BREAKING NEWS: Opera & Ballet

Hamlet in High Park

Fri, 26 Jul 2024 15:29:03 +0000

This year’s Dream in High Park production is Hamlet directed by Jessica Carmichael. Now Hamlet is an interesting choice for this format because it is, notoriously, a really long play and the High Park format demands something that comes in around two hours. A full blown Hamlet, as in the Branagh film lasts over four hours and even with the usual stage cuts it’s a three hour plus project. So getting it down to two hours rather meands that it’s almost as much Carmichael’s Hamlet as Shakespeare’s.

So what’s gone and what’s left? Unsurprisingly all the Norwegian politics is in the bin. It usually is. For the rest, it’s trimming here and there while leaving most of the bits most people will recognise; Hamlet and Claudius’ soliloquies, the ghost, the grave diggers, The Murder of Gonzago, the duel at the end. The effect, since they have a lot of the big speeches, is to emphasise Hamlet and Claudius and their relationship at the expense of, in particular, the ladies. Gertrude and Ophelia both seem somewhat marginal in this production. Even Ophelia’s mad scene pretty much disappears.

There’s also a sense that Carmichael is going for laughs wherever they can be found (and last night’s audience found them in some odd places indeed). Now, Hamlet does have some humour. What Shakespeare play doesn’t (except the comedies). Here it’s pretty broad. Rosenkrantz and Guildenstern are played almost as a clown act reinforced by the fact that actors are doubling as the gravediggers. Polonius too seems to be milking it where a more deadpan approach might actually be funnier. Overall it rather undermines the tragic qualities of the play. We don’t get enough of Ophelia or Gertrude to care about them and Hamlet himself doesn’t really have the time or space to fully engage us. So when he dies… so what?

All that said there’s some pretty good acting where it matters. Qasim Khan’s Hamlet is well articulated. His handling of the text suggests he knows what it means and what matters. He gets full value out of the big moments. Diego Matamoros is, unsurprisingly, a complex and regal Claudius. More than anyone he conveys a sense that something really is rotten un the state of Denmark. Raquel Duffy would probably be a very good Gertrude in a production that gave her more space to be one. Something similar could be said about Beck Lloyd’s Ophelia. She managed to convey a rather charming sense of vulnerability but that’s pretty much it. The rest of the cast, mostly playing multiple roles, did what the production demanded but I didn’t think anyone really stood out.

In the end, as I reflect on all this, I think the root problem is that a really effective two hour Hamlet is a very tall order. The director has to make tough choices and she has. The cast do a very decent job of pulling off that production concept. The end result is an OK two hours of theatre but it’s defininitely Hamlet lite.

Canadian Stage’s production of Hamlet runs in the amphitheatre in High Park until September 1st.

Photo credits: Dahlia Katz

Capriccio

Fri, 26 Jul 2024 13:00:19 +0000

Christian Thielemann conducts Elsa Dreisig, Bo Skovhus, Sebastian Kohlhepp, Ève-Maud Hubeaux, and Regula Mühlemann in a live performance from the Salzburg Festival

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Lady willpower

Fri, 26 Jul 2024 13:00:19 +0000

I suspect she was irresistible, like a charming runaway coach. I suspect that when she wanted something, she buttonholed you and reasoned with you until you admitted she had every right to whatever it was she’d set her sights on. And she set her sights on the almost all-male preserve of bel canto laurels.

Write songs and perform them (and her piano variations on popular tunes of the day) at the most fashionable salons in Florence? Sure—she did that by the age of 17, in 1827. Marry a famous surgeon and have him introduce her to everyone she wanted to meet? Done before she was 20. Publish her songs and piano riffs? No problem. Get the leading singers of the day to sing her songs at the best soirees in Italy (there were no recordings, remember; a party needed music-makers), witty verses by herself, tunes savoring of Bellini and Rossini and, well, whoever was chic? She was on it.

At last, she wanted to compose an opera. Not just the tunes—she orchestrated the thing as well. And she invited Rossini and the grand old man, Giovanni Simone Mayr, to attend. And she got them to write letters about how good it was, and how good she was. And she made sure those letters were noticed. (That first opera, Samson, is unfortunately lost.)

A widow now, and with a daughter to raise (and join her in salon duets), she went to a foreign country where she knew no one—Naples—and got them to stage a grand opera she had just composed on fashionably Scottish themes. (Meyerbeer had already set it. Libretti were often re-used in the days before copyright.) When the libretto wasn’t quite revelatory enough, she wrote new scenes herself. She was a Jill of all trades.

Considering the opinion widely held of creative women at the time, Uccelli must have been twice as able as the average debutante composer to get herself heard and produced. And she had Fanny Tacchinardi, the top soprano in town, to create the title role: Anna di Resburgo. It was 1835—Bellini had just died and Donizetti had just written Lucia di Lammermoor for the same opera house with the same diva. So Uccelli aimed high, and with quality.

The lady sounds too good to be true, something feminist showrunners would invent and flesh out with fiction: a strong, brainy woman in the man’s world of Bel Canto Italy. Even Donizetti premiered 25 operas before he had a bona fide hit, Anna Bolena, but Uccelli, with barely an apprenticeship, was ready for action.

But after half a dozen performances, her last, and only surviving, grand opera vanished from the stage. Uccelli and her daughter sang at salons a few more years, and then she died, forgotten, not yet fifty. Her works were on lists, but her name was misspelled—it required Will Crutchfield with Teatro Nuovo (no surprise) and the current rage for forgotten female creatives to raise the lady from oblivion.

It was just bad luck that the same theater, the San Carlo, that premiered Anna di Resburgo had given the prima of Donizetti’s Lucia only a month earlier. Lucia, like Anna di Resburgo, is set in Walter Scott country, and concerns property claims and blood feuds, ending with a confrontation in a cemetery. Lucia is the bel canto era’s masterpiece, dramatically cast iron, memorably melodious, beloved of sopranos, tenors, baritones and even basses. Poor Anna can’t compete with that. Its last-minute happy ending doesn’t help.

But for lovers of bel canto, insatiable fans of sumptuous voices warbling (and ornamenting) intoxicating tunes, Anna di Resburgo is a delightful new kid on the block, even if she doesn’t stick around long. Uccelli’s original, somewhat untutored style is just the sort of thing Crutchfield adores. He has unearthed Anna di Resburgo from its long obscurity, crying like Poe’s Roderick Usher, “We have put her living into the tomb!” (Poe loved bel canto opera—you can tell, can’t you?)

As you expect if you are a Teatro Nuovo fan, the Maestro gave a chat from the keyboard before curtain time last Wednesday, about the wonders he had found within the score: the variant bass lines, the off-kilter funeral march, the climactic confrontational duet between the self-righteous soprano (accompanied by flute) and the guilt-ridden baritone (snare drum obbligato—a new idea to me, as to Crutchfield). The auditorium, of course, was packed for his talk.

The chat was preceded by a program of eight of Uccelli’s salon songs, performed by nine of Crutchfield’s able young pupils. Set to Uccelli’s own lyrics, the songs are sophisticated items, sentimental or jocose, savoring of their melodious bel canto contemporaries—but holding their own with those masters. If they turned up on a program with Rossini, Bellini or Mercadante, you would never raise a questioning eyebrow.

Then, in the Rose Theater, we had the New York premiere (preceded last weekend by the U.S. premiere, in Montclair) of Anna di Resburgo. The sets were projections, the staging minimal, the orchestra on original instruments, the conductor (Elisa Citterio) leading with her violin, as they did in orchestras of the time.

The story will strike a modern audience as incoherent. A Scottish laird has murdered his old friend and neighbor, throwing suspicion on the victim’s innocent son. The laird takes the property, but dies soon after, confessing his crime on his deathbed to his own son and heir, Norcesto, who becomes rich but uneasy. The appearance of unknown persons in town, who turn out to be the escaped father-slayer, Edemondo, his bride Anna (disguised as a harp-playing bard) and their child, left on somebody’s doorstep, does not ease Norcesto’s conscience. In the end, he cannot bring himself to profit from his father’s crime—he reveals the truth, and all ends happily.

This story provides opportunities for reflection and confrontation, but Uccelli is clumsy about laying it out. The opening scene, for two minor characters (Olfredo and his daughter Etelia), demands an awful lot of exposition, but Uccelli finds no tuneful way to handle it. Later there is a very long trio for the sole reason (as far as I could see) that three people are on stage, so no love duet is possible. There are several choruses, sung because, well, Scottish peasants have nothing better to do, right? Donizetti would have had them beating the bounds. Anna has a big aria because, well, she’s the prima donna (albeit disguised), but she hasn’t much to say—Olfredo and Etelia have already said it. And so on.

Act II is far more eventful. Anna confronts Norcesto and he weakens under her accusations. Their duet, plus Norcesto’s long aria of indecision and repentance, are the high points of the opera, original and impassioned—Anna gets a flute obbligato, but Norcesto’s accompaniment is a sinister snare drum, a striking contrast.

Edemondo is tried for parricide but off stage. We only hear about it because Olfredo describes the trial in the sort of patter that buffos specialized in—but Uccelli has composed it to deadly serious if agitated narration. Here, she made a virtue of a necessity—a local star buffo was singing Olfredo, and buffos sang patter in Naples, where opera buffa was invented. To use the comic method for tragic purposes shows an original theatrical mind on her part.

Chelsea Lehnea, who sang Paolina in Teatro Nuovo’s Poliuto last year, sang Anna di Resburgo with a healthy soprano that fails to achieve ideal bel canto evenness across the admittedly enormous range required of her. Her coloratura, too, was choppy, and occasional leaps from one part of her range to another hit dry patches. Perhaps she should sing middle Verdi that focuses on the well-schooled notes of her mid-range and tacks on some rare coloratura; a full bel canto heroine seems to give her undue stress. True, Anna is in a stressful situation, and her reckless defiance was well projected. Elisse Albian sang some very pretty phrases in the seconda donna role of Olfredo’s daughter, Etelia.

Argentine tenor Santiago Ballerini, a Crutchfield favorite, sang Edemondo, accused of parricide, bereaved husband, with a suave line and pleasing ornaments. He ducked a concluding high note (or that was my impression) but was much applauded anyway. The role is dramatically inert, and Uccelli couldn’t think of anything to do with it. Maybe a solitary prison scene full of self-recrimination would help.

Riccardo José Rivera, a Puerto Rican baritone, possessed, in guilt-ridden Norcesto, the most exciting music and the most turbulent dramatic situations in the opera, and his dark, liquid, theater-filling sound was ideal for it and drew the evening’s heartiest applause. His musical skill is matched by his dramatic instincts; he held the theater rapt during his long solo scenes, as well as matching Lehnea, bel canto snarl for bel canto snarl, during their furious duet. He sings lots of Donizetti and Verdi around the country, and that’s just what he should be doing—he has a fine, Renato Bruson-like line.

Lucas Levy sang the buffo role of Olfredo, the valued retainer, with a graceful basso, nicely articulated in the patter narrative and enormous elsewhere—if anything, he had to hold it back. What such a voice can achieve in the great Lablache roles is a question—and I’m eager to hear the answer someday. (Lehnea, Ballerini, Rivera, and Levy would make an impressive Puritani cast, if any impresarios are reading this. We don’t often get a Puritani with a really worthy quartet.) Andrew Allan Hiers was unpleasant in the most tuneful way as Norcesto’s nasty a.d.c.

Teatro Nuovo always casts worthy singers in little-known works, and that’s my idea of a fine night at the opera. When I look out over an oncoming summer, I always consider what Crutchfield will be up to. In the present case, Anna di Resburgo is completely off the map, and there was much to savor in it. But nothing about the opera suggested we’re going to hear it again.

Photos: Steven Pisano

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Tannhäuser

Fri, 26 Jul 2024 13:00:00 +0000

The 2024 Bayreuther Festpiele continues with Nathalie Stutzman conducting Klaus Florian Vogt, Günther Groissböck, Elisabeth Teige, Irene Roberts, Markus Eiche, and Siyabonga Maqungo in a slightly delayed broadcast from the Grünen Hügel

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Arms and the Anne

Fri, 26 Jul 2024 10:00:48 +0000

Happy 56th birthday soprano Anne Schwanewilms

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The servant of two last names

Thu, 25 Jul 2024 13:00:44 +0000

Still, it’s an omission that Chris’s Cache rectifies today with a double-bill of I Quatro Rusteghi featuring American sopranos Barbara Bonney, Cheryl Studer, and Nancy Shade, plus Graziella Sciutti as the nicotine-addicted heroine of Il Segreto di Susanna.

Ermanno Wolf-Ferrari split his career between Italy and Germany which explains why Rustighi premiered in Munich as Die Vier Grobiane, the version we hear today. Although he may be best remembered for his comedies, many might know him instead for his serious opera I Gioielli della Madonna which premiered in Berlin as Der Schmuck der Madonna (oh dear!); its beguiling Intermezzo has been popular for decades.

//www.youtube.com/watch?v=a7OcDfspgZM

More recently Sly, his Shakespeare opera, served as a vehicle first for Placido Domingo and then José Carreras. But the one-act Segreto remains his most identifiable opera; it has been recorded several times and gets performed with some regularity.

