BREAKING NEWS: Opera & Ballet

Audiences expect miracles

Thu, 26 Dec 2024 14:00:29 +0000

I spent way too much of my viewing time for Maria wondering what ChatGPT prompt was used to generate this movie. It all feels way too algorithmic – something designed to demonstrate the ability of computer technology to swap Angelina Jolie into famous images and video clips of Maria Callas and somehow win Angelina Jolie an Oscar in the process.

The technology is impressive and La Jolie suffers and lip synchs convincingly, but the film makes no effort to help a viewer who may not already know key details of Callas’s biography and important sixties celebrities. As demonstrated by this film and Maestro, Netflix will only make biographies of celebrated classical musicians if they are as confusing as possible.

Brief snippets of the movie – a surreal manifestation of Madame Butterfly outdoors in the pouring rain – hint at what this movie could have been, but in the end its special effects without causes.

Patrick Mack

I take no joy in saying that I found this film deeply disappointing. Although not as surrealistic as Pedro Larrain’s “Spencer” (which I found perverse) it is nonetheless an odd fantasia on the final days of Maria Callas in the Paris of 1977 replete with florid hallucinations, ghosts, and conjectures on her backstory and behavior, some lovely and some confusing. Any filmmaker deliberately trying to be profound invariably just ends up steering into the weeds of ridiculousness. The subject needs to establish its own weight. Angelina Jolie portrays the stereotypical diva which I think bears little resemblance to the actual Callas according to her intimates. Thanks to makeup and lighting, the resemblance is eerie at times. She’s certainly got the haughty allure down as well as the clipped diction. The costumes have been very carefully curated and the VFX people have done a magnificent job of conjuring the memories of her stage career at La Scala, La Fenice, etc. The clothes do the heavy lifting, however. Her actual singing as it pertains to having to portray a diva in vocal distress is fearless in the moments when it’s actually Ms. Jolie. In the closing of the film, when they gently meld the two performances it’s seamlessly accomplished. Sadly the script completely lacks any kind of drama, conflict, or real humor. They should have filmed Terence McNally’s “Master Class” instead and at least given us something to enjoy, and something substantial for Ms. Jolie to sink her teeth into, instead of this slow funereal stroll through Paris.

Aprile Millo

How terrific it is to have an actress as important and as special as Angelina Jolie, part of a film about opera in which she was so respectful and so truly soulful and decent about her approach for training to sing and portraying such an important historical character, and beloved artist. It concentrates on a part of her life, which was very poignant to me and very sad. The film itself is exceedingly sad. And made up of a lot of assumptions written by opportunistic people writing books trying to make money on her life and death. I think she would have dug a hole and head straight into to avoid having people see her in what looks to be a difficult part of her life. This is a lioness. Miss Jolie does a very beautiful job and is very respectful. She cannot hint at the strange alchemy that was Maria Callas and the movement of Maria Callas and the stillness of Maria Callas. But like all things that try to examine greatness, they are not on a ladder high enough to reach her. Imitation is always flattery but in this case, it doesn’t really deliver on the genius that she was. We get to be an imaginary fly on the wall in some of these extraordinary moments of her life which are pretty much indelibly imprinted on every opera fan’s mind, the constant fan approach of wanting the Callas and not the Maria. The most exciting parts of the film are when they depict Callas on stage, and her voice is singing and again we are reminded of the incredible excitement she brought. The last scene when she was singing the prayer is perhaps the most heartbreaking. Her maid Bruna at least had a proper reaction, whereas they made the butler devoid of feeling. No matter what, Maria or La Callas is in the corridors of history. She wins by virtue of her unbelievable magic, sacrifice and Divine gift. My heart always will embrace her and hug her with my soul for all she has given brave and indomitable in service to music. The chance to really know her or experience her through this film are in the home movie clips played at the end which are very expressive, incredibly human, and magic at the same time. And so full of nuance and character and personality.

//www.youtube.com/watch?v=NVOoj1wwHOs

Niel Rishoi

It’s a long, depressing wallow-slog.
Angelina Jolie really invested her valiant efforts here, with sincerity, great compassion, and dedication. Quite often she gets the speaking voice right, too; but other times not so much.
But try as I might, I could not suspend Jolie into and see a manifestation of Callas.
Jolie (through no fault of her own) does not begin to suggest Callas’s sturdy, earthy, thoroughbred Greek physical persona. Jolie is very slight, with a long thin neck (the big hair scenes overwhelm her), pronounced, pouffy lips, and her face sunken and drawn in the cheekbones. In fact she looks much too contemporary, of a kind prevalent in diet-obsessed models and actresses.
The script is disjointed, the situations presented wildly improbable. Events and statements appallingly suspect and out of the range of credibility. The dialogue does not ring true a good deal of the time. I don’t know what director Pablo Lorrain’s intentions were. It seems to be Callas’s Fever Dreams While on Quaaludes. Her imaginary filmmaker is named Mandrax, the chemical name of the drug.
Like the equally disjointed and lacking-in-cohesion Bernstein biopic “Maestro”, “Maria” is just a mess.

Harry Rose

This film appealed to the Callas skeptic in me — I don’t deny her talent, but I don’t think there’s anything new she can give us beyond what she already left behind. Of Pablo Larraín’s famous women biopics, Callas is the only artist in the traditional sense and his interest in those questions of art, interpretation, and truth are palpable. And while the movie brings the historical specificity of the highly linear Jackie (which I hated), it borrows more tonally from the iconoclastic dreaminess of Spencer (which I liked quite a bit more).

Angelina Jolie is fine and unshowy in the central part, a Maria that often speaks in vague, Delphic pronouncements. It’s not clear how reliable a narrator she is even to herself, much less to anyone in her company (or to us). She is herself, in many senses, the bona fide Callas fan – not McNally’s bitchy scheming Mendy or quipping harridan Maria, but one whose nostalgia is a self-smoldering smugness. For an opera fan, the most relatable thing this Maria does is wander through her apartment mouthing along to “Vissi d’arte.” It’s also what kills her. Callas was dead: to begin with, we stand to be reminded. There is no doubt whatever about that.

Ira Siff

Perhaps I feel too close to the subject matter, but despite the film being a serious effort, I found it rather unsatisfying, and unrelentingly depressing. Angelina Jolie worked hard at the Callas impersonation, and certainly nailed the speaking voice. I’m unclear on what it set out to accomplish, however, as a treatment of Callas, her life, her art, even her sad end. Somehow – and this is just my feeling – something as irreverent as brilliant Charles Ludlam’s “Galas” found its way to being more reverent and revelatory.

Michael Steinberg

Who remembers Terrence McNally’s lovely play The Lisbon Traviata or a photograph of that fabled 1958 production with a caption that read “Even the hands are crying . . . “? Those examples got something basically right about Maria Callas which—in response to the movie Maria—might be summed up with the comment, “It’s about the music, stupid!” Which is to say; of course she was a diva and, like a true diva, both a gorgon and a myth, which (to correct Oscar Wilde) is entirely fair. But her excesses (in quali eccessi o numi!) were about the music. When she refused Rudolf Bing’s order to sing two vocally incompatible roles in one week (Butterfly and Lucia, if I remember correctly), it was because she required time to work the alternate role into her voice. Listen to a single phrase from “Casta diva” or anything else and you will hear a musicality that cannot be imitated, duplicated, or surpassed. In reestablishing bel canto, Callas validated it as music drama for our time.

Maria is now streaming on Netflix.

The post Audiences expect miracles appeared first on parterre box.

Un giorno rendimi de’ miei primi anni

Thu, 26 Dec 2024 11:00:25 +0000

On this day in 1830 Donizetti‘s Anna Bolena premiered in Milan

The post Un giorno rendimi de’ miei primi anni appeared first on parterre box.

Review of 2024

Thu, 26 Dec 2024 10:00:00 +0000

And so, we come to the end of another year of music. This year has seen me enjoy live performances from as far afield as Dresden to Buenos Aires, and Hamburg to São Paulo. Reflecting on the year just gone has reminded me that it was a spectacular year of music in so many respects.

Suor Angelica in Milan. Photo: © Orchestra Sinfonica di Milano

As always, one of the biggest pleasures I have is watching young artists as they grow into their careers. We have much reason to be pessimistic about the future, but the truth is the pipeline of young talent coming through is very encouraging. The young Flemish conductor, Martijn Dendievel, in a Don Giovanni in Bologna reminded us that he’s a conductor of elegance and taste. In Parma, at the Festival Verdi, I was thrilled by Diego Ceretta’s conducting of La battaglia di Legnano, where he established swift tempi and encouraged ornamentation, essential in early Verdi, while Marina Rebeka was a sensational Lida and gave us a singing lesson. In Milan, Vincenzo Milletarì gave us a glorious Suor Angelica, demonstrating a profound understanding of the Puccinian style. In Rome, I also saw a Sonnambula that was fabulously sung, with Ruth Iniesta bringing so much emotion to the role of Amina, Marco Ciaponi a tenor of exciting promise as Elvino, and Manuel Fuentes bringing his warm, healthy bass to Rodolfo’s music.

Carmen at the Liceu. Photo: © David Ruano

The year started with Jenůfa in Hamburg, with Eliška Weissová demonstrating some considerable volume as the Kostelnička. At the Liceu, Calixto Bieito’s now classic production of Carmen was revived with Rinat Shaham and Leonardo Capalbo. It might be over two decades old now, but it’s lost nothing of its searing power and psychological insight – and Shaham and Capalbo were riveting. I was also lucky to see René Jacobs conduct a period-instrument Carmen in Cologne. As always with Jacobs, it was revelatory. There wasn’t too much symphonic music this year, something I always say I’ll change. I did have the opportunity to visit the magnificent Sala São Paulo. What a stupendous hall that is! Converted from an old train station, the acoustic is easily the equal of the great concert halls of Europe and the house Orquestra Sinfónica do Estado de São Paulo is excellent. I also got to revisit the legendary Teatro Colón, sadly not for opera this time, but instead for a concert of symphonic music by Adams and Chin. The only new opera I saw this year was the premiere of Daan Janssens’ Brodeck at Opera Ballet Vlaanderen. Based on the novel by Philippe Claudel, it was a timely exploration of the impact of hate and prejudice. If the opera itself seemed to run out of steam in the second half, the performance was at the highest level imaginable and showed this ever-enterprising house at its considerable best.

