On October 29, at Trinity Lutheran Church, at 164 West 100th Street, the West Side Opera Society celebrated the 60th anniversary, to the day, of Artistic Director David Clenny’s operatic debut, in the boy soprano role of Timothy in Lee Hoiby’s “Beatrice,” with the Louisville Orchestra, in Kentucky. The Gala, to be repeated on November 3 at 7 p.m., featured lusty singing, in classic style, from a quartet of singers, assisted by Sergey Iorov at the piano.
Her soprano bright and focused, Arina Ayzen, who studies with Clenny, kicked off the Gala with a melting, lyrical “Donde lieta uscì,” Mimi’s third act farewell to Rodolfo, from Giacomo Puccini’s “La Bohème,” and a rousing coloratura “Chacun le sait,” the 21st regiment song, from Gaetano Donizetti’s “La Fille du Régiment.” Singing in Russian, she caressed the phrases of Nicolai Rimsky-Korsakov’s “Not the wind blowing from on high” with warmth, and lent plush tone to Sergey Rachmaninoff’s “Do not sing for me fair maiden,” replete with fluently-executed exotic Eastern melisma.
Garbed in a scarlet hoopskirt, Clenny delivered a cleanly-shaped, bel canto “Verdi prati,” from Georg Frideric Handel’s “Alcina,” an opera very dear to him, in which he made his local operatic debut, with the Handel Society of New York, at Carnegie Hall, on March 26, 1974.
Tenor Michael Celentano brought out both the romantic lyricism and dramatic urgency of “La fleur que tu m’avais jetée,” from Georges Bizet’s “Carmen;” fervently limned the contrasting beauty of the Marchesa Attavanti , Mario Cavaradossi’s inspiration for his painting of Mary Magdalene, and of his beloved Floria Tosca, in “Recondita armonia,” from Puccini’s “Tosca;” and in “De miei bollenti spiriti,” from Giuseppe Verdi’s “La Traviata,” offered yet another impassioned outpouring.
Robert Heepyoung Oh captured the rarely-acknowledged pathos of Père Germont’s address to his son, Alfredo, in “Di Provenza il mar, il suol,” from “Traviata,” sung in baritone sound at once liquid and formidable, and crowned his dramatic “Nemico della patria,” from Umberto Giordano’s “Andrea Chénier,” with a ringing conclusion.
Ayzen and Celentano conveyed immediate infatuation and impetuous young love in “O soave fanciulla,” from “Bohème,” with the tenor singing the harmony and the soprano, the high C, and in “Parigi, o cara,” from “Traviata,” sounded a hopeful note, in vain, near the end of a hopelessly doomed love affair. Celentano as the Duke of Mantua, Clenny replacing indisposed colleague Galina Ivannikova as Maddalena, Ayzen as Gilda, and Oh as the eponymous jester aired their characters’ very different views in “Bella figlia dell’amore,” from Verdi’s “Rigoletto,” with Ayzen capping the quartet with a floated high D-flat.