BREAKING NEWS: Opera & Ballet

Spelling it out for you

Fri, 22 Nov 2024 19:40:25 +0000

Rachvelishvili, who has been rebounding from a vocal crisis, made her role debut as Jezibaba Wednesday night in Naples.

How do you think she sounds?

Dvorák: “Cury mury fuk” from Rusalka

November 20, 2024
Dan Ettinger, Conductor
Teatro di San Carlo
Naples

Photo: Luciano Romano

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Il trovatore

Fri, 22 Nov 2024 17:00:52 +0000

Ken Howard

Streaming and discussion begin at 7:55 PM EST.

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Is our singers learning?

Fri, 22 Nov 2024 14:00:21 +0000

The pedagogue currently known as Haus of Shmizzay. Photos courtesy of their Instagram.

I get into the elevator with a six-and-a-half foot Oscar statuette. White-gold helmet hair. Gold Versace jumpsuit. Gold bling and protective designer sunglasses. He dwarfs me and the guy he’s with. It’s obvious that this is Haus of Shmizzay, the opera provocateur and influencer, and the reason I’ve come here to OPERA America’s National Opera Center for a conversation about the art of bel canto singing and the current state of voice teaching.

The event is sponsored by the enterprising Bel Canto Boot Camp (BCBC), which began as a Facebook practice group born out of desperation in March 2020, and grew to an online community of more than 1700 singers, voice teachers, coaches, and conductors, all working together posting practice videos and sharing progress. BCBC, which received its name from parterre box publisher and old-school singing aficionado Nick Scholl, is now a vigorous 501(C)(3) determined to teach performers and audience members about old-school technical methods and true artistry in operatic singing.

The point of tonight’s session is to kick off a series of presentations where vocal coaches Rachelle Jonck and Derrick Goff, the masterminds of Bel Canto Boot Camp, will chat with teachers, coaches, conductors, and others who share the core values of BCBC. Haus of Shmizzay, whose real name is James Smidt, is a kind of prelude to nine sessions planned as “Spring Training Tuesdays” at OPERA America from February to April 2025. Conductor and vocal historian Will Crutchfield, tenor and voice teacher Jack Livigni, and coaches Michal Biel, Katelan Terrell, and Ksenia Leletkina are among those already engaged, while past BCBC guests have included Michael Spyres, Jack Swanson, and Lisette Oropesa.

//www.youtube.com/watch?v=LAibJjdXnC4

James is currently the hot voice teacher in New York. His in-person and online calendar are full. Students fly in from Germany to work with him. His rogue Instagram presence came onto my radar last year, and I loved his audio posts comparing dead sopranos with current working gals in choice aria moments. In an interview with Opera Innovation, James admitted to taking time off in 2019 to rethink his own lackluster performing career. He was giving lessons to friends during COVID lockdowns, began a voice teaching Instagram, then discovered memes. He jumped into the OPERA America listserv transphobic email scandal and gained even more attention.

His day job was at a large, well-known private equity firm. “It turned out to be a perfect fit for me because, essentially, I was a glorified houseplant. My daily routine involved sitting at a desk, answering just two phone calls a day, sending three emails, sipping coffee, and building my Instagram presence. It provided a full-time salary for what was essentially spending time building my Instagram world, which set me up perfectly for the transition into teaching.” He is still amazed at how everything took off, and his studio is now booking months in advance, with more than half the students actively singing in top opera houses and major Young Artist programs.

Tonight’s session includes plenty of demonstrations, audience participation, laughter, and guided listening. BCBC had arranged topics in PowerPoint and began by outlining their initiatives. These include sharing resources–including historical treatises, vocalizes, Italian poetry rules, libretto translation guidelines, and more—on their website, and a book that grew out of the lockdown practice sessions.

The Vaccai Project: A practice diary exploring the historically informed performance practice of the bel canto style inspired by the classic lessons of Vaccai is a 280-page compendium of historical material, exercises, and inspiration, including journal prompts and a clean new edition of Vaccai’s instructional songs, in a structured workbook format with a friendly and supportive tone. Italian librettos are dissected, registration exercises (balancing head voice and chest voice) are numerous, QR codes link to videos, and instructions are given for reducing a piece to its musical skeleton in order to understand the composer’s, as well as one’s own, ornaments. (Full disclosure: I have participated from the beginning as a singer, voice teacher, audience member, and sometime critic, and make heavy use of the website and the book in my own work.)

Audience development and outreach are special passions of Rachelle and Derek, who travel around the US, Europe, and South Africa to teach, and are particularly interested in the opera loving community that lacks listening tools to discriminate and hear through the hype. Tenor and audiophile Steven Tharp joined BCBC to present Sunday afternoon listening sessions over Zoom, where a lively chat commentary holds nothing back. Steven has been listening to old singers for years, and curates sessions often themed by nationality or repertoire that go far beyond the usual golden age stars. But above all, BCBC is ruled by the collaborative, service-oriented spirit of ubuntu, a term from Rachelle’s South African homeland that means “I am because we are.” “When you join Bel Canto Boot Camp and its projects,” the website clarifies, “you do more than enter our shared, safe, creative space: you enter into the spirit of ubuntu.”

