Kicking off Viardot-vs-Grisi’s 2026 calendar of operatic pilgrimages, I headed west for Nashville Opera’s premiere of Puccini’s La Fanciulla del West this past Thursday, an adventure which would evolve into a bit of a physical challenge. Originally planned as a joint review between Chris Myers and I back in April of 2025 when the premiere was announced before the curtain of Nashville Opera’s production of Donizetti’s Lucia di Lammermoor, last week’s impending east coast ice storm threatened to make mincemeat of both travel reservations and the opera’s scheduled performances. Well-briefed in the south’s winter event readiness, and wishing to avoid a transatlantic nightmare, Chris judiciously decided to bow out and remain home in his new Paris digs. Though I decided to soldier on, I kept the memory of a previous weather-related disaster nightmare fresh on my mind. This was back in Halloween night 2012 ‘…the night Sandy came home,’ when I traded being stranded in New York for the chance to witness the one and only performance of Montemezzi’s La Nave. Hashtag choices. Thus, as soon as Delta’s weather alert warnings accompanied with fine print legalese started to roll in, I resolved to make an early escape right after the opening night performance held of Thursday, January 22nd, which I cover below.
As mentioned in previous entries, outings to Nashville Opera are often graced with a curious blend of apprehension and anticipation. My introduction to the company in 2014, a performance of Verdi’s Otello (featuring Clifton Forbis’ Otello and Mary Dunleavy debuting her first Desdemona,) was promising, but was somewhat soured by a dreary staging of Offenbach’s Les Contes d’Hoffman five years later. The Nashvile Opera regained ground in 2022 with a successful unveiling of Wagner’s Das Rheingold (crushing The Atlanta Opera’s southeast premiere claims by a year), only to raise further questions with last year’s jumbled offering of Donizetti’s Lucia di Lammermoor. It has been a bumpy ride. Mixed experience notwithstanding, these random samplings more than implied the company’s ambitious intent, and the announcement of the company’s premiere of Puccini’s La Fanciulla del West served as further evidence of the fact. As it turned out, the experience more than made up for all miles traveled and snows threaded, and with this production of Puccini’s western Nashville Opera swings the pendulum completely in its favor.
Tasked with bringing Puccini’s vision of the American west to life, Nashville Opera CEO, Artistic and Stage Director John Hoomes went about fulfilling his assignment with palpable affection, inspiring earnest performances from the opera’s antiheros by turning the spotlight on their commonalities and diverging motivations within the spirit of the text and score. His treatment of the ragtag miners was especially effective, allowing them enough space to develop adjacent to the main storyline (Joe’s overt admiration of Minnie, Sonora’s struggle with the bottle, Jim Larkens’ quiet despair, Nick’s special partnership with Minnie just to name a few) without shifting focus away from it. These developed side stories helped endear the characters to the audience beyond the confines of the Polka Saloon, and set up Mr. Hoomes to deliver Puccini’s full emotional blow in the opera’s denouement. Here, the musical sentiment first introduced during the Bible reading scene is now juxtaposed with the miner’s pervasive loneliness and their dependence on Minnie, who once again shows her poker hand by cashing in every act of kindness she has shared with the miners – a final gamble to secure a life with the man she loves. Seeing beyond their maverick morality, the miners have no other option but to comply, their lament gaining greater pathos as Minnie rides into the sunset with Dick Johnson: She has nothing left to teach them and indeed will not return.
Assembled alongside Mr. Hoomes to bring Puccini’s visual landscape to the stage of the Fisher Center for the Performing Arts, Costume Designer Jessica Meuller and Scenic Lighting Designer Barry Steele went about their task with matching enthusiasm. Ms. Meuller’s characterful costumes (all kept pristine by the miners, surely in anticipation of their eventual meet ups with their Polka Saloon hostess) championed the individual characteristics of the extensive cast, while Mr. Steele took full advantage of the venue’s giant LED screen to establish both place and mood, hamming up the action with nods to Sergio Leone, which often lured him down the path of endearing excess.
Getting past some minor miscues during its introductory pages, Nashville Opera Music Director & Conductor Dean Williamson’s baton navigated Puccini’s score, an ambitious blend of impressionism and americana which is arguably the root of the western sound nowadays built into the public’s cinematic ear for almost a century, with confidence and a sense of occasion. Electing a reduced version of the score, likely to accommodate the limiting dimensions of the orchestra pit, and observing a traditional cut in the second act love duet, Mr. Williamson was not afraid to place the forces of the Nashville Opera Orchestra at the service of the action, and took great care to set the mood of each scene, allowing the dramatic situation to dictate the pace. The famous poker scene was certainly milked for every ounce of suspense! All the while, Mr. Williamson graciously empowered his principals to champion the cause of Puccini’s unjustly underperformed masterpiece.
Leading the pack in the demanding role of Minnie was soprano Kara Shay Thomson. While no stranger to her work, we revisit her talents here with a 2013 performance of Puccini’s Tosca as the sole point of reference to recommend her participation. Consistent with that performance thirteen years ago, Ms. Thomson still knows how to get her point across and deliver a memorable interpretation despite not possessing the most glamorous of instruments. In its present state, her soprano has gained greater profile and a steelier edge, though the singing has predictably acquired the occasional inconsistency in texture and pitch that comes with a decade of service. Her chest resonance, a base requirement in this repertoire, is neither extraordinary in quality nor was it ever fully deployed during the opening night presentation, yet it dutifully served Ms. Thomson to promote the presence of her middle and lower scales, particularly throughout the grueling demands of the opera’s second act (Minnie is often referred to as Puccini’s Brunhilde).