Before Sly arrived in 2002, Wolf-Ferrari’s work hadn’t been heard at the Met since 1927, the final performance to date of Gioielli which had been mounted two years earlier with Maria Jeritza and Giovanni Martinelli. The Met had previously performed Le Donna Curiose and L’Amore Medico, the latter conducted by Arturo Toscanini. It’s amusing to survey the many operas the Met combined with Segreto: often Pagliacci or a long-forgotten The Polish Jew, but sometimes an entire La Bohème or L’Amore dei Tre Re. Philadelphia audiences got their money’s worth one night in 1921 when the Met brought Lucrezia Bori in Segreto along with Cavalleria Rusticana with Beniamino Gigli and L’Oracolo starring Antonio Scotti, of course!

While others were tackling verismo or absorbing Wagner into their operas, it may seem odd that an early 20^th century composer was so drawn to Carlo Goldoni, an 18^th century playwright. Wolf-Ferrari adapted numerous Goldini plays: besides Rustighi, there are Le donne curiose, Le Vedova Scaltra, Il Campiello, and Gli Amanti sposi.

The last of these features a libretto by Giovacchino Forzano who also wrote Sly’s. Best known for his texts for Puccini’sSuor Angelica and Gianni Schicchi, Forzano also wrote libretti for Mascagni, Leoncavallo, and Giordano.

Goldoni’s plays aren’t much done is the US although I saw Il servitore di due padroni nearly 20 years ago when Piccolo Teatro di Milano brought Giorgio Strehler’s famous version to Lincoln Center. Unexpectedly, I also saw La bottega del caffé in French at the Comédie-Française (where it was called simply Le Café) during my first visit to Paris when we were looking for something to do on Christmas Day.

Goldoni also wrote numerous opera libretti including several for Galuppi including Il Mondo della Luna which was later set by Haydn who also composed Lo Speziale and I Pescatrici to Goldoni libretti. The playwright was also responsible for adapting Richardson’s novel Pamela for Piccinni’s delicious La Cecchina ovvero La Buona Figliuola.

//www.youtube.com/watch?v=oK2gVGbwul8

Wolf-Ferrari: Die Vier Grobiane (composer’s German-language version of I Quatro Rusteghi)

Lucieta: Barbara Bonney
Margarita: Cornelia Wulkopf
Marina: Cheryl Studer
Felice: Nancy Shade
Magd: Helena Jungwirth
Lunardo: Artur Korn
Maurizio: Bodo Brinkmann
Filipeto: Yoshihisa Yamaji
Simon” Hans-Günter Nöcker
Cancian: Karl Christian Kohn
Conte Riccardo: Christer Bladin

Conductor: Alberto Zedda
Bayerische Staatsoper
18 April 1982
Broadcast

Wolf-Ferrari: Il Segreto di Susanna

Susanna: Graziella Sciutti
Gil: Renato Césari
Sante: Italo Pasini

Conductor: Juan Emilio Martini
Teatro Colón
August 1968
Broadcast

Each Wolf-Ferrari work can be downloaded by clicking on the icon of a cloud with an arrow pointing downward on the audio player above and the resulting mp3 file will appear in your download directory.

Never miss an episode of Chris’s Cache! Subscribe to this podcast via Apple Podcasts or RSS.

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Schmaltz and Pepper

Thu, 25 Jul 2024 12:20:42 +0000

Schmaltz and Pepper is a comparatively newly formed band (November 2023) but it contains quite a few familiar faces; Rebekah Wolkstein (vocals, violin) and Drew Jurecka (vocals and assorted instruments) from Payadora, Eric Abramowitz (clarinet) from the TSO plus multitalented Jeremy Ledbetter (piano) and Michael Herring (double bass). Between them they have backgrounds in classical, klezmer, tango, calypso, Yiddish swing, jazz and much more. The focus of the new band appears to be klezmer and Yiddish swing but since most of their material is original there are lots of influences.

Tuesday evening’s appearance in Walter Hall as part of Toronto Summer Music was maybe their third gig but word had clearly got out because the house was packed and enthusiastic (even discounting for the Abramowitz clan who were clearly out in force). The atmosphere was terrific.

They are a brilliant band. They are all first rate musicians; Abramowitz and Wolkstein are especially stunning. She is also a very engaging vocalist in both English and Yiddish. As mentioned earlier almost all their material is original with various band members contributing. I’m just remembering highlights but there were riffs on traditional folk tales and a klezmer take on a Bach fugue, There was Mozart the Mensch; how Mozart might have sounded if he had beenJewish and not such a screw up. I’m Sorry Mama was Wolkstein’s apologia for serially dating unsuitable men (i.e. musicians). And there was a version of the Judgement of Solomon that morphed into an Irish Reel (Tom Lehrer might have approved). And more…

All in all it was terrific fun and one imagines this group has a great future. I think there next gig is in September as part of the Ashkenaz Festival which always has some great shows. Catch them if you can.

Photo credit: LuckyTang

Printemps qui commença

Thu, 25 Jul 2024 10:00:37 +0000

Born on this day in 1894 soprano Yvonne Printemps

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Tristan und Isolde

Thu, 25 Jul 2024 10:00:30 +0000

Semyon Bychkov conducts the opening performance of the 2024 Bayreuther Festpiele with Andreas Schager, Camilla Nylund, Günther Groissböck, Christa Mayer, Olafur Sigurdarsonb, and Birger Radde

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Breathings

Wed, 24 Jul 2024 17:39:11 +0000

Monday night’s Toronto Summer Music concert in Walter Hall was a cross-cultural exploration of Nature, Heartbeat and Breathing. It featured an instrumental ensemble of Persian and Western instruments and two Indigenous vocalist/drummers; one Mi’kmaq, one Inuit.

I was rather underwhelmed. The musicianship was there and there was certainly potential for something exciting to happen but I don’t think it did. Mostly it sounded like a jam session between the instrumentalists (Constantinople; made up of Kiya Tabassian – setar, Khianoush Khililian – ney, Didem Başar – kanun, Etienne Lafrance – double bass and Patrick Graham – percussion) with some, but not enough, input from Darlene Gijuminag whose Mi’kmaq style singing was unfamiliar to me, quite stratling in its way and very effective. Inuit throat singer Celina Kalluk was also undeused and her contributions were somewhat drowned out by the instruments.

It might have worked better in a higher energy, less formal environment. In a club or lounge where people could get ad rink and mingle the required enrgy might have happened. In a half full, freezing cold Walter Hall it didn’t. Perhaps time to put Lula Lounge back in the TSM venue list?

Photo credit Lucky Tang

Il ritorno di Ulisse in patria

Wed, 24 Jul 2024 13:00:51 +0000

John Brancy, Deepa Johnny, Anthony León, Mariana Flores, and Alex Rosen lead a recent performance from Aix-en-Provence conducted by Leonardo García Alcarón

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The discreet charm of the bourgeoisie

Wed, 24 Jul 2024 13:00:34 +0000

I refer to Sabine Devieilhe and Lise Davidsen’s appearances at the Munich Opera Festival, where they starred as the titular waif in Debussy’s Pelléas et Mélisande and Liza in Tchaikovsky’s Pique Dame, respectively. Devieilhe, a clarion coloratura, has proven peerless in her interpretations of the French Baroque repertoire, Romantic lieder, mélodie, and much in between. Her approach to any repertoire is always idiomatic, and her pristine musicianship captivates. On the other side of the vocal spectrum, Davidsen’s refulgent lyric dramatic soprano has made her today’s leading exponent of Strauss and Wagner. Her recent appearances in New York have also allowed audiences to appreciate the depth of her artistry. These two artists possess vastly different instruments, to be sure, but they both proved luminous presences across two darkly atmospheric productions.

Dutch director Jetske Mijnssen, making her Bayerische Staatsoper debut in this production at the more intimate Prinzregentheater, moved Pelléas et Mélisande away from the medieval realm of Allemonde and into a late-Victorian domestic setting. It is almost de rigeur among directors to shift Pelléas to the time of composition—Graham Vick’s 1999 Glyndebourne production being a notable example—but Mijnssen’s dynamic blocking along with Ariane Bliss’s clever dramaturgical interventions made the concept feel fresh.

//www.youtube.com/watch?v=rd-SXEok3jY

In the opening scene, Golaud finds himself not lost among the boughs of an ancient forest, but pacing around an elegant ballroom as couples waltz around him. He finds his footing, if only for a moment, in the presence of an equally anxious Mélisande. Set designer Ben Baur’s stark arrangements of Biedermeier furniture upon parquet flooring supplant the decaying castle halls of the subsequent acts. A shallow trench of water along the stage’s edge stood in for the Blind Man’s Well, providing the characters with their sole means of communing with the natural world amid their stifling bourgeois surroundings.

Yet despite forgoing the work’s fairytale aspects, Mijnssen’s approach retained a sense of the faraway, the unreal encroaching upon what once seemed solid and true. We watched as a collective erotic haze descended upon an already ailing family unit, challenging their rigid notions of propriety and engendering, or perhaps revealing, the violence among its ranks. It was raw, sensual, and unsettling—one of the strongest productions of an opera I have seen in a while. The production will appear at The Dallas Opera in November. Do not hesitate to attend if you are able.

Devielhe’s Mélisande was a wonder. Her voice had a gossamer feel while its essential brightness, which never veered into harshness, ensured that it could pierce through Hannu Lintu’s plush, if occasionally opaque, conducting. She often eased into the notes, subtly building the intensity of her vocal lines to exude an expansive quality. Her “Mes longs cheveux descendent” had an unearthly aura, pouring into the hall in a cascade of violet-hued sound. Yet, in keeping with the production’s more grounded elements, she infused a spirited determination into her interpretation of the heroine. She sang with a self-assured abandon as she teetered on the well’s edge, and her voice took on a slightly steely edge as she faced Golaud’s interrogation over her missing wedding ring.

It is hard to believe that Christian Gerhaher was once a Pelléas, given how well the role of the elder brother suited his full-bodied baritone. As Golaud, he gave the most dramatically compelling performance of the evening, conveying a man riven by his increasing paranoia and inclination towards rage. The scene in which he forces little Yniold, sung with poise by Tölzer Knabenchor member Henrik Brandstetter, to spy on the would-be lovers was unnerving, as each command he bellowed at his child chipped away at any semblance of decorum. His intensity melted into pathetic self-loathing in the final act, and he infused a tenderness into his pleas for forgiveness that stirred the audience’s empathy.

Tenor Ben Bliss delivered a similarly strong performance as he traced Pelléas’s arc from a good-natured if occasionally negligent lad to a man completely consumed by an obsessive passion. His bright, vigorous top delivered some moments of sheer beauty, though his lower register often got lost amid the thicker orchestral passages. There was a considerable amount of heat in his interactions with Devielhe, especially in the rather voyeuristic rendering of the Tower Scene, and the two sold their characters’ bourgeoning attraction well. Bass Franz-Josef Selig was commanding as the patriarch Arkel, while mezzo-soprano Sophie Koch brought a matronly warmth to Geneviève.

Pique Dame was more of a mixed bag. The production by Australian director Benedict Andrews, which premiered at the Staatsoper’s Nationaltheater last February, is set in a nebulous contemporary setting: vaguely retro yet forgoing any dalliances with Soviet-style aesthetics for generic cool. Instead, Andrews adopted the aesthetics of the uncanny to bring us into Herman’s experience of alienation. The chorus emerged as an ominous, blank-faced entity from the back of the stage through John Clark’s smoky lighting to descend upon Herman, who was often situated by the prompter’s box. During the ball scene in Act II, the chorus and many of the principal characters donned plastic masks that blurred their features as they robotically danced in unison among a set of bleachers. Herman’s fellow officers, Tsurin and Chekalinsky, played with thuggish glee by bass Bálint Szabó and tenor Kevin Connors respectively, seemed hellbent on torturing their supposed friend at every opportunity, as were the children’s chorus in the opening scene and nearly every other character other than Liza. There were also the usual directorial flourishes: long drags of cigarettes, strippers, doubles, moody projections between the scenes, and an assortment of vehicles rolling onto the stage.

If the production largely succeeded in its exploration of self-estrangement, it was in large part due to the presence of tenor Brandon Jovanovich as Herman, reprising the role from the winter run. His Herman appeared incapable of behaving normally; he staggered around the edge of the stage, gangly and wild-eyed, brandishing his pistol in the audience’s direction. He often mimicked the behavior of those around him, as when he mirrored the Countess as she caressed herself in her boudoir and contorted his face into a painful, Looney Tunes grin amid the general merriment at the ball.

His efforts to conform merely exacerbated his isolation and drove him closer to the brink. It was a deeply committed performance that brought many of the production’s more original ideas into relief. Musically, he was less consistent. His tenor combines a mellifluous, smooth tone with ample heft along his middle range, setting him apart from the darker voices that have tackled this notoriously tricky role. Yet he approached many of the role’s punishing upward leaps with hesitancy, delaying his vocal production at times and resulting in a few cracks and an aborted high B at the end of the first scene. However, he gained momentum as the evening progressed.

As Liza, Davidsen was one of the few new additions to the production, replacing Asmik Grigorian from the original lineup. Likely due to a lack of rehearsal time, she was somewhat ill at ease with the blocking, not quite conveying the disaffected, moody heroine the production demanded. Still, her singing was gorgeous throughout. She scaled back her instrument significantly during her duet with Victoria Karkacheva’s plummy Polina, as the two women’s voices rippled in and out of each other’s. Her Act III arioso “Akh! istomilas ya goryem” contained a range of dynamic colors. In the first half of the piece, she suspended her sound at a silver-cast mezzo piano before sighing into a diminuendo, imparting a rather spectral air. Her high notes ignited her final duet with Herman—the love story was perhaps the weakest aspect of the production—and she left us with a coruscating F sharp that sliced through the orchestra.

