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closeThursday, Oct. 29, 2009
Dallas’ Margot and Bill Winspear Opera House opens with 'Otello’
Voices in 'Otello' leap off the stage as opener for Winspear Opera House in Dallas.
By SCOTT CANTRELL
Special to dfw.com
SPECIAL TO THE STAR-TELEGRAM/KYE R. LEE
Otello proves that the sound quality at the Margot and Bill Winspear Opera House is even better than expected. The show runs through Nov. 8 in Dallas. SPECIAL TO THE STAR-TELEGRAM/KYE R. LEE
For 20 years, Dallas has had one of the world’s greatest orchestra halls in the Meyerson Symphony Center. On Oct. 23, it was joined by one of the world’s greatest opera houses.
Designed by London’s Foster + Partners, the new Margot and Bill Winspear Opera House is wonderfully welcoming outside and coolly elegant inside. And thanks to acoustician Robert Essert, the sound for the Dallas Opera’s first full production in the house, Verdi’s Otello, answered every dream and then some.
Voices, from pianissimo solo to triple-forte chorus, leapt off the stage and filled the 2,200-seat horseshoe-shaped auditorium. From the quietest pluck of harp to thrilling blasts of brass, the orchestral sound was as much a physical presence as the singers onstage.
In an opera whose music ranges from tender to anxious to terrifying, music director Graeme Jenkins let the Dallas Opera Orchestra momentarily swamp a solo singer’s last notes, but only when the orchestra really wanted to be let loose. The effect was hair-raising. Otherwise, Jenkins kept the orchestra flawlessly balanced with the singers.
Jenkins, if anyone, was the star of the show, suavely managing the music’s mercurial shifts of timbre and intensity and lovingly shaping phrases. Apart from a couple of fuzzy spots from the violins and double basses, the orchestra played superbly. The chorus, prepared by Alexander Rom, made some thrilling sounds, too, but they weren’t always together.
Tenor Clifton Forbis, who began his career in the Dallas Opera Chorus, returned to sing the title role. His vibrato was a little wide, but his voice, from the beefy baritonal lower register to powerful clarion top, encapsulated all of Otello’s conflicted emotions. And he certainly personified a strong man gradually unraveled by betrayal and his own insecurities.
Lado Ataneli’s Iago looked like a cross between a Mafia don and a KGB thug. Though not always perfectly tuned, his rich baritone exuded oily evil. Alexandra Deshorties, a late replacement as Desdemona, didn’t have ideal vocal heft, but her quieter singing was ravishing and she winningly portrayed the wife’s innocence and growing desperation.
Sean Panikkar’s aptly loose-cannon Cassio served a bright, penetrating tenor. Raymond Aceto boomed imposingly as the Venetian ambassador Lodovico. Smaller roles were capably filled by Mark McCrory (Montano), Scott Quinn (Roderigo) and Elizabeth Turnbull (Emilia).
Production designer Anthony Baker updated Verdi’s (and Shakespeare’s) 15th-century tragedy to the turn of the 20th century. Water-stained walls and stairways could represent an island fortress or a battleship.
Winspear Opera House, 2403 Flora St., Dallas
$39-$450
214-443-1000; dallasopera.org
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