Jocasta, Oedipus Rex, Stravinsky
“As Jocasta, soprano Michelle Trainor, a local singer affiliated with the BLO, turned in the best performance I’ve yet heard from her. Trainor has a big voice of a type not heard much among local singers who cultivate the more delicate styles of the 17th century. One can imagine her burning up the stage in a Verdian or even Wagnerian work. Who will give her that chance? Here she made a sympathetic Jocasta, discovering slowly that her new husband not only killed her husband, the King, but is also her son by the King. At her entry the chorus has one of its spectacular outbursts, “Glory to Queen Jocasta!” And Trainor totally nailed her own balancing outburst, “Laius died at the crossroads,” when she begins to figure out what happened. The duet between Trainor and Jurgens, “I am afraid, Jocasta, I am afraid,” and her ineffective consoling words, “The oracles lie; the oracles always lie,” was an emotional highlight of the work.”
The Berkshire Fine Arts