//www.youtube.com/watch?v=uoLf4PzwwXA

Violeta Urmana appeared as the Countess in full 80s-era Elizabeth Taylor drag. Her mezzo-soprano retains much of its distinctive coloring, even if the sound is not quite as plush as it once was. There was a decrepit sumptuousness to her Act II aria “Je crains de lui parler la nuit.” As Prince Yeletsky, Boris Pinkhasovich garnered the most enthusiastic applause of the evening for his elegant and deeply felt “Ya vas lyublyu,” during which his mulberry shaded baritone unfurled some lovely legato lines and revealed a well-developed upper register. Baritone Roman Burdenko brought a rakish energy and a superb handling of the text to Tomsky’s two arias. Natalie Lewis and Daria Proszek impressed in their brief appearances as the Governess and Masha, respectively.

The fine quality of much of the singing was undercut by conductor Aziz Shokhakimov’s lackluster performance in the pit, which saw numerous coordination issues throughout the evening as well as general lack of shaping; the very fine Bayerische Staatsorchester sounded near cacophonous at points. The issues in the pit became most apparent during the piece’s many choral sections, and he was unable to effectively sync the orchestra with the Chorus of the Bayerische Staatsoper. Only in the a cappella final prayer were we able to appreciate the richness of the chorus’s sound.

Photos: Wilfried Hoesl

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Summer awakening

Wed, 24 Jul 2024 10:00:22 +0000

Born on this day in 1921 tenor Giuseppe Di Stefano

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Munich Opera Festival (3) - Pelléas et Mélisande, 22 July 2024

Tue, 23 Jul 2024 17:20:52 +0000

Prinzregententheater

Images: © Wilfried Hösl

Pelléas – Ben Bliss
Mélisande – Sabine Devieilhe
Golaud – Christian Gerhaher
Arkel – Franz-Josef Selig
Geneviève – Sophie Koch
Yniold – Felix Hofbauer
Doctor – Martin Snell
Shepherd – Pawel Horodyski

Director – Jetske Mijnssen
Set design – Ben Baur
Lighting – Bernd Purkrabek
Choreography – Dustin Klein
Dramaturgy – Ariane Bliss

Projektchor der Bayerischen Staatsoper (director: Franz Obermair)
Bayerisches Staatsorchester
Hannu Lintu (conductor)

Nine years ago, in this same theatre at this same festival, I saw Munich’s previous Pelléas et Mélisande: a staging by Christiane Pohle which I greatly admired, but everyone else seemed to loathe. I am tempted to say ‘failed to understand’, but let us move on—to its successor, directed by Jetske Mijnssen. Perhaps it was not the best time to see this, only a fortnight after encountering Katie Mitchell’s feminist rethinking of the work in Aix, in its first revival. For me, there is nothing especially wrong with Mijnssen’s staging. It does pretty much what one would expect of a Pelléas, save perhaps for presenting a greater realism in place of its Symbolism.

In that lay my doubts. Not that there is anything wrong with that in principle; far from it. Yet without a change of perspective, or some other such idea, the point remained elusive: not in the sense that Pelléas can, must remain elusive, but rather suggesting an extended bourgeois parody of Tristan und Isolde, with which it of course has much in common. That would be a point of view, though not necessarily one I should be inclined to pursue (imagining nonetheless with a wry smile what Nietzsche, in Case of Wagner mode, would have made of Pelléas). What I think Mijnssen is getting at, suggested by her final act – in which the castle, whose rooms whether in the forest, by the stagnant pool, or elsewhere have provided the setting for all that has gone before, is stripped to its foundations – is a psychological claim that we are all ultimately like Mélisande, not least in our inability to know one another. Presumably the wooden boards relate also to the forest we never really see.

Following a realistic if sparing portrayal of early-twentieth-century costumes, furniture, and so on, Arkel’s words ‘C’est un pauvre petit être mystérieux comme tout le monde’ offer the backdrop for the entirety of this act. Having moved from a (beautifully danced) ball for the first scene, to this hospital bed for the close, often viewing Pelléas’s sick father in his bed, the tragedy encompasses all of us in a metaphysical sense far from untrue to the work. The observation – and execution – of Golaud’s chess game with his son Yniold, and Yniold’s resort to playing with his toys, perhaps as a way of trying to understanding what is happening, including a similar sweeping of the board and pieces, are suggestive and accomplished. Golaud’s striking of Yniold likewise offers a powerful moment.

Much else, especially with water – seen as rainfall as we enter the theatre, yet otherwise relegated until the close to a long, thin ‘pool’ at the front of the stage – seems to sit a little awkwardly between two stools. That the pools are more evident in the final scene, presumably closing in on the very foundations – in more than one sense – of castle and family is another good idea. But Pelléas’s reappearance – a ghost, a dream, or an actual reappearance? – to show Mélisande her child seems to come less from an alternative dimension than from an alternative production or concept. Perhaps I am missing something, given what seems in many ways an intelligent attempt to construct a whole from what is viewed, curtain falling after every scene, as a quasi-filmic succession of dramatic fragments.

An effort to construct a greater whole in theatrical time from quasi-modernist fragments, as opposed to starting with a whole and carving detail from it, seemed also to characterise Hannu Lintu’s way with Debussy’s score. At its best, Lintu’s direction conjured a wonderful translucency from the Munich orchestra; it did not want for dark malevolence when called for, either. My principal reservation related to what seemed – I am unsure whether it actually was – for scenes, perhaps acts too, to slow during their course. No one wants to rush through Pelléas, of course, quite the contrary; yet there were occasions when I felt momentum was in danger of being lost. This may, however, have been as much a matter of pauses between scenes on account of scene rearrangement, especially before the fifth and final act. By the same token, losing oneself in the forest is surely part of the musical experience, perhaps all the more so when we never really see it.

There are doubtless many ways to sing Mélisande, yet during her performance, Sabine Devieilhe had me convinced hers was, if not quite the only one, then the best. Her ease of communication, not only in the French language but in Debussy’s musical style, was effortlessly communicated for all to hear; it was simply as if she were speaking, and as clear as if that were the case too. Moreover, Devieilhe’s delivery of the text seemed indivisible from dramatic situation and imperative. French is a notoriously difficult language to sing; it would be difficult, unsurprisingly, to claim that all in the cast managed with such ease. Sophie Koch’s excellent Geneviève was of course an exception, leaving us to long for more.

That said, no one made a bad job of it either, and an age of ‘international casts’ brings advantages and disadvantages. Christian Gerhaher’s Golaud was unquestionably a fine, brutal character study. Some will doubtless have taken more to his hectoring way (at times), but it was rooted in his conception of Golaud’s sadism. Gerhaher showed the courage not to try to endear his character to anyone, without in any sense rendering him one-dimensional. To that, Ben Bliss’s boyish, mellifluous Pelléas proved an excellent foil, vocal and scenic communication offering ample justification for Mélisande’s preference. The dark ambiguity of Franz-Josef Selig’s Arkel cast due shadow over all. Last but far from least, Felix Hofbauer gave an outstanding performance as Yniold: not ‘for a boy’, but for anyone. As impressively acted as it was sung, this treble’s performance offered yet another feather in the cap for the ever-lauded Tölz Boys’ Choir. So in many respects, the fragments did add up to more.

From Darkness to Light: Ariodante at the Festival dalle Valle d’Itria

Tue, 23 Jul 2024 14:07:22 +0000

Händel – Ariodante

Ariodante – Cecilia Molinari
Polinesso – Teresa Iervolino
Ginevra – Francesca Lombardi Mazzulli
Dalinda – Theodora Raftis
Lurcanio – Manuel Amati
Re di Scozia – Biagio Pizzuti
Odoardo – Manuel Caputo

Orchestra Barocca Modo Antiquo / Federico Maria Sardelli.
Stage director – Torsten Fischer.

Festival dalle Valle d’Itria, Teatro Verdi, Martina Franca. Monday, July 22nd, 2024.

For this, my second evening at this fiftieth edition of the Festival dale Valle d’Itria, it was time for some baroque. More specifically, Händel’s Ariodante in this new festival staging by Torsten Fischer. Rather than the courtyard of the Palazzo Ducale, the opera was presented instead in the neighbouring Teatro Verdi. These days, the Teatro doubles as a movie theatre, with extremely comfortable, semi-reclining seats, in addition to the very welcome air conditioning.

Photo: © Clarissa Lapolla

My only other encounter with Fischer’s work was a double-bill of the Gluck Iphigénies a decade ago at the Theater an der Wien. That was an extraordinary evening in the theatre and I had high hopes for this evening’s performance. Fischer sets the action on a single, white stage. Unlike Nicola Raab in last night’s Norma, Fischer uses his cast to provide constantly-changing and engaging visuals that clearly illustrate the narrative. Moreover, the cast as a whole had very clear personalities, all with convincing and believable relationships with each other. Fischer contrasts the whiteness of the set with mainly black costumes for the cast, with Polinesso given a zombie-like white face, and Ginevra’s bridal status exemplified by her white dress.

Photo: © Clarissa Lapolla

Moreover, it struck me that Fischer was particularly aware of the presence of dance in the score, particularly through the manifestation of veiled figures in dresses who circulated around the stage, their beards visible under the veils giving an impression of gender fluidity that I found particularly intriguing. Indeed, Cecilia Molinari’s Ariodante was a very feminine representation – although dressed in shorts and a shirt with bow tie, with very long hair, she danced around the stage in ‘dopo notte’ with uninhibited glee. Fischer wasn’t afraid to show us the ugly side of this work – the abusive relationship between Dalinda and Polinesso was shockingly real. Yet, Fischer also filled us with genuine joy and happiness as the story reached its lieto fine. The overriding impression I left with this evening, is that Fischer’s staging magnified this glorious score, using his cast fully to bring it to life and to find the humanity within. And it’s testament to his clarity of storytelling that the nonne behind me were completely silent throughout, expressing happiness and admiration of the youthful cast at intermission.

Photo: © Clarissa Lapolla

Musically, this was an equally fabulous evening. Conducting the intimately-proportioned Orchestra Barocca Modo Antiquo, Federico Maria Sardelli led a deliciously swift and vigorous reading. In this smaller theatre, the orchestral sound had real and refreshing physical impact, sweeping us along with it, so that it was impossible not to be invigorated. Indeed, the entire evening seemed to pass by in seconds. The quality of the orchestral playing was excellent, with some impressively accurate horn playing. There were a few passing moments of sour violin intonation, understandable given the length of the evening and challenge of using period instruments. Sardelli’s tempi were swift, but he also pulled back to give ‘scherza infida’ the space it needed, combined with some deeply eloquent bassoon playing. Sardelli also understands the emotional power of a sforzando, using dynamics and attack to reinforce meaning. Recitatives were appropriately and fluently paced, while ornamentation throughout the cast was tasteful and genuinely enhanced the line.

Photo: © Clarissa Lapolla

Ariodante is the best thing I’ve heard so far from Molinari. Her youthful, bright tone was an ideal match for the innocent optimism of her character, yet she was also able to find real devastation in her ‘scherza infida’. What was apparent throughout was Molinari’s seriously impressive breath control, sustaining apparently endless melismas whether in her outpouring of despair, or later in her cries of joy in ‘dopo notte’. The voice took flight in streams of virtuosity, dispatching line after line of effortless coloratura with impressive precision. If I were to be extremely churlish, I would have to comment on an occasional tendency for some breathiness to enter the tone at some of the more rapid-fire moments higher up, but these were passing. Molinari really did present herself tonight as a singer of extremely rare gifts.

Photo: © Clarissa Lapolla

As Ginevra, it sounded to my ears that Francesca Lombardi Mazzulli took a little while to find her groove. Her opening number saw her runs sounding rather lumpy, something that was not a feature of her singing once she got into her stride. Lombardi Mazzulli made use of pure tone throughout, the voice lacking in any vibrato, and it meant that I did miss a little bit of spin higher up in the voice. That said, she coloured the tone and text most impressively in ‘il mio crudel martoro’, using the spareness of the Händelian writing, and the emotional impact of the lines, to illustrate the pain of Ginevra’s delirium – here her use of pure tone really came into its own.

Photo: © Clarissa Lapolla

Teresa Iervolino sang Polinesso in a liquid, yet darkly resonant contralto. Taking on this role is a challenge for any singer given how closely it was associated with the late, great Ewa Podleś. Iervolino made ‘dover, giustizia, amor’ very much her own, adding some impressively wide-ranging embellishments to the line. I do, however, wonder whether Iervolino needs to work further on integrating the registers – there were a few isolated moments where the break was audible. Still, the juiciness and warmth of her tone give much pleasure. As indeed did Theodora Raftis as Dalinda. The Cypriot soprano was the only non-Italian singer on stage tonight, although she lacked nothing in textual acuity in comparison with her colleagues. Her soprano is bright and silky, with an agreeable fizz to the tone through a natural vibrato – qualities that make her a natural Händelian.

Photo: © Clarissa Lapolla

As the Re di Scozia, Biagio Pizzuti sang his music in a wonderfully warm, handsome and resonant baritone. Despite the relatively generous size of the voice, compared to his colleagues, he was able to turn the corners with ease, dispatching some impressively firm and even runs. Manuel Amati, a native of Martina Franca, was also a positive find as Lurcanio. His tenor is bright and focused, with a slight nasality to the tone giving it an attractive raspiness that recalled the equally late, great Anthony Rolfe Johnson. He sang his ‘Del mio sol vezzosi rai’ with real beauty and admirable command of dynamics. Manuel Caputo was an effective presence in Odoardo’s brief contributions and a game stage presence throughout.

