The company opened its 50th season with a gleefully silly, powerfully sung production that set the 1825 comedy in an art gallery; in New York, Samoan tenor Pene Pati brought warmth and expressiveness to a recital at Park Avenue Armory.
By
Heidi Waleson
Oct. 1, 2025 at 5:01 pm ET
A scene from the opera. PHOTO: STEVEN PISANO
Philadelphia
Opera Philadelphia’s 50th-season opener, Rossini’s “Il Viaggio a Reims,” performed over the past two weekends at the Academy of Music, was appropriately tongue-in-cheek. Anthony Roth Costanzo, who took over as OP’s general director and president last year, is busy upending the prevailing opera-company model, starting with a “Pick Your Price” offer of every available ticket at $11 (or whatever amount above that you want to pay), and a season lineup studded with new, highly unconventional pieces. “Viaggio” itself teases tradition. Written in 1825 to celebrate the coronation of the French king Charles X, it is a comic pageant with the wispiest of plots: An international group of aristocrats is stuck in a spa hotel en route to the coronation without onward transportation. There are tantrums, squabbles and romantic jealousies, but it is mostly an opportunity for bravura singing.
Damiano Michieletto’s well-traveled production, first mounted at the Dutch National Opera in 2015, leans into the silliness. Staged in Philadelphia by Eleonora Gravagnola, it is set in a modern-day art gallery, where a traveling exhibit is being crated up for transfer to its next location. Some of the opera’s characters become figures from the art; others are gallery employees or visitors. The conceit cleverly integrates both worlds and is entertaining without making much more sense than the original. Paintings and sculptures come to life in various amusing ways, and the characters finally coalesce into François Gérard’s 1827 painting of Charles X’s coronation.
The score calls for a large cast with serious bel canto skills, and Opera Philadelphia’s lineup delivered. As Madama Cortese, here the gallery’s proprietor, soprano Brenda Rae looked splendidly Anna Wintour-ish in Carla Teti’s chic outfit, complete with elbow-length black gloves and dark glasses. As she scrabbled for a laser pointer in her large handbag, her coloratura was comically on point, though she was inaudible in her middle range during the cabaletta. Soprano Lindsey Reynolds emerged from a packing crate in 19th-century dishabille and threw a convincing diva fit as La Contessa di Folleville. Her clothes have been lost en route, and she furiously rejected all proffered substitutes. Il Conte di Libenskof (the excellent high tenor Alasdair Kent) and Don Alvaro (the witty baritone Alex DeSocio) drew their swords over La Marchesa Melibea (mezzo Katherine Beck).
Brenda Rae PHOTO: STEVEN PISANO
Everyone was soon corralled into a large picture frame for a typically ebullient Rossini ensemble as Don Profondo (bass-baritone Ben Brady), an antiquarian, hung price tags on them. Then, for a complete change of musical and dramatic pace, Alessandro Carletti’s lighting took on a mysterious dimness; offstage an exquisite lyric soprano (Emilie Kealani), accompanied by solo harp, offered a serene aria; and the figures from Canova’s sculpture “The Three Graces” came to life and struck balletic poses.
Other arias were staged using even more elaborate art-related gags. After the arrival of a new assortment of relatively modern paintings (by Frida Kahlo, Fernando Boteroand Keith Haring, among others) and actor avatars of their subjects, Lord Sidney (Scott Conner)—here an art restorer—sang his aria of unrequited love, full of surprising bass coloratura, to John Singer Sargent’s “Madame X,” who came to life and covered him with paint. Mr. Brady pulled off Don Profondo’s patter song “Medaglie incomparabili,” a tongue-twisting list of precious objects, as an auctioneer’s spiel.
Some of the best singing of the night came from tenor Minghao Liu (as Il Cavaliere Belfiore) with his boasting yet playful wooing of the poet Corinna (Ms. Kealani), here a modern-day art student; to get past her indifference, he forces an unsuspecting gallery visitor, at sword point, to surrender his clothes and puts them on. The final parade of “national” songs was also cleverly handled: The characters, now appropriately costumed, stepped into a large frame, in front of a throne-room background, to perform. And during Ms. Kealani’s closing paean to Charles X, once again sensitively accompanied by the solo harp, the Gérard picture slowly assembled, with the painting itself finally projected onto the singers and Paulo Fantin’s set.
The chorus, usually engaged in packing or cleanup activities for the gallery, was also lively. Conductor Corrado Rovaris led a sprightly, transparent performance, full of Rossinian sparkle and verve, and the solo musicians, particularly the flutist, were as vivid and idiomatic as the singers.
New York
The Park Avenue Armory’s recital series is a good place to catch interesting vocalists. Last week, the Samoan tenor Pene Pati made his North American solo recital debut with pianist Ronny Michael Greenberg. Mr. Pati, who has sung in many European houses, got a quick Metropolitan Opera debut this January with a few performances as the Duke in “Rigoletto”; given the warmth and expressiveness of the instrument on display at the Armory, I hope he’ll be back there soon.
The program included French, English and German repertoire. A pair of Henri Duparc chansons sounded too loud in the small Board of Officers room, but for Lili Boulanger’s “Clairières dans le ciel” Mr. Pati found a conversational intimacy rare in big lyric-tenor voices. The English selections were superbly communicative. Mr. Pati’s idiomatic eloquence in pieces by Benjamin Britten, evoking the darkness of the final verse of “The Last Rose of Summer” and the poignant storytelling of “The Choirmaster’s Burial,” made me want to hear him sing Captain Vere in the composer’s “Billy Budd.” His just-released recording of Neapolitan songs with the ensemble Il Pomo d’Oro is similarly surprising. Instead of the full-throated, Pavarotti-style belt that’s common in this repertoire, Mr. Pati makes a familiar song like “O sole mio” as gentle as a caress.
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