Review: A breakout star brightens Haymarket Opera's ‘Artaserse'

Chicago Tribune

2 days ago

These days, it seems no operatic mountain is too high for Haymarket Opera.
The company's latest enterprise, Leonardo Vinci's 'Artaserse,' is one such intimidating peak. The rarely staged 1730 opera, set to a libretto by Pietro Metastasio, hovers around three and a half hours long. Haymarket's production runs four, counting two necessary intermissions.
Then, there's 'Artaserse's' casting quagmire. The opera premiered in Rome at a time when castrati, or castrated male singers, took on treble roles; a papal decree forbade women from performing onstage. Vinci, apparently in a treble-making mood, writes 'Artaserse's' very lowest part for a tenor, filling out the rest of the cast with no fewer than five castrato roles.
'And since we at Haymarket do historically accurately …,' general director Chase Hopkins joked in his introductory remarks.
In truth, the company's 'Artaserse' — which opened at DePaul University's Jarvis Opera Hall on Friday — cracked the castrato question with a mix of modern approaches. You had your countertenors, men who sing in falsetto or head voice: Kangmin Justin Kim (Artaserse), Key'mon Murrah (Arbace), and Ryan Belongie (Megabise). You had women portraying women, as did mezzo-soprano Emily Fons (Mandane) and men portraying women, as did soprano Elijah McCormack (Semira). A fourth countertenor doesn't sing in this production, but does more than any of his colleagues to shape it: stage director Drew Minter, also a founding member of fellow early-music heavyweights Newberry Consort.
Unusually high vocal writing aside, 'Artaserse' invokes Baroque opera tropes aplenty. Artaserse, a benevolent Persian prince, and his equally upstanding best friend Arbace are practically family: They're dating each other's sisters, and Arbace's father, the scheming Artabano, serves in the court of Artaserse's father, the king. Also in the mix is Megabise, a bumbling soldier who pines, one-sidedly, for Artaserse's fiancée Semira.
All those relationships are shaken when Artabano murders the king and frames his own son. Rather than rat out his father, Arbace nobly takes the fall, alienating his girlfriend, Mandane, and best friend in the process.
Naturally, Artabano's lies and pursuit of the throne catch up to him. A third act that's pretty much back-to-back aria patches things up in record speed, including a clock-stoppingly beautiful love duet between Arbace and Mandane ('Tu vuoi ch'io viva o cara').
Metastasio's libretti don't always flow for modern audiences. (Here's looking at you, 'La clemenza di Tito.') But his 'Artaserse' proves poignant; Alessandra Visconti's supertitle translations, which retain the original libretto's poeticism, are a big help. 'Artaserse' poses questions as flummoxing as they are timeless. If you had to choose between your lover and your family, would you? What's the most moral course of action: administering justice or granting forgiveness?
'Artaserse' may have the prince's name in its title, but Murrah, making his Haymarket debut as the falsely accused Arbace, was unquestionably its breakout star. His timbre, almost unearthly in its purity, could carry over the orchestra and through Jarvis Hall on luster alone. His ornaments had the ease and precision of an instrumentalist — a breezy upper extension, daintily dancing arpeggios.
In short, Murrah has to be heard to be believed. Seeing as 'Artaserse' is sold out, though, your next chance is 'El último sueño de Frida y Diego' at Lyric Opera, also his house debut (March 21 to April 4, 2026). Mark those calendars.
McCormack — a transgender singer whose CV includes both male and female Baroque roles — was another breakout as Arbace's sister, Semira. 'Artaserse's' arias can be repetitive as all get-out, but McCormack's inspired phrasing and adroit ornamentations managed to make his own sound unfailingly fresh. And in a company which faithfully recreates stiff 18th-century acting conventions, McCormack's unapologetically sassy Semira was a welcome change of pace, drawing the afternoon's biggest laughs.
As their wicked father Artabano, Eric Ferring held down the opera's sole low-ish voice with scorching conviction. His tenor, as seductive as it was tensile, balanced Artabano's venomous ambition with wounded, fatherly regret. Fons' Mandane was every bit as gripping, too, sharpening her luxurious mezzo to deadly points in the first act and lacing it with sobs in the third.
Murrah's countertenor peers proved more mixed. Megabise is a fascinating figure in Metastasio's drama, with a compelling backstory, opaque motives — is it he who's gotten in Artabano's ear? — and comic opportunities aplenty. Belongie's performance didn't plumb those depths, nor was his peaky voice enough to carry the lowest of the opera's castrato roles. As Artaserse, Kim's performance took some time to ripen on Friday, his voice sometimes vanishingly slender and lagging behind the orchestra in his first aria to Semira.
Kim's regretful aria in Act 1 — suspecting his own brother of his father's murder, Artaserse has mistakenly ordered him to be executed — was a turning point. From there onwards, he traversed his considerable range with confidence and power, without ever losing his voice's essential, attractive shimmer.
It's an eternal credit to Minter's direction that this 'Artaserse' flows as well as it does, making even minimal stage action engrossing. Stephanie Cluggish's costumes were as opulent as they were attentive, and Wendy Waszut-Barrett, a Haymarket mainstay, again contributed hand-painted sets of layered beauty. The opera's action transpires over the course of a single day; to depict that, the backdrop in the final act is subtly, hypnotically backlit to evoke a just-set sun.
Haymarket artistic director Craig Trompeter conducted a 21-piece pit orchestra, one of the company's largest ever. On Friday, the group was still learning how to wield that newfound power, overpowering the cast on occasion. Dicey intonation in the final chorus and Mandane's second-act aria aside, the group's unity and expression was impressive, from exactly seesawing strings to Brandon Acker's bleak, mournful lute under Artaserse's first-act lament.
Again, Haymarket's run is, bittersweetly, sold out. But curious listeners will get a chance to hear an even more polished studio account via Cedille Records, at a to-be-announced date next year — just the second commercial recording of the work to date. There's nothing more Haymarket than that: ever innovating, with history as its guide.