Is this zeal from both BCBC and Haus really necessary? How bad is the current state of singing? And when did it begin to deteriorate? You might blame the microphone and the recording industry, which promoted small-voiced singers with personality, or stage directors and video productions that demanded physical attractiveness at the expense of vocal excellence. Glamour master classes or taking a voice lesson only once a week, rather than seeing a teacher every day, might have contributed. Maybe larger acoustically-unfriendly performance spaces are to blame, or bigger orchestras, or the gradual rise in pitch. Maybe the fault is singing heavy repertoire too soon, or singing a greater variety of repertoire, or singing too often, or taking jet planes instead of ocean liners when the singer could work with the conductor for several days on board.

Or maybe it’s changing aesthetics, but does anyone really prefer wobbly vibratos to a gorgeous chiaroscuro sound? Many university voice programs prioritize volume and brightness over expression. Students also have to satisfy requirements in diction, movement, theory, history, and other academic classes that eat into practice time. But is conservatory voice teaching itself at a consistently high level?

The meat of the OPERA America session involves defining the principles of bel canto singing, shared by both BCBC and Haus, and trying out some exercises. (A roomful of opera singers is LOUD.) James emphasizes the connection between speaking and singing, and a recording of William Butler Yeats reading his poem “The Lake Isle of Innisfree” displays vibrato, trills, a reciting tone, and variety of speed and dynamics in a quasi-sung delivery. It’s a fun way to awaken our listening skills.

//www.youtube.com/watch?v=QLlcvQg9i6c

During the session much attention is paid to “the glottal onset” described by the OG voice teacher, Manuel Garcia II (1805 – 1906; yes, you read that right), and we all practice calling across the room “Eh!” like Italians in the piazza. As part of an illustrious family that included his father Manuel Garcia (Rossini’s first Almaviva), Maria Malibran, and Pauline Viardot, he must have been delighted when his invention of the laryngoscope in 1854 proved everything he had been teaching about singing was right.

In addition to this “coup de glotte,” Haus and BCBC emphasized minimal effort, organic processing, legato, well-developed chest voice, and portamento, how to get from one note to another without changing the sound. We use the video software program VoceVista to look at some coloratura passages from famous singers, our eyes confirming what our ears heard; some sing disconnected, pecky runs, while others glide through passagework with lovely legato.

We do some exercises switching from head voice to chest voice and back again and look at historical treatises describing and illustrating this. All the old exercise books begin with long notes and registration exercises, saving scales and arpeggios for much later. We listen to examples of perfect registration from Sigrid Onegin, Louise Homer, and Claudia Muzio, as well as some recordings where the dramatic situation calls for chest voice much higher than the bel-canto-prescribed F. (Think Lucia’s “il fantasma,” Santuzza’s “Io piango,” etc.) Rachelle finds several places in the repertoire for what she calls the “achey-brakey voice,” the slightly sobbing “Sicilian widow” sound, and we attempt this also.

//www.youtube.com/watch?v=DxW94tX55jM

She expands on this later: “Singers are routinely asked by conductors, coaches, and yes, teachers, to omit the audible portamento in cantabile music, insert h’s in their coloratura, avoid chest voice up to F4 — the F above middle C. These instructions,” Rachelle elaborates, “are clearly the very opposite of what singers were taught up to roughly 1940 as evidenced in recordings of the late 19th and early 20th century and described extensively in treatises of the 19th century and before. It also happens to be how the voice functions naturally.”

One current popular notion is that chest voice is to be avoided entirely, which really bothers Rachelle. She is passionate about this fundamental technical skill. “Sadly, it is the portamento and the chest voice above everything else that carries the soul of the voice to the ear of the audience, and people who are against this are robbing singers of their expressive voices and robbing audiences of hearing them. If you think this is ‘the new style of singing,’” she asks, “then why not have ‘new style opera houses’ where people can sing non-legato, whisper, shout, and explore expanded vocal techniques? Use a microphone if you feel like it, since that’s what inspired these new ways of singing.”

The session also includes plenty of talk about voice science and the current state of voice teaching. Many college programs are run by voice scientists disguised as pedagogues, and an emphasis on mechanics, in the nature of formants, the cricothyroid and thyroarytenoid muscles, semi-occluding the vocal tract, or singing through a straw – all jargony terms for which I have no time.

BCBC might use VoceVista’s analytic information to back up what they hear with their own ears, but Haus dismisses it outright. In his Opera Innovation interview, he admitted that “at the conservatory level, I experienced a kind of almost anti-old-world pedagogy, and everybody was so concerned with the science, spectrographs, muscle functions, and allegory. It would be like going to art school to learn how to paint, and rather than learning how to paint, you’re expected to learn, diagram and label all the muscles of the hand and do mathematical calculations on color theory, instead of just picking up a freaking paintbrush and learning the strokes!”

BCBC’s Derrick Goff also places voice science firmly in the university setting and considers it another way to take money from singers: “As a non-built instrument, we can keep creating hypotheses and try to prove or disprove them. What is not taken into account is that the voices that are studied scientifically are often not the best ones, and often not working at the maximum efficiency. A lot more study of defective voices happens than great ones.”

Will Crutchfield, the BCBC-adjacent vocal historian and conductor, agrees. “Given that singing reached peak levels of achievement when ‘voice science’ didn’t exist, it can’t be considered necessary. I think it can be helpful if it’s used to organize the information our ears already tell us. But overall, I think it’s more useful for criticism and history than for learning how to sing or how to teach.”

