Tomorrow's stars shine at this year's Center Stage Concert

The tenth anniversary edition was a joy, as usual

“Zoom, zoom, zoom, zoom
The world is in a mess.
With politics and taxes
And people grinding axes
There’s no happiness.”

Ira Gershwin, “Slap That Bass” (1937)

Nearly a century has passed since the Gershwins wrote “Slap That Bass” for the film Shall We Dance, and yet those lyrics could have been composed yesterday. Fortunately the lyric running through my head Tuesday night (June 24^th) was from an Irving Berlin lyric from 1935: “Heaven, I’m in heaven.” That’s because I was in the Loretto-Hilton center for Opera Theatre of St. Louis’s tenth anniversary edition of its justly celebrated Center Stage concert.

What’s so celestial about the Center Stage series? To begin with, as I wrote in my review last year, the performances by the young singers from the Gerdine Young Artists and Richard Gaddes Festival Artist programs have been consistently excellent since I started attending these concerts in 2019.

Second (and every bit as important) is the fact that they are backed up by the full St. Louis Symphony Orchestra (SLSO) under the baton of OTSL Principal Conductor Daniela Candillari. Along with guest conductors Darwin Aquino (a frequent visitor to the OTSL pit), OTSL Chorus Master Andrew Whitfield, and in his OTSL debut, Steven Aguiló-Arbues (who served as Assistant Conductor for Die Fledermaus and Don Pasquale this season), she led to band in truly splendid readings of a wide variety of music, from Handel to Ricky Ian Gordon

I take the space to mention this up front since during the regular season the band is obliged to take a back seat to the on-stage action. For the Center Stage concert, the SLSO is on stage and at full strength (70 pieces this year), making it that much easier to appreciate their virtuosity.

Things got off to a rousing start with a performance of the overture to Leonard Bernstein’s operetta Candide. Always an audience favorite, the overture’s combination of memorable tunes and intricate rhythms never fails to impress. Candillari took it at a brisk pace—a potentially risky choice for a less polished ensemble than the SLSO, who simply made it electrifying.

For the rest of the program, the orchestra shared the stage with the 29 immensely talented singers of the young artists program. After spending the season in the background, this was their chance to take on some major roles, and as usual, they did not disappoint.

As the evening consisted of two dozen different selections from opera, operetta, and Broadway, it would try both your patience and my memory to comment on each one. I am therefore limiting myself to what were, for me, the more notable moments. Your mileage may vary. For inquiring minds who want to know, you’ll find the complete program below.

First-act highlights included soprano Sofia Scattarreggia’s wondrous Magda in “Ma come puoi lasciarmi” the moving final scene from Puccini’s La Rondine. Magda has abandoned her lover Ruggero (tenor Brad Bickhardt, who also shines in selections from John Adams’s Nixon in China and Claude-Michel Schönberg’s Les Misérables) rather than cause his family pain, but her own pain is manifest in the music and in her performance. Scattarreggia’s voice is rich and has a solid high end. That’s most apparent as she exits with a pianissimo high G-flat, but that was really just the icing on the cake.

Scattarreggia also made a strong impression during Act II in the comic roles of Concepción in the quintet finale of Ravel’s L’heure espagnole and Baroness Paulette in the operetta Das Lied der Liebe by Erich Wolfgang Korngold, based on the music of Johann Strauss II.

Medium-high notes were on display in the next number, “Se teco vive il cor” (listed as “Se vive in te il mio cor”) from Act II of Handel’s 1720 opera seria Radamisto. The title character (countertenor Elijah English) is reunited with his wife Zenobia (mezzo Veronica Siebert) after being falsely reported as dead. The resulting da capo aria features several minutes of florid, close harmony taken at a brisk Allegro ma non troppo and sung with assurance. It was, sadly, English’s only appearance in the program; that voice deserved more.

Almost a century separates Radamisto from Rossini’s 1823 Semiramide, but as the latter was both a homage and farewell to the traditions of Baroque Italian opera, the similarities are striking. In the Act I duet “Serbami ognor sì fido il cor,” the voices of mezzo Michelle Mariposa (this year’s only Gaddes Festival Artist) and soprano Emilie Kealani blended seamlessly, and both displayed impressive vocal flexibility.

