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Sandra Piques Eddy as the title scullery as much better than that -- with more demanding fireworks to save herself for. Her wedding day aria is a dazzler.
Dance
Boston Ballet -- They came armed with a program that had attractions for balletomanes and contemporary dance fanciers, one of the most impressive dance invasions ever seen at Gaillard. Boston wasted no time firing off its heaviest artillery, leading off with resident choreographer Jorma Elo's "Brake the Eyes," an amazing juxtaposition of mechanical, absurdly doll-like movement and the elegant music of Mozart. Wide-eyed principal Larissa Ponomarenko conclusively demonstrated that Wolfgang did not have ballet in mind when he wrote, executing her precise, repetitive, inhuman routines with an aplomb -- and humor -- that belied their difficulty.
The whole ensemble impressed in this ebullient deconstruct of ballet, really the first troupe at Spoleto since the 1999 performance of Miami City Ballet to merit comparisons with our own North Carolina Dance Theatre. After intermission, they put the conventions back together for a set of excerpts from Pete Tchaikovsky's Swan Lake. Without dreamy lakeside scenery, a fairytale palace, or the context of a plot, the spectacle never reached full Russian refinement, despite Ponomarenko and Misa Kuranaga's exploits as swans in the pas de deux.
Newbies I heard gushing about the Bostonians were most impressed by the energy and athleticism of the finale, Twyla Tharp's "In the Upper Room." Perhaps that was because they hadn't been exposed to pieces presented by the Miamians or the Paul Taylor Dance Company in the same relentlessly blithe vein. Or they were not as numbed as I was by the nine Philip Glass segments this piece was set to.
Ballet du Grand Theatre de Geneve -- One of the most abysmal disappointments I've experienced at Gaillard, to be blunt. The Genevans totally discarded ballet -- and their senses along with it -- in opting for three edgy new-millennium choreographies. The first two, Saburo Teshigawara's "Para-Dice" and Andonis Foniadakis' "Selon Desir," were the worst, lacking spark from the dancers, who had little in the way of physical challenge or emotional involvement from the choreographers to ignite them.
Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui's "Loin" started far more promisingly with a couple of the guys performing an intriguingly partnered hand-and-arm dance. Additional unisex couples completed the tableau and performed the same dance, standing in a row across the stage. Then they all turned around a full 180 degrees, as if in a square dance, replacing their discarded partners with ones of the opposite sex -- and leaving one partnerless man and one partnerless woman at opposite ends of the line. They tried to connect twice, succeeding only when all the other dancers flopped to the floor, a recurring motif.
Unfortunately, Cherkaoui inserted spoken segments in the middle of his provocative concept, delivered by the dancers. I'm at a loss to explain how this ballet company rounded up so many Swiss who speak English so badly. More inexcusable was the absence of feedback supplied to the dancers. By their third performance at Gailliard, they should have adjusted to the hall and made themselves audible. Or they should have been amplified. The same inattention plagued "Desir," where recordings of Bach's Passion oratorios were potted too loud by sound engineers.
Jazz
Heloisa Fernandes -- You don't often see a jazz soloist break down and cry in the middle of a performance. But then you rarely hear any music so affecting that you're not surprised. That was just one aspect of Fernandes' US debut concert that was astonishing. From the opening selection, which transitioned smoothly from Villa-Lobos's "Abril" to Jobim's "Double Rainbow," she demonstrated formidable virtuosity and magical delicacy.
On her own "Voo," Fernandes showed she has absorbed Chick Corea's power Spanish mode as fully as his softer "Children's Songs" side. There were also passages of Chopinesque grandeur reminiscent of Keith Jarrett's finest ruminations. But it was during "Crianca," Fernandes' plaything for her own children (tinged with premonitions of love and death), that the tears began to form in the pianist's eyes. Spoleto impresario Michael Grofsorean has unearthed a true Brazilian gem here. I'm betting she'll be back.
Daniel Mille -- After suffering through bandoneon player Dino Saluzzi last year, accompanied by a droning cello, I was a little leery of another excursion into the world of accordion. Mille does things on his all-button instrument that I'd never seen before, including percussion and vibrato. And have you ever heard any instrument sound like the ocean's waves? Sue enjoyed the range of Mille's facial expressions as he played his own unabashedly romantic compositions. I was more enchanted by the vocalise that he layered on.
