If done well, Jules Massenet’s Don Quixote is funny and sad and beautiful. Frighteningly for an opera company, it’s the singer in the title role that pretty much makes or breaks this opera.
Fortunately for Seattle Opera’s current production of Massenet’s work, bass-baritone John Relyea was up to the task as the eccentric, aging knight. While it took time for him to warm into the role on opening night Saturday, and he wasn’t as physically doddering as I expected, his sweet befuddlement and transcendental madness completely captivated the audience. Relyea’s Quixote is a saint-like fool, scarcely connected to reality but acting from the noblest of intentions despite the obstacles. In Relyea’s rendition, Quixote’s delusional quest to win the youthful Dulcinée was at times comical, at others heartbreaking, and always compellingly sympathetic. And then there’s that darkly tinged, potent voice of his that reverberates poignancy into your very bones.
Director Linda Brovsky masterfully kept the action moving, whether physically or emotionally, on a set as loosely linked to Quixote’s reality as he is to the world around him. Donald Eastman’s set, original to this production, references the classic novel by Spanish author Miguel de Cervantes that inspired the opera. Giant inkwells and 14-foot-tall books both intimate Cervantes’ desk and serve as walls, balconies, and more.
In staging as fluid as Massenet’s music, Brovsky starts the opera with Spanish villagers swirling, fighting and dancing among the books and inkwells in eddies that gradually build into a fiesta. Choreographer Sara de Luis and her dancers help establish the setting with spellbinding classical Spanish dance numbers.
Any story about Don Quixote must have him tilting at the windmills he believes to be giants. Here the windmills are projections of enormous whirling quill pens. The scene works mostly due to fantastical lighting by Connie Yun and Massenet’s score, which suggests both the sound of turning windmills and Quixote’s misapprehension that they are giants he is heroically battling.
One of my favorite scenes in this production, and one critical to the rest of the performance, is Quixote’s prayer and request to Ténébrun, chief of the bandits, to return Dulcinée’s necklace. Who wouldn’t succumb to Quixote’s wish, given Massenet’s valiantly sacred music combining with Yun’s celestially white light and Relyea’s demeanor, as commanding as if guided by God?
Credit must also go to Carlo Montanaro’s attentive conducting and the supporting cast, including the beautifully nuanced Seattle Opera Chorus. As the opening night Sancho Panza, Eduardo Chauma was unwaveringly loyal despite his aggravation at working around the problems created by his master’s fantasies. Chauma was heartrending in Panza’s aria defending his demoralized master against the villagers’ ridicule.
I didn’t fully buy Malgorzata Walewska as the flirtatious, superficial courtesan Dulcinée but loved her riff on believing she would never truly love and her eventual compassion for Quixote. Actor Jad Kassouf was intense, and scary, in the spoken role of the chief bandit Ténénbrun. Also fine were Dulcinée’s four suitors: Marcus Shelton as Rodriguez, Alex Mansoori as Juan, Emily Clubb as Garcias and Jennifer Bromagen as Pedro.
I caught a little of the Sunday performance and liked what I saw of Nicolas Cavalier as Quixote, Daniela Sindram as a youthfully flirtatious Dulcinée and Richard Bernstein as Sancho Panza.
Rarely do I cry at an opera. Relyea and this production were so deeply moving I had to steal tissue from my companion during the final scene.
Seattle Opera’s “Don Quixote” plays at Marion Oliver McCaw Hall, 321 Mercer St., through Saturday, March 12. Prices $25-$191. Tickets/information: 389-7676, www.seattleopera.org <http://www.seattleopera.org/> .