The Honolulu Symphony celebrated Easter weekend with a dynamite concert featuring soprano Sumi Jo in the first half and Carl Orff's "Carmina Burana" in the second, each garnering a standing ovation.

The Honolulu Symphony celebrated Easter weekend with a dynamite concert featuring soprano Sumi Jo in the first half and Carl Orff's "Carmina Burana" in the second, each garnering a standing ovation.

Sumi Jo, a long time favorite in Hawaii, has won several prestigious awards and is internationally known for her light, clear coloratura. Her voice is exceptionally agile and precise, with excellent dynamic control, tight trills, and stratospheric range. She hits pitches cleanly, even in lightening-fast arpeggios.

Many sopranos claim "coloratura" in the sense of being able to handle florid ornamentation, but few are able to sculpt the timbre of notes to create the vocal "colors" in the original sense of the word.

Sumi Jo does. Singers of all genres should flock to hear her in order to learn what the human voice can do when trained well.

Her voice danced lightly around and through every technical feat, shading lines so they shimmered, caressed, soared, and rang. Delicate without being fragile, her voice revealed no edges, no rough transitions – silky smooth, top to bottom.

She opened with "Ah! Je veux vivre" from Gounod's "Romeo et Juliette," a standard display aria, showcased her lyricism with "Vilja" from Lehar's "Merry Widow" and her vocal agility with Strauss's "On the Beautiful Blue Danube," but she brought down the house with "The Doll Song" from Offenbach's "Tales of Hoffman."

In the opera, the aria is sung by a mechanical doll, which Sumi Jo imitated with stiff poses and jerky movements, creating mechanically abrupt loud-soft echo effects. Occasionally, Sumi Jo "wound down," remaining frozen until the conductor "rewound" her so she could continue. 

She had the audience eating out of her hand and rewarded their standing ovation with two encores, including "Amazing Grace," sung a cappella (without accompaniment) to a dark and silent hall.

Conductor Jean-Marie Zeitouni maintained an absolutely perfect balance throughout the evening, ensuring that every note Sumi Jo sang could be heard, yet allowing the orchestra to thunder in climaxes. Whether highlighting a soloist or integrating multiple groups, Zeitouni kept the music's focus clear and elicited outstanding performances..

Concertmaster Ignace ("Iggy") Jang's and Constance Uejio's solos in Massenet's "Meditation" from his opera "Thais" were gorgeous.

"Carmina Burana," one of the most powerful and popular of 20th-century works, was an unusual choice for Easter weekend, one of the holiest of Christian holidays: It is based on a series of Latin poems from the twelfth and thirteenth centuries that celebrate a secular, even pagan, world of drinking, gambling, and sensual love. 

Orff's setting begins and ends in praise of "Fortuna," the wheel of fate that lifts people high, only to lay them low as it turns. The poems move from celebrating spring, to seeking love among the meadows, to drinking "unbridled and unceasingly" in the tavern, to an exchange between soprano and baritone in the court of love that ends with the soprano's climax, "My sweetest one, ah! I give you my all!"

The Honolulu Symphony's performance featured soloists Sumi Jo and baritone Quinn Kelsey, whose voice was even larger and richer than the last time he performed in Honolulu., joined by tenor Brian Stucki in a delightful cameo role as the roasting swan, his plaintive cries alternating with the growling hunger of the male chorus.

Born and raised in Hawaii, Kelsey debuted last spring at the Metropolitan Opera in "La Boheme" and is becoming well known in the operatic world. His voice is warm as mulled wine, with an arching lyricism that compels attention.

"Carmina Burana" also featured Nola Nahulu's outstanding Hawaii Youth Opera Chorus and the Honolulu Symphony Chorus, now under the direction of Esther Yoo.

The stage was so full, it spilled into the wings, but Zeitouni wove the myriad forces into a single ensemble that could be both delicate and thunderous. The Honolulu Symphony delivered a powerful performance that ended with enthusiastic cheering.