Rachelle thinks “science” is the key word. “It seems to me that voice science seeks to bring order to the chaos of modern voice teaching, which in turn feeds that ‘touchy feely’ world of personality cult teaching that has dominated for the past 75 years.” Of course, old-school teachers were also interested in anatomy (remember Garcia dropping a small mirror down his throat?), but BCBC and Haus seem to agree that the ears are the most important tool. Clearly voice scientists need to be studying great singing and not just five random singers going into a studio to record the C above middle C on various vowels.

And yet, technology has been useful in tracing the increasing slowness of singers’ vibratos. Crutchfield points out that “the average rate has fallen from about 6.7 cycles per second to about 5.5. And vibrato on high notes used to be same-or-faster compared to the rest of the voice, while now they are same-or-slower. So, science is helpful there, because it can give us a fact in place of a suspicion, and that might provide a spur to action.”

He insists that “sluggish vibrato” goes hand in hand with “off-the-voice piano,” “darkened vowels,” “underdevelopment of chest voice,” “scooping into the pitch,” and “unintended local diminuendos” as general markers of a move from greater to lesser laryngeal energization. It’s only a slight oversimplification of that to qualify it as “a move away from opera singing and towards laid-back mic singing.” Sounds disturbingly like Rachelle’s “new style opera house.”

The OPERA America session made clear that both Haus and BCBC are trying to bring back the musical and aesthetic values of the past. Complaining about wobbly sopranos currently singing at the Met is one thing but, as Derrick pointed out, this year at the Met competition all the women used chest voice properly and there was no choppy coloratura. But does this represent the current state of vocal training? The taste of the judges this year? Or is it just random?

These are passionate, driven artists and they are preaching to my choir. They are on a mission, and they want to educate the listening public. Haus can be both endearing – in h

Midcentury modern

Fri, 22 Nov 2024 11:00:23 +0000

//www.youtube.com/watch?v=c2kdwGS-05A

Happy 62nd birthday soprano Sumi Jo

//www.youtube.com/watch?v=08xsZ0vtZyw

On this day premieres of Giacomo Meyerbeer‘s Robert le Diable in Paris (1831) and Pietro Mascagni‘s Iris in Rome (1898)

Birthday anniversaries of baritone Jacques Jansen (1913), bass Günter Reich (1921), director Peter Hall(1930), and tenor Jerome Pruett (1941)

Happy 75th birthday mezzo-soprano Elizabeth Laurence
Happy 73rd birthday conductor Kent Nagano

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The Bidding War

Thu, 21 Nov 2024 17:02:33 +0000

There was a certain amount of anticipatory buzz about Michael Ross Albert’s The Bidding War, directed by Paolo Santalucia, that opened at Crow’s Theatre on Wednesday night. Crow’s has built rather a reputation for punchy, darkly humorous, Toronto-centric plays. This time it’s basically a satire on the Toronto real estate market and the sharp practices of the real estate and property development industries and for the most part it hits the mark.

Owing to the death of the former owner, a sculptor, the last affordable house in the downtownish area has come on the market. Selling it is the first venture into real estate for Sam; a friend of the family but something of a loser. It opens with Sam desperately trying to get ready for an open house when June, the sculptor’s daughter and also a sculptor (of pieces made from bioluminescent algae) based in Berlin shows up jet-lagged. She is the co-owner and has no idea why her step-mother has entrusted the sale to Sam. They row and Sam agrees to convert contract to one in which he must obtain a sale in 24 hours.

The prospective buyers and their agents arrive during these shenanigans. The house is priced too low and there are rumours of developments (gentrification natch!) that will boost values in the area. The prospects include a technologically challenged retired teacher, an unemployed journalist and his heavily pregnant wife, a gay couple and a gym bunny who peddles humiliation on Tik-tok and Instagram. As the buyers’ agents begin to realise just what a steal the house is they try desperately to fob off their clients so that they can put in an offer themselves. Mayhem ensues.

There are lots of Toronto clichés and obvious farce elements but just as it seems to be descending into rather predictable slapstick it takes a shocking and darker turn with with an allergic reaction, fights, an unfortunate encounter between an eye and a sculpture of a bug, and serious shagging in the basement. It’s not every play where the stage hands come out to mop up the blood at intermission! In the second half relationships start to fall apart, characters reveal their deepest fears, the physically maimed reappear to terrifyingly funny effect and we finally learn who has been pulling the strings all along. Cynicism gets its reward but it’s a less than zero sum game.

It’s well constructed theatre brought off by a talented ensemble cast. Peter Fernandes is excellent as Sam and he and Veronica Hortiguela, as June, do a very good slow reveal on their long standing, rather fraught, relationship. Gregory Waters as the muscle guy Charlie is incredibly feral and is especially funny when he and unscrupulous realtor and wannabe Tory MP Blayne (Aurora Browne) get jiggy. Her second act appearance is also rather striking. Gay couple Donovan (Izad Etamadi) and Ian (Steven Sutcliffe) are convincing and the latter is especially good in Act 2 portraying someone still suffering from an acute allergic reaction. Their realtor Greg, who can’t quite get over his ambition to be an actor, is nicely played by Sergio Di Zito.

Gregory Prest, as the earnest journo Luke, and Amy Matysio as Lara, his more materialistic and heavily pregnant wife, knock spots off each other in a sometimes cringe-worthy way. The cast is rounded out by Sophia Walker as Patricia whose real estate practice is collapsing and who is trying desperately to dump her client Miriam; the latter played by Fiona Reid who does an excellent job of playing someone who is not quite as as dumb as they make themselves out to be.

