Music can tell just as good a story as any Walter White, a fact I was reminded of last Tuesday at the Tuesday Evening Concert Series in Old Cabell Hall featuring the Les Violons du Roy chamber orchestra accompanied by mezzo-soprano opera singer Stephanie Blythe.
I walked into this spectacle somewhat underdressed and underprepared, but thankfully the musicians did not.
The Les Violons du Roy opened with “Orchestral Suite No. 1 in C Major, BWV 1066,” a lively, naturalistic piece. It didn’t take more than bows across strings to evoke feelings of happiness, merriment and revelry before taking a dark turn into a somber, morose graveyard-esque tone. As the piece continued the pace and beat picked back up, as if the work itself was a widow coming out of mourning.
The powerful emotions were mirrored on the faces of the musicians as they threw themselves wholeheartedly into their music. They struck and lunged as if caught in the dance of the music they had created. Their obvious passion, vigor and intensity was infectious.
The same held true for Stephanie Blythe who came onstage for the second piece, “Arianna a Naxos, Hob. XXXVIb:2.” Blythe has performed everywhere from the Metropolitan Opera with the New York Philharmonic to the Opéra National de Paris and it showed. Or rather, it was heard.
The beautiful mezzo-soprano notes weren’t ear-piercingly high, but beautifully measured and packed with emotion. Even though both operas were in Italian, you didn’t need to understand the language to understand know what she was saying — the tragic tale of a lost lover across the seas and her bitterness at his betrayal. There were translations of both works in the program, but I stopped following along after mere minutes. The beauty wasn’t in what she was saying, but in how she said it. The standing ovation was well-deserved.
The post-intermission works, “Suite No. 4 in D major, BWV 1069” and “Giuilo Cesare, HWV 17,” were much less dramatic, though no worse for it. They had a naturalistic style reminiscent of a movie soundtrack; I could easily see Frodo running through the Shire with Suite No. 4 playing in the background.
These works dragged a little compared to those in the first act, but that was mostly because they lacked the strong, dramatic switches in emotion. Instead of being swept up in fantastic tales of heartbreak and tragedy, I felt like I was meandering through the scenery around the tales. As the evening came to a close, I wasn’t sitting in Old Cabell but flying over a landscape of hills, valleys and rivers — probably in New Zealand.
The Tuesday Evening Concert Series is a valuable experience — and at only $5 a ticket for students, its hard to pass up. It’s not often in life so little money will grant you access to performances from great opera singers and professional violinists. Take advantage of it. The next concert will take place Nov. 12, featuring the Ensemble Plus Ultra, a Renaissance vocal ensemble. I may have no idea what that means — but I assure you, I will be there.
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