Tosca in Munich. Photo: © Wilfried Hösl

In this Puccini year, his music was ever-present, starting with a Rondine at the Scala. Mariangela Sicilia was enchanting in the title role and Matteo Lippi ardent as Ruggero. Irina Brook’s staging was a bit cynical, although Riccardo Chailly and the Scala orchestra were predictably superb. Eleonora Buratto made her debut as Tosca in Munich. I was nervous that this glorious singer, surely the greatest Italian soprano before the public today, was taking on this iconic role too soon. I needn’t have worried. Both here and at the Santa Cecilia in October, she proved herself a tremendous exponent of this iconic role, bringing that unique sense of the union of text and line that Italians can bring. Also making his debut as Cavaradossi in Munich was Charles Castronovo, who sang his music with warm Italianate tone and immaculate control of dynamics. Ludovic Tézier was a thrilling vocal presence as Scarpia in Munich, although at the Santa Cecilia the impact of his singing was hampered by the acoustic. Castronovo also sang Pinkerton in Damiano Michieletto’s Madama Butterfly in Madrid, which he did with the utmost musicality and handsomeness of tone. Michieletto’s staging was revelatory. For once, Act 1 moved me more than it ever has before, bringing out the sheer horror of Butterfly’s impending fate. Even if Ailyn Pérez was vocally stretched in the title role here, the cumulative impact was immense. But perhaps the most impactful Puccini I heard this year was in his native Tuscany. In April, I had the privilege of seeing the great Zubin Mehta conducting Turandot at the Maggio Musicale Fiorentino, on the eve of his eighty-eighth birthday. Like so many, I learned the work though Mehta’s classic Decca recording and to hear him bring so much colour to the work, combined with that superlative chorus and orchestra was a real privilege. It was an experience I’ll never forget. Similarly, in December I saw a Gianni Schicchi that was so fully idiomatic, gloriously sung, with Roberto De Candia so healthy in the title role and Valentina Pernozzoli a fabulous Zita. To see this most Florentine of works, so well performed, in the city that has inspired so many artists over the centuries was simply a dream.

Gianni Schicchi in Florence. Photo: © Michele Monasta / Maggio Musicale Fiorentino

In December, I also got to see a Pagliacci at the Bologna Comunale. One might think it rather short measure for an evening’s entertainment, particularly given how hard it is to get to the Comunale’s temporary theatre from downtown. And yet, it was a thrilling evening, rendered more so by the sheer idiomatic verve with which the orchestra and chorus attacked their music. At the Donizetti Opera Festival in Bergamo, that festival once again confirmed its position as the place to go to hear the best, new bel canto talent. I was introduced to the enchanting soprano Giulia Mazzola as Norina in Don Pasquale, in a production that tried to add on a narrative layer that the work couldn’t sustain. In Roberto Devereux the following evening, Raffaella Lupinacci was a sublime Sara, while John Osborn gave us a singing lesson in the title role, and Jessica Pratt commanded the stage as Elisabetta. I also had the pleasure of visiting the beautiful Puglian town of Martina Franca for its annual festival. A Norma was hampered by some laborious conducting by Fabio Luisi and an incoherent staging by Nicola Raab, but it was saved by Airam Hernández’ stylish and immaculately-sung Pollione. The following evening, Ariodante was given by a youthful, mainly Italian cast, fabulously played under Federico Maria Sardelli, in a penetrating and cogent staging by Torsten Fischer. This was Händelian singing and playing at its very best.

Ariodante in Martina Franca. Photo: © Clarissa Lapolla

In Helsinki, the Ring came to its big conclusion with a Götterdämmerung that reflected the course of the cycle: cl

The promise of ages

Wed, 25 Dec 2024 11:00:30 +0000

//www.youtube.com/watch?v=5iQJm7vPViE

Born on this day in 1900 contralto Gladys Swarthout (with music for the holiday)

//www.youtube.com/watch?v=-ZxBxZExQj0

Born on this day in 1908 writer and actor Quentin Crisp

//www.youtube.com/watch?v=hOvXiZ4x1v4

Happy 43rd birthday soprano Sonya Yoncheva

Born on this day librettist Temistocle Solera (1815), soprano Lina Cavalieri (1874), composer Gabriel von Wayditch (1888), and bass Bonaldo Giaiotti (1932)

The post The promise of ages appeared first on parterre box.

January 2025

Tue, 24 Dec 2024 19:19:29 +0000

So what’s in store for Toronto early in the New Year?

December 29th 2024 and January 3rd and 4th 2025, Toronto Operetta Theatre are presenting Kalman’s Countess Maritza at the Jane Mallett Theatre.
Bad New Days are presenting Adam Paolozza’s Last Landscape; a meditation on environmental collapse, at Buddies in Bad Times. Preview is on the 12th with opening on the 14th and running until the 26th.

Also on the 14th there’s a chance to see Danika Lorèn in conversation at Walter Hall at 12.10pm.
Liz Appel’s Wights plays at Crow’s Theatre. Previews are 7th to 14th with opening on the 15th running to February 9th. To quote; “Wights delves into the intricate power of language and its profound influence on our connections, our society, and the very fabric of reality.”
Also on the 15th Sara Schabas is singing in the RBA at lunchtime.
Necessary Angel Theatre Company and Canadian Stage are presenting Roland Schimmelpfennig’s Winter Solstice; another play dealing with the rise of the “New Right”. It’s at Berkeley Street and previews are 14th to 16th with opening on the 17th and running until February 2nd.
January 18th to 25th sees the 21C festival of contemporary music in various venues at the Royal Conservatory of Music. Always a great way to catch up on new and emerging composers and performers.
CanStage have a revival of Albee’s Whose Afraid of Virginia Woolf? at the Bluma Appel. Previews are 18th to 22nd with opening on the 23rd and the run continuing to February 9th.
Canadian Opera Company opens it’s winter season on the 24th with Puccinis’s Madama Butterfly with eight performances to February 16th. Bilodeau and Bouchard’s La Reine Garçon opens on the 31st with seven performances to February 15th.
There are lunchtime concerts in the RBA on the 29th and 30th with Sam Chan and Teiya Kasahara performing a concert each.

Quand sur la plage

Tue, 24 Dec 2024 14:00:29 +0000

William Christie turned 80 on December 19 this year. He chose, as his birthday present, to conduct Rameau’s Les Fêtes d’Hébé in a new staging by Robert Carsen, at the Opéra Comique, Christie’s thirteenth production there since the famous Atys of 1987.

In doing so, he offered a magnificent Christmas present to us all. As this is one of Rameau’s best, but not best-known, works, I’ll begin with a little bit about it. As usual, anyone not needing an intro can skip it.

Premiered in 1739 by the Académie royale de musique (now the Paris Opera) in its Palais-Royal house, Les Fêtes d’Hébé, ou les Talens Lyriques (or Talents Liriques, as the cover of the score in France’s National Library spells it) is the composer’s second ‘opéra-ballet’, after Les Indes Galantes (1735). It followed Castor et Pollux (1737), which I’ll see later this season at the Palais Garnier, and is one of the works in which Rameau recycled music composed for the Samson(1734) that he worked on with Voltaire – banned by the censors for mixing the sacred and profane and therefore abandoned. Claus Guth and Raphaël Pichon have put together a reconstruction-cum-pastiche of Samson, performedin Aix in July this year, and I’ll see that at the Opéra Comique next spring.

//www.youtube.com/watch?v=8K5I1eaalkk

In 1739, Rameau, by then in his mid-fifties, was at his peak. Despite its feeble libretto, criticized from the outset and revised within months of the premiere, Les Fêtes d’Hébé contains some of his most inventive and variegated music, whether comic, tragic or pastoral, and was one of his greatest hits. Rameau claimed he could successfully set the newspaper to music; contemporary writer Guillaume Raynal retorted that having heard Hébé, he could well believe it. With a cast that included Rameau faithfuls Marie Fel, Pierre Jélyotte, Marie Pélissier, and the dancer and choreographer Marie Sallé as Terpsichore, the work initially ran for six months non-stop, every night the house was open, and was performed nearly 400 times in all during the composer’s lifetime.

The plot is, if possible, slighter still than that of Les Indes Galantes, and takes the same form: a Prologue and a series of ‘entrées,’ alternating song and ballet. In the present case, these are three short stories of love first thwarted but eventually prevailing, that celebrate the combined powers of youth and poetry, music and dance in turn. In antiquity, Hébé was supposed to have been banished from Olympus for spilling the gods’ nectar. Here, she is led by the Zephyrs (or in this production, sent, on a bicycle) to the banks of the Seine, where the action, such as it is, takes place.

All you need to know to follow Robert Carsen’s clever updating is (1) that French president Emmanuel Macron’s nickname is Jupiter (on account of his supposedly Olympian presidential style); (2) that each year, the City of Paris transforms the Seine embankments into a ‘beach’ area, with deckchairs, games and dancing, called ‘Paris Plage’; and (3), supposing you didn’t know already, that the 2024 Olympic Games took place in Paris, after an opening ceremony along the river, and ended, as the Olympic flame ascended in a balloon, with Céline Dion singing Piaf’s Hymne à l’amour at a sparkling Eiffel Tower.

At curtain-up, Robert Carsen’s production swaps Olympus for a photographic mock-up, columns, chandeliers and all, of the Elysée Palace, seat of the French presidency. Emmanuel Macron and his wife Brigitte — played by lookalikes — are entertaining guests in suits and cocktail dresses, some carrying briefcases. Disaster strikes: Hébé, a waitress, trips and spills red wine on Brigitte’s immaculate white ensemble. She is fired on the spot by Macron/Jupiter. She leaves, followed by Momus. The guests pour out to form a line at the taxi stand. Amour, here a glamorous influencer in a long, red, satin dress slit to the thigh, ropes in the two handsome, grinning policemen guarding the entrance to take photos while she strikes a series of increasingly zany voguing poses before the palace. The queuing guests brandish their smartphones to capture the scene as Amour consoles Hébé and urges one and all, including Hébé on her bike, to gather for fun and games on the banks of the Seine. It is already obvious by this point that Carsen has given everyone on stage, individually, specific comic directions, followed with alacrity.

The first entrée, La Poésie, finds us at Paris Plage. Young employees in turquoise polo shirts, name tags round their necks, are setting up deck-chairs under a row of potted palms on the embankment. The Elysée guests change on stage into colorful beachwear (this counts as a ballet, though no-one actually dances), and a visibly chuffed chief of France’s CRS riot police takes the place of Hymas, King of Lesbos, to watch the show devised by Sappho. Her success is such that cartons soon arrive, filled with books of her poetry, hot off the press and handed out to her fans, the guests. Thelemus, the unlucky suitor, is garlanded with seaweed and chucked into the Seine with a splash.