Photo: © Clarissa Lapolla

This was a wonderful evening in the theatre, one that showed this festival in the very best light. The singing throughout was fabulous, the youthful cast giving us a feast of Händelian virtuosity, in a cogent staging that was notable for its fantasy and clarity of storytelling, conducted with style and vigour. Indeed, it has been a lovely few days in this beautiful and welcoming part of the world. It might have been my first visit to Martina Franca and the festival, but I hope it won’t be the last. The audience received the cast and production team at the close with generous and enthusiastic cheers.

La clemenza di Tito

Tue, 23 Jul 2024 13:00:30 +0000

Raphaël Pichon conducts Pene Pati, Karine Deshayes, Marianne Crebassa, Lea Desandre, Emily Pogorelc, and Nahuel di Pierro in a recent performance from Aix-en-Provence

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Do it for the Graham

Tue, 23 Jul 2024 10:00:59 +0000

//www.youtube.com/watch?v=sGn0UR0kww8

Happy 52nd birthday soprano Anja Harteros

//www.youtube.com/watch?v=xLtiNLyF3uk

Birthday anniversaries of composer Francesco Cilea (1866)
and soprano Ava June (1931)

Happy 83rd birthday opera administrator Brian Dickie

Happy 69th birthday soprano Susan Dunn

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Pelléas et Mélisande at Münchner Opernfestspiele

Tue, 23 Jul 2024 09:18:35 +0000

* Notes *A new production of Pelléas et Mélisande (Act II, Scene 1 pictured, photograph by Wilfried Hösl) opened as part of the Münchner Opernfestspiele opened earlier this month. Last night's performance had some very nice singing, but the production did not elucidate this dreamy, strange piece. Maestro Hannu Lintu presided over a glittery orchestra, the music had a lot of color, but perhaps the phrasing could have a bit more nuance. The music certainly was very loud in the tiny Prinzregententheater, and could be felt as much as heard. This co-production with Dallas Opera, directed by Jetske Mijnssen, is not very sensible. So many of the scenes simply go against the text, as when in Act III Scene 1 where Pelléas says he cannot reach Mélisande's hand while he's right next to her and indeed holding her hand. Ben Baur's narrow stage over water is nice and clean, it's very pleasing to watch the rain fall behind it before the opera, and the little strip of water downstage was a good effect. However, it probably was extremely confusing for those who do not know this opera, the forest in the first scene seems to be in a ballroom, the cave in Act II is under a dining table. The background of Act V has "C'était un pauvre petit être mystérieux comme tout le monde" on it, which Arkel sings at the end. Everyone was cast perfectly for their roles. The child from the Tölzer Knabenchor who played Yniold was eerily clear, and acted very naturally even in this stilted production. Bass Franz-Josef Selig was slightly creaky at first but conveyed care and sympathy in the last scene. Baritone Christian Gerhaher is a terrifying Golaud, you never feel like Mélisande is being irrational for loving his half-brother rather than him. Gerhaher does angry very well, but he showed a more tender side at times when needed. Tenor Ben Bliss is an ideal Pelléas, he is sweet and light and certainly brings a boyishness to the role. Soprano Sabine Devieilhe is also convincing as Mélisande, very ethereal but easily soars over the instrumentation. Her "Mes longs cheveux" was lovely. The love scene in Act IV was also very strong. * Tattling * Before the performance there was an altercation in English between two people in the center section in Row 25 or so. Someone yelled "Shut up" and the other person responded with yelling about how one shouldn't be "so rude." There was only light whispering during the music and no electronic noise. My opera companion did not like Debussy's music or the production. She left at intermission, but was only one of a few who did so.

In the Moonlight: Norma at the Festival della Valle d’Itria

Mon, 22 Jul 2024 14:59:16 +0000

Bellini – Norma

Norma – Jacquelyn Wagner
Adalgisa – Valentina Farcas
Pollione – Airam Hernández
Oroveso – Goran Jurić
Clotilde – Sugiyama Saori
Flavio – Zachary McCulloch

Coro del Teatro Petruzzelli di Bari, Banda Musicale della Città di Martina Franca “Armonie d’Itria”, Orchestra del Teatro Petruzzelli di Bari / Fabio Luisi.
Stage director – Nicola Raab.

Festival della Valle d’Itria, Palazzo Ducale, Martina Franca, Italy. Sunday, July 21st, 2024.

This visit to the beautiful hilltop town of Martina Franca marked my first to its Festival della Valle d’Itria, this year celebrating its fiftieth edition. It’s a charming place to spend a few days, with excellent food and wine and, at least it seemed, not as many Anglophone tourists as one found on the coast at Bari. This evening’s performance of Norma, the second in the run, took place in the courtyard of the Palazzo Ducale, with the orchestra and chorus brought over from Bari.

Photo: © Clarissa Lapolla

The staging was confided to Nicola Raab. My only other exposure to her work was a semi-staging of Elektra that she did at the São Carlos a few years ago. That was notable for doing much with little and so I was intrigued to see what she would do with Bellini’s masterpiece. Of course, working within the limitations of a temporary stage, such as that of the Palazzo Ducale, meant that this could not be a technically advanced staging with an elaborate moving set. Instead, it required Raab to work closely with her singers to produce a cogent and legible piece of theatre. I do wonder whether Raab might have actually benefitted from presenting her production concept in advance to a group of Italian nonne, to see if it was indeed intelligible. There was a group behind me and they were not shy in asking each other what was going on during the evening. Justifiably so, since there were several moments when I had to ask myself what precisely was going on.

Photo: © Clarissa Lapolla

It started during the overture, when a statuesque figure, later revealed to be Norma, came out and expired on the stage, only to be picked up and walked back off. No, I have no idea. The chorus, was parked on the side of the stage within the columns displaying the bilingual Italian/English surtitles, where they sang in evening dress. They were occasionally brought out and parked on stage, but the reason why they were brought on momentarily, rather than being left in their columns, was less than clear, and inspired an animated intermission discussion between the nonne. Norma was accompanied by a group of five handmaidens, who at one point carried Norma’s children onto the stage. They children looked lifeless – to which the nonne asked if she had already killed them – only for them to be resurrected as soon as they got to the stage. Clotilde was outfitted with a huge wig, that looked like the one Beyoncé wore as Foxxy Cleopatra again, for a reason that I still can’t fathom why. Personenregie consisted mainly of standing and delivering in traditional robes, with Jacquelyn Wagner’s Norma blindfolded by Foxxy for half of ‘casta diva’, only to remove it half-way through. The set was dominated by a large wall, which it later transpired was an enormous gong, as Norma struck it three times. In the respect that Raab needed to create a cogent theatrical narrative, I must admit that I’m not convinced that she did. And in that respect, I think the nonne would have been in accord. That said, for me the performance worked thanks to the clarity of the sung text – had that not been the case, it would have been a very different evening.

Photo: © Clarissa Lapolla

Fabio Luisi led a relaxed survey through the score. The overture set the tone for the remainder: long legato lines, a big, thick string sound and relaxed attack. Of course, I would have preferred the strings senza vibrato and sharper attack, but that is of course a matter of taste. I did find Luisi’s tempi rather on the slow side. He did pick up for ‘Guerra!’, only to slam on the brakes immediately afterwards. The off-stage band played with terrific precision and despite the warmth of the evening, string intonation was accurate throughout. The chorus, prepared by Marco Medved, sang with impressive ensemble given how far they were from the conductor, although their singing was robbed of its full impact given their off-stage position. I longed to be bathed in a wall of sound, which would have been the case had they been on stage. That said, in the Act 1 finale, they sang from the rear of the courtyard, which did create a tremendous effect.

Photo: © Clarissa Lapolla

Norma is a role that has been taken by so many different kinds of singers over the years. Wagner’s is very much that of a bright, lyric soprano. She gave us a lovely ‘casta diva’, one in which her silvery tone echoed the moonlight, showing supreme command of the breath, phrasing in long, aching paragraphs, caressing the lines with real pulchritude. Her soprano is, however, rather narrow and the top tends to shrillness, turning sharp as she put pressure on the tone. It felt that Wagner perhaps requires more metal to find the authority that the role requires. Her Italian was comprehensible, but it struck me that had she spat out the text and used the words more in the Act 1 finale, it would have compensated for her narrowness of tone. Still, she had clearly internalized the role fully and sang with unflinching commitment.

Photo: © Clarissa Lapolla

Valentina Farcas was very much a soprano Adalgisa, interpolating some impressive acuti through the evening. The voice is bright and sunny in tone, appropriately youthful, with an equally smooth legato. While the text was clear, it did feel that she suffered most from the relative lack of characterization, leaving me with a sense of not quite knowing who her character was. Airam Hernández is a new name to me and a very welcome one. The Canarian tenor sang with a princely legato and beauty of line that recalled another great islander colleague of his of the past. He made Pollione a much more rounded and sensitive character than we often see, filling his entreaties to Adalgisa to join him in Rome with real beauty, shading the text impressively. His Italian is superb, every word filled with meaning. Hernández also embellished the line in his opening aria with welcome and musical use of ornamentation. Undoubtedly a singer to watch.

Photo: © Clarissa Lapolla

The remainder of the cast reflected positively on the standards of the festival. Goran Jurić sang Oroveso in his familiar robust and inky bass, singing his aria with impassioned force. Sugiyama Saori sang Clotilde in an attractive soprano, one I would certainly like to hear as Adalgisa, while Zachary McCulloch sang Flavio in a peppery tenor, although his Italian was rather Anglophone in nature.

Photo: © Clarissa Lapolla

Musically, there was much to enjoy in tonight’s Norma. The sheer sense of tradition in the way the orchestra phrased their music, Wagner’s lovely ‘casta diva’, and Hernández bringing bel canto stylishness and impeccable diction to Pollione. Yes, Raab’s staging was rather confusing and didn’t quite illuminate the narrative in the way that one would have hoped, while Luisi’s conducting was rather relaxed for my personal taste. Still, there were a number of elements that gave significant pleasure, and the audience responded at the close with a warm and generous ovation.

Late July and August

Mon, 22 Jul 2024 13:27:27 +0000

It’s still mostly festival season with two events coming up in Toronto.

There’s Summer Opera Lyric Theatre It runs July 26th to August 4th and features three operas in piano score with young artist singers. The operas are Puccini’s La Bohème, Handel’s Serse and Mozart’s Idomeneo and the venue is the Alumnae Theatre on Berkeley Street. Full details, tickets etc.

There’s also Summerworks which features most experimental theatre at a variety of venues. It runs August 1st to 11th. There’s a focus on survival and collaborations with Taiwan this year. I’m intrigued by the following shows: Rougarou, Bimbos in Space, Slug Meal and Versus. Full details here.

There’s also of course Canadian Stage’s annual production in High Park. This year it’s Hamlet and previews have already started, opening night is the 25th and it runs to September 1st. Details here.

Ariodante

Mon, 22 Jul 2024 13:00:42 +0000

Federico Maria Sardelli conducts Cecilia Molinari, Teresa Iervolino, Francesca Lombardi Mazzulli, Theodora Raftis, and Manuel Amati in a live broadcast from the Festival della Valle D’Itria in Martina Franca

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Memoirs of a geisha

Mon, 22 Jul 2024 10:00:06 +0000

//www.youtube.com/watch?v=n6UsZDfJ7Qs

Birthday anniversaries of librettist, poet and politician Carlo Pepoli (1796),
composer Luigi Arditi (some sources say July 16) (1822),
conductor Hans Rosbaud (1895),
and mezzo-soprano Ann Howard (1936)

Happy 78th birthday singer Mirelle Mathieu

//www.youtube.com/watch?v=t9evASARY4E

Happy 77th birthday mezzo-soprano Sandra Browne

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Tannhäuser at Münchner Opernfestspiele

Mon, 22 Jul 2024 06:32:47 +0000

* Notes *Bayerische Staatsoper's 2017 Tannhäuser (ovation pictured, photograph by author) returned to the Münchner Opernfestspiele last night. The performance was absolutely transcendent in its beauty, with grand playing from the orchestra and wonderful singing. The orchestra sounded full and together under Maestro Sebastian Weigle. The trumpets, bassoons, and harp were particularly fine. This staging, from director Romeo Castellucci, is very busy. There are many supernumeraries, in various states of undress, doing all kinds of choreography all the time. For example, the overture was accompanied by perhaps two dozen archers, all of whom appeared to be young ladies with their chests bared. They shot at a large circle with a projection of an eye on it. It was very impressive how well they shot the arrows and how perfectly everything was coordinated. But we also had blood splattered loudly on this same round object, and had a count up in German of time from one second to many billions of years. I did really enjoy the dancing that happened from seated or lying down, the dancers were able to move as one entity, it seemed. The chorus was great, singing with intensity. "Beglückt darf nun dich" was very moving. The rest of the cast was likewise strong. Mezzo-soprano Yulia Matochkina has a luxuriant, plush sound, perfect for Venus. Soprano Elisabeth Teige also has a dark tone as Elisabeth, but the two women definitely sounded different. Her Act II "Dich, teure Halle, grüss ich wieder" was full of hope and her Act III "Er kehret nicht züruck!" had palpable despair. Baritone Andrè Schuen was heartbreaking as Wolfram. His voice is velvety and resonant, and his "O du mein holder Abendstern" was simply lovely. Even still, Schuen managed not to upstage tenor lKaus Florian Vogt in the title role. Vogt is bright, warm, and effortless. His Tannhäuser has much appeal and such sweetness. * Tattling * It seems that certain audience members simply do not think that the messages in German and English about completely turning off one's cellular phones apply to them. An elderly person on the left side of the Balkon, Reihe 3 Platz 35 had a device that rang many times during the overture, and the couple next to her had to help silence it. The person next to us in the Balkon, Reihe 1 Platz 17 was roughly in the same demographic, yet was kind enough to take our photograph before the performance and let another eager person know that our seats were taken before the start of Act III. We tried to arrive as late as possible as we were on the aisle and wanted to make it easier for others to get to their seats.