Beyond the merits of her instrument, Ms. Thompson’s understanding of Puccini’s Minnie and her commitment to employ her instrument to serve both music and character, would prove key factors to ensure her success. Through each arduous act, Ms. Thomson’s steely timbre, which continually rode over the orchestra and dominated the cacophony, was often tamed by its mistress to credibly portray the endearing naivety living side by side the assertive, rough and tumble pioneer. These conflicting traits find their apex during that extraordinary scene when our heroine tries to remain unaffected when her spurred lover is wounded, wonderfully brought to life here by Ms. Thomson (either through Mr. Hoomes’ instigation or endorsement) by having Minnie crawl into her bed placing a pillow over her face. Her brazen cheating during the poker scene, complete with neener neener cackles as she claimed her prize, was high drag and one for the books.
Sharing Ms. Thomson’s success was tenor Jonathan Burton, who graced the production with his impassioned portrayal of Minnie’s duplicitous love interest, Dick Johnson, an assumption which this blog has been fortunate to experience in the flesh before. That occasion, it would seem, was part of a general introduction to the Jonathan Burton experience, a propensity to set opera stages on fire across the nation, taking us as far back as Mr. Burton’s Sarasota Opera debut as Calaf in Puccini’s Turandot in 2013. What was heard then served to remind those on both sides of the curtain of the basic and most enduring appeal to be found in opera as an art form: the voice, and the exuberant use of it, as the main commodity to be bartered at the ticket office. Definitive interpretations of Dick Johnson at The Des Moines Metro Opera Festival would follow two years later (which also featured Alexandra LoBianco’s nearly ideal Minnie) further cementing the initial impression. And now here, more than a decade later, his singing remains effervescent and incredibly exciting.
His virile tenor has retained its heroic profile and masculine verve, brandished by its master through athletic, exuberant vocalism which has seduced Mr. Burton to indulge in the sort of antics that made Franco Corelli a favorite among audiences in the Italian provinces in the 1960s. True to the memory of those Des Moines Fanciullas, his interpretation leans heavily on the narrative of his confession in Act II, which supports the debonair, charismatic vagabond rather than the covert leader of a gang of bandits. Though the ensuing years may call out an infrequent grey patch in his scale, the basic knit of his instrument has maintained its vibrancy, the marvel of his technique very much on display as he conquered Puccini’s rapturous phrases throughout the opening night performance. A casual survey of his updated bio indicated previous engagements in Nashville, which has been fortunate to sample his Calaf, and most recently his portrayal of Canio in Leoncavallo’s Pagliacci. The tremendous ovation which greeted his curtain call was, in essence, a welcome back gesture, and a well deserved one at that.
Serving as the opera’s main antagonistic force, baritone Kyle Albertson maintained law and order through his stately account of Sheriff Jack Rance. A young artist who recently caused a bit of a stir in Atlanta, where after singing a couple of small roles in past seasons, Mr. Albertson stepped up to assist the celebrated Greer Grimsley during the Atlanta Opera’s opening night presentation of Wagner’s Siegfried, singing the part of The Wanderer from the wings while an indisposed Mr. Grimsley mimed the role onstage. The ovations which greeted his efforts that night, as well as the judicious policies by which he manages his vocal resources, support his current transition from comprimario to leading baritone assignments. Some of his future engagements, including Puccini’s Scarpia and Wotan in Wagner’s Die Walkure, are prone to invite a heavy-handed approach and should prompt caution. If his assumption of Jack Rance is indicative of his current methods, one should not fret.
Leaning into the character’s more defensible qualities, he portrayed a surprisingly sympathetic Rance, a man struggling with overwhelming isolation by clinging to his position of authority, his disposition further aggravated by Minnie’s rejection and her subsequent interest in a potential criminal. Mr. Albertson’s Rance rarely overstated his position, relying mostly on the imposing caliber of his instrument to establish his intentions, that is until his personal motivations overwhelmed his composure. Even when goaded by flamboyant vocal displays from his fellow principals, he avoided the lure of competition. This sensible policy is likely to gradually revert once his technical comfort zone enables him greater freedom. We hope to be in the audience as he continues to make strides into what promises to be an important career.
Though the long list of comprimarios delivered performances of varying quality (the range of accents, most likely unintentionally, promoted the opera’s improvised frontier atmosphere) the sum of all parts added to a net positive in this production of Puccini’s La Fanciulla del West. Out of this group, baritone Ryan Bede as Sonora, tenor Jordan Mathis as Joe (representing the members of the Nashville Opera Chorus), and tenor Greg Sliskovich as Nick provided vocal and dramatic standout performances. Finally, bass Harold Wilson fulfilled dual assignments, serving a superb vocal rendition of Jake Wallace, while imbuing Ashby with a commanding physical presence. His involvement deserves special mention, for his art has been known to this blog through various principal and comprimario assignments, and like the Nashville Opera company itself, has met with colliding feedback from this blog. I am thrilled to declare, like any passionate lover of this extraordinary art form must, that both did the damn thing in this production, and reduced me to a pile of bravos during curtain calls.
Nashville Opera’s 2025-26 season continues with performances of Rossini’s The Barber of Seville. For more information, please visit the company’s website at https://www.nashvilleopera.org/
-Daniel Vasquez