The second entrée, La Musique, is set on a Left-Bank quayside, complete with bouquinistes’ dark-green booths on the parapet, and (video) plane-trees above, rustling gently in a summer breeze. Princess Iphise, here already in a wedding dress and veil, may only marry a hero who has defeated the Messenians; in Carsen’s vision, Tyrtaeus is the captain of France’s soccer team, who arrive on the river (i.e. through the auditorium, house lights on) and set off to challenge the Greeks. They return victorious, with their delirious fans, the former Elysée guests, now brandishing flags and scarves. There follows a fascinating soccer mime/ballet, in which feet kick and eyes follow invisible balls. Iphise, of course, marries the coach.

In the third and final entrée, La Danse, a little blue DJ’s shack is set up on an embankment with a broadside view of Notre Dame and her spire, beside a dance floor staked out under strings of bare bulbs. Mercury arrives on a motorbike and takes over the turntables. Eglé’s suitors (there’s a dance-off for her hand) and her virtuoso dancer friends wear contemporary party clothes: fancy dinner jackets, shiny fabrics, spangled tops. The villagers who rush to her wedding with Mercury are, of course, none other than those Elysée guests again. The luxuriant garden evoked by the stage directions is the Hébé, a cardboard cut-out bateau Mouche, with Hebe herself as tour guide. All aboard, the whole crowd set gaily off west along the Seine, gleefully snapping photos and selfies as they go (the whole production is under the sign of Instagram), till the Eiffel Tower looms up and bursts into sparkling lights against a background of fireworks. Curtain – and applause, lots of it.

I said just now that Carsen’s updating of the plot was ‘clever’. It was very clever, as by keeping us wondering what the next, fun clin d’oeil at contemporary France would be, he eliminated any risk of boredom. To create a narrative thread for a libretto that didn’t previously have one, he linked the three entrées together under the single, Paris Plage concept, and hit on plausible, amusing contemporary transpositions of the antique story without resorting to slapstick gags. Carsen is Carsen: it’s funny, but still chic. At a pinch, you might complain that street-inspired dance in Rameau is now déjà vu; but people lap it up, and I don’t think anyone there was in a mood for complaining. Far from it. The detailed action is beautifully managed, to the last glance and gesture, from start to finish. The athletic, witty ballets merge seamlessly with the action and singing, and make unusual demands on soloists and chorus, proving that Lea Desandre, who actually has a sinuous, solo contemporary dance of her own in the final entrée, and others do more than ‘just’ sing.

But sing they do. It’s always hard to do justice in writing to music and singing at this high standard. What can you say, other than that everything was fab? William Christie is capable, as we know, of casting weak singers. (A friend of mine calls these his ‘voiceless wonders.’) Singing Rameau isn’t a stroll in the park: his idiom calls for a demanding mix of declamatory skill with vocal agility and flexibility of a kind that at times almost recalls classical Middle Eastern songs. It’s hard, and you can’t just wander into it from other rep and carry it off. But in this cast there wasn’t one weak link. Here, everyone, from the smallest to the stars, had both the proper style and — mirabile dictu — good diction; what a relief not to spend the evening glued to the supertitles. And not a single countertenor in sight. The chorus was on top form, and no amount of simultaneous acting and dancing could throw them off the beat. If there was one weakness, it was perhaps the minor quibble that the voices in the lower male supporting roles tended to peter out at the bottom: a familiar issue.

Emmanuelle de Negri, who’s sung with Christie for at least fifteen years, set the joyful tone of the evening as Hébé, deploying a darkish, supple soprano voice with vivacity and presence. Cyril Auvity, another ‘Christie veteran,’ eternally youthful (if now grey at the temples) remains instantly recognizable, singing more forcefully and steadily than on occasion, right to the haute contre top.

Ana Vieira Leite and Lea Desandre were both way better employed here than they were straying into Médée last spring at Garnier, where they sounded two sizes too small. Still, I noted then that ‘Ana Vieira Leite sings beautifully, with a pretty, silvery sound,’ and here she combined that with vivacious comic acting as a glamorous, slightly ditzy but determined influencer. Lea Desandre seemed to ‘own’ her three roles, showing remarkable ease in the style: supple, subtle, varied in color and dynamics… It was as if she’d sung them all her life. She was quite obviously the vocal star of the evening. And even more than the rest of the cast, her singing, acting and dancing were all one, forming an integrated whole.

Only that stardom was very nearly snatched away from her at the last hour by Marc Mauillon. The role of Momus doesn’t really offer the chance to shine. But Mercury is Mercury and was originally sung by Jélyotte. His easily recognizable arias — florid, brilliant and high — are among the hardest in Rameau to get right. Mauillon did it, putting in an astonishing performance that, to be honest, based on past experience, I had no idea he had in him. Not, I think, since Topi Lehtipuu had I heard one of these dazzling, clarion-call arias carried off with such gleeful brio.

//www.youtube.com/watch?v=7EvM6tsMfME

William Christie, at 80, conducts Rameau with even more vigor than ever. I’ve tended, in the past, to associate him with a delicate, feathery, touch, even if his tempi have always been brisk. But here, with quite a large orchestra including four oboes, four bassoons, and a musette, the playing was not just vigorous but rich, colorful, and beefy — more ‘muscular’ than usual. His years of French baroque have culminated in absolute mastery of the style, giving him freedom to navigate, with his players and chorus, the most striking variations in color, tempo, rhythm and dynamics. If, above, I wrote that Lea Desandre was the vocal star, it was so I could now say that the real stars of this particular show were, indeed, Christie and his players. A feast. He looked as pleased as punch during the curtain calls, and as usual led an encore from the stage while capering, in his dapper white tie and tails, with the cast.

On Tuesday evening, ticket touts were out at the Métro exits, scouting for spare seats. I’m not sure they found any. The house was packed. But not once, remarkably, did Christie need to turn and scowl at people coughing or phones tootling. At the end, of course, the silence exploded into cheers. He conducted again on Thursday: his birthday. I should imagine the cheers, for Hébé but also for all the conductor’s long career in France, in support of French 18th century repertoire, were louder still.

Photos: Vincent Pontet

The post Quand sur la plage appeared first on parterre box.

Have you seen a child?

Tue, 24 Dec 2024 11:00:26 +0000

//www.youtube.com/watch?v=mrJG0jsm_9c

Born on this day in 1824 composer Peter Cornelius (with music for the holiday)

httpvh:////

//www.youtube.com/watch?v=LDG338cxF08

Born on this day poet George Crabbe (1754), dramatist and librettist Eugène Scribe (1791), sopranos Lucrezia Bori (1887) and Teresa Stich-Randall (1927), dancer and choreographer Robert Joffrey (1930), baritone Richard Cowan (1957), and conductor Arnold Ostman (1939)

Happy 74th birthday composer Libby Larsen

The post Have you seen a child? appeared first on parterre box.

Singing from our chains

Mon, 23 Dec 2024 14:00:22 +0000

counter codex

First, there is the countertenor. There used to be very few singers in this category. You could name the notable ones on one hand or less, and they scarcely ever appeared in the opera house. It wasn’t clear how you did use them, since few composers had specified their music for one. Great was the debate over whether countertenors could match the achievements of the castrati (I think they can and do, but … I’ve never heard a trained evirato, surgically altered to suit the task, and neither has anyone else you’ve ever met) and whether a male countertenor not so altered can match or surpass a female alto in the same artfully heroic roles.

And then there arrived a starburst of countertenors and sopranists, trained to a superb degree and capable of singing just about anything. Dozens of them. Hundreds—with distinct qualities and talents. Once you’ve got as many in the opera house as the traffic will bear, how do the rest pass their time? We’ve heard them sing in rock cabarets and do solo performances of Le nozze di Figaro and replace Cherubino or Octavian and perform Schubert songs and rock anthems in drag—appealing to a mixed audience or not.

The second problem is the operatic voice itself in this age of the microphone. Is there still an audience for the natural sound, generated by the singer without electronic assistance? Yes, to be sure, but how large is that audience? And if opera lovers prefer an unamplified sound, and the abilities of a naturally produced voice (I certainly do), to what purposes outside the traditional repertory and the traditional opera house can such well-seasoned instruments be turned?

//www.youtube.com/watch?v=nWbzkHN35IM

All these matters were idling through my mind when I attended Ritual: Schwarze Messe Kabarett/Black Mass Cabaret the Friday before last (the first of three performances) at the Cell Theatre in Chelsea. Ritual was the third installment (I missed the previous two) of a series of programs/performances designed to bring out the queer perspective in the history of operatic performance under the heading “Counter Codex,” “created to reclaim queer narratives in opera.” The singer at the heart of these collaborations is Jordan Rutter-Covatto, star of Counter Codex.

The first production, Erato, focused on music of the Italian baroque opera world—and we all know how much use those narratives made of gender-bending and transformative characters, changing their sex or their orientation at will, usually by magical means, for whatever purpose, usually seduction or disguise. The second production, Polymath: La Comedie de la Mort, turned to such composers as Berlioz and Duparc (among some contemporary guys) to depict the queer community’s response to the ordeal of AIDS.

Ritual focused on another aspect of queer history: the invention of a “queer science” in twentieth-century Germany. There, a certain Magnus Hirschfeld, an openly queer researcher on sexual psychology, studied homosexuality and its position in many societies. This sounds dry; the performance was not dry. (There were even drinks available.)

counter codex

Ritual, the third installment, dealt with the brief, intoxicating openness of the Weimar Era in post-war Germany, the ensuing rise of Fascism that oppressed sexual freedom along with so much else, the closet that bloomed in secret during and after that period (including the McCarthy Era’s pernicious scandals) and so to the more open modern era.

The music performed, besides arias from a number of Bach cantatas, was otherwise largely the work of Jewish (and sometimes queer) composers of Germanic extraction, from Schönberg and Friedrich Hollander to Viktor Ullmann and David Begyglman, two men who composed at the “artistic” concentration camp of Theresienstadt and died at Auschwitz, and on to Kurt Weill, a Berliner who fled to Broadway, and Mischa Spoliansky, a Russian who fled to Berlins.