Norma

Sun, 21 Jul 2024 13:00:18 +0000

Fabio Luisi conducts Jacquelyn Wagner, Valentina Farcas, Airam Hernández, and Goran Juric in a live broadcast from the Festival della Valle D’Itria in Martina Franca

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Mighty monster

Sun, 21 Jul 2024 10:00:28 +0000

Born on this day in 1936 soprano Ursula Schröder-Feinen

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Parsifal at Münchner Opernfestspiele

Sun, 21 Jul 2024 07:23:11 +0000

* Notes *An excellent revival of Parsifal (ovation pictured, photograph by author) opened at Münchner Opernfestspiele yesterday evening. Musically, it was the best Parsifal I have heard live, the orchestra sounded splendid and the singers were all great. Maestro Adam Fischer lead the orchestra with verve, starting off the Vorspiel in a stately manner and building from there. The sound was very full and could be felt in one's whole body. The brass was clear, the timpani ecstatic, and the harps exquisite. Pierre Audi's 2018 production is serviceable. Act I featured a forest, Act II had a curtain downstage and a cloth backdrop mid-stage with a big gash in the middle, and Act III was the forest upside-down, which was effective. There is a lot of imagery around flaccid, aging bodies, on screens and curtains, and depicted in the chorus, whose members wore padded bodysuits to appear naked in Act I Scene 2 and Act II Scene 2. The chorus sang beautifully and together. The principal cast was also uniform and strong. Baritone Jochen Schmeckenbecher's Klingsor was menacing, while bass-baritone Gerald Finley conveyed painfully exhaustion as Amfortas. Bass Tareq Nazmi sang a sympathetic and robust Gurnemanz. Tenor Clay Hilley gave a solid performance as Parsifal, though his stage presence is a bit wooden. His voice cuts through the orchestra and is quite loud. Soprano Nina Stemme makes for an intense Kundry, she seems to really be inside the character, and draws the audience in as well. The resonance of her sound is penetrating but never harsh. Act II was the highlight of the night because of her, to be sure. * Tattling * It was a relief to be at a Wagner performance in Germany, as the audience is serious and engaged. Unfortunately two cellular phones rang during the Vorspiel and there was some clapping after Act I. The person next to us in the Balkon, Reihe 1 Platz 5 was cheerful and joked with us before curtain, but fell asleep during Act I. He had the good sense to leave at the second intermission. Gerald Finley was named a Bayerischer Kammersänger after the performance and addressed his colleagues and the audience in German. He thanked many people, including his wife and family, and mentioned the wisdom he received from Edita Gruberová about performing on this stage.

Das Rheingold

Sat, 20 Jul 2024 13:00:11 +0000

Antonio Pappano conducts Christopher Maltman, Christopher Purves, Sean Panikkar, Marina Prudenskaya, Kiandra Howarth, and Wiebke Lehmkuhl in a performance recorded in London last fall

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Le nozze di Figaro

Sat, 20 Jul 2024 13:00:01 +0000

Gábor Takács-Nagy conducts Peter Mattei, Golda Schultz, Tommaso Barea, Anna El-Khashem, and Rebecka Wallroth in a live performance from the Verbier Festival

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Così fan tutte

Sat, 20 Jul 2024 13:00:00 +0000

Philippe Jordan conducts Federica Lombardi, Emily D’Angelo, Peter Kellner, Filipe Manu, Kate Lindsey, and Christopher Maltman in a performance from last month in Vienna

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Mourning wood

Sat, 20 Jul 2024 10:00:15 +0000

Born on this day in 1938 actresses Natalie Wood and Diana Rigg

The post Mourning wood appeared first on parterre box.

Florence and the machine

Fri, 19 Jul 2024 10:00:40 +0000

Born on this day in 1868 soprano Florence Foster Jenkins

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Tancredi at Bregenzer Festspiele

Fri, 19 Jul 2024 08:00:32 +0000

* Notes *Rossini's Tancredi (ovation pictured, photograph by author) premiered at Bregenzer Festspiele last night in the Großer Saal of the Festspielhaus. Based on Voltaire's play, the opera has lots of brilliant music that is a joy to hear. Set in Syracuse, the production from Jan Philipp Gloger is updated to be set in a Cosa Nostra household. It was a bit on the nose, but the revolving set itself is very attractive. The role of Tancredi is written for a mezzo or contralto en travesti, but for this version the character is a woman with she/her pronouns, but this is only known to her beloved, Amenaide. The singing was adequate. Mezzo-soprano Laura Polverelli was throaty and emotive as Isaura, who was Amenaide's mom rather than her friend in this production. Bass-baritone Andreas Wolf was perfectly fine as Tancredi's rival Orbazzano. Tenor Antonino Siragusa shouted quite a bit as Amenaide's father Argirio. His voice is bright but not overly plaintive or pretty. Soprano Mélissa Petit is a lovely Amenaide, her sound is bird-like and she sang very beautifully with mezzo-soprano Anna Goryachova as Tancredi. Goryachova has some wooliness to her lower register, but her high notes have a nice clarity and she definitely is convincing as an androgynous person in both her body-type but more importantly, in her carriage. Her last piece was very sad, not only because of her singing, but because she has been completely abandoned on the stage and is singing for no one. The orchestra could have been more precise and driven under the baton of Maestra Yi-Chen Lin, though the beauty of the music was evident. * Tattling * Again, the Bregenz audience was quite terrible. The two women who moved in from the aisle behind me in Row 23 spoke loudly and said very self-evident things like "Es is eine Frau, eine Chinesin" about the conductor when the orchestra was playing. A woman next to us in Row 22 loudly unwrapped a cough drop for several seconds during a choral part of Act I. Naturally, there were people taking pictures of the opera during the performance. A person in Row 20 Seat 6 was stoped by an usher in the first half, but both talked to her companion (for which she was roundly hushed by my seat mate) and took at least one photo during the second half.

Der Freischütz at Bregenzer Festspiele

Thu, 18 Jul 2024 15:37:26 +0000

* Notes *A spectacular new production of Der Freischütz (ovation pictured, photograph by author) opened at the Seebühne of the Bregenzer Festspiele yesterday night. The opera featured an icy town under a huge moon with reimagined spoken dialogue. Philipp Stölzl's staging created a whole world complete with synchronized swimming, ice skating, and lots of fire. There were some silly bird sound effects and kitschy projections on the moon, but for the most part, there was always something to look at as objects would rise from the partially submerged set. The singers and dancers did an impressive job moving about the stage, it seems like they could easily slipped. As this took place on Lake Constance, the singers were all amplified and the orchestra, the Wiener Symphoniker, was not even visible expect by simulcast. The music is quite jaunty and fun. It was a little weird that the camera focused often on the finger boards of string instruments, instead of the conductor, Enrique Mazzola. There was some charismatic performances, Moritz von Treuenfel had an outsized role as Samiel, the Black Huntsman, and brought an intense physicality to this spoken part. He was also darkly funny. Bass Christof Fischesser was suitably sinister as Kaspar, and tenor Thomas Blondelle had a pleasing warmth and baritonal quality as Max. Strongest of all were the two sopranos, Hanna Herfurtner was an incisive Ännchen without being shrill and Mandy Fredrich had a beautifully clear but emotionally-charged performance as Agathe. * Tattling * This audience was badly-behaved. There was a family of four in Row 32 Seats 302 to 305 who came with another couple that pretty much spoke for the entire two hours. The two males in the group repeated took photographs of the performance even though we had been explicitly told not to at the beginning. For the most part the talking was fairly quiet at least. It is simply unnerving to be around audience members who don't seem that engaged with such an over-the-top display in such a unique setting. It makes you wonder what would make them stop talking and put their phones down.

The Tortured Poets Department

Thu, 18 Jul 2024 15:21:57 +0000

Wednesday evening’s Shuffle Hour concert at Toronto Summer Music was given by mezzo Alex Hetherington and pianist Vlad Soloviev in Heliconian Hall and carried the curious moniker The Tortured Poets Department. It kicked off with the letter aria from Massenet’s Werther and let’s face it if anyone deserves torturing it’s some combination of Werther himself and Goethe for inventing him (and possibly Massenet for prolonging the life of a character who might otherwise have fallen into obscurity). Whatever, Alex gave a fine, impassioned reading of the aria which set the stage well for what was to follow.

And that was one of the most dramatic accounts of Schumann’s Dichterliebe that I have ever heard. Both the singing and the pianism were strongly declamatory though not to an extent that distorted words or music. It was exciting and very well done. I’m just not sure I’d wan to hear these songs that way all the time. There’s a lyricism there too and I’m not sure one can have both at the same time. Still, let me reiterate it was a valid interpretation that worked well on its own terms.

The concluding piece was Jocelyn Morlock’s Amore. It’s a playful setting of a couple of short Latin lines[1] with syllables pulled all over the place. In it’s way it’s both a summary and an antidote to Dichterliebe. Clever programming!

And there were surtitles.. yay, yay and thrice yay!

fn1: Amore nihil molius… Amore nihil violentius

Written in the tsars

Thu, 18 Jul 2024 13:00:12 +0000

As promised, Chris’s Cache continues its Russian cycle with two epics–Mussorgsky’s Khovanshchina and Borodin’s Prince Igor—both from early 1970s La Scala with starry casts that include Irina Arkhipova and Nicolai Ghiaurov performing the former work in Italian, and Bolshoi regulars Tamara Milashkina, Vladimir Atlantov, and Yevgeni Nesterenko in the latter.

Last month, I attended a thrilling performance of the Mussorgsky work at the Berlin Staatsoper. It reminded me how much I like the opera and prefer it to the composer’s more frequently performed masterpiece Boris Godunov. I admit I found Khovanshchina confusing when I first saw it at the Met’s new production in 1985, pre-MetTitles, but the fine cast, which included Helga Dernesch (in her very belated company debut), Wieslaw Ochman, Aage Haugland, and Martti Talvela still made it memorable.

It’s been over twelve years since it was done at the Met, a really excellent revival of the company’s now decades-old production with Olga Borodina (wonderful as Marfa) and Ildar Abdrazakov, superbly led by Kirill Petrenko in his last Met performances to date.

Not so many live primetime Bolshoi Opera performances were recorded, but when the company went on tour it always brought its very best singers, and often pirates were there to capture them, as is the case with today’s 1973 visit to La Scala.

Igor, too, has been missing from the Met since its was revived in 2014 in a production by Dmitri Tcherniakov also starring Abdrazakov of whom we’ve likely seen the last here in the US.

Another Khovanshchina with Christa Ludwig, Ochman, Ghiaurov, Talvela, and Bernd Weikl can be found here.

Mussorgsky: Khovanshchina (in Italian)

Marfa: Irina Arkhipova
Emma: Rita Talarico
Susanna: Clara Petrella
Andrei Khovansky: Giorgio Merighi
Ivan Khovansky: Nicolai Ghiaurov
Dosifei: Paolo Washington
Golitsin: Giampaolo Corradi
Shaklovity: Lorenzo Saccomani
Scribe: Piero de Palma

Conductor: Gianandrea Gavazzeni
Teatro alla Scala
25 January 1971
Broadcast

Borodin: Prince Igor

Yaroslavna: Tamara Milashkina
Konchakovna: Tamara Sinyavskaya
Polovtsian Girl: Makvala Kasrashvili
Yaroslavna’s Nanny: Nina Grigorieva
Vladimir Igorevich: Vladimir Atlantov
Vladimir Yaroslavich: Arthur Eisen
Konchak: Alexander Vedernikov
Prince Igor: Evgeny Nesterenko
Ovlur: Vitaly Vlasov
Skula: Valery Yaroslavtsev
Eroshka: Konstantin Baskov

Conductor: Yuri Simono
Bolshoi Opera on tour to La Scala
1 November 1973
In-house

Each great Russian work can be downloaded by clicking on the icon of a cloud with an arrow pointing downward on the audio player above and the resulting mp3 file will appear in your download directory.

Never miss an episode of Chris’s Cache! Subscribe to this podcast via Apple Podcasts or RSS.

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Picker and chooser

Thu, 18 Jul 2024 10:00:03 +0000

//www.youtube.com/watch?v=zkbDqEW4l20

Happy 59th birthday mezzo-soprano Vesselina Kasarova

//www.youtube.com/watch?v=pwmnBVtpwL0

On this day in 1791 Cherubini‘s Ladoiska premiered in Paris

//www.youtube.com/watch?v=0LpEjpZMy-8

Birthday anniversaries of composer Giovanni Bononcini (1670),
mezzo-soprano and composer Pauline Viardot-Garcia (1821),
conductors Kurt Masur and Carlo Franci (both 1927),
and baritone Yury Mazurok (1931)

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1,000,000 page views

Wed, 17 Jul 2024 19:52:00 +0000

Today, July 17 2024, this blog topped 1 million page views.

