Thursday, May 8, 2025
Wrapping up a 30-year run, Ryan Brown, founder and artistic director of Opera Lafayette, conducted his “swan song” on April 30 in the magnificent sanctuary of St. Bartholomew’s Church on Manhattan’s Park Avenue. The program — which offered opera excerpts both live and on a large screen behind the chamber orchestra — was repeated the following night in the Kennedy Center Terrace Theater.
Brown launched Opera Lafayette in 1995 as Les Violons de Lafayette, performing in the Corcoran Gallery of Art’s Salon Doré. Specializing in French baroque repertoire, “the nation’s oldest period-instrument opera company” now presents a full season both in Washington, D.C., and in New York (recent venues: El Museo del Barrio and Jazz at Lincoln Center).
Titled “Rejoice: 30 Years of Ryan Brown at Opera Lafayette,” the program was something of a highlight reel, giving the audience a few minutes each of 11 operas by seven composers and, appropriately, the Mozart solo motet “Exsultate, jubilate (Exult, rejoice).”
Entering and exiting as needed were five vocalists: sopranos Pascale Beaudin and Paulina Francisco, tenors James Reese and Gene Stenger and bass-baritone John Taylor Ward.
Sung by Francisco — who earlier lent her angelic voice to an aria and, with the three men, a chorus from Christoph Willibald Gluck’s “Armide” — the Mozart, also from the 1770s, was conducted by Artistic Director Designate Patrick Quigley, founder and artistic director of Miami-based choir Seraphic Fire.
In February, Quigley conducted Opera Lafayette’s world-premiere performances of “Morgiane,” an 1887 work believed to be the earliest surviving opera by a Black American, New Orleans-born emigrant to France Edmond Dédé.
Other “Rejoice” high points: Beaudin’s expressive performance of an aria from André Grétry’s “L’épreuve villageoise”; Ward’s humourous embodiment of Sancho Panza in “Je suis comme une pauvre boule,” from François-André Danican Philidor’s opera about Don Quixote’s put-upon squire; and Reese’s entertaining — comically urgent, then ingratiating — delivery of “Quittez nymphes” from Jean-Philippe Rameau’s “Platée.” Just before intermission, Stenger returned to join the five-singer lineup that winningly performed the “Sancho Pança” vaudeville “Je vais revoir ma chère metairie.”
The second half began with film clips of three operas — Beethoven’s “Leonore,” Rameau’s “Les fêtes de l’Hymen et de l’Amour” and “The Blacksmith,” Opera Lafayette’s cowboy adaptation of Philidor’s “Le maréchal ferrant” — charmingly introduced by Beaudin, a cast member of “Leonore” and “The Blacksmith.” The latter, directed by Nick Olcott, was livestreamed during the pandemic from the Marcos, Colorado, ranch long in Brown’s family.
Opera Lafayette’s two invitations to perform at the Opéra Royal de Versailles, in 2012 and 2014, confirmed its success as a presenter and recorder of rarely heard baroque operas, especially French ones. The clips underscored how the company has jumped that fence, so to speak, in creative ways. Directed by Oriol Tomas, “Leonore” — the first version of Beethoven’s sole opera, “Fidelio” — is neither baroque nor French; and the Rameau, co-directed by choreographers Seán Curran, Anuradha Nehru and Catherine Turocy, incorporated dancing by Curran’s company, Nehru’s Kalanidhi Dance and Turocy’s New York Baroque Dance Company.
After Francisco’s “Exsultate, jubilate” performance, Reese and Ward joined her to close the program with the “O doux moment” trio from Antonio Maria Gasparo Gioacchino Sacchini’s “Oedipe à Colone.” Like the earlier excerpts from Gluck’s “Orphée et Eurydice,” sung by Reese and his four colleagues, the piece was a showcase not only for the singers but for Brown’s well-honed, 21-piece orchestra (notably its two baroque flutists).
Opera Lafayette’s 2025-26 season, with Quigley as artistic director, will include Henry Purcell’s “Dido and Aeneas” in October, with Mary Elizabeth Williams as Dido; “Queen of Hearts,” described as “an evening of drinking songs, ballads, heartache croons and bawdy verse,” which Nic McGegan will lead in February; and “New Woman,” featuring arias sung by soprano Lauren Snouffer and Haydn’s Symphony No. 63, “Le Roxelane,” named for Suleiman the Magnificent’s sultana, in May.
In his farewell letter in the program, Ryan — who seemingly plans to fade into the Colorado sunset — wrote: “To those who shared my interest in words, history and context (and perhaps especially to those who do not), thank you for your indulgence” and “To those who share a predilection for subtlety and humor in music, thank you for patiently working with us to bring these qualities to the fore and/or appreciating our efforts.”