Three divas in the house

Northwest Sinfonietta to deliver wine and excitement
by Jessica Corey-Butler
Jan 25, 2007

When three tenors get together, there’s a butt-slapping bravado going on that smells an awful lot like a men’s locker room full of sweat and testosterone.
Get together three divas, individually incomparable singers of great accomplishment, and you’d probably have something like rapier-sharpened nails and French perfume.

Put those curvalicious women in a parlorlike setting with Mozart librettos to sing and you have the makings of an infinitely and intimately fascinating evening.
That’s the intention of the Northwest Sinfonietta as it introduces The 3 Divas — Lambroula Maria Pappas, Vanessa Conlin and Melina Pyron — for two very special shows at the Rialto Theater in Tacoma Saturday, Jan. 27, at 8 p.m. and Sunday, Jan. 28, at 2 p.m.

Before the Saturday performance, there will be a Washington wine tasting beginning at 6:30 p.m. while the Sunday performance will feature chocolate decadence at 12:30 p.m. At the same time, the librettos will be discussed, so that those who are clueless as to the purpose of operatic arias can smile and act as if they’re filled with refinement and culture even as they learn that classical music is filled with timeless emotional fervor and some kick-ass energy to boot.

And certainly Christophe Chagnard can bring that energy to Mozart’s music at the Rialto.  With the classical sensibilities that would seem to be innate in a Frenchman, he takes the music of ages and elevates it from mere notes to an entire experience, much like Pink Floyd, the band Chagnard followed as a Berkley student, brought rock ‘n’ roll to all the senses.

But rather than filling a stadium with smoke and lights, expanding a cavernous space, he creates parlorlike intimacy within the space of the theater and fills the room with emotional complexity.

And unlike many orchestras, where competition among chairs is the norm, Chagnard’s orchestra is unified in intent rather than stratified by competition.
It was competition that marked Mozart’s career as rival composer Salieri tried to undercut Mozart to retain the favor of the court and the audiences. But Mozart’s skillful manipulation of notes to create soaring emotions while evoking goose bumps in his audiences served to elevate Mozart to “rock star” status while Salieri was condemned to mediocrity as a sort of Barry Manilow to Mozart’s Kurt Cobain.
But mediocrity won’t figure in the evenings with the divas.  Each singer performing with the Sinfonietta is an extraordinary talent in her own right, and each will bring her own flair to help elevate the Mozart pieces to the heights that Mozart himself visualized as he composed.

Pappas — a Canadian who has performed worldwide, from Vancouver, British Columbia, to France, Belgium, Germany, and Spain — is the recipient of several awards and grants and also shows her ability to play well with other divas as performer/producer of her show “Two Divas are Better than One.”

Conlin, educated to the master’s level on the East Coast, is also the recipient of several awards and received a study grant from the Musicians Club of New York. She also has performed worldwide and has won rave reviews from the likes of such magazines as the United Kingdom’s Opera Magazine, which also notes, “Vanessa Conlin is drop-dead gorgeous.”

Pyron, who may be recognized for her past work in “The Barber of Seville” and “The Marriage of Figaro” for Tacoma Opera, is a graduate of the Lyric Opera Center for American Artists.

While there will be pairings of these singers as the evening progresses, there will be a climactic trio where all three divas will match voices in “Zu Hilfe! Zu Hilfe!” from Mozart’s “Die Zauberflote” (“The Magic Flute”), the opera written in Mozart’s last year of life. It’s guaranteed to be a stirring end to an intriguingly romantic evening.

[Rialto Theater, Jan. 27 8 p.m., Jan. 28 2 p.m., $11-$50, 310 S. Ninth St., Tacoma, 253.284.9400]

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