Elaine's Bella Notte / A Knight beside me / 'The French Connection'

The pretty and winsome soprano Elaine Lee, a graduate (major in opera performance) of Canada’s British Columbia U., has expressed, early in her career, an interest in producing opera buffa (light comic opera). She translated her wish into reality with the recent presentation of Bella Notte (Beautiful Night) at the Philamlife auditorium.

Bella Notte consisted of Menotti’s one-act opera “The Telephone,” the songs “Summertime” and “Bess, You Is My Woman Now”, from Gershwin’s folk opera “Porgy and Bess”, a duet from Mozart’s “Marriage of Figaro” and Rossini’s “Cat Duet”. Except for “Summertime” the rest were duets interpreted by Elaine Lee and baritone John Ocampos.

Favorite pop singer-composer Jose Mari Chan rendered “I Have Dreamed” from “The King and I” and “Some Enchanted Evening” from “South Pacific, both musicals by Rodgers and Hammerstein. The closing number, “Unexpected Song”, featured Lee and Chan, with Lee using a microphone as a courteous gesture to Chan, opera singers not being generally dependent on microphones.

Lee sparkled in the highly amusing and clever “The Telephone”. Judging by her singing and emoting, Lee has obviously received excellent training from her mentors, including those in various masterclasses. Her sweet, refined (if not too powerful) voice emanated from a singer of keen musicality and intelligence, solid musicianship and sensuous appeal. Lee was charm and mischief personified in Menotti’s opera.

She similarly displayed fine vocal and acting skill in Mozart’s Cinque, Dieci, Veinti Trenta (Five, Ten, Twenty, Thirty), “Papageno and Papagena”, and in the Cat Duet. However, her movements in the latter were rather repetitious.

Baritone John Ocampos rightly calls himself an “apprentice” in the printed program. He is still a “work in progress”. Nevertheless, he demonstrated tremendous promise and his remarkable acting was enhanced by varied facial expressions and eloquent gestures. As time goes by, both his singing and acting will develop further, and become even more impressive.

Chan confessed to having a cold. Yet he sang with his usual mellow, soothing, “caressing” voice. His nuances, reflected in changes of volume and exquisite phrasing, were subtle and deeply moving.

Pianist Miguel Castro was an impeccable assisting artist. Director Mark Aranal kept action onstage smooth, swift, and tightly controlled. Props were properly indicative of enacted situations.

At the recent Malacañang awarding rites the fellow awardee seated beside me, the Dutch anthropologist Dr. Antoon Postma, garbed in a plain shirt, had been knighted just the day before by Queen Beatriz through Ambassador Robert A. Brinks.

By deciphering the Laguna Copperplate Inscription, Dr. Postma proved Filipinos had a written, legal culture before 900 A.D. Dr. Postma documented the poetry, music and other cultural forms of the Hanunoo Mangyan, having studied these for decades.

The Mangyan Heritage Center headed by Lolita Delgado Fansler as president, and helped by German missionary Fr. Ewald Dinter, and Fil-Am Jesuit volunteer Quinit Fansler, Lolita’s son, is mainly responsible for preserving the life work of Dr. Postma. At the recent Mangyan exhibit at the Ayala Museum, guests viewed the tremendous Mangyan contribution to Philippine culture as discovered and documented by Dr. Postma.

On Friday, April 17, the Alliance Francaise headed by Oliver Ditinger will present at the CCP main auditorium “The French Connection”, a concert of works by French composers, with eminent Michael Costeau wielding the baton over the PPO. Virtuoso Raul Sunico who will be the soloist in Saint-Saens “Egyptian Concerto”, keeps expanding his already formidable repertoire of some 500 works, and keeps sharpening his phenomenal memory. In 2003, he played all four of Rachmaninov’s concertos in one evening without a score — a record unequalled by any other Filipino or foreign pianist here or abroad. Earlier, he learned the bulk of a 173-page work by F. Busoni in two weeks, memorizing the rest on the plane just a few days before the concert!