The Gustavus, Charles Castronovo, with a clear lyric tenor whose upper register has turned rather wiry, made his way professionally through a role that requires greater span and tonal glamor. Like Redpath, he brought off the string of bits assigned him in Alden’s staging without any real panache, but also “without incident,” as they used to say. Of the principals, baritone Quinn Kelsey, as Anckarström, was the closest match to his role, both in vocal calibre and timbre and in physical presence. It was in his best moments that Verdi’s writing came most alive. But his singing was not consistent. Phrases in a persuasive legato alternated with others sloughed through with straight tone, culminating in an ugly ascent to the F at “sul mio seno” in the “Eri tu“; several top Es and Fs sounded perilously open; and the Gs (all important climactic notes) were neutral in resonance and quickly released. Also up for discussion: the notorious “baritone snarl.” Its basic formatives are present in some Italian voices (Bechi, Gobbi, Bastianini, et al.) and are easily converted into an all-purpose Bad Guy sound. But they aren’t inherent in Kelsey’s voice, so when he suddenly adopts the stereotypical color (Robert Merrill used to do this, too) it’s at once the evening’s loudest wake-up call and something of a put-on, as if Anckarström, hitherto a straightforward, stand-up type, were not only a very angry, wounded man, but suddenly a villain of melodramatic inclination. Yet as I say, he gave us the evening’s most effective  moments.

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NEXT TIME: Daniel Catán’s Florencia en el Amazonas, which has been around for a while but will be new to me, is my choice for this season’s Contemporary Opera of the Year, and will be the main subject of the next post, which I’m projecting for Friday, Dec. 15.

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