James Conlon
REVIEW: Conlon’s CSO Mozart cycle comes full circle with an outstanding “Abduction”
By John von Rhein
The Abduction from the Seraglio has led a prodigal life on local stages.
Lyric Opera last ventured Mozart’s endearing singspiel in 2009. Roughly one year earlier, James Conlon conducted a fondly-remembered concert version at the outset of his multi-season survey at Ravinia of the canonic Mozart operas, with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra.
The festival’s former music director brought his Ravinia traversal full circle Saturday afternoon in the Martin Theatre, where he presided over a CSO performance of Die Entführung aus dem Serail that gloried in stronger singing than his previous outing—and, indeed, proved more successful overall. (Thursday night’s performance was cancelled at the last minute out of concerns over the hazardous air quality resulting from Canadian wildfires.)
Once again the opera was given in modified concert form, with an effective semi-staging directed by Harry Silverstein and an outstanding cast headed by some of the leading lights among the younger generation of Mozart singers.
Who needs sets, costumes and full staging when you have so luxurious a pit band as the CSO at the ready, sharing the stage with singers and conductor?
Conlon and friends delivered the score substantially complete, with discreet traditional cuts. The opera was sung in the original German, with English surtitles. Whatever dramatic points were missing from the non-action and the original German dialogues were covered in a fine if uncredited English-language narration. It was delivered with elegant aplomb by Jefferson Mays, doubling as narrator and in the spoken role of Pasha Selim.
The accomplished stage and screen actor played the Ottoman pasha who holds the Spanish nobleman Belmonte’s beloved Konstanze and her maid Blonde captive in his harem. Pedrillo, Blonde’s swain and Belmonte’s manservant, has been enlisted as the Turkish lord’s head gardener. The captives eventually are set free after Selim magnanimously consents to their release.
Saturday’s terrific performance proved a fitting summation of Conlon’s distinguished, decades-long advocacy of the operatic Mozart. Last season Conlon concluded a notable 20-year tenure as music director of Los Angeles Opera.
On Saturday this born Mozartean made certain that musical flow and dramatic pacing were all of a piece. It was nice to see him mouthing the German text along with the singers, sharing close communication within touching distance of the podium.
Ever sensitive to articulation, phrasing and dynamics, Conlon paced the performance with such grace, style and spontaneity that the show—lasting well under three hours, including intermission—seemed to fly by.
You won’t hear Mozart’s evergreen scoreplayed any finer than what the chamber contingent of the CSO delivered for Conlon on Saturday. The instrumental work was fully on par with the singing, fully engaged in the ingenious workings of the music. Such is the physical and acoustical intimacy of the 850-seat house that neither the players nor the singers had to push.