I started the blog in 2007, but the posts go back before then to May 2003. The first post was about a performance of Jenufa at the Châtelet, in Stéphane Braunschweig's still-memorable production. In all, there are now 546 posts on the blog, not counting this one.

Things are about to quieten down for the summer of course, but this year I've decided to stop off in Pesaro on the way to Greece, so there should be a new post in August, all being well.

The blog goes on.

Connolly and Middleton

Wed, 17 Jul 2024 19:35:17 +0000

This year’s art song mentors for Toronto Summer Music; Dame Sarah Connolly and Joseph Middleton, gave the traditional recital in Walter Hall on Tuesday evening. Those who braved flooded streets and spotty TTC service enjoyed a treat. It was a carefully curated and beautifully performed collection of songs.

The first half of the programme consisted entirely of English language songs. Barber’s Three Songs, Op. 10 set texts by James Joyce and are quite declamatory in nature. The third song, “I Hear an Army” is particularly dramatic. Besides their own merits these songs set the tone for the evening. Connolly’s diction (the most welcome surtitles scarcely needed here) and phrasing were impeccable. She used a wide range of colours with taste and Middleton showed that he was no mere accompanist. The subtleties of his playing were one of the highlights of the evening.

Errolyn Wallen’s Night Thoughts; written for the performers, came next. Wallen is a Belize born Brit and there’s definitely something here that reflects that heritage. It’s gentler than Maria Thompson Corley’s The Colour of Joy but reflects some similar ideas; the impact of a Northern winter on someone from somewhere warmer, the quality of Northern light, the hopes and fears of the immigrant experience. There’s something conversational too. Perhapds a reflection of her also being a singer/songwriter. I need to hear these songs again.

Richard Rodney Bennett’s A History of the Thé Dansant riffs in an impressionistic way on the experience of two upper class English children in the fashionable south of France in the 1920s. The poems are by his sister May Peacock. The atmosphere will be familiar to anyone who has read memoirs of writers of the period; Anthony Powell and Cyril Connolly (no relation as far as I know) come to mind. Jazz, fancy deserts, flirtation, not quite sun, sand and sex but getting there. These are all playfully evoked with jazzy touches. Dame Sarah definitely added her own ironic touches. Good fun.

After the break things got a bit more serious, at east for a while. We heard one of the finest performances of the piano version of Mahler’s Rückert Lieder that I have ever heard. These songs cover such a wide emotional range and navigating it while maintaining impeccable musicality is a feat. I might single out one moment. At the devastating conclusion of “Um Mitternacht”, sung as the third of the five, Dame Sarah looked as emotionally drained as I felt and yet after the briefest of pauses she launched into an appropriately sunny “Liebst du um Schönheit”. There was so much subtlety, artistry and depth of emotion from both of them in this set that it defies my powers of description.

Continuing in the Viennese mould we got some early, and rarely heard, Schoenberg and Berg songs which really do show that what happened musically in Vienna in the decades after1900 was really all of a logical whole; however much some of the formal experimentation that went on might suggest otherwise. In an odd way this was reinforced by a final set of cabaret and musical pieces by Kurt Weill; composed of course in exile but carrying on that sensibility. I particularly enjoyed “Je ne t’aime pas” where Dame Sarah was not afraid to switch between rather lovely singing and a sort of Sprechstimme more typical of early Weill than the Broadway stuff.

The encore was Herbert Howells’ setting of Walter de la Mer’s King David which Dame Sarah has described as “the greatest British Art Song ever written”. I’d have to think about that but it’s certainly a most beautiful poem and a lovely setting by a somewhat underrated composer. A fitting end to a fine recital that certainly charmed away sorrowfulness.

Photo credit: Lucky Tang

Polybius and Government

Wed, 17 Jul 2024 17:33:16 +0000

Edward Gibbon wrote, “History is indeed little more than the register of the crimes, follies, and misfortunes of mankind.” His great predecessor the Greek historian Polybius (c. 200 – c. 118 BC) seems on close analysis by the reader to have believed that history was little more than the register of different people doing the same things over and over again.

His purpose in writing the Histories was to explain how Rome in only 53 years went from being a local power to mastery of the Mediterranean world and its environs. In Book VI of his Histories, he examined the various constitutions under which states operate arguing that Rome’s at the time was the best of those he knew and was a large reason for its rise to domination.

Polybius describes six forms of governments, all transitory and which merge with the next in regular cyclical succession. Despotism is the first form of government. The emergence of a strongman who seizes control of the group in which he exists. Kingship evolves from despotism as a consequence of honorable and effective leadership. Polybius asserts that morality transmutes despotism into kingship.

The good behavior of a king does not guarantee that his heirs may be likewise effective and honorable. Thus Polybius asserts that inevitably kingship degenerates into tyranny. This state in turn eventually causes good men to band together to overthrow the tyrant. The people in gratitude for the release from tyranny grant authority to those who have relieved them. Thus tyranny is followed by aristocracy.

But the same problem arises with the succesion of new generations. Polybius in a powerful passage describes how aristocracy degenerates into oligarchy which is as unstable as was tyranny.

But when the sons of these men received the same position of authority from their fathers,—having had no experience of misfortunes, and none at all of civil equality and freedom of speech, but having been bred up from the first under the shadow of their fathers’ authority and lofty position,—some of them gave themselves up with passion to avarice and unscrupulous love of money, others to drinking and the boundless debaucheries which accompanies it, and others to the violation of women or the forcible appropriation of boys; and so they turned an aristocracy into an oligarchy. Aristocracy degenerates into oligarchy But it was not long before they roused in the minds of the people the same feelings as before, and their fall therefore was very like the disaster which befell the tyrants.

The citizens desperate to rid themselves of rule by the privileged and corrupt few turn to democracy. Polybius describes this change in the constitution of society thusly: Having then got rid of these rulers by assassination or exile, they do not venture to set up a king again, being still in terror of the injustice to which this led before; nor dare they entrust the common interests again to more than one, considering the recent example of their misconduct: and therefore, as the only sound hope left them is that which depends upon themselves, they are driven to take refuge in that; and so changed the constitution from an oligarchy to a democracy.

The historian then posits that democracy degenerates into a rule of corruption and violence, only to be stopped by a return to despotism. He outlines the path from democracy to mob rule to despotism as follows: But as soon as a new generation has arisen, and the democracy has descended to their children’s children, long association weakens their value for equality and freedom, and some seek to become more powerful than the ordinary citizens; and the most liable to this temptation are the rich. Democracy degenerates into rule of corruption and violence, only to be stopped by a return to despotism. So when they begin to be fond of office, and find themselves unable to obtain it by their own unassisted efforts and their own merits, they ruin their estates, while enticing and corrupting the common people in every possible way. By which means when, in their senseless mania for reputation, they have made the populace ready and greedy to receive bribes, the virtue of democracy is destroyed, and it is transformed into a government of violence and the strong hand. For the mob, habituated to feed at the expense of others, and to have its hopes of a livelihood in the property of its neighbors, as soon as it has got a leader sufficiently ambitious and daring, being excluded by poverty from the sweets of civil honors, produces a reign of mere violence. Then come tumultuous assemblies, massacres, banishments, redivisions of land; until, after losing all trace of civilization, it has once more found a master and a despot.

Polybius sees each form of government as inherently unstable, planted at its inception with the seeds of its own destruction. He was writing over 2,000 years ago. The rise and fall of civilizations and cultures may not be exactly as he depicted them, but his central point is prescient and undiminished. Yeats echoed this view when he wrote, Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold. Everything human is temporary. As a later political observer commented, Anything that can end will end.

It was Polybius himself who described Scipio Aemelianus weeping at the final destruction of Carthage as he realized eventually the same fate would descend on his own country. Polybius, his mentor and friend, was with Scipio at the razing of Carthage.

Polybius’ views on government seem as if written yesterday rather than two millennia ago. The link will take you to Book VI of his Histories. In fact, all the extant books of his monumental work can be found there. Polybius Histories Book VI

Youthful Tragedy: Madama Butterfly at the Teatro Real

Wed, 17 Jul 2024 16:40:45 +0000

Puccini – Madama Butterfly

Cio-cio-san – Ailyn Pérez
BF Pinkerton – Charles Castronovo
Suzuki – Nino Surguladze
Sharpless – Gerardo Bullón
Goro – Moisés Marin
Lo zio Bonzo – Roman Chabaranok
Il Principe Yamadori – Toni Marsol
Kate Pinkerton – Marta Fontanals-Simmons
Lo zio Yakusidé – Andrés Mundo
Il commissario imperial – Xavier Casademont

Coro Titular del Teatro Real, Orquesta Titular del Teatro Real / Nicola Luisotti.
Stage directors – Damiano Michieletto.

Teatro Real, Madrid, Spain. Tuesday, July 16th, 2024.

To end its 2023 – 24 season, the Teatro Real chose to mount Damiano Michieletto’s staging of Madama Butterfly, imported from the Teatro Regio Torino. As is customary here, the house cast the run with multiple singers, including Saioa Hernández, Lianna Haroutounian and Dr Alexandra Kurzak in the title role, with Leonardo Capalbo, Matthew Polenzani and Michael Fabiano as Pinkerton. This evening’s cast featured Ailyn Pérez in the title role, with Charles Castronovo as Pinkerton. The vast majority of the run was conducted by Nicola Luisotti, as indeed it was tonight, with his assistant, Luis Miguel Méndez taking on a handful of performances. The run was also dedicated to the centennial of the birth of Catalonia’s great Butterfly, the late Victoria de los Ángeles.

Michieletto sets the action in our time. Rather than stylized nineteenth-century Japan, we get a seedy and gaudy backstreet, where girls are displayed in a glass room, encouraged to socialize with rich westerners who purchase their services. In so doing, Michieletto immediately highlights the child sexual tourism that sits at the heart of this piece, but that’s so often ignored in productions that prettify what is, in reality, a gruesome story. Yet more than that, he makes us feel. There are so many moments in this staging that just had me in tears. This is a staging of sheer visceral emotional impact. Michieletto makes us even more aware of the fact that Butterfly isn’t marrying Pinkerton for love, but instead through desperation – the way that she recounts the penury she now faced that forced her into prostitution, was made even more potent by the setting. The love duet was absolutely devastating, Butterfly’s sincerity was so tangible, her belief that in marrying Pinkerton she could make a better life for herself so real. Yet Michieletto juxtaposed the duet with a group of girls walking around the glass room below. It was an unbearably moving image, the hope in Butterfly’s music contrasted so effectively with the grim reality of the child sexual tourism of which she was a victim.

What Michieletto also succeeds in doing is making Pinkerton an even more rounded character than we often see. Yes, he’s clearly what the Italians would call a ‘stronzo’, the way that even before meeting Butterfly he was already socializing and enjoying the company of the other girls, made it clear he had no intention of ever making a long-term commitment to her. Yet there was a genuine sincerity in his singing of the love duet where, for a moment, we could see that he was aware of the sacrifices Butterfly was making in spurning her faith and family. That psychological insight that Michieletto brought into the characters and their motivations was ever-present throughout the evening. As Sharpless read the letter to Butterfly in Act 2, we could see Butterfly’s fantasies of Pinkerton coming to life as he appeared walking on the stage. The moment when Sorrow was introduced to Sharpless was just as devastating as it should be, the innocence of the child returning home from kindergarten with his backpack, tugged at the heartstrings and reinforced the tragedy of both his and his mother’s fate. Particularly as Michieletto had a group of children taunting him later on, bringing out the fact that Sorrow really wasn’t unique in being a child of sexual tourism. The closing tableau of the evening, with Pinkerton snatching Sorrow and throwing him into a car, while Butterfly lay lifeless, quite simply finished me. Michieletto has given us what I have longed to see for so long. A Butterfly that really engages with the horror and tragedy of this story, and does so in a way that makes it impossible for an audience member not to be moved.

Luisotti conducted a house orchestra on excellent form. The sound was big and rich, with some superb brass playing. He also tugged at the heartstrings in the way that he brought out the fragrance of Butterfly’s opening entry, the gossamer lightness of the sound reflecting those Nipponese cherry blossoms. I did, however, find his tempi had a tendency to drag later on in the evening. He revelled in those long Puccinian melodies, but it did feel in the latter pages of Act 2 that there was a distinct drop in tension. The chorus, in their brief contributions, was enthusiastic, although it did take the sopranos a few seconds to find the note in their opening entry and there were a few overprominent vibratos. The strings dug deep to find a deep pile carpet of sound. Luisotti also allowed the band to bloom, although this wasn’t always optimal for balance from my seat, since Pérez’ Butterfly was frequently overwhelmed by the tumult from the pit.

Pérez has one of the most sheerly beautiful sopranos around. The sound has wonderful sheen, with a pulchritudinous velvety core, based on a nice, juicy bottom. She clearly has a very well schooled technique and found a truth in the text that I found to be extremely moving. Hers isn’t the largest voice to have essayed this music and in a theatre of this size, with a conductor willing to allow the orchestra to play out, there were moments where the tone took on a hardness and lack of spin on top, particularly in the climactic closing scene. She sang her ‘un bel dì’ with genuine feeling, finding a beauty of tone and understanding of the text that was deeply affecting. Pérez did, unfortunately, run out of steam in the big climax of that celebrated aria, but one could not be failed to be moved by the vulnerability she brought to the role – a vulnerability that emerged through the tone and her use of text. There was much to enjoy in her assumption and her dedication to Michieletto’s staging.

