– Original Credits: (Corey Weaver / Handout) Russell Thomas and Tamara Wilson in the lyric opera from Chicago’s “Ernani”. If you look at the work from a less patriarchal perspective, which has been common for most of its history, you see a woman struggling for self-determination and agency against three different fates, all chosen by men, Of which only one, at best, actually sees him.

self-indulgent) courtship, dealing with a kidnapper (the King of Spain, no less) who forces him to hold up his knife in his defense, and a guardian who is excited about forced marriage and is involved in No interest allowed. That said, Ernani (Russell Thomas), baritone Don Carlo (Quinn Kelsey), and bass don Ruy Gomez de Silva (Christian Van Horn) are far from equal in point of view of Elvira (Tamara Wilson), who is real (if a tad). Do the characters in “Eranny” have personalities that match their voices, or should they have voices that match their personalities? Verdi’s genius was, I think, to take a French romantic play by Victor Hugo (“Hernani”) and erase that distinction. How can use itself as a kind of musical and dramatic effect but note again how much shared human stories are often based on physical archetypes. Listening to that formally rich swirl of roaring Verdi melody on Saturday night at the Lyric Opera, at the opening of Lyric’s fall season and under the joyful exploratory baton of music director Enrique Mazzola, was not only a reflection of how Verdi was before. Three different men courted the soprano Elvira: the young and passionate titular tenor Arnani, an authoritarian and intimidating bass, and a baritone that is perhaps best described as complex, because of that particular vocal type. First seen in Venice in 1844 and a huge success for the young composer, Giuseppe Verdi’s “Ernani” is not so much a love triangle as a quartet of discovery and reaction.

Verdi voices lyric opera