It’s put together really well; staged in the round with quite striking sound design by Olivia Wheeler and lighting by Christian Horoszczak. The sets by Ken Mackenzie and Sim Suzer are simple but effective and the “bug sculptures” are genius.

It’s a good night at the theatre. It’s clever, if in places predictably so, and at times it’s laugh out loud funny especially if that’s how you react to the unexpectedly horrible. The direction is tight and there’s fine ensemble acting. Overall it lives up to expectations and is probably going to be a huge hit.

Photos by Dahlia Katz. I just wish there were a few of the weirder bits of Act 2.

It takes a woman

Thu, 21 Nov 2024 14:00:23 +0000

First, the San Francisco Opera mounted its final fall production, a revival of Francesca Zambello’s 2019 staging of Georges Bizet’s evergreen Carmen on Wednesday, November 13^th. Two days later, at the tiny ODC Theater, the flourishing Ars Minerva presented the modern-day world premiere of La Flora, composed by Antonio Sartorio (1630 – 1680, he died before the opera was finished) and completed by Marc’Antonio Ziani (c. 1653 – 1715), with libretto by Novello Bonis.

A co-production between the San Francisco Opera and Washington National Opera, the well-traveled Zambello’s production was based on an earlier Royal Opera House Covent Garden and Norwegian National Opera co-production. It updated the setting to Seville around the time of the opera’s premiere in 1875, instead of the 1820s. This revival strikingly boasted two US debuts and a role debut amongst the principals, in addition to a house debut for the American conductor Benjamin Manis.

Making her American debut, French mezzo-soprano Eve-Maud Hubeaux joined a long list of esteemed Carmen interpreters on the War Memorial stage (after all, the opera is the fourth most-presented work in the company’s history behind Giacomo Puccini’s Big Three) with her mercurial take of the titular role. Tall, beautiful, and elegant, her Carmen exuded equal parts of confidence and cool indifference, almost as if she had no cares for the world. Without resorting to gratuitousness, here was a full-fledged woman living by her own rules, making sense of Carmen’s defiance in the final two acts. While she might lack a coquettish factor for Act I to some, particularly for the “Seguidille,” she solidly characterized Carmen throughout the opera as a marginalized person with an ideal. Poor, maybe, but not broken.

Hubeaux’s voice, if anything, was even more impressive. Armed with perfect French diction and great phrasing, her considerable sound felt warm and velvety to my ears, with a robust and well-supported middle register that moved up the stave with ease. Being a native French speaker also made her a natural in her dialogues, which she projected with total clarity. Furthermore, playing with various colors, the voice also emanated sensuality and self-assurance without being overly vain. If I might nitpick, only the low parts of “Habanera” seemed to trip her a bit on Wednesday, as they tended to get swallowed by the orchestra.

Two years after the self-professed Puccini tenor Jonathan Tetelman made his house debut in Giuseppe Verdi’s La traviata, the Chilean-American tenor gave an absorbing performance as the naïve soldier Don José in his very Italianate role debut, particularly in the “Flower Song.” With a ringing register and marked dynamics in his voice, he detailed Don José’s act-by-act gradual decline in fate sonically and physically. It was truly fascinating to see how far his acting skills had progressed since Alfredo Germont just two short years ago!

He wholeheartedly presented a well-defined and totally believable character, befitting the fact that Don José was the opera’s central figure and, as musicologist Winton Dean put it, “[it] is his fate rather than Carmen’s that interests us.” Tetelman also established a great rapport with Hubeaux, and the juxtaposition between his fiery passions and her calm, composed demeanor provided the show with a much-needed push-pull drama that was riveting to watch. The final scene, in particular, continued building until it reached its feverish climax with Carmen’s death—indeed an edge-of-the-seat moment for the audience!

Four years after her scheduled American debut with the company (as the title role of George Frideric Handel’s Partenope revival), British soprano and the 2017 Dame Joan Sutherland Audience Prize winner at the BBC Cardiff Singer of the World competition Louise Alder finally landed at War Memorial stage making triple-debut (US, Company, and role) as the chaste village maiden Micaëla. With bright and lyrical equipment, she easily traversed Micaëla’s music, and her showstopper Act III aria, “Je dis que rien ne m’épouvante,” turned out to be, indeed, showstopping. Nevertheless, her personification of the role might be problematic for some, as her Micaëla proved to be neither innocent nor angelic as the role is usually played. While on its own, it was a sensible interpretation, presenting Micaëla as a full-grown woman with desires and feelings, but the contrast between her and Carmen became lesser. And as a result, it lessened the impact of Don José’s downfall. Next spring, Alder will return to the Bay Area to tackle Cleopatra in Handel’s Giulio Cesare in Egitto with the English Concert, a role that should match her temperament more fittingly!

Christian Van Horn completed the principals as the toreador, Escamillo, performed with enough swagger and panache. Van Horn, who had performed in various operas at the War Memorial stage throughout the years, imbued the role with a booming voice and commanding presence, and his entrance high on the horse — an 18-year-old Gypsy Vanner gelding named Drogen — most certainly turned heads. On Wednesday, his low notes on the tricky “Toreador Song” unfortunately tended to get overwhelmed by the Orchestra.

In the minor roles, Carmen showed why SF Opera’s Adler Fellowship was one of the most prestigious in the nation, as they were filled with all-around successes from top to bottom. Mezzo-soprano Nikola Printz and soprano Arianna Rodriguez were a dynamic duo as Mercédès and Frasquita, drawing much laughter from the audience for their banters and, mainly, the Act II quintet with Carmen, Christopher Oglesby’s Dancaïre and Alex Boyer’s Remendado, which was performed with great comic timing. Samuel Kidd and James McCarthy completed the ensemble as the playful Moralès and stern Zuniga, respectively.