Castronovo’s Pinkerton was an extremely psychologically complex account of a role that can so often feel one-dimensional. He managed to combine swagger, thorough his gleaming top, with sensitivity in the way that he pulled back on the dynamics in the love duet. As always, his handsome tenor gave much pleasure, as indeed did the clarity of his diction. His phrasing and elegance of line gave his Pinkerton a sophisticated air that made his cowardice in not even being able to face Butterfly in the closing scene even more frustrating. As far as I can recall, Gerardo Bullón is a new name to me and a very welcome discovery. His baritone is firm and warm, with good projection. The top does lose a little in quality, but his is most certainly a name to watch.

Nino Surguladze sang Suzuki with genuine concern and power. She made use of an agreeably full chestiness, but the registers in her mezzo appear to be starting to part company. Moisés Marin gave us a textually-aware Goro, sung in a focused tenor with easy reach. The remainder of the cast reflected the excellent standards one would expect from this address. Marta Fontanals-Simmons made much of little as Kate Pinkerton, sung in a vibrant mezzo, while Toni Marsol, here costumed as a very old Yamadori, sung in a similarly vibrant baritone.

I am genuinely surprised that this Butterfly has not travelled more widely than Turin and now Madrid. In it, Michieletto faces the horror and tragedy of this story head-on, making it infinitely more moving than any other Butterfly I have seen before – and in that I include Jacopo Spirei’s excellent staging at the São Carlos last year, which also sought to face the ugliness of the sexual tourism at the heart of the work. Michieletto gives us a staging that really makes us feel, to appreciate the unbearable tragedy of Butterfly’s life, a girl who only wanted to make a better future for herself with her American husband. Tonight, he had excellent singing-actors at his disposal. While Pérez was stretched by the final scene, not helped by the roar from the pit, her acting and use of text throughout moved me immensely, while Castronovo made Pinkerton a troublingly complex character. This has to be the definitive staging of Butterfly for our times and deserves to be widely seen and discussed. The audience responded at the close with generous applause for the cast. There are only a few performances left in the run – if you can get to Madrid, don’t miss them. And if you can’t the Real will be streaming Pérez and Castronovo on their Myoperaplayer service from July 21st.

Sound baths

Wed, 17 Jul 2024 10:00:12 +0000

//www.youtube.com/watch?v=q7IQrAs0SoA

Happy 64th birthday soprano Dawn Upshaw

//www.youtube.com/watch?v=_nUk6djiKFE

Born on this day in 1935 composer and parodist Prof. Peter Schickele

//www.youtube.com/watch?v=68_j6yU4Whg

Birthday anniversaries of soprano Antonina Neshdanova (1873)
and director Luc Bondy (1948)

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Dreams, Death and the Maiden

Wed, 17 Jul 2024 06:53:22 +0000

Monday night in Walter Hall Toronto Summer Music continued with a concert by the new Orford Quartet (Jonathan Crow and Andrew Wan – violins, Sharon Wei – viola, Brian Manker – cello). I was there primarily to hear the première of Ian Cusson’s Dreams which was bookended on the programme by “Death and the Maiden” themed quartets in D minor by Mozart and Schubert.

Dreams consists of three movements; each inspired by a vignette from Akira Kurosawa’s 1990 film Yume (Dreams). The first movement “Sunshine Through the Rain” concerns a boy who ignores his morther’s advice not to spy on a kitsune (fox) wedding. It has a mysterious feel; it’s tonality insecure and unsettling. I was thinking Pelléas et Mélisande. I loved it. The second and third movements both have dance elements. In “The Peach Orchard” dolls who represent the spirit of felled peach trees dance for a little boy whose family once owned the orchard and in “Village of the Watermills” the funeral procession of an old lady turns into a rambunctious celebration of her life with echoes vaguely reminiscent of a New Orleans jazz funeral. Good stuff, especially the first movement.

Preceding Dreams we had Mozart’s String Quartet No. 15, K421. This has a rather lovely melody in the second movement and a very interesting minuet in the third. In the latter the first violin plays a beautiful high melody while the other players play pizzicato dance rhythms with the viola sometimes breaking off in a kind of “call and response” with the first violin. It was a nice example of a how the members of a very good chamber ensemble riff off each other.

The final piece on the programme was the famous Schubert String Quartet No.14, D.810 “Death and the Maiden” which reworks some of the material from the even more famous famous lied. This all comes in a theme and variations in the second movement but there’s actually rather more to the piece notably a short but playful scherzo third movement and a super fast and virtuosic finale. First rate playing throughout as one would expect. All in all a very satisfying evening.

Photo credit: Lucky Tang

Festival d’Aix-en-Provence (4) - Iphigénie en Aulide and Iphigénie en Tauride, 11 July 2024

Tue, 16 Jul 2024 15:21:01 +0000

Grand Théâtre de Provence

Images: Monika Rittershaus

Iphigénie – Corinne Winters
Agamemnon – Russell Braun
Clytemnestre – Véronique Gens
Achille – Alasdair Kent
Calchas – Nicolas Cavallier
Diane – Soula Parassidis
Patrocle – Lukáš Zeman
Arcas, Minister, Scythian – Tomasz Kumięga
Oreste – Florian Sempey
Pylade – Stanislas de Barbeyrac
Thoas – Alexandre Duhamel
Priestess – Laura Jarrell

Director, set designs – Dmitri Tcherniakov
Costumes – Elena Zaytseva
Lighting – Gleb Filtschinsky

Dramaturgy – Tatiana Werestchagina

Le Choeur d’Astrée (chorus director: Richard Wilberforce)
Le Concert d’Astrée

Emmanuelle Haïm (conductor)

It is not every day one has opportunity to see Iphigénie en Aulide, let alone in tandem with Iphigénie en Tauride. Even I, fervent Gluckian that I be, had never seen the former staged. This is, of course, just what a major festival should be doing: something that cannot readily be replicated in a house season. Enlisting Dmitri Tcherniakov, one of today’s most sought-after opera directors, underlined the Festival d’Aix-en-Provence’s intent. It was, by any standards, a memorable occasion, even if Tcherniakov’s production proved a little more straightforward, even conventional – I cannot imagine why some booed the first opera – than one might have hoped for, and the period instruments of Emmanuelle Haïm’s Concert d’Astrée often lacked the dramatic commitment either of the more colourful period ensembles (such as Raphaël Pichon’s Pygmalion the following evening) or of modern orchestras.

Tcherniakov’s Paris Troyens was a landmark staging, its twin presentation of war and therapeutic aftermath in the two parts of Berlioz’s opera cast a powerful, provocative spell that has yet to recede. Here, in a dramatic œuvre of great importance to Berlioz and Wagner, the uncharitable might say there was a little too much retreading of ground, if in near-reverse, war naturally coming second and announced as such at the close of Iphigénie en Aulide, the curtain starkly announcing ‘GUERRE’. To be fair, though, the Tcherniakov therapeutic turn, which after his fitful Ring seemed to many of us to have run its course, is only hinted at in the group of refugees among whom Iphigénie (en Tauride) stays behind. Trauma itself stands rightly, strongly in the foreground, from the second drama’s announcement of casualties over a generation of war (‘une vingtaine d’années plus tard’, we are informed as we re-enter the theatre after the sole, dinner interval). Oreste’s shellshock is horrifying throughout, rendering his emergent friendship – perhaps in this condition, it can be no more than that – with Pylade a necessary, if highly limited, solace.

Tcherniakov, as usual, provides his own set design, a building outline that can serve, both intact and not, for a range of dramatic purposes—and to my mind did so very well. (It doubtless depended where one was in the theatre, but I heard complaints contrary to my experience, but undoubtedly genuine, from both visual and acoustic standpoints.) At any rate, the contrast on one level between the two dramas registers strongly, the ambiguities of sacrifice readily apparent at the close of Aulide. Iphigénie has been rescued for now, but at what cost, both personal (marriage) and societal (impending war)? A good few of those who had been initially happy, or at least compliant, to cooperate in her sacrifice must surely wish they had gone through with it. The struggle of Achille and his men to overcome Agamemnon and his path is well handled: one of the most convincing fight scenes I have seen on the operatic stage. Few are the opera productions today, or so it feels, that escape silly dancing, neither related to the music nor intelligent set in (non-musical) counterpoint to it. This, alas, proved no exception, but most of us are wearily accustomed to the practice by now; at least it is at a wedding, which one might say is a natural home to silly dancing. It remains a pity, though, that the expressive, dramatic role played by dance in so much eighteenth-century opera, especially that we may broadly consider to be French, once again goes ignored.

The question of the deus ex machina, familiar to Wagner, who wrote a revised ending of his own (surprisingly adopted by Riccardo Muti at La Scala), is muddied, but that is probably the point. Having Diane speak through the sacrificed Iphigénie – seen at the beginning, in Agamemnon’s imagination – allows Iphigénie herself, in double, to witness that horror, as well as compound fear instilled amidst the similarly consecrated nuptials concerning Agamenon’s voyage. The scene is recalled at the end of Tauride, a nicely ambiguous close into which we can probably read what we will, though it would be difficult to feel wildly optimistic, given what we have seen. There are times when subverting or, more often, simply disregarding the lieto fine irritates, at best, but this is better thought through and without narrowing insistence.

Haïm’s direction had its moments. The vigour of the Scythian choruses in particular evoked a properly barbaric, brutally war-torn atmosphere from percussion and the excellent chorus alike. In general, though, even for those who find it easier to take such ‘whiteness’ of strings than I do, the emotional range was limited, belying Gluck’s status as a master musical dramatist. Purely orchestral movements often seemed merely pretty or, worse, fey, rather than acting as bearers and drivers of the drama. Dance music thereby doubly suffered, given Tcherniakov’s parallel lack of interest. Intonation, moreover, was variable, even given regular retuning. The audience, however, greeted Haïm with rapturous applause.

Corinne Winters’s performance would have greatly impressed, had it only been in one of the operas. Hers was a musicodramatic achievement of high order, no mere ‘feat’. As well acted as it was sung, one could read almost as much into her varied facial expressions as her vocal palette. Here was a survivor in every sense. From a strong cast, Véronique Gens as a glamorous yet intensely human (and humane) Clytemnestre, Alasdair Kent’s Achille, cocky vanity matching yet not exceeding his valour, Florian Sempey’s resolute yet highly traumatised Oreste, and Stanislas de Barbeyrac’s heart-rendingly beautiful performance of Pylade stood out for me. This, though, was an Iphigénie cast in depth; I recall no weak links. Whatever my reservations, its memory will also doubtless endure.

Festival d’Aix-en-Provence (5) - Samson, 12 July 2024

Tue, 16 Jul 2024 15:20:45 +0000

Théâtre de l’Archevêché

Samson – Jarrett Ott
Dalila – Jacquelyn Stucker
Timna – Lea Desandre
Achisch – Nahuel Di Pierro
Elon – Laurence Kilsby
Angel – Julie Roset
First Judge, Guest – Antonin Rondepierre
Samson’s mother – Andréa Ferréol
Young Samson – Gabriel Coullaud-Rosseel
Homeless person – Pascal Lifschutz
Dancers – Gal Fefferman, Theo Emil Krausz, Victoria McConnell, Manuel Meza, Rouven Pabst, Francesco Pacelli, Dan Palleg, Marion Plantey, Evie Poaros, Robin Rohrmann, Victor Villarreal, Marko Weigert
Actors – Alexandre Charlet, Arnaud Fiore, Jacky Kumanovic

Director – Claus Guth
Set designs – Étienne Pluss
Costumes – Ursula Kudrna
Lighting and video – Bertrand Couderc
Choreography – Sommer Ulrickson
Sound design – Mathis Nitschke
Editorial associate – Eddy Garaudel

Dramaturgy – Yvonne Gebauer

Pygmalion

Raphaël Pichon (conductor)

A Rameau premiere? Yes and no. In some ways, what we saw and heard was more extraordinary than that: the resurrection of Rameau’s lost Voltaire opera, Samson of 1733. Envisaged by Voltaire as the work to reform tragédie lyrique, to restore its French classical virtues, it fell prey to censorship on grounds of blasphemy and was never performed. Both music and original libretto were lost, although a revised, almost certainly toned-down version of the latter survives from a collection Voltaire published later in life. Adopting an approach both speculative and scholarly, in the best sense creative, Raphaël Pichon and Claus Guth have reinvented the work, delving deeper into the Book of Judges for context, yet setting the work in a present framed by Samson’s mother (movingly acted, not sung, by Andréa Ferréol, an ambiguous homeless man (Pascal Lifschutz) and other actors and singers (including an enchanting Angel from Julie Roser). Knowing that Rameau reused music from the opera, initial attempts were made to fit Voltaire to numbers from other works.

For instance, Pichon recounts: ‘you may be familiar with the entrée “Les Incas du Pérou” in Les Indes galantes. It contains a very impressive scene sung by the character of Huascar, who is also a basse-taille, and who also commits suicide – by hurling himself into a volcano. The music in this scene is truly breathtaking, and it gradually became clear to me that it had been used for the final scene of the destruction of the temple in Samson. So for that scene, I began to assemble a first mosaic. And so it went on.’ But it soon proved impossible to match music to the only version of the libretto to survive, so instead they adopted a freer approach, inventing that scenario and, in a way, letting both music and the Bible dictate, or perhaps even become, the drama. ‘And so,’ according to Pichon, ‘began a long and painstaking treasure hunt … and its moments of doubt when we deleted everything and started all over again. First we had to think about the number of acts, the nature of the prologue, the trajectory of a character within an act, and then the sequence of scenes, the structuring of each scene, trying to find the best way to get from one to the next, not to mention the range of tonalities and their sequences…’. Eddy Garaudel as writer and Yvonne Gebauer as dramaturge were deeply involved in the process too. A diary, if such a thing exists, or itself could be ‘reconstructed’ or ‘reimagined’, would doubtless be enlightened.