The principal musician animating the series is Rutter-Covatto, a countertenor who has sung with many baroque ensembles but has been in search of new worlds to conquer. His instrument is not especially sensuous, and he has not seen a path forward in the operatic realm. He acts persuasively and expressively, but the voice lacks a quality to match, say, a mezzo soprano in the same music. Undaunted, he has adopted the accoutrements of the leather scene to portray grotesques of the Weimar Era and the martyrdoms of the Nazi period that crushed it. His choice of music is fascinating—I did not know the Ullmann or Beyglman songs and found his performances insinuating and appealing. The Weill and Spoliansky songs were also moody and inspiring.

//www.youtube.com/watch?v=eM0ZN7Puycg

Aside from the work of Lotte Lenya, we know very little of the rich satiric and political cabaret repertoire of the Weimar Era. Rutter-Covatto sings Ullman’s and Beyglman’s songs with a hectoring energy that reminds us (subtitles appeared on the walls) of the bitter wit of protest. He does not attempt to make the sounds beautiful; he reminds us of the acid experiences that gave rise to them and contrasts with the snarling operettas of the period.

The actors Max Richards (playing a sometime scientist—Magnus Hirschfeld, perhaps) and Peter Cage (silent, but imposingly head to foot in black vinyl) contributed to scenes of the experiences these songs (sung by Rutter-Covatto, harnessed in leather) might illustrate. A lively instrumental trio (piano, woodwinds, cello) backed the musical side—they began with a Meyerbeer overture; although there was nothing Jewish about the music, the enlightenment air of Berlin in the era of Napoleon prepared us for the inventions and developments that followed. The director of the project was John de los Santos.

The Schwarze Messe Kabarett struck me as a work in progress, startling in its visual and aural imagery (if naked men on the concert stage still shock anyone), incomplete in its decisions of what to satirize and how to bring these declarations into a unified artistic whole. An intent and crowded audience seemed to be tickled by the music, the performance, the cheerfully sordid atmosphere of “This is your history—revel in it!”

The post Singing from our chains appeared first on parterre box.

I want candy

Mon, 23 Dec 2024 11:00:27 +0000

On this day in 1893 Humperdinck‘s Hansel und Gretel premiered in Weimar

The post I want candy appeared first on parterre box.

Joseph Schumpeter and a Broken Jar of Coffee

Sun, 22 Dec 2024 22:44:53 +0000

Joseph Schumpeter (1883-1950) was an Austrian political economist. After a distinguished career in Germany, he emigrated to the US in 1932. He taught at Harvard for the remaining 18 years of his life. In 1942 he published his best-known work Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy.

He is famous for creative destruction a term he borrowed to denote an endogenous replacement of old ways of doing things by new ways, which will ultimately undermine and destroy the capitalist structure. Schumpeter believed that capitalism would gradually weaken itself and eventually collapse. Specifically, the success of capitalism would lead to corporatism and values hostile to capitalism, especially among intellectuals.

“Intellectuals” are a social class in a position to critique societal matters for which they are not directly responsible and to stand up for the interests of other classes. Intellectuals tend to have a negative outlook on capitalism, even while relying on it for prestige because their professions rely on antagonism toward it. The growing number of people with higher education is a great advantage of capitalism, according to Schumpeter. Yet, unemployment and a lack of fulfilling work will lead to intellectual critique, discontent, and protests.

Parliaments will increasingly elect social democratic parties, and democratic majorities will vote for restrictions on entrepreneurship. Increasing workers’ self-management, industrial democracy, and regulatory institutions would evolve non-politically into “liberal capitalism”. Thus, the intellectual and social climate needed for thriving entrepreneurship will be replaced by some form of “laborism”. This will exacerbate “creative destruction” (a borrowed phrase to denote an endogenous replacement of old ways of doing things by new ways), ultimately undermining and destroying the capitalist structure. Schumpeter was not in favor of the process, he just thought it inevitable.

Schumpeter’s ideas are complex and beyond my explanatory powers and the scope of this article. Creative destruction can be summed up to describe the innovative entry by entrepreneurs as the force that sustains long-term economic growth, even as it destroys the value of established companies that have enjoyed some degree of monopoly power. Because of the significant barriers to entry that monopolies enjoy, new entrants have to be radically different: ensuring fundamental improvement is achieved, not a mere difference in packaging.

This process can easily be seen by examining the dominant corporations of the mid-20th century compared to today. I’ll pick two from both eras. In 1950 Ford and GM were so dominant that the CEO of the latter firm confidently proclaimed that what was good for GM was good for the country. He likely was correct.

Of the nine corporations with a market cap of $1 trillion or more eight are American. Of these eight all are engaged in businesses unheard of in 1950. The ninth is also in a relatively new occupation. Ford and GM are struggling for survival; dominance is a memory.

I’ll discuss two of these mega-corporations to see if they fit into Schumpeter’s formulation – they are Amazon and Microsoft. Jeff Bezos founded Amazon on July 5, 1994 in his garage in Bellevue, Washington. Microsoft was founded on April 4, 1975, by Bill Gates and Paul Allen in Albuquerque, New Mexico.

Amazon dominates retail trade in a way never seen before. Walmart which previously held that position has a market cap one third of Amazon’s. It struggles, mostly unsuccessfully, to keep up with its online rival. Though there’s still a lot of life left in the bricks and mortar firm. Of course, Amazon now does a lot more than retail sales. Similarly, Microsoft has branched into a long list of endeavors virtually all of which involve computers. The two giants compete in a variety of services such as cloud computing.

I’d need a degree of clairvoyance not granted to a casual observer to predict if either Amazon or Microsoft will dominate their respective fields 50 years hence, but Schumpeter’s analysis suggests that they may well not.

What might cause them to become less relevant? Obviously, the advent of a completely new type of commerce. They have diversified in an attempt to guard against such an event. If the next big thing is unanticipated, diversification might do more harm than good. Shear size might cripple corporate governance.

Signs of a buckling performance are already visible. They may turn out to be trivial or harbingers of decay to come; it’s too soon to tell. Amazon which is famous for its outstanding service is starting to show signs that its standard may be slipping. Part of this problem, assuming there really is one, is that too many customers may be taking advantage of the company through a variety of nefarious schemes. When you contact Customer Service it may take a while to shed a computer-generated voice and and a series of menus before you get a human. The human may then require a series of verification steps routed through text and email before working on your problem. The service rep may ask for a photo of a damaged or broken item. Many of Amazon’s older customers who only use their phones for calls, texts, and email may be unfamiliar with taking photos with their phones and then sending them to the service rep. Eventually, your problem likely will be resolved, but you wasted 45 minutes to get a refund for a broken $7 glass jar of coffee.

Microsoft’s problem is a bit different. They essentially have no customer service or if it’s available it’s disguised to invisibility. They have cornered the market on the operating system for a PC and feel little need for one-on-one contact with their customers. Their near-monopoly frees them from providing much customer service. It also allows them to make huge profits from a mediocre system – Windows in all its iterations.

When Microsoft does have competition as in the browser market they suffer. Internet Explorer killed the first graphical browser – Netscape. When Google entered this market with Chrome they relegated IE’s successor Edge to irrelevance.

As I said above, I have no idea what technology and commerce will be like in half a century. My guess is that today’s giant companies will be gone or greatly diminished. Schumpeter probably would agree were he still around. But he’s long gone and so will I in 50 years.

Ecco l’artista!

Sun, 22 Dec 2024 11:00:03 +0000

//www.youtube.com/watch?v=bpYAntNU-V8

Born on this day in 1916 bass Fernando Corena

//www.youtube.com/watch?v=UvsTFSAsw-c

Born on this day composers Edgard Varèse (1883) and Robert Kurka (1921), composer and critic Deems Taylor (1885), conductor Andre Kostelanetz (1901), mezzo-soprano Rosette Anday (1903), and opera director and librettist Frank Corsaro (1924)

Happy 70th birthday mezzo-soprano Jean Rigby

The post Ecco l’artista! appeared first on parterre box.

'Morning Star' - The Gesualdo Six, 20 December 2024

Sat, 21 Dec 2024 19:27:54 +0000

Wigmore Hall

Palestrina (arr. Willcocks): Matin Responsory
Lassus: Conditor alme siderum
Praetorius: Nun, komm der Heiden Heiland a 6
Sally Beamish: In the stillness
Jacobus Händl: Mirabile mysterium
Cheryl Frances-Hoad: The Promised Light of Life
Plainchant: Rorate coeli
Byrd: Rorate coeli
Poulenc: O magnum mysterium
Anon (arr. Praetorius): Es ist ein Ros entsprungen
Anon: Angelus ed virginem
Plainchant: Ecce advenit
Cornelius: Weihnachtslieder, op.8: no.3, ‘Die Könige’
Eccard: Maria wallt zum Heiligtum
Clemens von Papa: Magi veniunt
Arvo Pärt: Morning Star
Judith Bingham: In Mary’s love
Plainchant: Vidimus stellam
Lassus: Tribus miraculis
Owain Park: O send out thy light
Bob Chilcott: The Shepherd’s Carol

Alasdair Austin, Guy James (countertenors)
Josh Cooter (tenor)
Joseph Wicks (tenor)
Michael Craddock (baritone)
Owain Park (artistic director, bass)

The eve of the shortest day of 2024 was especially miserable in London: cold, wet, and dark. All the more need, then, for an aural glimpse of the ‘Morning Star’ that gave its name to this Wigmore Hall concert from The Gesualdo Six. Rather than concentrate on Advent, Christmas, or Epiphany, the programme took us from one through another to the third. Indeed, it perhaps tried to do too much in too many pieces, a succession of very different, generally short music in some cases more merging into one than showing affinity and connection, though there were certainly exceptions to that. A packed audience, though, clearly enjoyed its evening, nowhere more so than in an encore performance of Jingle Bells, arranged by Gordon Langford. ‘Style’ might seem an unduly pretentious attribute, but for me it pointed out what had sometimes been missing elsewhere, certain standout pieces offering welcome relief. Perhaps a church acoustic would have imparted a warmer blend, or perhaps I was simply not in the right mood, but there were times – and I realise this is a matter of taste more than anything else – when relief in the guise of female voices might have helped.

I had reservations, then, but this was also an opportunity to hear a good range of repertoire from chant to Palestrina to the present day, in the guise of artistic director Owain Park’s own O send out thy light, gratefully written for the group, in which instance they were clearly very much at home. Palestrina had appeared at the opening, in the guise of David Willcocks’s well-known arrangement of a Nunc dimittis as a Mattins responsory. Many will surely have recognised it in one guise or another, and it made for a fitting opening, followed by well if slightly anonymously sung Lassus (how I felt about a later example too) and more florid Praetorius, Nun komm der Heiland, which to my ears gave a more arresting impression. Plainchant and ‘Anon.’ often fared best, I think, deceptive simplicity permitting performances and their reception to hone in on melody and words, the mediaeval carol Angelus ad virginem gathering voices in a warm conclusion to the first half.