Manis picked a quick tempo throughout, which worked well to move the story, especially with this youthful cast. He was sensitive to the needs of the singers and maintained great clarity throughout the opera. Bizet’s brilliant instrumentation, particularly for the dance numbers, came alive in his hands. SF Opera Chorus, under director John Keene, similarly brought excitement in taking various roles as needed by the opera.

In describing the original production five years ago, I used the adjective “tame” to describe the overall output. While that adjective was still appropriate for elements of this revival, this time, the production felt much more present and engaging, undoubtedly also due to the total commitment of the whole cast. Anna Maria Bruzzese was brought in to serve as Associate Director and Choreographer for these performances as she was when the production was seen in Washington in 2022. I felt her contributions helped shape the staging, upping the sense of danger and menace and improving the interactions and movements of everybody on stage. The flamenco-based dance sequence for Act II, “Les tringles des sistres tintaient,” was undoubtedly more entertaining and electrifying than before. Tanya McCallin’s new set design also helped change the production’s look and feel.

This was a great Fall season closer for the San Francisco Opera, and I was glad to see that last Wednesday’s performance was sold out and that all the remaining performances are of “limited availability.” The audience was evidently enjoying themselves and gave the cast great applause, particularly for Hubeaux and Tetelman. Six more performances remain, including a performance on Tuesday, November 26, that will feature Adler Fellow Thomas Kinch, who mesmerized as Melot in Tristan und Isolde last month, as Don José.

//www.youtube.com/watch?v=ftvsmRLE0iQ

Two days later, I moved back in time and traded 1820s Seville with the 1681 Venice Carnival, the time when La Flora was performed for the first and only time, and never again till Ars Minerva revived it last Friday. La Flora was the ninth opera that Ars Minerva revived annually since Daniele de Castrovillari’s La Cleopatra in 2015, the brainchild of Ars Minerva’s Founder and Executive Artistic Director — and this production’s director — Céline Ricci. I have been religiously attending their productions (missing only two so far) as I think they are of a worthy cause to support, and those operas give a better understanding of the Opera’s origins. I even reviewed their 2018 production, Giovanni Porta’s Ifigenia in Aulide, which coincidentally also featured Printz (the Mercédès above) as Agamennone.

Sartorio was an Italian composer active in his native Venice and, interestingly, in Hanover, Germany. In 1665, he served as Kapellmeister to Duke Johann Friedrich of Brunswick-Lüneburg, a position that he held for ten years (while still returning frequently to Venice to compose operas for the Carnival) until he won the position of vice maestro di cappella of the prestigious Basilica di San Marco. He began writing La Flora in early 1680 and soon fell ill. Considering the opera was supposed to open the Venetian Carnival season, Ziani was brought in to finish the work. The opera opened on December 26 or 27 the following year at Teatro Sant’Angelo, and Sartorio passed away four days later.

The fictional plot for La Flora, not to be confused with an opera of the same name by Marco da Gagliano and Jacopo Peri in 1628, draws from the historical figures during the era when the Roman Republic began its descent into civil war. The dictator Silla has put down a rebellion with the help of his young general Pompeo (aka Pompey the Great, later on) and planned to marry his daughter Emilia (even though she’s already married to Servio) to Pompeo. Pompeo himself is in love with Flora, who accidentally stumbles upon Pompeo’s father, Strabone, and incites his wrath. Fearful of his father, Pompeo denies Flora and creates an on-again-off-again relationship with her throughout the opera. Meanwhile, Pompeo’s friend Geminio, who is in love with Flora, complicates the matter.

Cast in three acts, La Flora mainly revolves around the relationship between Flora and Pompeo and Servio’s efforts to raise a coup against his father-in-law, who forces him to divorce Emilia. Servio is unfortunately mortally wounded by Pompeo halfway through Act II after his attempt to recruit Geminio doesn’t bear fruits, and his revenge plans are found out. Even by 17th-century standards, the plot is strikingly eventful, so no wonder Ziani was hired to complete the opera. In my humble opinion, only the twist at the end doesn’t make sense by contemporary opera world standards.

//www.youtube.com/watch?v=AgJ_I2IBJtA

Musically, La Flora represents a transitional opera. While the structure of the opera still mostly followed the earlier Venetian conventions à la Claudio Monteverdi, in terms of dependency of recitatives most of the (short) arias involved florid coloratura passages, the hallmark of Baroque operas by Handel, Nicola Porpora and Johann Adolph Hasse, to name a few. Furthermore, while La Flora employed a small orchestra mainly consisting of strings, here performed by two violins and two violas, a continuo section with a harpsichord, played by the conductor Matthew Dirst, a cello, and a theorbo, strikingly, the opera also featured an instrument that Sartorio was well known for: the trumpet. The instrument appeared at the key moments, anticipating arie d’imitazione later on. In addition, despite the music’s being written by two composers, there was no noticeable change of style throughout the opera and it seamlessly blended the styles of both composers.

