by Michael Caruso

When local music lovers hear or read the name Suzanne DuPlantis, they immediately think of the resplendent East Falls mezzo-soprano who, along with Chestnut Hill pianist Laura Ward, founded and directs Lyric Fest. The pair present fascinating programs that combine poetry set to music spanning the centuries. Many of Lyric Fest’s performances are given in the Presbyterian Church of Chestnut Hill, where Ward is a member.

But DuPlantis is more than just a singer. She is also a highly regarded painter whose exhibit, “Be Still – Still-Life and Still Places,” is set to open Aug. 19, with a reception from 4 to 5:30 p.m., in the Beaumont Gallery, Beaumont at Bryn Mawr, 601 N. Ithan Ave., Bryn Mawr.

Prior to attending Eastman School of Music in Rochester, NY, DuPlantis probably painted as much as she sang. When she received a scholarship from Eastman, the direction of her budding career was set along a musical path. But once she retired from a full-time performing career, the lure of painting resurfaced.

“It’s so wonderful that it waited for me,” she explained. “The spirit behind it is the same as singing. But I have to say, it’s so nice for an introvert like me, who has been in an extroverted profession, to find this quiet form of expression.”

For more information, contact Beaumont Gallery at 610-526-7000.

RUSSIAN OPERA

At the risk of being suspected of collusion with a hostile foreign power, I’m willing to admit that two of my most enjoyable recent operatic experiences were the result of performances of Russian operas. Philadelphia’s Russian Opera Workshop presented a concert version of Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky’s “Eugene Onegin” July 31 and Aug. 1 & 2 in the Academy of Vocal Arts’ Helen Corning Warden Theater in Center City Philadelphia. The previous weekend and running through the following week, SummerScape at Bard College (in upstate New York) offered Anton Rubinstein’s “Demon.”

“Eugene Onegin” is one of the most finely crafted operas in the standard repertoire. Tchaikovsky, himself, based its libretto on the verse novel of the same name by Alexander Pushkin, who occupies a similarly exalted position in the Russian language as William Shakespeare occupies in the English. Calling his original concept of the score “lyrical scenes” in three acts, the composer fashioned a vocal/orchestral score of surpassing beauty, searing expressivity and structural integrity that grows in potency upon every successive hearing.

Philadelphia’s Russian Opera Workshop presented a concert version of Tchaikovsky’s “Eugene Onegin” on July 31 and Aug. 1 and 2 at the Academy of Vocal Arts.[/caption]

The narrative focuses on the title character’s sophisticated arrogance in turning down the advances of the beautifully naïve Tatyana in the opera’s first act, his reckless taunting of her sister Olga’s fiancé, Lensky, that results in a fatal duel in the second and his too-late-to-matter realization in the third act that he has wasted his life and that he needs Tatyana’s love to redeem him. Unlike the libretti of so many operas, in which characters battle over tedious drivel or utter banalities that transcend mere absurdity, Tchaikovsky’s libretto not only deals with something very real, indeed, but deals with it intelligently, compassionately and meaningfully.

Tchaikovsky responded to this story of tragic missed opportunities with a score that is among the operatic repertoire’s finest offerings and one of the finest in the composer’s entire canon of works.

Ghenady Meirson, the founder & director of the Russian Opera Workshop and the piano accompanist of the three performances of “Eugene Onegin,” went back to Tchaikovsky’s original “lyrical scenes” format. The more commonly known “grand opera” version is the result of the piece’s having been taken up by Moscow’s Bolshoi Theater, with choruses and ballet sequences added on. Stripped of these decorative, albeit attractive, insertions, this “Eugene Onegin” proved itself not just more intimate and telling but all the more powerful and memorable.

Chief among the strengths of this mounting were the performances given the major roles Wednesday evening, Aug. 1. Baritone Scott Clark made a visually seductive Onegin while at the same time revealing the character’s inner self-focus as he ignored the feeling of even those he professes to care about. He sang with a robust tone and acted efficaciously to project the heartless cad beneath the handsome veneer.

Soprano Jennifer Turner was a lovely Tatyana: delicate like a spring flower in the first act, appalled with moral indignation in the second and monumental in her dismissal of Onegin’s insincere outpourings of passion in the third. Tenor Justin Kroll was tremendously touching as the misused and abused Lensky, mezzo Kristyna Gocova was a convincing Olga and AVA alumnus Ben Wager used his darkly burnished bass to impressive effect as Gremin, the man Tatyana has married and to whom she remains faithful.

As was the case the previous month with “Prince Igor,” Meirson accompanied his young singers with style and strength at the Steinway & Sons grand piano. Next year’s scheduled pair of operas are “The Maid of Orleans” and “Iolanta,” both by Tchaikovsky.

For more information about the Russian Opera Workshop visit www.russianoperaworkshop.com

RUBINSTEIN’S ‘DEMON’

In its day — it premiered in 1875 — Anton Rubinstein’s “Demon” was among the most popular of all Russian operas. And, even today, it receives the occasional revival in the nation of its birth. But by the turn of the 19th century into the 20th, the work had pretty much disappeared from the standard repertoire of most of the world’s major opera houses.

"Lily in White" is one of the many pieces that will be on display when Suzanne DuPlantis' exhibit, “Be Still – Still-Life and Still Places,” opens at the Beaumont Gallery on August 19. (Photo by Suzanne DuPlantis)[/caption]

Apparently, it wasn’t sufficiently “Russian” for international audiences. They preferred the music of Rubinstein’s countrymen such as Tchaikovsky, Rimsky-Korsakov, Mussorgsky and Borodin from his own era to say nothing of the works of Rachmaninoff, Stravinsky, Prokofiev and Shostakovich in the next.

And yet, as an operatic telling of the traditional tale of a devil dreaming about what it might be like to be human, “Demon” certainly deserves as many regular mountings as its saccharine French counterpart, “Faust,” by Charles Gounod. That point was powerfully made July 27 through Aug. 5 in Bard College’s Sosnoff Theater under the baton of Leon Botstein. With the American Symphony Orchestra in the pit offering sumptuous and evocative tones in abundance, Botstein oversaw a production that coursed with energy, dazzled with shimmering splendor and overwhelmed with emotional intensity.

Although I found a good bit of Thaddeus Strassberger’s stage direction annoyingly fussy, the cast sang and acted splendidly on opening night. The undisputed star of the cast was baritone Efim Zavalny in the title role. From the moment he bounded onto the stage in the Prologue until he gave up his quest in the Epilogue, Zavalny commanded the narrative’s development with the power, beauty and danger of a black panther. He sang in glistening timbres and acted with athletic prowess.

Mezzo-soprano Nadezhda Babintseva was his angelic foil, very nearly overwhelmed in her quest to save soprano Olga Tolkmit’s Tamara from the Demon’s satanic spell. Tenor Alexander Nesterenko gave a stalwart yet touching portrayal of Prince Sinodal, the Demon’s earthly rival who is dispensed with by the Demon very nearly as an afterthought.

The legacy of pianist/composer/conductor Anton Rubinstein (1829-94) has a charming “local connection.” He taught the great Polish-American pianist Josef Hofmann from 1892 until 1894. Hofmann became the first head of the piano department at the inception of Philadelphia’s Curtis Institute of Music in 1924 and was its director from 1927 until 1938.

For more information about Bard College’s SummerScape call 1-845-758-7900 or visit www.fishercenter.bard.edu. You can contact NOTEWORTHY at Michael-caruso@comcast.net. To read more of NOTEWORTHY, visit www.chestnuthilllocal.com