SAMSON ET DALILA
Lyric’s general director, Ardis Krainik, is fond of saying that opera is the culmination of all the art forms, combining singing, theater, symphony, dance, even painting, sculpture, and architecture. Opera does combine all of these, but more often than not in a rather ineffectual way. At its best, however, opera has the potential to rise above the other art forms when it gives each of these elements equal attention.
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Equally important to making this opera work is a sensual Dalila, a woman capable of enough sex appeal to make us believe that Samson would throw his religion and his people out the window for lust and passion. Greek mezzo-soprano Agnes Baltsa more than fills the bill. Saint-Saens found the darker color of the mezzo-soprano more erotic than the higher range of the soprano, which he often thought of as screeching. Baltsa–besides being unusually attractive and possessing considerable elegance, grace, and style–has a voice that is remarkably flexible and beautifully colored. She has a tendency to attack a note with more or less straight pitch and then let it waver as it goes on, which annoys many purists (most of whom probably want quarter-tone wobbling all of the time, rather than a small waver some of the time). But the approach works very well for her, and she always stays within a designated pitch. Her timbre can have a slight smoke tint to it when she wants it to, but more often she sings with a brilliance and bravura more typical of a dramatic soprano than a mezzo. Her big arias, notably the famous “Mon coeur s’ouvre a ta voix” (“My heart opens to your sweet voice”), were sung with power and passion.