Other highlights for me included the extraordinary wandering chromatic lines of Jacobus Händl’s Mirabile mysterium. They are anything but easy to sing, yet intonation never proved a problem. Nor did it in Poulenc’s O magnum mysterium, which emerged a little later as fitting complement in stillness and movement, although this was one of those cases when I felt the loss of women’s (or even children’s) voices. The expressive accomplishment of Byrd’s Rorate coeli was highly welcome, perhaps a first-half counterpart to the second-half highpoint of Clemens von Papa’s euphonious and, no coincidence, more extended Ephipany Magi veniunt. It was preceded by Joannes Eccard’s Maria wallt zum Heiligtum which likewise benefited from a degree more warmth.

None of the twenty-first-century pieces seemed concerned with straining at the edges of modernity, Sally Beamish’s In the stillness purposefully reticent, almost belying the skill with which verbal and musical cadences coincided. Cheryl Frances-Hoad and Judith Bingham ventured further harmonically, the former a rare if doubtless coincidental instance of seeming to take its leave from its predecessor (Händl), the latter another welcome case of painting on a slightly larger canvas, which if not exactly ‘Romantic’ was not exactly un-Romantic either. Arvo Pärt’s Morning Star, well crafted and performed with sympathy, readily laid bare idea and processes. A somewhat dour Cornelius ‘Three Kings’, sung in English, suggested that the nineteenth century was in generally better avoided; unless, that is, we count Jingle Bells.

The Magic Flute

Sat, 21 Dec 2024 14:00:46 +0000

Evan Zimmerman/Metropolitan Opera

Streaming and discussion start at 1:00 PM EST.

The post The Magic Flute appeared first on parterre box.

Les Contes d’Hoffmann

Sat, 21 Dec 2024 14:00:19 +0000

Camilla Greenwell

Streaming and discussion begin at 1:00 PM EST.

The post Les Contes d’Hoffmann appeared first on parterre box.

You can’t keep a good girl down

Sat, 21 Dec 2024 11:00:16 +0000

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

Happy 80th birthday conductor and composer Michael Tilson Thomas

//www.youtube.com/watch?v=FD5ZKi-moMU

Birthday anniversaries of bass Ernst Wiemann (1919), baritone Giangiacomo Guelfi (1924), tenor Bruno Prevedi (1928), and conductor Christopher Keene (1946)

Happy 86th birthday bass-baritone Domenico Trimarchi
Happy 71st birthday soprano Nadine Secunde
Happy 66th birthday tenor Thomas Randle

The post You can’t keep a good girl down appeared first on parterre box.

Birds, bears, and based boyfriends

Fri, 20 Dec 2024 15:00:55 +0000

“What if Jordan Peterson and Taylor Swift had a disagreement but then decided to love each other anyway?” said my opera companion upon seeing The Magic Flute for the first time Friday the 13^th at the Met. In the 90-minute holiday presentation, Pamina dooms herself to a lifetime of mansplaining in Sarastro’s Temple of Wisdom, his hordes exulting as the female Dragon of Chaos is cast into darkest oblivion.

The opera’s deranged gender politics were mirrored in the show’s casting. With the delightful Emily Pogorelc holding down her part with breadth and dignity while Duke Kim, in his Met debut as Tamino, limped through each song, barely able to project to the Orchestra, let alone the Family Circle. This was a real shame given how many first-time opera goers were in the audience. It seemed a sterling example of one of the opera’s main themes: the strange vicissitudes of male mediocrity. Granted, Tamino is the Ken doll of tenor roles and there isn’t a lot of room for him to shine; however, Kim did almost nothing to bring creative richness to the role.

Kathryn Lewek was a spectacular and rewardingly histrionic Queen of Night. While bumbling slightly through the ending of “Oh, don’t tremble,” her “Hell’s vengeance boils” was as hyped and sparkly as Christmas morning. The comedic Julie Taymor costume, the Queen’s soaring cape shivering on wires attached to her bodice, worked magically. She was by far the funniest Queen of Night I’ve seen.

//www.youtube.com/watch?v=_U47q-dNsjE

Peixin Chen as Sarastro rounded out the performance with his broad and bodied bass. He tooted around the stage like a benevolent anthropomorphic cloud out of a Mario Brothers game. Sean Michael Plumb as Papageno was like a round green baby wriggling and mugging and sticking out his ass, in a very Nickelodeon Junior performance. (Totally appropriate to the Mozart junior holiday presentation.)

While he had plenty more going for him than Kim, there was something a little too studied and self-satisfied in his performance, like he wasn’t asking for laughter and plaudits but had already claimed them by right. In a less adulterated production, with a more well-rounded cast, I believe he’d have been less well received. However, performing beside a lackluster Kim he was a breath of fresh air whenever he arrived on stage. Thomas Capobianco’s Monostatos was similarly amusing but too overtly clownish. There’s so much costume and gimmick and flapping around demanding big laughs, but not much in his performance took me by surprise.

The direction throughout leaned heavily into broad comedy and Taymor’s darkly whimsical puppets and costumes. Lindsay Ohse’s Papagena was charming and cheerful but otherwise unremarkable; she’s on stage so briefly that her costumes were more memorable than her singing. She mirrored but did not outshine Plumb, not that the production really gives her room to do so.

Le Bu, as the Speaker, on the other hand, took his time and took up space, giving a quiet gravitas to the role in a memorable performance. He is a lush singer and a strikingly passionate actor, making a real attempt to perform with and not merely beside the other performers. J David Jackson as conductor was adequate, although, as with some of the evening’s principal performances, I didn’t get the sense that he was trying very hard. The by-the-book conducting was prim and quick but otherwise difficult to comment on.

The abbreviated English language holiday presentation hops from aria to aria. The English is jarringly strange at first but ultimately slipped beyond notice in the finer performances. The 20-year-old Taymor production was none the worse for wear. Like Mark Morris’s The Hard Nut, Taymor’s The Magic Flute has become a seasonal classic, with the pointy breasted flamingo ballerinas as iconic as Sugar Plum fairies. I loved the ghostly, slow-moving birds and quivering silk bears.

George Tyspin’s sets are like something out of an advanced intergalactic civilization on the precipice of extinction. Taymor and Michael Curry’s costumes are so good they make me want to drop everything and enroll in Parsons for theatrical design. The designers and crafters all understood the assignment and took it seriously, so why doesn’t the Met treat the production with the respect it deserves musically? If they are indeed serious about bringing in new audiences, they could start by throwing a more well-rounded cast into their holiday presentation.

Photos: Richard Termine

The post Birds, bears, and based boyfriends appeared first on parterre box.

New kids from the bloc

Fri, 20 Dec 2024 14:00:36 +0000

Jennifer Taylor

Likely a matter of serendipity than deliberate planning, Carnegie Hall recently presented a week-long festival of Eastern European vocal music with top-flight international performers. If song recitals by opera stars Piotr Beczala and Asmik Grigorian sometimes came up short, Semyon Bychkov’s powerful rendition of the Glagolitic Mass instantly became one of the year’s highlights.

Janácek’s sacred work closed the second of three programs shared by the Czech Philharmonic and the Prague Philharmonic Chorus marking 2024’s Year of Czech Music. The usually bare Carnegie stage was festively decorated with pots of red and white flower and two large green banners. The audience included many chicly attired Czechs — I didn’t hear a word of English around me the entire evening — who vigorously cheered not only the Mass and Dvorák’sPiano Concerto, but also the President of the Czech Republic who was in attendance.

The Dvorak which began the evening gave many opportunities for Daniil Trifonov to display his dazzling technique, but his bravura wasn’t enough to transform the earnest concerto into a masterwork. He was clearly the main attraction for some audience members including the gentleman seated next to me who fled at intermission. But they missed an inspired orchestra, four fine soloists, a masterly organist, and a mighty eighty-member chorus tackle one of the jewels of Janácek’s most productive final years.

Jennifer Taylor

Though the composer was an atheist, he utilized the traditional Mass (in Old Church Slavonic rather than Latin) to express his deeply spiritual nature. Perhaps due to the large forces required, Janacek’s work hadn’t been performed at Carnegie Hall since 2010, but I couldn’t believe that the New York Philharmonic hasn’t programmed it since 1963 when Leonard Bernstein led it. As Cincinnati’s May Festival always prominently features choral music, I first encountered the work there in the mid-1980s and never forgot its stunning impact.

Of its eight movements, only five feature voices; the work begins and ends with the orchestra alone while the seventh is an extended and demanding organ solo, played at Carnegie by Daniela Valtrov Kosinova. Listeners familiar with masses by Brahms or Verdi may find Janácek’s use of his solo vocalists unusual. They don’t have movements to themselves but rather enter sometimes unexpectedly amidst the complexly pungent choral writing which the Prague group handled with vigorous precision.

Little known in the US, soprano Katerina Knezikova has a growing discography; she has just released an all-Strauss CD including the Vier Letzte Lieder as well as songs accompanied on the piano by conductor Jakub Hrusa.

//www.youtube.com/watch?v=AuuTI2MpnHw

This summer she returns to the Glyndebourne Festival to once again star in Janácek’s Kata Kabanova. Although she began uncertainly at Carnegie, Knezikova soon revealed a cooly gleaming soprano which soared neatly over Bychkov’s churning orchestra and chorus. Mezzo Lucie Hilscherova, with far less to do, didn’t make much of an impression.

Bass David Leigh, the sole non-Czech soloist and subject of a recent parterre box profile by Judith Malafronte, contributed a commanding presence in his brief interjections, particularly his duet with ringing tenor Ales Briscein who handled the punishingly high tessitura of his frequent solos with shining power.

Several days later, another tenor took the Stern stage with decidedly more intimate music. Taking a day off from rehearsals at the Met for its new Aida which premieres on New Year’s Eve, Piotr Beczala set aside Verdi for a recital of Russian, Polish, and German songs accompanied by Helmut Deutsch, who is most frequently heard as the partner of another superstar tenor, Jonas Kaufmann.

Chris Lee

Perhaps the exertions of Radames had zapped his energies as Beczala offered a blandly low-energy evening. Works by Tchaikovsky, Greig (in German), Karlowicz, Schumann, and Rachmaninoff tended to be moderately serious and romantic in nature and allowed the affable tenor (who turns 58 three days before Aida opens) to display with plangent ardor his remarkably well-preserved and sunny voice which occasionally rose to still-secure house-filling high notes.

