The 20th century is littered with the corpses of high-minded comic operas. Satire is what closes on Saturday night, said George S. Kaufman, whose witticism has passed into theater folklore. Fearlessly, composer Jake Heggie and his long-time librettist Gene Scheer took up the challenge with The Judgment of Paris — it was the exclamation point of Festival Napa Valley’s 20th anniversary season.
Commissioned by the Festival, the one act opera comes in at well under two hours and brings the funny. It’s about the famous 1976 blind tasting, where Napa Valley wines competed on even terms with France’s best, and actually came out ahead.
Heggie and Scheer treat the event with lightness and broad humor. Venus and Bacchus have a spat on Mount Olympus and involve themselves in the humans' contest. Every time the leading French wine critic, Odette Kahn, is mentioned, a chorus bellows her name from backstage, bringing to mind “Frau Blucher” from Mel Brooks’s Young Frankenstein. The climax is a hilarious mad scene for Kahn.
The opera is unapologetically laid out in numbers which Heggie provides with great melody and dance rhythms, specifically a snappy tango that gives the show lift and wit. The Olympus and Paris scenes fly by, and the tasting itself is a little gem of unison group movement by the chorus, punctuated by loud sips and spitting.
The scenes that are set in Napa are more earnest. At first sight, the valley’s serene beauty is underscored by a long melody unfurling over a bassline in contrary motion that summits on a gleaming major chord. The winemakers sing with bluff earnestness. An inspired Venus sings “I was there,” a beautiful aria about the high points of human creativity, which makes a point about passion and innovation leading to greatness. It’s a moral that is echoed in an ensemble finale that nods to Mozart.
At the production’s helm was the invaluable director Jean-Romain Vesperini, back for a second season in Napa after last year’s enormously enjoyable La fille du régiment from Versailles Opera. His productions are clean, crisp, and driven by believable character interactions. Perhaps because he’s a singer himself, Vesperini puts the vocalists at ease — in Judgement, they move naturally like actors and without any operatic affectations.
The cast was exceptional. As Venus, Danielle de Niese sang with a sumptuous tone and integrated easily into the ensemble. As Bacchus, big-voiced baritone Quinn Kelsey was the perfect comic foil. When Venus inevitably brought him to heel after her Californians won the day, his pouting schoolboy manner was genuinely funny.
As the wine merchant Steven Spurrier, Nicholas Phan sang with his usual focused clarity. His diction and ease of delivery are wonders unto themselves. Everything is idiomatic with him, no matter what he’s singing. Recent Adler Fellow Simone McIntosh, as Spurrier’s business partner Patricia Gallagher, matched Phan’s diction and gave the character a youthful, endearing earnestness.
Coloratura soprano Brenda Rae gleefully inhabited the role of Kahn, stealing the show as the writers probably anticipated — they must have known a pro like Rae would take the mad scene and run with it. The high notes rang out full bodied, and the vocal acrobatics combined with a great comic performance. As she deflated like a balloon and slid under a table at the finish, the audience laughed loudly and rewarded her with a barrel’s worth of applause.
Smaller roles were admirably served by singers from the chorus. Four dancers added sparkle to the proceedings, and the orchestra — crowded with top professionals — gave Heggie’s score polish. Conductor Kent Nagano, himself the product of a Bay Area farming family, paced the show with a masterful combination of firmness and flexibility.
In front of a hometown crowd, with audience members who participated in the real-life tasting in 1976, the show was rapturously received. Cheers went up every time a local was mentioned. Heggie and Scheer tailored it to order, writing it — like many of the great comic operas — in under nine months. But it would be a shame if The Judgment of Paris doesn’t make it into the international repertory. It’s a hoot.
