Galka gives spellbinding performance that sets Shakespeare in song

Soprano enchantress Katrina Galka cast a spell with her marvelous voice in Enchanted Woods, Portland Opera’s intimate evening of songs set to texts by Shakespeare. Accompanied by piano and a quintet of woodwinds, Galka commanded the stage at The Gregory K. and Mary Chomenko Hinckley Studio Theatre (February 3) with style and elan to deliver an impressive number of tunes by an array of composers that included John Dankworth, Erich Wolfgang Korngold, Mark Blitzstein, Roger Quilter, Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco, Arthur Sullivan, Betty Jackson King, Benjamen Britten, Lola Williams, and Cole Porter. All-in-all, the production, which was directed by Kristine McIntyre and included a handful of additional singers, constituted a veritable feast for literature and music lovers of the great English bard, but digesting thirty songs stuffed concertgoers’ ears to the hilt and then some.

Several years ago, while Galka was a resident artist at Portland Opera, she made a very strong impression with roles in “The Elixir of Love” (2015), “Carmen” (2015), and “The Italian Girl in Algiers” (2015), “The Magic Flute” (2016), and “Sweeney Todd” (2016). She returned for a magnificent performance as Gilda in “Rigoletto” (2018) and has built an international career.

Galka co-curated the Enchanted Woods program, stringing together a series of songs that made a loose-limbed narrative. Dankworth’s “All the World’s a Stage” was a delightful invitation sprinkled with a hint of sultriness. She enticed the audience, which was seated at cabaret tables, with a lovely interpretation of Korngold’s “Under the Greenwood Tree.” The rhapsodic mood continued with pieces by Quilter, Blitzstein, and Castelnuovo-Tedesco. For those who are familiar “When Birds do Sing” as a pleasant madrigal, it was great to hear that text in a much more robust, sparkly, and impetuous style by Korngold.

Five songs by Sullivan with words from “Twelfth Night” offered an interplay of characters who arrived in the forest – much like many settings in Shakespeare’s plays – and mixing up flirting, jealousy, and other emotions connected to the theme of love. Portland resident artists Judy Yanninii, Roland Hawkins II, and Antonio Domino collaborated with Anna Jablonski to create a diversion that culminated with the wistful musings of Betty Jackson King’s “In the Springtime” from “As You Like It.”

Returning in a fanciful costume, Galka cast some magical sleep-inducing dust on her colleagues, followed by the feathery and “dewberry” light “Be Kind and Courteous” by Britten. She capped off the first half of the program with Britten’s lovely “Come, Now a Roundel” and Blitzstein’s gentle “Lullaby.”

After intermission came three pieces by Lola Williams, an obscure American composer who is only now being rediscovered. Her “Threnos (for Romeo and Juliet),” featuring Yannini and Jablonski, and “The Owl Sings (for Winter), sung by Yannini and Hawkins II, created a solemn mood. That transitioned to a lighter vein with “The Cuckoo Sings (for Spring) in which Galka, Yannini, and Jablonski interspersed some bird-like sounds.

Galka received enthusiastic applause after camping things up with glee in Cole Porter’s “I Hate Men!” and “Always True to You in My Fashion.” She juxtaposed these with the serious themes of Catelnuovo-Tedesco’s “Come to Dust,” Quilter’s “Come Away, Death,” and Korngold’s “Desdemona’s Song.” The evening closed out with Blitzstein’s “Court Song,” which evoked an Elizabethan style, Quilter’s “Hey, Ho, the Wind and the Rain,” and Dankworth’s “Our Revels Now Are Ended.”

It was a tour-de-force performance for Galka, who sang with intense commitment and always a beautiful tone. Almost all of the action took place on a raised platform that was clad in forest-green artificial turf and placed in the center of the room. Sensitive piano playing by Nicholas Fox accompanied almost all of the pieces while some were set to a wind quintet (flutist GeorgeAnne Ries, oboist Kelly Gronli, clarinetist Louis DeMartino, bassoonist Samuel Rhoton, and hornist Michael Hettwer). Fox also arranged several pieces for piano and the chamber ensemble.

It seems that Enchanted Woods would be an excellent piece to do at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival. A few songs could be cut and actors from the festival could be the extra characters that Galka interacts with. To give her a chance to rest up between a set of songs, some of the actors could recite a few of Shakespeare’s sonnets or do an excerpt from a play. Enchanted Woods is a terrific vehicle or Galka or another singer of her caliber, and since the forces required for a performance are so small, it could easily be taken on the road.