As before, Ars Minerva assembled a small cast of primarily excellent local Bay Area singers for this opera, many of whom had performed in previous productions. In the title role, soprano Aléxa Anderson easily navigated Flora’s tessitura while looking like a million bucks as the only character in this show with multiple costume changes. Jasmine Johnson’s Pompeo was sufficiently docile, both in acting and in her sound, until the last minute. Mezzo Nina Jones dazzled with her effortless coloratura as the scheming Geminio. At the same time, Aura Veruni, in the emotionally complex role of Emilia which is marked by constant changes of anger and sadness, fully embodied the role with both her vocal and her acting. Tenor Sidney Ragland gave a dignified reading as Strabone, Pompeo’s father, with his resonant sound while still being funny enough for Strabone’s more comic moments. Maxwell Ary stole the scenes each time with his perfect comedic timing as Probo, Flora’s assistant (or, in this production, “gay BFF”). Unfortunately, on Friday, Wayne Wong noticeably missed a line or two in his delivery as the dictator Silla.

In her direction, Ricci found a parallel between the story and modern-world “political machinations” as she transferred the setting to modern-day Rome, both in Entropy’s projections of office buildings in Rome overlooking the churches and in Marina Polakoff’s modern office attire for the characters. She also brought out the almost slapstick aspect of the story, nearly as if to point out the ridiculousness of (any) politics. Such interpretations made a lot of sense, and they didn’t distract much from the story. (Servio’s rebellion could manifest into office backstabbing that happened daily, for example.) Ricci’s depiction of Flora as a socialite, with various costumes straight from the fashion shows, was truly a stroke of genius, and the use of three stage crews that changed the props in the dark, coupled with projection changes, effectively allowed for seamless scene changes.

All in all, it was indeed a tremendous effort to produce such a rarity, and Ars Minerva deserved a round of applause for continuing to “bring forgotten music back to life.” It saddened me to see that such a beautiful show was not well attended on Friday, and I was hoping the situation improved during last weekend. I, for one, definitely look forward to appreciating more forgotten operas with them in the future!

Photos: Cory Weaver

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All in the family

Thu, 21 Nov 2024 11:00:29 +0000

//www.youtube.com/watch?v=SVb1f3_jC2g

Soprano Gundula Janowitz, bass Karl Ridderbusch, and mezzo Gwendolyn Killebrew all making their Met debuts as Sieglinde, Hunding, and Waltraute

Birthday anniversaries of writer and philosopher Francois-Marie Arouet (better known as Voltaire) (1694) and conductor James dePriest (1936)

On this day in 1901 Richard Strauss’s Feuersnot premiered in Dresden

Happy 82nd birthday mezzo-soprano Julia Hamari
Happy 78th birthday soprano Anne-Marie Rodde
Happy 59th birthday singer Bjork

//www.youtube.com/watch?v=UZt8eic_KNw

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La bohème

Wed, 20 Nov 2024 17:00:00 +0000

Evan Zimmerman

Streaming and discussion start at 7:55 PM EST.

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Otello

Wed, 20 Nov 2024 14:00:45 +0000

A live broadcast of the opening night of the 2024-25 season from Venice.

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Reims or reason

Wed, 20 Nov 2024 14:00:45 +0000

This week offers Rossini’s frothy Il Viaggio à Reims with a big cast that includes Marina Rebeka, Michael Spyres, and Sergey Romanovsky. Also, in response to Niel Rishoi’s recent Norma recording review that attracted so much discussion, I’m including a broadcast of last year’s Parisien Donizetti-Bellini-Rossini concert by Rebeka and her CD Adalgisa Karine Deshayes, as well as a brief taste of Rebeka as Cherubini’s Médée.

Today’s Rossini pirate documents the second (!) cast of La Scala’s 2009 Viaggio revival in Luca Ronconi’s classic production. The premiere cast was televised and featured, among others, Patrizia Ciofi as Corinna.

//www.youtube.com/watch?v=wPGZXjbTa2w

It’s too bad that Viaggio has never really caught on in the US, though it’s a challenging undertaking to bring together the bravura cast it requires. The Rossini Festival in Pesaro occasionally uses a line-up of young singers instead of big stars.

In 1999, New York City Opera mounted the local stage premiere of Viaggio. (It had been done in concert a dozen years earlier.) I enjoyed one of the performances as the last-minute date of opera director John Copley. (Long story.) I learned that he had originally been asked to produce the Rossini but his plans proved too ambitious/expensive and he instead mounted Handel’s Ariodante for the company around that time.

For those who found the Prima Norma studio-bound and poorly recorded, the live French concert includes important bits of Norma, as well as selections from Anna Bolena and Maria Stuarda, the pair of Donizetti “Tudor queens” that Rebeka has performed. Deshayes offers some of her Rossini Elisabetta, an opera she performed in Pesaro in 2021.

//www.youtube.com/watch?v=y3A3TqWQ0o4

I was very lucky to catch Rebeka last year in a staging of the Cherubini opera in Berlin. The work was performed there in French accompanied by a period-instrument ensemble and reunited her with the tenor and conductor of her excellent La Vestale recording.

Today’s clip comes from an in-house recording from the Berlin run made available by a parterre reader (whose name I’ve misplaced). I didn’t want to post the entire opera without explicit permission.

Rebeka’s subsequent performances of Médée at La Scala, with a modern-instrument orchestra, in which she had replaced Sonya Yoncheva, were plagued by illness. She canceled several shows, and was only able to perform the first act the evening the Cherubini was livestreamed.

