The Cio-Cio-San of the La Scala Butterfly is Maria José Siri, whom I saw in a Rome Andrea Chénier three years ago. In that role, heard live, her voice sounded attractive and of fair size, but without a consistent center, occasionally unstable, and feeble at the bottom. This is better. There is still the low-range weakness, but the lie of the role is more comfortable for her. She has good command of the dynamic range, and the endurance to muster her forces for the writing’s late challenges. Because of her voice’s technical structure, she cannot offer the sort of inflectional detail available to an instrument of brighter, leaner, tauter orientation (that would require, among other things, an active, well-positioned chest register). But perhaps her instincts wouldn’t incline in that direction, anyway. Whatever she has to offer as a physical actress is nipped in the bud by the makeup and the posing—I award her many points for carrying on with the Kabuki pretense, which she must have worked very hard to maintain.

Bryan Hymel is the Pinkerton. I have yet to hear him in person, but his comes across as a sturdy, efficient tenor of what we’d call lirico-spinto calibre, though there is little of the Italianate quality we usually associate with the term. There’s some throatiness in midrange, but a clear ring in the top. He does a straightforward piece of singing of the kind being called for, and as an actor does his best in the love duet to overcome with earnestness and attentiveness the production’s picture of him as a terminally clueless Ugly American buying his way through every little situation with a new wad of bills. Carlos Álvarez, who was by coincidence the Renato of the Ballo in Maschera I used to illustrate Notperformance in my book, and whom I’d been looking forward to hearing this season in Simon Boccanegra, is by present standards luxury casting as Sharpless. This is a solid, consistently produced baritone voice of virile timbre. Whether or not he has much theatrical spark or enlightenment to offer will have to await more favorable circumstances. Annalisa Stroppa does about what can be done with Suzuki short of casting a star, and Nicole Brandolino shows enough voice and presence as Kate to arouse my curiosity about something bigger, though (to be voice-teacher picky) she needs to address the asymmetry in her jaw action.

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NEXT TIME: As indicated above, it’s on to the “orginal,” “opéra dialogué” Faust. Next Friday, June 19.

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