Letter from Florida: Opera Up-Close - Unveiling the Dramatic Process with Paul Curran at Palm Beach Opera

Opera Up-Close - Mozart: Don Giovanni - Evan Lazdowski as Leporello and Erik Tofte as Giovanni - Palm Beach Opera (Photo: Kelly O'Brien of Coastal Click Photography)

Opera Up-Close: Unveiling the Dramatic Process with Paul Curran; Palm Beach Opera, The Cornelia T. Bailey Opera Center, Palm Beach, Florida
Reviewed by Robert J Carreras, 13 December 2025

In our latest Letter from Florida, Robert J Carrera enjoys Palm Beach Opera's latest Opera Up-Close with features scenes from four operas where stage director Paul Curran provides expert commentary about each scene.

Palm Beach Opera (PBO) General Director James Barbato and internationally renown Stage Director Paul Curran are creating monsters. Both these types of monsters are of operatic proportions of course, only one serves a higher purpose. PBO demonstrates a resoluteness in this area, sorely lacking representation in classical music today. PBO is looking at itself first.

Look at the calm before the storm in Palm Beach. Something is brewing sub rosa at Wall Street South. It is there in the form of a figure...unclear, unnamed, a monster. It gives rise to and shifts the axis of the facade of the Cornelia T. Bailey Opera Center, a monster. At the meet and greet in the reception hall, it lurks behind the walls. Arcus, nimbi, and tubas are forming and gathering there. A monstrous storm front is overflowing in Paradise now.

The second installment of PBO’s Opera Up-Close: Unveiling the Dramatic Process celebrates its first anniversary of artistic anxiety, never failing to disappoint and disillusion. PBO, Curran and Young Artists peel back another layer of where opera stands at present. The farthest seat tonight is standing room about twenty feet away; the closest, too close. In an age of High Definition captured birthmarks and rashes there is little margin for error; these are very intense training grounds.

There is so much talent out there that the lines between opera-special and opera-Olympian are evermore blurring. The talent has probably always been there, but the recruitment process is now a full-scale competitive exercise all its own. Spaceship earth seems smaller, and there are so many talented talent scouts searching it would take the seclusion of the remotest parts of Papa New Guinea for the next Farinelli to evade discovery. Unless she were never to know about opera, a proposition much less plausible today.

Opera Up-Close - Mozart: Don Giovanni - Sara Stevens as Donna Anna - Palm Beach Opera (Photo: Kelly O'Brien of Coastal Click Photography)

Disillusionment, disappointment and anxiety appear aplenty in Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s Don Giovanni – Commendatore is a collusive character in this constellation. It is no secret Mozart had a troubled relationship with his father, and a pop psychology contingent proposes that Giovanni’s killing of Donna Anna’s father is emblematic of the composer’s memory of their relationship. Add to that the passing of Johann Georg Leopold Mozart (simply Leopold to Wolfgang) recent to the creating of this opera and the speculation runneth over.

In the scenes that run to and through the duel that fells Commendatore, Evan Lazdowski (hailing from New Hampshire) has the comedic expression and timing of essence to Leporello. Ladowski’s “Catalogue Aria” was matter-of-factly recounted, making it seem Giovanni’s rascality in the Iberian peninsula, “mille e tre,”is grossly short-sold.

Lazdowski’s glinted crescendo at “majestuosa” called on Donna Anna to remember herself, and Sara Stevens (of Kennesaw, Georgia) turned up the decibel dial with a voice of Valhallan proportions. Stevens’ voice found Donna Anna’s despondence over the dysfunctions written by Lorenzo da Ponte.

In conversation with Randy Ho, the Don Ottavio here, Planet Hugill learns the tenor is a student of the human voice and anatomy, and of the rich history of opera as a whole. Ho and Margaret Macaira Shannon (Donna Elvira) sang well, and represented Paul Curran as knowing animateur.

Thank goodness that West Central New Yorker Erik Tofte has not developed any of the unseemly talents and traits of Don Giovanni. Suggested reading for this baritone, Errol Flynn’s My wicked, wicked ways.

To all in this Mozart motley crew – remember to have fun with your Wolfer.

Opera Up-Close - Donizetti: L'elisir d'amore - Matthew Cerillo as Nemorino - Palm Beach Opera (Photo: Kelly O'Brien of Coastal Click Photography)

Tenor Matthew Cerillo of Freehold New Jersey picked up where he left off last year in another scene from Domenico Gaetano Maria Donizetti’s L’elisir d’amore. His is a more secure stage manner tonight – of voice, better supported, better produced, better enunciated; of stage, more opera-mannered, and therefore easier to empathize with, a more complete stage persona. Curran’s influence has had the effect of processing the ham, into mortadella.

Upside down as it may seem, one of opera’s most challenging jobs is in turning performers on their heads. The consummate artist must learn to stop putting on a show. Until the performer gives up on drama, they are rudderless and take the stage off course with them, much like a beast begging to be tamed. The more the damage, the harder the work. Opera needs them sharp, sharp enough to become part of the show, until they can take it over. Paul Curran has the complex chore of curing the creator from the inside out.

Opera Up-Close - Mascagni: L'amico Fritz - Simon Brea as Fritz and Kayla Rae Stein as Suzel - Palm Beach Opera (Photo: Kelly O'Brien of Coastal Click Photography)

Hastings-on-Hudson’s own Simon Brea tells Planet Hugill he listens to Juan Diego Florez and Laurence Brownlee, and he enjoys singing Handel. The tenor is your friend Fritz now, prettily paired with the Suzel of Kayla Rae Stein from just outside Chicago.