More often than not intently gazing at his score, Beczala didn’t come across as a natural recitalist armed with richly nuanced interpretations. Every song sounded pretty much like the other; even the rare Karlowicz songs in his native Polish failed to elicit much of a spark. He and Deutsch, usually a masterful accompanist, lacked chemistry and the audience responded with respectful applause that often died out before the performers had exited the stage.

As they often do, four encores brought out the singer’s best displaying more engagement especially in the one by Moniuszko, a rare instance when the tenor sang without referring to his score. We at last got a glimpse of the kind of deeply felt communication of which he could be capable.

Jennifer Taylor

Three days later down in Zankel Hall, Asmik Grigorian, returning to New York for the first time since her acclaimed Met debut this spring in Madama Butterfly, also sang from behind a music stand which held her music iPad. It seemed odd that a score was needed as she’s been periodically offering this same program of Tchaikovsky and Rachmaninoff songs since she recorded them several years ago with fellow Lithuanian, superb pianist Lukas Geniusas. In fact, Joel Rozen reviewed a similar recital they offered at the Aix-en-Provence Festival in the summer of 2023.

Those in charge of Stern ordained we needn’t be able to read Beczala’s text and translations, so the lights were kept down; however, Grigorian’s audience had a much brighter house. Since I’m not especially familiar with Russian song repertoire, I can’t speak to how these performers compare to their long list of predecessors. However, Beczala and Grigorian’s approaches to Tchaikovsky and Rachmaninoff—they even sang several of the same songs—differed markedly.

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

Despite the presence of the scores at which she only occasionally glanced, the darkly intense soprano, unlike Beczala, quickly conjured a new world with each song. Surely, the more intimate space in Zankel helped, but her arresting involvement–rivetingly assisted by Geniusas– drew us in and gripped us through each group. Though she eschewed any gestures, her flamboyantly emotional approach made Tchaikovsky’s songs resonate as much more strongly emotional than those offered by Beczala.

Though she did justice to some of Rachmaninoff’s quieter songs, she embraced a big operatic approach to “Spring Waters” and the demanding “Dissonances,” which concluded the program and which she took as the title for her album. Often she sounded like she might be a mezzo as the middle of her voice poured forth in a velvety stream. But strong high notes were plentiful, though they perhaps emerged with some effort and lacked real freedom. Her dynamics ranged impressively from the softest of high pianissimi to show-stopping diva climaxes. Her sheer leopard-patterned gown tartly married modesty with a playful provocative fashion flair. Despite loud ovations and two bouquets, we were rewarded with just a single unannounced encore.

Jennifer Taylor

It would appear that Grigorian is at last moving on from this all-Russian recital program. At next summer’s Salzburg Festival (where she’ll be again appearing in Macbeth), she and pianist Hyung-ki Joo will present “A Diva is Born” featuring music by Georges Bizet, Giacomo Puccini, Olivier Messiaen, Paul McCartney and John Lennon, Lady Gaga, and Sting!

But first: who will win the fast-approaching Norma sweepstakes? Grigorian will be the first of three sopranos singing their first naughty Druid priestesses in new productions across Europe this spring. In mid-February at the Theater an der Wien, Grigorian, directed by her partner Vasily Barkhatov, will duet with Aigul Akhmetshina after being betrayed by the tenor the Viennese website calls Frederick Rocco De Tomasso. Later in February, Federica Lombardi at the Wiener Staatsoper temporarily loses Juan Diego Florez to Vasilia Berzhanskaya, while in April at Berlin’s Staatsoper. the Barkhatov staging reappears with Rachel Willis-Sorensen, Elmina Hasan, and Dmitri Korchak. Which one would YOU attend?

The post New kids from the bloc appeared first on parterre box.

Boat against the tide

Fri, 20 Dec 2024 11:00:55 +0000

Happy 86th birthday composer John Harbison

The post Boat against the tide appeared first on parterre box.

Rameau - Les Fêtes d'Hébé, ou Les Talens Lyriques, at the Opéra Comique (Salle Favart) in Paris

Thu, 19 Dec 2024 20:37:00 +0000

Opéra Comique, Paris, 17 December 2024

Conductor: William Christie. Production: Robert Carsen. Sets and Costumes: Gideon Davey. Lighting: Robert Carsen, Peter Van Praet. Choreography: Nicolas Paul. Video: Renaud Rubiano. Hébé/Naïade: Emmanuelle de Negri. Sapho/Iphise/Eglé: Lea Desandre. L'Amour/Le ruisseau/Une bergère: Ana Vieira Leite. Momus/Mercure: Marc Mauillon. Hymas/Tirtée: Renato Dolcini. Le ruisseau/Lycurgue: Cyril Auvity. Eurilas/Alcée: Lisandro Abadie. Thélème: Antonin Rondepierre. Le Fleuve: Matthieu Walendzik. Les Arts Florissants.

Photos: Vincent Pontet

William Christie turned 80 on December 19 this year. He chose, as his present to himself, to perform Rameau’s Les Fêtes d’Hébé in a new staging by Robert Carsen, at the Opéra Comique - Christie's thirteenth production there since the famous Atys of 1987. In doing so, he offered a magnificent Christmas present to us all. As this is one of Rameau’s best, but not best-known, works, I’ll begin with a little bit about it. As usual, anyone not needing an intro can skip it.

Premiered in 1739 by the Académie Royale de Musique (now the Paris Opera) in its Palais-Royal house, Les Fêtes d’Hébé, ou les Talens Lyriques (or Talents Liriques, as on the cover of the score in France’s National Library) is the composer’s second ‘opéra-ballet’, after Les Indes Galantes (1735). It followed Castor et Pollux (1737), which I’ll see later this season at the Palais Garnier, and is one of the works in which Rameau recycled music composed for the Samson (1734) he worked on with Voltaire; this was banned by the censors for mixing the sacred and profane, and therefore abandoned. Claus Guth and Raphaël Pichon have put together a reconstruction-cum-pastiche of Samson, performed in Aix in July this year, and I’ll see that at the Opéra Comique next spring.

In 1739, Rameau, by then in his mid-fifties, was at his peak. Despite its feeble libretto, criticised from the outset and revised within months of the premiere, Les Fêtes d’Hébé contains some of his most inventive and variegated music, whether comic, tragic or pastoral, and was one of his greatest hits. Rameau claimed he could successfully set the newspaper to music; his contemporary Guillaume Raynal retorted that having heard Hébé, he could well believe it. With a cast that included Rameau faithfuls Marie Fel, Pierre Jélyotte, Marie Pélissier and the dancer and choreographer Marie Sallé as Terpsichore, the work initially ran for six months non-stop, every night the house was open, and was performed nearly 400 times in all during the composer’s lifetime.

The plot is, if possible, slighter still than that of Les Indes Galantes, and takes the same form: a Prologue and a series of ‘entrées’, alternating song and ballet. In the present case, these are three short stories of love first thwarted but eventually prevailing, that celebrate the combined powers of youth and poetry, music and dance in turn. In antiquity, Hebe was supposed to have been banished from Olympus for spilling the gods’ nectar. Here, she is led by the Zephyrs (or in this production, sent, on a bicycle) to the banks of the Seine, where the action, such as it is, takes place. All you need to know to follow Robert Carsen’s clever updating is (1) that French president Emmanuel Macron’s nickname is Jupiter (on account of his supposedly Olympian presidential style); (2) that each year, the City of Paris transforms the Seine embankments into a ‘beach’ area, with deckchairs, games and dancing, called ‘Paris Plage’; and (3), supposing you didn’t know already, that the 2024 Olympic Games took place in Paris, after an opening ceremony along the river, and ended, as the Olympic flame ascended in a balloon, with Céline Dion singing Piaf’s Hymne à l'amour at a sparkling Eiffel Tower.

At curtain-up, Robert Carsen’s production swaps Olympus for a photographic mock-up, columns, chandeliers and all, of the Elysée Palace, seat of the French presidency. Emmanuel Macron and his wife Brigitte - played by lookalikes - are entertaining guests in suits and cocktail dresses, some carrying briefcases. Disaster strikes: Hébé, a waitress, trips and spills red wine on Brigitte’s immaculate white ensemble. She is fired on the spot by Macron/Jupiter. She leaves, followed by Momus. The guests pour out to form a line at the taxi stand. Amour, here a glamorous influencer in a long, red, satin dress slit to the thigh, ropes in the two handsome, grinning policemen guarding the entrance to take photos while she strikes a series of increasingly zany voguing poses before the palace. The queuing guests brandish their smartphones to capture the scene as Amour consoles Hébé and urges one and all, including Hébé on her bike, to gather for fun and games on the banks of the Seine. It is already obvious by this point that Carsen has given everyone on stage, individually, specific comic directions, followed with alacrity.

The first entrée, La Poésie, finds us at Paris Plage. Young employees in turquoise polo shirts, name tags round their necks, are setting up deck-chairs under a row of potted palms on the embankment. The Elysée guests change on stage into colourful beachwear (this counts as a ballet, though no-one actually dances), and a visibly chuffed chief of France’s CRS riot police takes the place of Hymas, King of Lesbos, to watch the show devised by Sapho. Her success is such that cartons soon arrive, filled with books of her poetry, hot off the press and handed out to her fans, the guests. Thelemus, the unlucky suitor, is garlanded with seaweed and chucked into the Seine with a splash.

The second entrée, La Musique, is set on a Left-Bank quayside, complete with bouquinistes’ dark-green booths on the parapet, and (video) plane-trees above, rustling gently in a summer breeze. Princess Iphise, here already in a wedding dress and veil, may only marry a hero who has defeated the Messenians; in Carsen’s vision, Tyrtaeus is the captain of France’s soccer team, who arrive on the river (i.e. through the auditorium, house lights on) and set off to challenge the Greeks. They return victorious, with their delirious fans: the former Elysée guests, now brandishing flags and scarves. There follows a fascinating soccer mime/ballet, in which feet kick and eyes follow invisible balls. Iphise, of course, weds the coach.