Both singers had star turns of their own in other numbers. Kealani was a delightful Marie in “Tous les trois reunis” from Donizetti’s comedy La fille du regiment, ably assisted by bass-baritone Jose Olivares as the hearty Sergeant Sulpice and tenor Michah Perry as the endearingly befuddled Tonio. And Mariposa gave us a purely beautiful “Simple Child” (from Ricky Ian Gordon’s The Grapes of Wrath) in the second half of the concert.

Mariposa was one of only three singers who had solo numbers. The other two were soprano Jouelle Roberson (one of the stars of last year’s concert) in a high-powered rendition of Leonora’s anguished “Pace, pace mio Dio” from Act IV of Verdi’s La forza del destino and baritone Sean Holshouser in an emotionally charged “Being Alive” from Sondheim’s Company.

In his 1894 Masters of French Music, Arthur Hervey suggests that to appreciate Ambroise Thomas' 1868 opera Hamlet, "it is necessary to try and forget Shakespeare as much as possible.” The Hamlet/Ophélie duet I heard last night is a good case in point. In the hands of baritone Emilio Vásquez and soprano Tess Levine, it is, taken on its own terms, a lovely and touching declaration of amour. Their scene radiated sincerity and passion.

There were plenty of gratifyingly precise small ensemble numbers throughout the evening as well. The most complex of these was easily the first part of the Act I finale from Verdi’s last (and possibly greatest) opera Falstaff. There are nine characters on stage at this point, all singing rapid, overlapping lines at a breakneck tempo (usually some variant of Allegro). No wonder the original 1893 La Scala production required an unheard-of total of over 60 rehearsals!

Most of the scene is carried by the four women: Nanetta (soprano Laura Santamaria), Alice Ford (soprano Anna Thompson), Meg Page (mezzo Zoe Brooks), and Mistress Quickly (mezzo Imara Ashton Miles). Alice and Meg have been sent identical love letters by Falstaff and the quartet plot his downfall. Then Fenton (Michal Perry) and Ford (Emilio Vásquez) enter along with the querulous Dr. Caius (tenor Carlos Ahrens) and Falstaff’s hangers-on Pistola (Jose Olivares) and Bardolfo (tenor Gregory V. Sliskovich) and we’re off to the races.

Candillari and the OTSL cast deserve laurel wreathes for their performance Tuesday night. Vocal lines were about as clear as they could possibly be under the circumstances and as far as I could tell this express train never came anywhere near being derailed. It was really quite stunning.

Finally, let’s not neglect the two large ensemble numbers: the choruses that conclude each of the concert’s two acts. Act I ends with Scene 3 of Mascagni’s Cavalleria Rusticana, in which a brief interchange among three of the principal characters is interrupted by the chorus of villagers returning from Easter services. Joined by the sound of the church organ (played here by a synthesizer), the chorus sing a joyous resurrection hymn.

The sheer power of those many fine voices combined with the organ and orchestra is overwhelming, at least when it’s performed this well. The powerful sound of Jouelle Roberson’s soprano riding of top of it all made it that much more inspiring.

Even more gratifying, though, was the evening’s closing number: “One Day More,” the Act I finale from Les Misérables. Quintessentially operatic in its complexity, “One Day More” begins with the main theme sung by Jean Valjean (Brad Bickhardt). He’s quickly joined by the lovers Marius and Cosette (Adam Partridge and Emilie Kealani), the doomed Eponine (soprano Laura Elena Fernández), the revolutionary Enjolras (Carlos Ahrens), the relentless Javert (baritone Cole Bellamy) and the corrupt Thénardiers (Gregory V. Sliskovich and mezzo Isabel Randall). They all have different melodic lines that interlock and finally merge into a glorious wall of sound guaranteed to generate a standing ovation.

Ensuring that all of this is clearly heard is difficult outside of a recording studio (the live performances of Les Mis that I have seen over the years haven’t always managed it), much less at the Loretto-Hilton, where the singers were spread out across the front of the stage. I have to give everyone involved credit for doing a solid job under trying circumstances. Any lack of clarity should be chalked up to the performance space rather than the performers themselves, who were impeccable.

Congratulations are due to everyone on that stage, in any case, as well as to stage directors Diane Machin, Seán Curran (who is also OTSL’s choreographer), Erica Ferguson, Anna Theodosakis, Dennis Oliveira, and of course, Patricia Racette—without whom none of this would have been possible. Somehow it seems only fitting that the artist who ran OTSL’s young artist programs for so many years is now the incoming Artistic Director.

The Opera Theatre season ends June 29th, but the 2026 season has already been announced. Check the OTSL web site for details.