Soprano Rae Stein listened to herself as a young lady, singing pop and music theater. When she heard her opera voice, she heard home. The timbre of Rae Stein’s lyric soprano alone makes opera ancestors wake talent scouts from slumber and have them draw a bead to her door – scoperta, scoperta! Rae Stein will be learning how to use this inspired instrument throughout her career, to opera’s pleasure.

Paul Curran employed a clever device to immerse the audience in the Italian innuendo sub rosa to Nicola Daspuro in Pietro Mascagni’s L’amico Fritz. The Act II duet was first presented in slow-motion English, with Brea and Rae Stein provocatively panting and steamily stressing lines. Adjusting in seats, much; clearing of throats, much, much; hot under collars, much, much, much.

Cherries anyone? They ended up rolling all over the place, on and over the side of the dais, under the seats. These two go through cherries like Peter Popoff goes through spring water, only with more relatable prurient interests. Rated PG and for mature audiences, this is a most evocative stage experience. Darn my melanin – we need to see less blushing like this in Palm Beach people, but more blushing for sure.

Opera Up-Close - Jake Heggie: Dead Man Walking - Mario Manzo as Joseph De Rocher and Anastasia Koorn as Sister Helen Prejean - Palm Beach Opera (Photo: Kelly O'Brien of Coastal Click Photography)

Pompeii, Vesuvius, Mount St. Helens – the monster has arrived. As two weeks of rehearsal and scene work drew to a close, it became apparent that Curran’s original plans to denouement tonight’s show with anything other than Mario Manzo had to be rethought. There’s most definitely something about Mario.

“I am more confident,” Mario tells Planet Hugill of how this night became his coming out. Paul Curran is quick to interject: a consummate opera performer must countermand confidence with containment. An opera-Olympian must be disciplined, or as Curran puts it, “spontaneous within a framework.”

The person Mario Manzo is a gentle-giant. He is universes away from the character of Joseph De Rocher, and De Rocher minutes away from the final walk down death row. Jake Heggie’s Dead Man Walking is heady stuff at this point in Manzo’s career; the entire opera may be out of reach for him today, but this scene – “The Confession” – is truth.

Picture the “blown away guy,” the cassette tape commercial from yesteryear. That is the gist of what the audience absorbs now – countdown to takeoff, the rafters coming unglued from Mario’s roars of pain and discomfort, all from self-loathing. Manzo turns this private confession into a fully inclusionary group therapy session.

Manzo becomes De Rocher’s internal grappling – flailing, clutching at and grasping for his contrition. Through her voice, the Sister Helen Prejean of Anastasia Koorn (from Connecticut) untangles and frees the exegeses questions from sacred texts. Koorn’s interpretation is of a Sister Prejean secure in the knowledge De Rocher is redeemed and she knows how to get him there. This Sister Helen has a record collection that includes Ziggy Marley’s Love is my religion.

Post-performance, Arizonan Mario Manzo speaks of “the strange and ugly sounds I made," and my composure is compromised. I avert his gaze. The flickering figure of Martti Talvela phases in and out, across and around Manzo’s face. Mario Manzo has me mixing operas, placing Zurga into Carmen. You handled that with a consummate and soulful elegance beyond your years Mario.

On this night, all the way through, Curran spared no stage space, pattering the place with visuals – all audience members got birds-eye and ears-eye views. The piano accompaniment was all the way through clean and rich, on an instrument riding on the high side of the tonic.

PBO is looking at itself first in 2026. The company elevates the level of competition in classical music in the area of shared-humanity, freeing the glass ceiling of debris and building a new ground floor. The company first brought in an Intimacy Director in 2024, a long and arduous process requiring hard discussions and decisions. The birthmarks and rashes of opera’s past, present and future surely came out. The result – a top down, safety first and consent-forward culture. PBO is looking at itself.

These monsters opera is creating are the safekeepers of a new era of standards in the humane treatment of women – your daughters, your sisters, your mothers, your grandmothers. Fiercely defend the honor of your Donna Annas, Commendatores. To the Donna Annas, help your Commendatores keep you. Accept nothing less ladies. Accept nothing less Palm Beach.

Who’d you think the monster was?

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozaert – Don Giovanni
World Premiere: Prague, 1787
Act I, scenes I-IV
Music Director and Piano: Shelby Rhoades

Leporello: Evan Lazdowski
Donna Anna: Sara Stevens
Don Giovanni: Erik Tofte
Commendatore: Nathan Savant
Don Ottavio: Randy Ho
Donna Elvira: Margaret Macaira Shannon

Domenico Gaetano Maria Donizetti – L’elisir d’amore
World premiere: Milan, 1832
Act I, scene VI: “Voglio dire lo stupendo elisir”
Music Director and Piano: Anna Betka

Nemorino: Mathew Cerillo
Dr. Dulcamara: Nathan Savant

Pietro Mascagni – L’amico Fritz
World Premiere: Rome, 1891
Act II Duet: “Suzel, buon di”
Music Director and Piano: Eric Head

Fritz Kobus: Simon Brea
Suzel: Kayla Rae Stein

Jake Heggie – Dead Man Walking
World Premiere: San Francisco, 2000
Act II, scene VII
Music Director and Piano: Shelby Rhoades

Joseph De Rocher: Mario Manzo
Sister Helen Prejean: Anastasi Koorn

Palm Beach Opera was founded in the summer of 1961 as the Civic Opera of the Palm Beaches. On January 29, 1962, at the Palm Beach High School Auditorium, the organization presented its first-ever production, La traviata, to a sold-out audience of 1,200 with a live chorus and 26-piece orchestra.

Even in its early years, the Civic Opera of the Palm Beaches—which became Palm Beach Opera in the 80s—attracted international stars like Beverly Sills and Robert Merrill. Over the years, the company has been led by esteemed conductors and artistic directors and has presented some of the world’s most famous performers.

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