Rossini: Il Viaggio à Riems

Madama Cortese: Teresa Romano
Corinna: Christina Obregon
Marchesa Melibea: Maite Beaumont
Contessa di Folleville: Marina Rebeka
Cavalier Belfiore: Michael Spyres
Conte di Libenskof: Sergey Romanovsky
Lord Sidney: Roberto Tagliavini
Don Profondo: Simón Orfila
Barone di Trombonok: José Carbó
Don Alvaro: Simone del Savio

Conductor: Ottavio Dantone
Teatro alla Scala
19 April 2009
In-house recording

Bel Canto Concert

Arias and Duets from Donizetti: Maria Stuarda & Anna Bolena; Rossini: Semiramide & Elisabetta, Regina d’Inghilterra; Bellini: Norma and Mozart: Le Nozze di Figaro (encore)

Marina Rebeka
Karine Deshayes

Paris Chamber Orchestra
Conductor: Speranza Scappucci
Théâtre des Champs-Elysées, Paris
21 March 2023
Broadcast

Cherubini: Médée (excerpt)

Marina Rebeka
Stanislas de Barbeyrac

Les Talens Lyriques
Conductor: Christophe Rousset
Berlin Staatsoper
24 November 2023
In-house recording

Each of the Rebeka recordings 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, or find our uploads on //www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLEBqTIiis_vKiQu0ZC80–ZRzOpEn5pM1

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Justice is deaf

Wed, 20 Nov 2024 11:00:24 +0000

//www.youtube.com/watch?v=rLRMTD3eY5w

Happy 87th birthday tenor René Kollo

On this day in 1907 bass Fyodor Chaliapin made his Met debut as Boito‘s Mefistofele

//www.youtube.com/watch?v=phGpmZO41Ic

Happy 76th birthday soprano Barbara Hendricks

//www.youtube.com/watch?v=50J3M21wVPo

Happy 74th birthday tenor Vinson Cole

Birthday anniversary of dancer Alexandra Danilova (1903)

Photo: Ken Howard/Metropolitan Opera

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An afternoon at the opera

Tue, 19 Nov 2024 15:00:16 +0000

It’s flu season in New York, and the Met’s current Trovatore run has been cursed by various ailments including tenor Michael Fabiano’s twisting his ankle on opening night. But nothing compares to Sunday’s performance, with a few planned changes of cast resulting in a whole lot of unplanned changes mid-performance. Angela Meade was announced as ill at the beginning of the performance, and after the intermission it was announced that she would be replaced by Leah Hawkins for the remaining two acts. It was also announced after the intermission that Michael Fabiano was feeling ill but would continue; after visibly struggling through “Di quella pira” he was replaced, unannounced, by Arturo Chacón-Cruz for the final act. David McVicar’s Goya-esque production features rotating sets, with the unintended result that you never knew who would be onstage in the next scene.

Despite all the backstage drama it ended up being an oddly compelling performance, certainly far more musically exciting than the tentative opening night. It’s often been said that Leonora is a role that requires two different sopranos – it’s rare to find a singer that can pull off the bouncy coloratura of “Di tale amor” as well as the chesty drama of the “Miserere.” In that sense, we were fortunate to have two sopranos well suited to their respective arias. Even while sick, Meade pulls off the coloratura of “Di tale amor” better than pretty much any other Leonora singing today, with clean passagework and a neat trill. She also floats nicely in “Tacea la notte” and, whether because of her recent move into bigger repertoire or because of her illness, has gained access to a potent chest voice that lends rhythmic incisiveness to the trio.

//www.youtube.com/watch?v=7BlyyBb8O1Y

It’s never been a voice that readily soars thanks to her rapid vibrato, and in that sense we were lucky to have Leah Hawkins take over for the big Act IV scena. The Met has been pushing her as their next big Verdi soprano and it’s easy to see why – she has a sumptuous, weighty voice, with a powerful middle and chest register and lovely floated high notes. It’s a voice ideally suited to the Met, with a presence and resonance that fills the auditorium, and if her phrasing and acting were tentative at times it’s fully understandable given the circumstances. Let’s hope the Met gives her more opportunities to develop her artistry, because it’s clearly a first-rate voice.

Hawkins also had the unenviable task of having to sing opposite two Manricos, particularly as it became evident that Fabiano would not make it through the performance. Given the circumstances and high notes aside, Fabiano pulled off a decent “Di quella pira”, taken at quite the pace, as well as a sensitive “Ah si, ben mio” with plangent tone and elegant phrasing. He attacked the first two acts with his usual intensity, full of ringing sound and machismo. He was also the most sympathetic actor onstage, bounding around the stage with enthusiasm having recovered from his ankle injury. I was surprised to hear that this jump-in would be Arturo Chacón-Cruz’s Met debut – he’s been performing leading roles in the US and Europe since winning Operalia two decades ago. His voice is a bit light for the role in a house the size of the Met, but he’s an exciting actor with plenty of Italianate style. He’d be a useful asset for the Met in a range of repertoire.

Olesya Petrova was the other (planned) cast change from the opening, and she’s a frustratingly inconsistent Azucena. It’s a glassy, somewhat metallic voice with a ringing high C and a cavernous lower register which she navigates without any ungainly register shifts. “Stride la vampa” caught her at her worst, with bumpy articulation and unstable pitch, but immediately after she pulled off a thrillingly deranged “Condotta ell’era in ceppi.” She was also variable dramatically, pulling off the high-stakes moments like “Condotta” and the final scene while remaining an anonymous presence in between.

