All About the Singing: Union Avenue Opera celebrates 30th season with concert “Aïda”

Producing opera has always required mucho dinero, a scarcer resource in the 2020s than before. Unsurprisingly, opera in concert has trended since the pandemic. Institutions can direct funds into hiring singers for works that would otherwise prove unstageable on the company’s budget. The singers can concentrate on their main job, free from the whims of directorial concepts that force them to exert themselves in a staging. And concert performances allow a wider range of organizations to mount operas, since symphony orchestras can join the fun too. Saint Louis can be a frustrating place to live if you want to hear opera’s “big sings,” which mostly appear at the Saint Louis Symphony, in concert, only about four times per decade.

Union Avenue Opera has long provided an original-language counterbalance to Opera Theatre of Saint Louis's dedication to opera in English. Now in their thirtieth season, despite a smaller budget than OTSL, UAO has more often performed meat-n-potatoes long 19C repertory that hasn’t proven copacetic for OTSL’s small thrust stage or English chamber sensibilities. For example, OTSL has never performed Wagner; but in 2012-15, UAO staged an entire “Der Ring des Nibelungen” in the reduced Jonathan Dove adaptation. They’ve even mounted more operas by Verdi than has OTSL—“Aïda” makes the score seven to five. But neither company had tried their hand at Verdi’s late masterpiece, though the SLSO gave “Aïda” a shot in concert a decade ago. Staged properly, “Aïda” requires about six sets for its seven scenes in four acts. And forget the ballet dancers, horses, and even elephants. It’s a lot.

So General/Artistic Director Scott Schoonover hatched a plan for UAO’s pearl anniversary. He frequently places the biggest work second anyway, and UAO 2024 began with the crowd-pleasing “Carmen” and will end with a Broadway show in late August, this time Sondheim’s “Into the Woods.” But to make “Aïda” feasible, it appeared in concert, for three performances rather than four, and strengthened by a top-shelf trio for the love triangle.

The newsiest member of the roster, a Missouri native from Kennett, Limmie Pulliam brought his stentorian dramatic tenor to Union Avenue’s cozy confines in a company debut as Radamès. Pulliam’s instrument is one of the biggest I have ever heard live, and he filled the Metropolitan Opera House with it in his debut there in December 2022, as the first African American Radamès in the company’s long history. In attendance then, your reviewer was amazed—few people can do that there. Union Avenue houses about one sixth as many seats, and has enjoyed no other male voice this powerful, and perhaps only Christine Brewer on the women’s side. Pulliam’s Egyptian general soldiered bravely through a respiratory ailment, but much of the time you couldn’t even tell he was ailing. He gave us a “Celeste Aïda” with ample ping on top, and nailed all the character’s showiest moments, especially “Immenso Ftha” to end the first act and “Sacerdote, io resto a te” closing the third. The character appears a little dense compared to the women, but Pulliam sensibly leveraged what little development Verdi grants Radamès in the last act, standing up to Amneris, on pain of death. You’re unlikely to hear a voice any more heroic than Pulliam’s in North America.

As the title Ethiopian princess, returning to UAO’s mainstage season for the first time since 2018’s “Nabucco”—one of the best productions in the company’s three decades—soprano Marsha Thompson brought her signature role to Union Avenue. Your reviewer last saw her as Aïda at Boheme Opera New Jersey five years ago, and her understanding of the dramatic nuances of the role have sharpened further since then. Her Aïda picked spots to defy Egypt intelligently, the rest of the time deferential but resenting it, stoically. Her voice cuts over the orchestra easily, which served her well in meeting her love interest’s sizy instrument. Thompson skillfully navigated Aïda’s slippery dynamic contrasts in “Ritorna vincitor.” She floated the high C in “O patria mia,”and the part of the role that suits her voice best, the Tomb Scene, arrived with lovely spin. Perhaps her best dramatic moment came in the second act, when Aïda momentarily challenges Amneris; UAO veterans will recall the snappy volley of shade between Thompson and Melody Wilson in “Nabucco,” as rival claimants to the throne in Verdi’s early barnburner.

A Saint Louis favorite, and frequent essayist of Verdi at UAO (Fenena, Meg Page), mezzo-soprano Melody Wilson gave a commanding performance in her first Amneris, with the assuredness of a multiyear veteran of the role. The alpha role in Italian opera for mezzo-soprano, Amneris, which resides in a high tessitura but dips low here and there in dramatic moments, is even better suited to Wilson’s voice than anything she’s sung previously, as she combines a luscious zwischy top with an immersive chest voice in the old Italian style. She paired ceaselessly gorgeous vocalism with screen-actor dramatic verisimilitude. Amneris often comes off as the bad guy, but Wilson made you root for her character in equal measure as you sympathize with Aïda, which strengthens the drama. She worked her romantic rival by degrees in Act II with the deception about Radamés dying in the previous battle, and paced the role magnificently with plenty of reserve for Amneris’ towering Act IV scena, with rich character development and fierce high As and B♭s. One of the best Judgment Scenes I’ve heard in four decades of listening to this opera live and recorded, and this in a role debut.

The remaining cast all gave solid performances, especially bass-baritone Lloyd Reshard as a formidable Amonasro. Another singer with a large instrument, Reshard’s strenuous Amonasro put the Egyptians on their heels in Act II and absolutely wilted his daughter Aïda in Act III; his “muori!” directed at Amneris in the chaos of the Act III finale terrified. Baritone Todd Payne’s Egyptian King communicated dignity, and a little pomp and circumstance when required. Baritone Jacob Lassetter, recently Zuniga in “Carmen” here, saved the show when the scheduled Ramfis withdrew on scant notice. Lassetter learned the entire role in less than a week—the Egyptian high priest appears in all four acts—and delivered a priestly gravitas. And sourced from the chorus, young tenor R. Nathan Brown as the Messenger ably alerted the Egyptians to the Ethiopian insurgence with a bright sound. The UAO chorus, sixteen men and fourteen women, formed a strong ensemble in one of the most chorus-forward operas in the repertory. Drawn from their ranks too, soprano Danielle Yilmaz did the honors as the Priestess, with a larger instrument than you often hear in that role, perhaps a future singer of Wagner.

Unusually for an orchestra, the winds and brass met the challenge better than the sometimes-pitchy strings. Union Avenue reduced the score to eighteen instrumentalists plus Henry Claude on multiple percussion voices, who got a workout in Acts II and IV. One of the best operas for oboe, “Aïda” gave principal oboist Ann Homann multiple featured opportunities, and she played beautifully with Thompson in the soprano’s Act III aria, “O patria mia,” nearly a duet of sorts.

Altogether, Union Avenue assembled a superbly sung “Aïda,” better, in fact, than Lyric Opera of Chicago managed last spring with far more money. Concert opera will expand the horizons of any opera company. Even Seattle Opera, one of ten A-level American houses, routinely puts on a concert selection in January now, Berlioz’s epic “Les Troyens” next year and Saint-Saëns “Samson et Dalila,” last year. A couple summers ago, chatter circulated that Scott Schoonover had been seen with a score of “Samson et Dalila,” a work smaller companies avoid—because who on earth can finance building a temple only to tear it down? I’m sure I don’t know what Union Avenue will perform in 2025 and 2026—their season reveal comes in mid-autumn nowadays—but my fingers are crossed.

“Aïda” continues for one more performance on Saturday, 3 August. Union Avenue Opera’s 2024 mainstage season closes with four performances of Stephen Sondheim’s “Into the Woods” on 16, 17, 23 and 24 August. They announce their 2025 season at a gala with Christine Brewer on Thursday, 17 October 2024 at The Barnett on Washington.