Laura Claycomb Tries To Forget Sutherland And Callas "Lucia"

Creative Coloratura: Laura Claycomb wrote her
Lucia cadenzas with conductor Patrick Summers
(Photo: Sergio Valente)

"Laura Claycomb dies in the New Orleans Opera production of Lucia di Lammermoor. It happens every time a soprano sings the title role -- and most of the world's great sopranos have done it since Donizetti penned this hyper-romantic, bel canto masterpiece in 1835. So how does Claycomb plan to match Maria Callas, Joan Sutherland and other legends who dwell only in memory or the scratchy recordings prized by opera nuts? 'I had to clean the slate to sing Lucia,' Claycomb said. 'So my first job was trying to forget Callas and Sutherland -- all the great stars on old recordings whose singing has gotten stuck in everyone's ears. People sometimes think that's the only approach, but it's really just the style of the 1950s, the style that emerged more than a century after Donizetti wrote the piece.'... 'If you look at the early performance history of bel canto operas, you can see that the originators chose roles very differently, and that audiences expected lighter, more flexible voices -- my kind of voice -- not the big, inflexible Mack Truck singers that sometimes rumble through this repertoire today,' Claycomb said. Claycomb is thrilled with the New Orleans cast, which includes New Orleanian Casey Candebat, Michael Chioldi and William Burden, among others. She also had praise for stage director E. Loren Meeker, who has helped to set the New Orleans production in the era of Downton Abbey." [Source]

Three Strauss Ladies Reviewed in HGO's "Ariadne"

"As The Prima Donna in the prologue and Ariadne in The Opera, Christine Goerke was confident and insistent, magnificent in every respect and clearly at the top of her game. Funny and dramatic, she seemed entirely natural in these roles, as if they had been written expressly for her. As well, her commanding voice was the only one that prevailed over a largely dominant orchestra. She has a powerful, fully resonant quality that would make her an ideal Wagnerian singer, and one can only imagine what her recent interpretation of Kundry in Parsifal at Turin’s Teatro Regio was like. I’d safely bet that it was incredible. Standing on her lonely rock and beckoning to what she believes is Hermes ready to escort her towards death, a spine-tingling moment, she was one of the most extraordinary artists on HGO’s stage this season."

"Just a month ago at Dallas Opera, Laura Claycomb gave an exacting, emotional performance as Gilda in Verdi’s popular Rigoletto. Her voice was rich and confident, clear in the high notes, her phrasing smooth and inventive. Thrilling to hear, she was also a very convincing actor, vulnerable and endearing as the hunchbacked jester’s beautiful daughter. This being the only other role I’ve seen her perform, however, it appears that she is much more attuned to Verdi’s flowing Italian than Strauss’ dense Austrian-flavored German. Her interpretation of Zerbinetta on Friday was largely unremarkable. It seemed she was protecting her voice in order to make it through the thing. Her high notes were raspy, sometimes thin. She struggled with the coloratura flourishes in the lengthy second-scene 'Opera' aria. She looked tired. This might have been unnoticeable if she had exuded more charisma. Zerbinetta is an 'all or nothing' role, and Claycomb stayed safely in the middle."

"In the prologue it is Zerbinetta, I believe, who refers to The Composer with contempt, saying, 'his endless top notes are irritating.' Funny when mentioned within the opera, unfortunately this was exactly the case with Susan Graham, who didn’t seem in good voice on Friday night. It was as if she couldn’t hear herself. She seemed even out of breath at times. Most of her top notes were distinctly sharp or flat, and vocally she wandered throughout the scene, giving us far too many sudden fortissimos. Strauss gave some of his most glorious phrases to this character, and I kept waiting for Graham to settle in and dazzle, but she didn’t. There is also the matter of her acting. Yes, The Composer has a stormy persona, but that doesn’t mean the part is one-dimensional. 'He' has to do more than stamp his foot time and again."

[Source]

James Valenti and Laura Claycomb Are Dallas Opera Stars

"Laura Claycomb (Gilda) is a highly acclaimed soprano long overdue on the Dallas stage. An operatic moment that Rigoletto fans look forward to is Gilda’s coloratura trills send high notes flying to Mount Everest heights without the arduous climb. The love song 'Caro Nome (Sweet name)' shows off Claycomb's amazing lyrical vocal abilities with pure high notes effortlessly placed with a light airiness.

 Tenor James Valenti (the Duke of Mantua) is not only a rising international opera star, he is also has striking leading man looks. His Duke of Mantua is a believable scoundrel as exemplified in the famous song 'La donna é mobile.'" [Source]

Photos: Michael L. Haynes