Voltaire’s determination to restrict recitative to the minimum makes for a fascinating ‘reform’, now incorporating speech and even sound design, that in some ways looks back to early Venetian opera – Pichon mentions Cavalli, who of course worked in France too – and forward through Gluck almost to wherever one will. It is a one-off, and its creators appear to have been liberated by that prospect. Dance becomes all the more dramatically focused, and if invoking the spirit of Wagner might be misleading, it is perhaps not entirely so. Others will have different standpoints, of course, and in many ways the work came across as a staged oratorio, a French counterpart to Handel’s work of the same name, Rameau, Voltaire, and their modern collaborators perhaps penetrating even deeper.

There would be much more to be written about the idea and realisation of the enterprise; it would be a fine thing if its creators were to do so, perhaps in tandem with some of the scholars Pichon cites. But what of the dramatic reality, as the sun set on Aix’s ever-magical Théâtre de l’Archevêché? The use of spoken texts from Judges, not quite in lieu of recitative but rather supplementing and framing, offered power and concision: worlds away from what any eighteenth-century (or later) censor would have approved. Étienne Pluss’s set design seemed to mediate between the colours and materials of vernacular architecture and a non-specific Canaan/Israel/Palestine that for obvious reasons presented problems of its own. There are clearly limits to how one might defuse, almost literally, those issues, given the subject matter. I felt uneasy at the literally monochrome portrayal of Philistines in black and Israelites in white, but perhaps black-and-whiteness was the point. In general, a temptation to make political points was, probably wisely, avoided. Samson’s own depiction, aided by sound design that gave voice to his internal agonies, was more a psychological study—and a powerful one at that.

Jarrett Ott’s work in bringing that study to life was outstanding, as well acted as it was sung, in (to my ears) excellent French too, which far from always goes without saying. The hero’s charisma and physicality – partly, it seemed, compensation for personal and social trauma – shone through, as did Ott’s chemistry with his fellow artists. Timna, a composite of various women with whom Samson was involved prior to Dalila, and then in the second part Dalila herself were brought to life vividly and in perfect style by the nicely complementary Lea Desandre and Jacquelyn Stucker. Nahuel Di Pierro’s dark, malovelent Achisch and the strikingly melliflous tenor of Laurence Kilsby as the ultimately doomed traitor Elon offered equally fine character studies in voice and gesture. Dancers and chorus contributed likewise, as impressive collectively as individually.

Both inspiring and supporting this was the outstanding work of Pichon and his Pygmalion choir and orchestra. The ensemble’s dark hue, inflected by moments of typically French éclat, underpinned one of the finest period-instrument performances I have heard, far superior to the previous evening’s Gluck. It was unabashedly bigboned, refuting the silly conflation common to many of ‘old’ and ‘small’, relishing rather a confrontation between old and new that played out on stage, in the pit, and in our minds. An unmistakeably Gallic bassoon enabled one, perhaps fancifully, to trace lineage up to Stravinsky’s Rite and indeed beyond, to early recordings of French orchestras, whose particularity has largely been lost in postwar homogenisation of orchestral sound. Pichon’s direction seemed unerringly to alight on the right balance, dynamic contrast, tempo, and more: a fine illustration of how scholarship and musicianship can and should inform one another in the heat of the dramatic moment. Perhaps another time it would have been different; it gave the impression of marrying due preparation with spontaneity on the evening, as did the performances of those on stage.

And so, when the temple came crashing down in the wounded, tortured Samson’s final act of revenge and personhood, Samson became the lion he once had rent asunder. Voltaire’s determination to avoid the lieto fine, fully supported then and now by Rameau, imparted an ending of veritable and venerable tragedy, Attic and Hebrew. The world stopped, scenically and musically, in a fashion both faithful and unfaithful to Samson and his original creators—and thus, one could fancy, to expectations ancient and modern. This was evidently a labour not only of love but also of conviction for all involved. In that sense and not only that, the figure of Samson and Voltaire’s bold, vanquished plans for operatic reform found themselves embodied in Rameau, Pichon, and Guth’s new Samson.

Harem scarem

Tue, 16 Jul 2024 10:00:03 +0000

//www.youtube.com/watch?v=C9ugmurt950

Happy 68th birthday playwright Tony Kushner

//www.youtube.com/watch?v=d8VMwJ-s6-o

Born on this day in 1911 performer Ginger Rogers

//www.youtube.com/watch?v=sRqK-KxNLAY

Birthday anniversaries of librettists Jacopo Ferretti (1784) and Camille du Locle (1832)
and tenor Ticho Parly (1928)

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If you’re going through hell

Mon, 15 Jul 2024 13:00:48 +0000

The ignavi – those who refuse to take sides in debates – for example, are condemned to march forever behind a white flag. The lustful (where we meet Paolo and Francesca, from that other big early 20^th century Dante opera), knocked around in an endless windstorm just as their passions carried them away in life (which would also explains the random New Rochelle dustbowl scene in Luca Guadagnino’s wretched Challengers). So, sitting at Bologna’s Comunale Nouveau (the provisional theater in the city’s convention center area while the main theater, due to reopen in 2026, undergoes repairs) on Friday for Pier Francesco Maestrini’s Dantesque, agenda-driven Il trittico, I was wondering what I might have done to have to assist to such a bland, wayward production – or what punishment I might eventually incur for writing about it!

Like some scholars, Maestrini sees Trittico’s three parts as equating to Dante’s three canticles – the ceaseless infernal torment of Tabarro, Angelica’s Purgatory of perpetual anticipation in Suor Angelica, and Gianni Schicchi’s hard-earned laugh as Paradise (despite the fact that Gianni Schicchi, the only character of Dante’s devising in Trittico, is gnawing on necks in Inferno Canto XXX). He accordingly pumps the three operas full of visual references to both the Divina Commedia and Gustave Doré’s famous illustrations of it, without much coherence, often saying little about the operas’ distinct dramaturgies.

Tabarro makes it out the least scathed of the three; though construing the barge captain Michele as a Charon figure, schlepping dead souls across the river Styx, doesn’t make much sense, and the video supplements of the hellish hauling stevedores looked like Lord of the Rings (a cultural property with which Italy has a very specific relationship), Maestrini at least grasps the opera’s abundance of surface misery. How Luigi is able to die in hell, however, remains beyond my understanding.

But Suor Angelica, unfolding on ostensibly the beach of Purgatorio I, was much, much lumpier. While the opera’s lopsided doctrine of expiation lends itself to a Purgatory-inspired take, at the end, Angelica, who takes poison after learning about the death of her son, is ratcheted back to Inferno XIII where the souls of those who die by suicide are turned into trees. The scene was less reminiscent of Dante, whose trees are not anthropomorphic, but a mix of Otto Schenck’s Rusalka and the forest from The Wizard of Oz. As Angelica raised her limp arms towards some generic source of light and died, I imagine dry eyes abounded.

Schicchi, whose comedy is ceaseless but unsubtle, came off the least effectually. Librettist Giovacchino Forzano flexed some finely tuned Tuscan literary chops in coaxing belly laughs out of the disquieting Inferno scene about a falsified will, but Maestrini is more interested in sight gags like Buoso’s greedy relatives plod around in gilded, leaden robes à la Inferno XXII, the cheerful, Monty Python-esque friars, and the starlings swarming around Rinuccio and Lauretta (once again, an Inferno V callback). The production’s final image is of a playful demon farting.

But rather than an arc, a progression towards something, the staging was instead just a circuitous grab bag tied together by the exaggerated and grim sets, costumes, and lighting of Nicolas Boni, Stefania Scaraggi, and Daniele Naldi, respectively, and the complex video backdrops that set the scenes. A friend of mine loves to quote how a Dante scholar once told her that to become an expert in the sommo poeta, it requires “20 years sitting on your ass” – this production, while not yielding any similar intellectual fruit, affords a comparable physical sensation.

The singers still managed to break through and make individual impressions; Franco Vassallo was a high tragedy Michele, his concise and acidic baritone snarling out the lines with vehemence, though he also has a real flare for shaping his sound across a phrase with specificity and largesse. And he certainly seemed like the more appealing option when considered beside the declamatory, decibel-rich Luigi of Roberto Aronica who merely sounded parched.

In between them was the very fine Chiara Isotton. As the miserable wife Giorgetta caught up in an affair with one of her husband’s stevedores, she’s no tart and probably couldn’t be a convincing harridan even if she wanted to be. But she turns her bronze timbre towards nostalgic longing and is a thoughtful colorist with throbbing, if somewhat disconnected, high notes. Steadiness has to be the babyfaced Isotton’s most laudable quality – in taxing, heavy music, she sounded robust and unfatigued and you never worry if she’ll be able to make it to the end of the phrase.

But despite her merits, Suor Angelica, which lays squarely in the sweet spot of her voice, was missing a frenzy and desperation beyond its outward somberness. A sincere but earthbound “Senza mamma” confirmed that Isotton is a solid artist, but certainly not a heartbreaker. And she was fairly easily beaten into submission (by way of a masked, shadowy body double) by the imposing Zia Principessa of Chiara Mogini whose mezzo has a Simionato-like edge without a Simionato-like heft.

Progressing to Schicchi, enough good things can’t be said about the Lauretta of Darija Augustan. Though the character has precious little to do, her “O mio babbino caro,” drawn in long, easy phrases with a ductile, shimmery soprano was the highlight of the evening and the only moment in any of the three operas to garner mid-performance applause. Giorgio Misseri was fine and ardent as Rinuccio, unfolding his aria with a sense of occasion that hardly befit the otherwise squalidness of the stage picture, though his B-flat looked much harder than it sounded.

//www.youtube.com/watch?v=UR_Wsotx18M

Roberto de Candia acted gamely, fulfilling perhaps the most important criteria for any Gianni Schicchi, and seemed to be having quite a good time. He needs a reminder, though, that words can, in fact, be put over with legato to just as much effect as barking them. Indeed, there were some really lovely brief legato moments, like when the Doctor comes to check on the then-deceased Buoso, but I wish he didn’t just treat it as a comic device.

In some of the smaller roles, Vittoriana De Amicis was a lovely Suor Genovieffa and Marco Puggioni made the most of his scene in Tabarro as the song seller. Manuela Custer, De Amicis again, and Laura Cherici tossed off a lovely trio in Schicchi even if all of the voices were not of the same calibre. Cristina Melis, as Frugola, was hooty.

Roberto Abbado, conducting this score for the first time in one evening, often struggled to keep the orchestra from overwhelming the singers amidst the somewhat clangy acoustic of the Comunale’s temporary space. His reliance on drawing contrast from the quicksilver shifts of mood in the score made for interesting listening in Tabarro, but it had become predictable by the time Schicchi rolled around.

But despite its longueurs, I was glad to get in a Trittico during this Puccini centennial year. And as for the production, which will travel next to Trieste, I can only quote Churchill: “If you’re going through hell, keep going”

Photos: Andrea Ranzi

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One who or that which sheds its skin

Mon, 15 Jul 2024 10:00:38 +0000

Happy 44th birthday to Broadway’s Laura Benanti

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Smiles of a summer birthday

Sun, 14 Jul 2024 10:00:31 +0000

Born on this day in 1918 director and screenwriter Ingmar Bergman

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Premarital sextet

Sat, 13 Jul 2024 19:13:43 +0000

The string sextet is an unusual combination of instruments and there aren’t that many works for it. But one, Schoenberg’s Verklärte Nacht, Op. 4, has almost cult status and is performed fairly often. It does though need a companion to make up a concert programme. On Friday night at Toronto Summer Music in Walter Hall the chosen accompanying piece was Brahms’ Sextet No.2 in G Major, Op. 36.

The Brahms is a fairly complex, well crafted piece, full of invention and quite varied in mood. Having said all that I find it really hard to engage with it emotionally and find myself admiring rather than loving it; even when performed as beautifully as the version we got from Andrew Wan and Jonathan Crow (violins), Eric Nowlin and Sharon Wei (violas) and Brian Manker and Peter Stumpf (cellos).

The Schoenberg does move me though. It;s very early and the influences of Brahms and Wagner are obvious but there’s also this sense that he is looking to find a way beyond the musical language at his disposal (while Brahms always seems happy to refine the accepted language of the day). It’s also that the music is more overtly emotional; perhaps because programmatic rather than in abstract sonata form.

It’s riffing off a symbolist poem by Richard dehmel about a man and a woman taking a moon lit walk. She confesses that she is pregnant by someone else but both accept this and refuse to let it get in the way of their relationship. It’s interesting to think about what scandalised fin de siecle Vienna more; a story based on premarital sex or Schoenberg’s mildly radical use of non-standard tonality.

In any event the Schoenberg got a committed and excellent performance and a rapturous audience reception.

Photo credit: Lucky Tang.

Madama Butterfly

Sat, 13 Jul 2024 13:00:13 +0000

Daniele Rustioni conducts Ermonela Jaho, Adam Smith, Mihoko Fujimura, and Lionel Lhote in a slightly delayed broadcast of Andrea Breth‘s production from Aix-en-Provence

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