Lyric Opera's new 'Abduction': Nevermind the shtick, it's the glorious Mozart singing that matters

By John von Rhein | Tribune critic

March 4, 2009

In today's sensitive international political climate, it may not be the wisest thing to milk cheap laughs from a slave girl being stuffed headfirst into a basket in a Turkish harem. A minor detail, to be sure, but it tells you something about the fuzzy thinking behind the new production of Mozart's "The Abduction From the Seraglio" that is closing the 2008-09 Lyric Opera of Chicago season.

Fortunately Mozart saves everybody's bacon with a genial ending in which all misunderstandings between Christians and Muslims are swept away by the magnanimous Pasha Selim, who frees the captive Europeans Konstanze and her lover Belmonte, along with their servant couple Blonde and Pedrillo. Call off the picket line, folks.

Also fortunately, the season's first performance of Mozart's comic singspiel on Monday boasted a strong cast that rose above the admixture of farcical shtick and would-be pathos that is Chas Rader-Shieber's staging.

Nor could the indisposition of Blonde, Polish soprano Aleksandra Kurzak—who was felled by laryngitis and replaced by Angela Mannino, a promising Ryan Opera Center freshman soprano—dampen the high spirits of an evening dominated vocally by two of the center's star alumni, Erin Wall as Konstanze and Matthew Polenzani as Belmonte.

Designer David Zinn's replica of an 18th Century theater, using receding prosceniums, faded painted drops, cut-out set pieces and a revolving platform, did what it could to create the illusion of intimacy.

Bare-chested eunuchs in ballooning harem pants, Muslim women in burqas, a mustached chorus and the other cliche iconography filled the stage.

But there was much else that proved distracting and irrelevant when not flirting with stylistic confusion.

The pasha was given an aged alter ego who comforted the caliph after the steadfast Konstanze repeatedly rejected his advances.

A more serious miscalculation was inserting two ruinous intermissions in this "Entfuhrung aus dem Serail," fatally undermining dramatic momentum.

Comic scenes, notably the one in which Mannino's spunky Blonde lectured Andrea Silvestrelli's flustered Osmin about the proper treatment of European women, made it hard to accept the climactic lurch into tragic pathos. No wonder the audience laughed when Selim (Chicago actor David Steiger, an almost too nice pasha) revealed that he had captured the son of his mortal enemy.

Wall displayed a wide vocal compass, agile coloratura technique and lyrical poise in the killer role of Konstanze, conveying the heroine's implacable resolve in a fearless and stunning "Martern aller Arten."

Polenzani's Belmonte was an unalloyed triumph, as noble in bearing as in his intelligent, ardent and flexible shaping of each of the hero's four demanding arias. Also, the romantic chemistry between Polenzani and Wall was at all times believable.

Mannino and tenor Steve Davislim exuded perky vitality and abundant charm as the duo of domestics. Silvestrelli boomed and blustered as a very funny Osmin; too bad his low D disappeared in thick air and he had tempo issues with conductor Andrew Davis.

"Abduction" never had a better friend than Davis, Lyric's resident Mozartean, who kept the score perking along nimbly and gracefully, yet flexibly. The Lyric orchestra capped off a strong season by giving its music director everything he required in idiomatic sound and style.

jvonrhein@tribune.com