Opera Neo Stages the American Première of Nicola Porpora’s ‘Polifemo’

The chances of experiencing a production of an opera written before the time of Mozart are indeed slim. Opera began and flourished in Italy at the turn of the 17th Century, but for American opera companies, their opera trajectory begins with the operas Mozart wrote in the 1780s.

The exception, of course, is the occasional foray into the opera catalogue of G. F. Handel, whose operas began to return to the modern opera stage in Germany in the 1920s. I have never understood why opera companies are so uncurious about the wide, thriving opera culture of which Handel was just one successful practitioner. What about the operas of Telemann or Vivaldi or Hasse?

And what about the operas of Handel’s rival composer and opera producer in 1730s London, Nicola Porpora, the prolific Italian who composed some 50 operas? Opera companies in Europe and North America—and most music history textbooks—blithely ignored Porpora until the box office success of the 1994 French-Italian motion picture Farinelli, a sensational biography of the most celebrated castrato virtuoso of Handel’s era. The film featured the performance of the bravura aria “Alto Giove” from Propora’s 1735 opera Polifemo.

Opera stars quickly included this aria in their CD recordings, and a Viennese opera company at last staged Polifemo in 2013. The Salzburg Festival and a few other European companies followed suit with Polifemo productions, but not until Friday at UCSD Park & Market did Americans get to experience Porpora’s Polifemo, thanks to the sparkling production by San Diego’s Opera Neo.

Porpora was also a successful vocal instructor, and he trained Farinelli and other notable castrati. So it is no surprise that two of Polifemo’s major roles are written for castrati–the role of Aci was tailored to the prowess of Farinelli. Today these roles are sung by countertenors, and Opera Neo’s Polifemo boasts two show-stopping countertenors, Keith Wehmeier as Ulisse and Chuanyuan Liu as Aci. The virtuoso, emotionally gripping accounts of the countertenors’ arias electrified Opera Neo’s production.

Colin Ramsey’s deep, burnished bass-baritone gave his Polifemo, an actual monster with no redeeming characteristics, the necessary fear-inducing rage. San Diego Opera patrons have heard Ramsey’s vocal artistry in several recent productions, including the 2023 production of Puccini’s Gianni Schicchi. Soprano Ashley Fabian made her San Diego Opera debut this February as a splendid Zerlina in the company’s Don Giovanni, and her return to Opera Neo as Galatea in Polifemo provided another welcome opportunity to enjoy the brilliance of her supple soprano. The charged duets she sang with Liu–yes, Porpora used the traditional Acis and Galatea romance as part of his complicated plot–were vocally resplendent.

Lauren Randolph’s gleaming mezzo-soprano gave depth and compassion to Calipso, the aspiring lover of Wehmeier’s heroic Ulisse. As Nerea, the plot’s cheerful comic relief, coloratura soprano Nini Marchese delivered vibrant roulades that gave welcome vocal contrast to the intense ornamentation of the principals’ arias.

Opera Neo Artistic Director Peter Kozma conducted a rousing 30-member period orchestra that generously supported the singers and gave welcome propulsion to the at times lumbering plot of troubled lovers who finally resolve their differences in time for a cheerful grand finale.

Given the fantastic twists of the opera where Zeus turns mere mortals into gods and the monster is brutally maimed, stage director D Zholnerova decided to present the work as taking place on a huge video game–a reasonable option given the availability of the immense digital backdrop of the Park & Market staging area. I would say the concept was more appealing than the actualization inasmuch as the synchronization of the singers on the screen–as opposed to those on the stage in front of the screen–was not always in precise time with the sound.

Zoë Trautmann’s costumes proved a mix of styles ancient and modern, but they were sufficiently colorful and easy on the eyes. The lighting design of Elijah Thomas facilitated well the plot’s changes of setting, although Blake McCaarty’s video projections were overly eclectic: some chaste, Classical settings with rows of imposing pillars; a bay with 16th-century Spanish galleons at anchor, and the New York City skyline at night. A mystery.

This production of Nicola Porpora’s opera ‘Polifemo’ was presented at the UC San Diego Park & Market facility in San Diego’s East Village on July 19, 2024. It will be repeated on July 20, 2024, in the same venue.