairytale-ish tale at least a measure of believability.

Robert O’Hearn’s sets, conceived for the opera’s revival here in 1999, offer befitting environments for the era and the action: a spacious drawing room, a staircase and chandelier-dominated ballroom and a period hotel lobby. Michael Schwandt’s lighting excels.

If one looks for substance in librettist Hugo von Hofmannsthal’s story for “Arabella,” it’s findable: the decay in Vienna’s urban life versus the honesty still to be had in the outer reaches of the Austrian empire; the pressure of family economics on status; the place of women; the decline in behavior and values, matters still of concern today. More than anything, however, “Arabella” amounts to a romantic comedy of manners. The heroine needs to marry well to save her bankrupt clan. She has suitors but doggedly clings to the notion that Mr. Right will come along. He does and, after the requisite complications, comes the happy ending.

The opera’s considerable requirements for singers are often set high in range. In addition, the title role asks for a soprano of vocal heft. Because of youth, neither Arabella — Elizabeth Baldwin on Friday or Carol Dusdicker on Saturday — as yet has that preferred plumpness of sound, but both invested their performance with gorgeous top notes, flexible technique and plenty of interpretive plausibility. They had a couple of strong baritones, Scott Skiba and Robert Brandt, to woo them as Mandryka, the awfully rich landowner who brings honesty and salvation to the goings-on. Much depends on an effective Mandryka; this production has two.

Rachel Copeland and Alexis Lundy succeeded in personifying and vocalizing the difficult part of Arabella’s younger sister, Zdenka, who must masquerade as a man so as not to take attention away from her mate-needy sibling, but who ultimately gets her own partner, the soldier Matteo, decently well sung by tenors Joshua Lindsay and Christopher Sponseller. Particia Thompson and Sarah Mabary as the mother and Wayne Hu and Jeremiah Johnson as the father are helpful contributors, as are the rest in the casts. Not everyone is of equal musical stature, but all add to the impressive total.

The opera is sung in German, some crackerjack, some merely passable. There are English subtitles.

---

The Indiana University Jacobs School of Music would like
to thank the Herald Times for permission to republish this review.