In the third and final entrée, La Danse, a little blue DJ’s shack is set up on an embankment with a broadside view of Notre Dame and her spire, beside a dance floor staked out under strings of bare bulbs. Mercury arrives on a motorbike and takes over the turntables. Eglé’s suitors (there’s a dance-off for her hand) and her virtuoso dancer friends wear contemporary party clothes: fancy dinner jackets, shiny fabrics, spangled tops. The villagers who rush to her wedding with Mercury are, of course, none other than those Elysée guests again. The luxuriant garden evoked by the stage directions is the Hébé, a cardboard cut-out bateau Mouche, with Hebe herself as tour guide. All aboard, the whole crowd set gaily off west along the Seine, gleefully snapping photos and selfies as they go (the whole production is under the sign of Instagram), till the Eiffel Tower looms up and bursts into sparkling lights against a background of fireworks. Curtain - and applause, lots of it.

I said just now that Carsen’s updating of the plot was ‘clever’. It was very clever, as by keeping us wondering what the next, fun clin d’oeil at contemporary France would be, he eliminated any risk of boredom. To create a narrative thread for a libretto that didn’t previously have one, he linked the three entrées together under the single, Paris Plage concept, and hit on plausible, amusing contemporary transpositions of the antique story without resorting to slapstick gags. Carsen is Carsen: it’s funny, but still chic. At a pinch, you might complain that street-inspired dance in Rameau is now déjà vu; but people lap it up, and I don’t think anyone there was in a mood for complaining. Far from it. The detailed action is beautifully managed, to the last glance and gesture, from start to finish. The athletic, witty ballets merge seamlessly with the action and singing, and make unusual demands on soloists and chorus, proving that Lea Desandre, who actually has a sinuous, solo contemporary dance of her own the final entrée, and others do more than ‘just’ sing.

But sing they do. It’s always hard to do justice in writing to music and singing at this high standard. What can you say, other than that everything was fab? William Christie is capable, as we know, of casting weak singers - what a friend of mine calls his ‘voiceless wonders’. Singing Rameau isn’t a stroll in the park: his idiom calls for a demanding mix of declamatory skill with vocal agility and flexibility of a kind that at times almost recalls classical Middle Eastern songs. It’s hard, and you can’t just wander into it from other rep and carry it off. But in this cast there wasn’t one weak link. Here, everyone, from the smallest to the stars, had both the proper style and - mirabile dictu - good diction: what a relief not to spend the evening glued to the supertitles. And not a single countertenor in sight. The chorus was on top form, and no amount of simultaneous acting and dancing could throw them off the beat. If there was one weakness, it was perhaps the minor quibble that the voices in the lower male supporting roles tended to peter out at the bottom: a familiar issue.

Emmanuelle de Negri, who’s sung with Christie for at least fifteen years, set the joyful tone of the evening as Hébé, deploying a darkish, supple soprano voice with vivacity and presence. Cyril Auvity, another ‘Christie veteran,’ eternally youthful (if now grey at the temples) remains instantly recognisable, singing more forcefully and steadily than on occasion, right to the haute contre top.

Ana Vieira Leite and Lea Desandre were both way better employed here than straying into Médée last spring at Garnier, where they sounded two sizes too small. Still, I noted then that ‘Ana Vieira Leite sings beautifully, with a pretty, silvery sound,’ and here she combined that with vivacious comic acting as a glamorous, slightly ditzy but determined influencer. Lea Desandre seemed to 'own' her three roles, showing remarkable ease in the style - supple, subtle, varied in colour and dynamics… It was as if she'd sung them all her life. She was quite obviously the vocal star of the evening. And even more than the rest of the cast, her singing, acting and dancing were all one, forming an integrated whole.

Only that stardom was very nearly snatched away from her at the last hour by Marc Mauillon. The role of Momus doesn’t really offer the chance to shine. But Mercury is Mercury, and was originally sung by Jélyotte. His easily recognisable arias, florid, brilliant and high, are among the hardest in Rameau to get right. Mauillon did it, putting in an astonishing performance that, to be honest, based on past experience, I had no idea he had in him. Not, I think, since Topi Lehtipuu had I heard one of these dazzling, clarion-call arias carried off with such gleeful brio.

William Christie, at 80, conducts Rameau with even more vigour than ever. I’ve tended, in the past, to associate him with a delicate, feathery, touch, even if his tempi have always been brisk. But here, with quite a large orchestra including four oboes, four bassoons, and a musette, the playing was not just vigorous but rich, colourful, and beefy: more ‘muscular’ than usual. His years of French baroque have culminated in absolute mastery of the style, giving him freedom to navigate, with his players and chorus, the most striking variations in colour, tempo, rhythm and dynamics. If, above, I wrote that Lea Desandre was the vocal star, it was so I could now say that the real stars of this particular show were, indeed, Christie and his players. A feast. He looked as pleased as punch during the curtain calls, and as usual led an encore from the stage while capering, in his dapper white tie and tails, with the cast.

Best of 2024

Thu, 19 Dec 2024 15:48:16 +0000

So here we go with a round up of the best things I saw and listened to in 2024.

Opera

The Toronto opera scene is still a bit flat and lacking the vibrancy of pre-pandemic with Against the Grain pretty much invisible and Tapestry wrapped up in building out their new digs. Still, there were some good shows. The best of the CCC’s offerings, IMO, were Cherubini’s Medea in the spring and Gounod’s Faust in the fall. Beyond the COC, William Christie and co’s presentation of Purcell’s The Fairy Queen at TSM was refreshingly different, Opera 5 bounced back with a rather good production of Britten’s The Turn of the Screw and let’s throw Art of Time Ensemble’s reimagining of Stravinsky’s The Soldier’s Tale into this category too. There were a couple of excellent student shows. The GGS produced a very good Dialogues of the Carmelites early in the year and UoT Opera chipped in with their Three Islands show featuring three one act operas directed by Tim Albery.

Concerts

My picks in this category are seriously eclectic. Two shows at Koerner Hall early in the year stood out; Peter Sellars’ staging of Schütz’ Musikalische Exequien with the LA Master Chorale and Emma Nikolovska’s emotional and engaging “Return to Toronto”. TSM featured two outstanding but very different concerts with an excellent recital by Dame Sarah Connolly and the debut of the ebullient Schmaltz and Pepper. Later in the year was the CD launch of Ajdad-Ancestors by the Amir Amiri Ensemble. Finally, Barbara Hannigan did it again at a packed Koerner Hall with a recital with Bernard Chamayou which included an absolutely remarkable performance of music by John Zorn.

Theatre

The Toronto theatre scene is really busy. I don’t usually see the most commercial end of it (i.e. Mirvish) but it still keeps me super busy with seasons from high quality outfits like Coal Mine, Crow’s Theatre and Canadian Stage and a bunch of much more experimental stuff from smaller theatre companies and festivals.

The very best came quite late in the year with the stunning one man show featuring Saul Rubinek; Playing Shylock at Canadian Stage. There were also some strong productions of repertory classics including Hedda Gabler at Coal Mine and Rosmersholm at Crow’s. Two plays about residential schools also impressed me; Jani Lauzon’s 1939 at Canadian Stage managed to be deeply thought provoking and very funny and Civilized at Buddies in Bad Times was a stunning one man show.

On a lighter note, I actually enjoyed a musical: the very clever and inventive DION at Coal Mine and I was equally taken by the rather mad Mad Madge from Nightwood. The Inheritance at Canadian Stage deserves a mention. In this age of sub 90 minute plays a tightly written and consistently compelling six hour epic is something to behold! Finally, a couple of Fringe shows gave me a good laugh. There was the crazy farce/clown show Monks and the wonderful black comedy Stiff and Sons. They made up for the less successful fare and all the hanging around in line ups in the blazing sun!

Video recordings

It wasn’t a particularly great year in terms of DVD/Blu-ray releases but four did stand out. There was a recording Rameau’s Platée that showcased just how well Opéra de Paris incorporates dance, a very focussed Robert Carsen production of Aida from Covent Garden, a charming L’elisir d’amore, also from Covent Garden and a rather radical Der Freischütz from, of all places, Bregenz.

Also on video we got to see the Digital Excellence Award winning film Sweat by Jennifer Nicholls and Larissa Koniuk. And, a deeply personal one for me; was the very weird discovery of a recording of the 1977 TV broadcast of Viktor Uhlmann’s Der Kaiser von Atlantis.

Audio recordings

So many audio recordings come my way that it’s impossible to keep up. Some notable ones early in the year included a recording of Michael Hersch’s opera Poppea and a beautiful recital by Hera Hyesang Park (with some help from Emily D’Angelo). I don’t often listen to opera on CD when I can watch it but I thought the recording of Handel’s Theodora on the Alpha label was outstanding. Barbara Hannigan and Bertrand Chamayou chipped in with some outstanding Messiaen. There was also George Benjamin’s excellent new opera Picture a Day Like This (we need a video of this one) and Benjamin Appl’s fascinating collaboration with György Kurtág; Lines of Life.

Statistics

It was a busy year. I reviewed 149 live shows (71 concerts, 29 opera performances and 49 plays). I also published reviews of 34 opera videos and 46 CDs with a few more of each in the pipeline at various publications.

2025

Thu, 19 Dec 2024 14:41:00 +0000

Ethiopian blends

Thu, 19 Dec 2024 14:00:54 +0000

Included are rare performances by Galina Vishnevskaya (her Met debut), Montserrat Caballé, and Rita Hunter in the title role, as well as Shirley Verrett’s only New York Amneris, along with Elena Obrazstova’s Met debut and Marilyn Horne’s sole complete opera at the Met with Caballé (the first of her just two Met Ethiopian princesses).

The early in-house recording of the Vishnevskaya debut isn’t absolutely complete and features the first of only two performances of Radamès that Jon Vickers sang in New York. One wonders if the appearance of Franco Corelli on the scene earlier in 1961 dissuaded Vickers from continuing in a role he sang elsewhere. Perhaps Corelli may also be the reason that Carlo Bergonzi stopped singing Manrico in New York during the years Corelli sang it.

The year before Vishnevskaya arrived, another notable Russian singer, Pavel Lisitsian, made his Met debut in Aida. He sang Amonasro the day before Leonard Warren died onstage during La Forza del Destino. Like Piero Cappuccilli, Lisitsian’s Met career consisted of a single performance; unfortunately, I’ve never seen mention of a recording of either debut/farewell.

As I often think of it as a dramatic tenor role, I was surprised to note that Bergonzi–who appears today opposite both Lucine Amara and Hunter– performed Radamès with the company almost 60 times. The Verrett show comes from the strike-shortened season of 1969-70 when the Met was desperately putting together an abbreviated schedule. That might explain why the mezzo appeared just once that season in her sole Amneris.

Though she sang the title role with the company more than thirty times, I don’t find Amara a particularly satisfying Aida. Perhaps someone who heard her in Verdi in the house could offer an opinion.

