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Bizet,  Les Pêcheurs de perles:  Seattle Opera, soloists, cond. Gerard Schwarz, dir. Kay Walker Castaldo, set designer Boyd Ostroff, costume designer Richard St. Clair, lighting designer Neil Peter Jampolis, choreographer Peggy Hickey, Marion Oliver McCaw Hall, Seattle, 10 & 11.1.2009 (BJ)


More than ever, after witnessing Seattle Opera’s presentation of The Pearl Fishers, I am convinced that this product of Bizet’s twenties is every bit as wonderful an opera as the one that everyone tells us is his masterpiece. I have long felt that the characters in Pearl Fishers are more three-dimensionally human than those in Carmen, and this production bore me out–with the help of superbly committed performances from all three of the participants in the love triangle at the center of the plot.

Carmen, completed a few months before Bizet’s death in 1875 at the age of 36, is all hard edged urgency, as highly charged in its dramatic force–and its explosive animal sexuality–as it is picturesque in its evocation of Spain. The Pearl Fishers is picturesque too, but the atmosphere it breathes is the perfumed enchantment of Ceylon–now the modern nation of Sri Lanka, but in Bizet’s time a far-off island shrouded in the kind of religiously tinged mystery irresistible to his romantic temperament.

Along with Boyd Ostroff’s indeed enchanting sets and Richard St. Clair’s graceful costumes, I loved Kay Walker Castaldo’s production when I first saw it in Philadelphia a few years ago. But this Seattle restaging puts that recollection in the shade, thanks first of all to the new lighting design by Neil Peter Jampolis, who is clearly a genius in his field. Beth Kirchhoff’s chorus, too, was both musically and dramatically impeccable. The dancers, led by Bobby Briscoe and Lisa Gillespie, carried out Peggy Hickey’s brilliant choreography with stunning virtuosity. Geoffrey Alm directed a truly frightening fight between Nadir and Zurga, the two rivals for Leïla’s love. And all kinds of wonderful details have been sharpened up or added in this new version of the production.

The Nadir and Leïla in the first of Seattle’s two casts were both holdovers from the original Philadelphia staging. Mary Dunleavy again shaped a touching picture of the priestess whose heart cancels the force of her vow of chastity. She sang with impressive freedom, and with an appealing mezzo-ish tint to the voice, and she moved well. The role of Nadir finds William Burden, a company favorite, at the zenith of his powers (if you’ll forgive the paradox): there are now, and surely have been ever, few tenors who could match his combination of athleticism, finely focused tone, and sheer charm.

As Zurga, the most complex character in the story, baritone Christopher Feigum proved a worthy partner to those two, singing strongly, and portraying the emotional turmoil of the role with compelling intensity. The only other solo role, that of the priest Nourabad, gave scope to Patrick Carfizzi’s powerful bass-baritone.

All of this was enhanced enormously by orchestral playing of the highest caliber. Gerard Schwarz marshaled his forces to perfection, and Susan Carroll’s horn solo, heightened by some perfectly judged silent pauses, turned Leïla’s Act 2 aria, for me, into the musical highlight of the evening, fully matching the beauty of the more widely admired Nadir-Zurga duet in Act 1.

Unlike lightning, magic did strike a second time when the second cast took over for the Sunday matinee, but not quite as ravishingly as in the opening-night performance. Aside from Carfizzi’s Nourabad, all the principal roles changed hands for this second look. The new Leïla, Nadir, and Zurga all did well, and it is only against the background of their predecessors’ performances that I have to confess a touch of disappointment.

The biggest difference is to be found in the voice-types of the two Leïlas. Russian soprano Larissa Yudina’s other roles include Zerbinetta, Olympia, and the Queen of the Night. Hers is indeed an essentially coloratura instrument, better fitted for the upper flights than for the middle of the range, where Mary Dunleavy had sounded so voluptuous and sympathetic. If you can imagine the Fiakermilli (in Strauss’ Arabella) transported from Vienna to Ceylon and switched from the profane to the sacred realm, that is what the more florid passages sounded like with Yudina. There were exciting moments in her singing, but they tended to come on isolated notes, and too many of those notes emerged almost violently from an insufficiently integrated line.

The Nadir, Brian Stucki, was vocally more at home. He may not command quite as much physical ebullience as William Burden, but he displayed a pleasantly French if not especially rich tenor timbre, and phrased sensitively in the famous duet.

As Zurga, baritone David Adam Moore differed from Christopher Feigum more strikingly in dramatic than in vocal terms. Moore’s voice is both strong and lustrous. But he did not emulate the impressive moment in Act 1 when Feigum’s Zurga, acclaimed as the pearl fishers’ king, suddenly took on new dignity with the donning of his robe of office–Moore just smiled happily at this point, as if to say “Well, I’m still just one of the chaps, you know!” And he portrayed Zurga’s struggle with conscience in Act 3 with far less intensity than Feigum.

Still, with either cast, this Pearl Fishers was a must-hear, must-see production for anyone susceptible to musical genius and romantic enchantment. Best summed up by the word “magical,” it fully matched the quality of a too often underestimated work, and confirmed Seattle Opera’s status as one of the world’s finest companies.

Bernard Jacobson

NB: a version of this review appeared also in the Seattle Times.


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