Even to hard-core opera buffs, Rossini’s “Wil liam Tell” is known best for its rousing overture, a k a the “Lone Ranger” theme. But at Caramoor Saturday night, the majestic work was revealed as a masterpiece of musical drama.
Based on the legend of the Swiss patriot who’s challenged by a foreign tyrant to shoot an arrow through an apple on his son’s head, the 1829 opera roused Rossini to a grander, more sophisticated style than he used for earlier comic pieces like “The Barber of Seville.” The finale, after Tell’s defiance sparks a revolution, is a soaring hymn to liberty foreshadowing the music of Verdi and Wagner later.
For this concert production, conductor Will Crutchfield trimmed the more than five hours of the original to a four-hour version, preserving the opera’s epic sweep. Leading the Orchestra of St. Luke’s, he built each of the four long acts from a quiet beginning to a thundering climax.
Among the singers, the women — of secondary importance in this warlike tale — scored highest marks. The silvery soprano of Talise Trevigne, as Tell’s son Jemmy, soared over the ensembles. As Matilde, a princess sympathetic to the Swiss cause, Julianna Di Giacomo’s rich lyric voice won one of the evening’s biggest ovations for her love song “Sombre foret.”
The men were a mixed bag. Despite crisp French diction, bass-baritone Daniel Mobbs lacked vocal and dramatic gravitas for Tell, and Michael Spyres’ tenor was at home only in the plaintive moments of the young firebrand Arnold.
But even so, Caramoor’s smart and gutsy “William Tell” hit the bull’s-eye. It repeats Friday.