Obraztsova appeared with the Met a year after she made a splash when the Bolshoi Opera visited New York. She sang often with the company until US-Soviet relations froze several years later and which prevented her from singing there again for over eight years. She reappeared in 1987 as Azucena during the ill-fated Livia Budai Trovatore run.

A number of today’s principals performed their roles with the company over very long stretches: Amara from 1959 until 1983; Mignon Dunn from 1960 to 1980 and Bergonzi 1956 until 1978.

Paul Plishka sang either the King or Ramfis 111 times between 1967 and 1999, while James Morris made his debut as the King in 1971 and was still singing Ramfis in 2017! Robert Nagy sang an astonishing 175 Aidas with the Met between 1957 and 1986, nearly all as the Messenger with just three occasions, including today’s recording replacing Placido Domingo (you can hear the boos responding to that announcement), as Radamès

Beginning New Year’s Eve, the new Michael Mayer production will be seen seventeen times this season including an HD transmission on January 25^th.

Verdi: Aida

Aida: Galina Vishnevskaya
Amneris: Mignon Dunn
Priestess: Carlotta Ordassy
Radamès: Jon Vickers
Amonasro: Anselmo Colzani
Ramfis: Jerome Hines
King: Louis Sgarro
Messenger: Robert Nagy

Conductor: Nino Verchi
6 November 1961
Metropolitan Opera
In-house recording

Aida: Lucine Amara
Amneris: Shirley Verrett
Priestess: Carlotta Ordassy
Radamès: Carlo Bergonzi
Amonasro: Mario Sereni
Ramfis: Justino Díaz
King: Paul Plishka
Messenger: Rod MacWherter

Conductor: Kurt Adler
Metropolitan Opera
In-house recording
March 31, 1970

Aida: Montserrat Caballé
Amneris: Marilyn Horne
Priestess: Marcia Baldwin
Radamès: Robert Nagy
Amonasro: Cornell MacNeil
Ramfis: Jerome Hines
King: James Morris
Messenger: Charles Anthony

Conductor: James Levine
Metropolitan Opera
In-house recording
10 March 1976

Aida: Rita Hunter
Amneris: Elena Obraztsova
Priestess: Jean Kraft
Radamès: Carlo Bergonzi
Amonasro: Louis Quilico
Ramfis: James Morris
King: Philip Booth
Messenger: Paul Franke

Conductor: Kazimierz Kord
Metropolitan Opera
In-house recording
12 October 1976

Each Aida 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.

Photo: Metropolitan Opera Archives

The post Ethiopian blends appeared first on parterre box.

Peu m’importe si tu m’aimes

Thu, 19 Dec 2024 11:00:20 +0000

//www.youtube.com/watch?v=KoYHWgj1Gcs

On this date in 1991 the World Premiere of John Corigliano‘s The Ghost of Versailles at the Met

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

Born on this day composers Giuseppe Giordani (1751) and Walter Braunfels (1882), conductor Fritz Reiner(1888), soprano and Glyndebourne founder Audrey Mildmay (1900), soprano Dusolina Giannini (1902), and baritone Sanford Sylvan (1953)

Happy 80th birthday conductor William Christie
Happy 75th birthday baritone Russell Smythe
Happy 72nd birthday mezzo Jane Bunnell
Happy 67th birthday baritone Olaf Bär

The post Peu m’importe si tu m’aimes appeared first on parterre box.

The Torment Within: Pagliacci at the Teatro Comunale di Bologna

Wed, 18 Dec 2024 15:42:49 +0000

Leoncavallo – Pagliacci

Canio – Mikheil Sheshaberidze
Nedda – Francesca Sassu
Tonio – Badral Chuluunbaatar
Beppe – Paolo Antognetti
Silvio – Marcello Rosiello

Coro Voci Bianche del Teatro Comunale di Bologna, Coro del Teatro Comunale di Bologna, Orchestra del Teatro Comunale di Bologna / Daniel Oren.
Stage director – Serena Sinigaglia.

Teatro Comunale di Bologna – Comunale Nouveau, Bologna, Italy. Tuesday, December 17th, 2024.

For its final new production of 2024, the Teatro Comunale di Bologna chose to end the year with this new production of Pagliacci, directed by Serena Sinigaglia and conducted by Daniel Oren. As is customary at the house, the run was double-cast with experienced singers in one, and younger talents in the other. Given the strength of casting one has come to expect here, seeing the second cast can often be a great opportunity to discover new talent that one might not previously have been aware of. One might also question whether having such a short opera, complete with intermission, would actually be good value for a night out. Particularly as getting to the Comunale’s temporary theatre is such a mission. I would strongly recommend visitors give themselves extra time to get there – the bus timetables in this wonderful city tend to be more suggestions that dependable – and to go with an empty bladder, given the fact that the temporary theatre is short of washrooms. And yet, Pagliacci contains so much gripping drama that it really does make for an engaging evening in the theatre; and with a curtain time of 18:00, and ending by 19:45, left plenty of time for a meal in one of the splendid osterie that abound in the culinary capital of the Italian Republic.

On entering the auditorium, the audience was confronted with an empty stage, with only a raised platform in the centre. As the prelude started, the stage crew set about creating a pastoral scene on stage, creating fields of wheat in which the action took place. This reminded us that this is very much a piece of small-town Italy, the excitement of the visiting troupe brought to life. As a framework for that action, it was effective enough. Although, unfortunately for Sinigaglia, her staging did not allow one to forget Damiano Michieletto’s outstanding production of this work, his love letter to small-town Italy, that I saw in Brussels. Indeed, it felt that Sinigaglia’s handling of the chorus was a bit too self-consciously ‘stagey’, with lots of parking accompanied by emphatic hand gestures. I do also wonder why she had a group of farmers accompany ‘vesti la giubba’ by waving scythes in the air, looking at the audience. Was it to suggest that Canio was doomed to murder? Was it that his suffering was known to him only, while the population went around its business? It’s hard to know, but really did feel unnecessary and indeed distracting. She also had Tonio brutally assault Nedda sexually in their big confrontation. It was certainly striking, bringing out that Tonio was a powerful, psychopathic danger to her, but at the same time, did feel a bit gratuitous. Still, on the whole Sinigaglia’s staging did what it needed to do and allowed the musical aspects to be front and centre, even though it didn’t eclipse memories of Michieletto’s much stronger staging.

The Comunale orchestra was on stupendous form for Daniel Oren. I must admit to a little trepidation at the prospect of Oren’s conducting, but I have to say that working with a truly great orchestra, as he was here, he was able to give an utterly riveting performance. Indeed, I would say that the intermission actually took away from the dramatic tension that Oren had so fully brought out. His tempi were generally quite swift, with ‘Stridono lassù’ taken at a delightfully uplifting lick. The playing of the orchestra was superlative. The sheer sound they made was so idiomatic and their ability to phrase and make ‘sing’ Leoncavallo’s melodies was utterly enchanting. Even in this difficult acoustic, the corporate sound that they made was so distinctively Italian and so right for this work. The sheer personality in the wind playing, the accuracy of the brass, and the warmth of the strings – including an extremely eloquent cello solo, all combined to a fabulous whole. The choruses, with adults prepared by Gea Garatti Ansini and children by Alhambra Superchi, were also superb. The children were terrifically raucous and uninhibited. The adults sang with excellent precision of ensemble and made a massive sound. Indeed, the huge high B on ‘silenzio’ at the start of the pagliacci’s show, must have been heard on the other side of town – it was tremendous. These are house forces that are really on top of their game right now.

All of the cast was new to me and I must admit to particularly enjoying getting to hear new singers. Mikheil Sheshaberidze is based in Italy and sings frequently in theatres around the republic. This meant that he brought a clarity of diction, and communicated an understanding of the text, that gave much pleasure. The voice is big in depth, although it does sound like it needs a bit of heavy lifting to get to the top, which is clarion and focused. I must admit his ‘vesti la giubba’ at first felt a bit restrained, a bit passive. Yet, as Sheshaberidze moved through this celebrated aria, he brought ever more emotion so that his ‘ridi Pagliaccio’ was utterly devastating. There was a quiet anger to his reading, a sense of hiding the torment within, that I found initially a bit too subtle, but it eventually grew to be very convincing.

Francesca Sassu gave us a lovely Nedda. The voice is light and able to float on air, and she’s the owner of a genuine trill. Her legato was milky smooth and her control of the breath allowed her to spin those charming, long lines impeccably. I did have a sense that the role takes her just slightly beyond her current limits in terms of amplitude, not helped by the fact that the orchestra was a shade too loud to allow her to be most optimally heard in the bigger climaxes. Still, her implicit musicality and ability to float her lines were wonderful to hear. Definitely a name to watch.

Photo: © Michele Monasta / Maggio Musicale Fiorentino

BREAKING NEWS: Opera & Ballet

Audiences expect miracles

Un giorno rendimi de’ miei primi anni

Review of 2024

The promise of ages

January 2025

Quand sur la plage

Have you seen a child?

Singing from our chains

I want candy

Joseph Schumpeter and a Broken Jar of Coffee

Ecco l’artista!

'Morning Star' - The Gesualdo Six, 20 December 2024

The Magic Flute

Les Contes d’Hoffmann

You can’t keep a good girl down

Birds, bears, and based boyfriends

New kids from the bloc

Boat against the tide

Rameau - Les Fêtes d'Hébé, ou Les Talens Lyriques, at the Opéra Comique (Salle Favart) in Paris

Best of 2024

2025

Ethiopian blends

Peu m’importe si tu m’aimes

The Torment Within: Pagliacci at the Teatro Comunale di Bologna

Anna Caterina Antonacci

Let’s get metaphysical

Streich the harp and join the chorus

BBC SO/Oramo - Elgar, 13 December 2024

El Niño: Nativity Reconsidered

Seek to set him right

Abendsterne

More on Hayek

Family Life: Mavra and Gianni Schicchi at the Maggio Musicale Fiorentino

All the world loves a clown

I am always acting

The Excursions of Mr. Brouček

Stravinsky - The Rake's Progress, at the Palais Garnier in Paris

Pagliacci

Il suo mister come mai finì?

Lines of Life

Grounded

La cenerentola

Inevitable Destiny: La forza del destino at the Teatro alla Scala

Horton - Debussy and Chopin, 11 December 2024

Fenlon and Fenlon do Winterreise

Revisiting The Master Plan

Mikael Karlsson - Fanny and Alexander, at La Monnaie in Brussels

Respighi and Verdi

Transpositions