Even if you’re a Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart junkie, a dedicated opera fan or a musicologist, bets are you haven’t seen or heard Mozart’s Il Sogno di Scipione or Scipio’s Dream. You’ll only occasionally find it listed in the reference books. Maybe, if you were a diehard “opera nerd,” said Christopher Mattaliano, founder of the 4-year-old OrpheusPDX opera company, you’d have a clue about this 1771 one-act morality tale decorated by a stream of arias da capo (repeated arias).

The two sopranos and two tenors had the chops – both singing and acting abilities – to pull off the long repetitive arias, which were heavily ornamented the second and third time around. The audience let loose a bevy of delighted bravos and bravas after almost every aria. If only tenors and sopranos sang, the bright sound made up for a full range of voices. Mozart, in his earlier operas – recall OrpheusPDX’s 2022 Il Re Pastore (The Shepherd King), written in 1775 – is a fan of that dynamic, at least when he was a very young composer. And if you listen carefully, you can pick up a series of notes that sound like the Queen of the Night’s aria in The Magic Flute, Mozart’s last opera. He wasn’t above stealing from himself.

The opera was sung in Italian with English subtitles, and the audience could easily read the action in the intimate venue, Portland State University’s acoustically sweet 495-seat Lincoln Hall. OrpheusPDX operas are built on intimacy, though Deanna Tham conducted a 25-piece orchestra with five student musicians – so it wasn’t exactly a chamber opera.

The opera’s unfamiliarity, cleverly turned into a fresh and funny production for two performances Aug. 2 and Aug. 3, is one of the reasons this 90-minute piece was such a surprise hit. (I saw the opener Aug. 2.)  No one, or few people, knew what was coming, or had any preconceptions or attachments to some version of it. Scipio was the first of two OrpheusPDX operas this summer. The other is Jacqueline, set for Aug.  23 and Aug. 24. One “old” opera by someone like Handel or Mozart followed by one new opera by a living composer is OrpheusPDX’s successful programming formula.

This wasn’t a premiere, though it was a first for Portland opera, the record shows. Scipio wasn’t staged, as far as the experts know, until 1979 at the Salzburg Mozart Festival. A couple of decades later in 2001, the hip and now defunct Gotham Chamber Opera (perhaps a model for OrpheusPDX) in New York City’s Greenwich Village, revived it with Christopher Alden staging it to rave reviews. His playful modern version was staged again in 2012, and somewhere during those years, Mattaliano fell in love with it, and later convinced Alden to direct it in Portland. Alden brought along lighting maestro Allen Hahn and set designer Andrew Cavanaugh Holland. The clever costumes were coordinated by Melissa Heller. The contemporary production is difficult to place in time, though the ‘70s were hinted at with the minimalist beige setting a la Pottery Barn, mattress and box springs, Fortuna’s brilliant green Jackie Onassis-shaped outfit, and the black and white TV on the blink, paused for the night. 

Mozart wrote the opera when he was 15, and it wasn’t his first. It’s based on Cicero’s morality story of Scipio (tenor Charles Sy, who sleeps in a hoodie and sweatpants) waking up in the Elysian Fields with two beautiful goddesses, in this case, glorious sopranos Jana McIntyre and Holly Flack. The women have no interest in a ménage à trois, though they are dressed fetchingly enough to contradict that possibility. They are in charge: They tell Scipio that he must choose between the two of them to make his way forward. Flack has been in several OrpheusPDX operas, reaching stratospheric notes; no doubt the talented McIntyre will be in more.

Fortuna (McIntyre) is all about ego and power, Constanza (Flack) is a believer in trust, relationships and moderation. They tell Scipio he can’t wimp out and stay in these afterlife clouds; he has to go back to Earth. And he can’t have them both. Sound like a familiar scenario?

Sponsor

The sopranos had similar voices, though Flack’s rose even higher – she reached B-flat above high C in one aria. Though the women constructed convincing characters out of their parts, they could have switched roles. McIntyre’s Fortuna played her role with brazen humor and defiant sexiness; Flack’s Constanza projected a calm assurance illustrated by her yoga and graceful ballet moves, and she never changed out of her sweet long true-blue dress/nightgown. In one scene Fortuna changes clothes over and over, admiring herself in the mirror, illustrating her changeable, untrustworthy, self-centered – yet exciting – nature. Her performance was funny and edgy.

Constanza watches her competitor patiently while believing in her own resilience and steadiness, as she does in the often noted “Biancheggia in mar lo scoglio” aria. (“The rock gleams white in the sea stands tall and visible among turbulent water.”) Pietro Metastasio wrote the florid libretto.

The two sopranos trade complex ornamented arias to convince Scipio that each is the “It Girl.” They try to one-up each other with their I-can-go-higher-than-you singing pyrotechnics, which creates another layer in the opera. Not many sopranos can sing like these two, nor compete on an even playing field so well. Mozart has a way of creating tension with beautiful, flowing melodies, even though the archbishop to whom the opera was dedicated would have been blushing or pissed off throughout.

The sopranos were exceptional but Sy held his own, especially acting an overwhelmed and over-awed “victim” who has trouble choosing or doing anything other than hiding, observing and  and panicking throughout most of the opera. He did all of those things comically without going over the top, though at one point he climbed on top of a walk-in closet and hid there. He makes his decision toward the end of the opera and chooses Constanza – encouraged by his grandfather, war hero Publico (tenor Norman Shankle), to make a difference on earth. Publico appears out of nowhere, brace around his knee. He arrives with a chorus of onetime “noble” mortals dressed like war refugees, which I didn’t get, nor did the chorus have much of a role.

Eventually ready to make a decision, Scipio faces the music and grows up, puts on his suit, ties his tie while he’s singing with newfound confidence, and tells the tantrum-throwing Fortuna, that’s it, he’s made his mind up, and it’s not her.

I enjoyed his evolution. In a question-and-answer session after the opera, director Alden said he’d imagined Scipio as an entitled dude who worked in finance (he did carry a briefcase when he finally got dressed). I saw him as an overwhelmed indecisive guy who manned up when he realized he had to go back to Earth. Multiple interpretations make for a more interesting opera.

Critics have called this opera an energetic romp, imaginatively staged, but the music was far too challenging to leave it at that. Highly skilled singers, all of them young and vigorous, are an absolute requirement to make a go of this opera, and Mattaliano knows how to find them. The production was pretty much all Christopher Alden’s otherwise.

Sponsor