As the only holdovers from the opening night cast, Igor Golovatenko and Ryan Speedo Green were much the same; the former impressive in vocal weight and color but somewhat blunt in his phrasing of “Il balen,” the latter pulling off a surprisingly agile account of the opera’s opening aria. Conductor Daniele Callegari must be commended for keeping the performance together and adapting well to the planned and unplanned cast changes, and in spite of it all managed to pull off an exciting, coherent performance.

Photo: Ken Howard

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Thane enthusiasm

Tue, 19 Nov 2024 14:00:09 +0000

Perhaps the biggest casting story here was the return to DC of soprano Ewa Plonka as Lady Macbeth after her WNO debut in the title role of last spring’s sold-out run of Puccini’s Turandot.

Unfortunately, this proved the less successful of the two outings. The first bars of Plonka’s letter scene and vigorous attack on “Vieni t’affretta” promised excitement ahead, with flourishes above the staff recalling that same bright, sharp-edged top that made for a successful Turandot. But that advantage turned out to be a lonely argument for Plonka’s Lady Macbeth.

In that first aria and many of the subsequent scenes, Plonka’s middle voice felt underpowered and indistinct, making it difficult to bring character and dimension to the substantial portion of the role that lives in that region. The coloratura material that is a special hallmark of his role could be serviceable at times, as in the cabaletta to “Vieni t’affretta,” but too often Plonka seemed to be pulled along by the orchestra rather than driving the music in more florid passages. Choppy phrasing in moments like “La luce langue” tended to break up and sap emotional direction from Verdi’s long lines.

Dramatically this was a fairly basic portrayal, with plenty of devious mugging but little impactful engagement with the character. Finally in Act IV, the mad scene imperatives of “Una macchia è qui tuttora” seemed to give Plonka permission to go bigger, and a heftier chest sound and some colorful vocal touches made this the most successful of the character’s big moments. But overall, despite moments of vocal brilliance, this felt like a cautious approach to a role that begs singers to take risks.

Plonka’s limitations increased the pressure on her Macbeth to fully convey the principals’ desperate descent. Thankfully, she had such a co-star in French Canadian singer Étienne Dupuis, making his WNO debut here. (Met audiences may recall his Rodrigue in the French Don Carlos.) Dupuis’s middleweight baritone has a comfortable pliability and attractive tone that well-serves his attention to character and text. Here he frequently pushed that sound into swaggering fortes that punctuated Macbeth’s expressions of fury or horror, though he could also push too far at times, letting the voice become unruly and pitchless.

Ably depicting an initially imperious but conflicted Macbeth that unravels and coarsens in his pursuit of power, Dupuis effectively carried set pieces like Macbeth’s crack-up in the banquet scene, though his duets with Lady Macbeth remained somewhat inert. His Act IV highlights began with a tender “Pietà, rispetto, amore,” revealing a more lyrical side of Dupuis’s voice just this once, in the sole glimpse we get of Macbeth not tinged by fear or ambition.

//www.youtube.com/watch?v=hBA7nk2j1N4

This Act IV also included “Mal per me che m’affidai,” restoring the death scene aria for Macbeth that was included in the original 1847 score but was cut from the 1865 revised version in which Macbeth dies offstage. (That is the version that otherwise serves as the basis for this production.) Dupuis’s bleak and chilling rendition made a strong case for the character getting a debased onstage death while moaning about his “vile crown,” though the added punch of this moment made the extended happy coronation material for Malcolm and choral paean to victory from the later edition feel especially superfluous.

Frequent WNO contributor Soloman Howard’s instantly recognizable voice is always an event onstage, pairing bottomless depths of sound with intense delivery, and he did much to highlight this production’s Banquo, including a moving “Come dal ciel precipita.” Kang Wang, who has appeared at WNO as Rodolfo and Ferrando in recent years, also made a strong impression as MacDuff, his abundant tenor easily filling the hall in “Ah, la paterna mano.” Sheer volume aside, the voice has a focused heartiness and urgency well suited to Verdi’s heroes. Less successful were some of the subtler vocal effects Wang sought to deploy here, which appeared to still be works in progress.

WNO Principal Conductor Evan Rogister approached the score with an emphasis on clarity and entertainment, Verdi’s colorful and shocking details coming through in high relief, abetted by a committed performance from the WNO Orchestra. Tight coordination of the larger ensemble and chorus scenes made for precise and rewarding listening, though a few opening night foibles turned up in smaller ensembles. The contributions of the WNO chorus, prepared by Steven Gathman, were a highlight of the evening, from pungent articulation in the witches’ choruses to an expertly handled slow burn crescendo in the Act IV opening chorus lamenting Macbeth’s war.

The production, directed by Brenna Corner, began with a projection of a Shakespeare quote in the style of a title card from a gothic horror film of early Hollywood, the lurid strains of the prelude providing an uncannily appropriate soundtrack for a genre and art form more than a half century in the future. Macbeth seen through the lens of 20th century expressionism is an intriguing connection, and the ensuing production hinted at that idea to some degree, in the garish horror take on the witches’ chorus, the staging of the banquet scene, and the abstract black and white castle (sets by Erhard Rom).

Ultimately, however, there weren’t quite enough consistent choices in the direction of that aesthetic vision to impose a strong point of view, and we got a Macbeth that was engaging and functional but a bit scattered. See for instance, the costuming, which does a routine updating of the action to the 19th century. (Costumes are credited as a co-production between Lyric Opera and Canadian Opera Company, perhaps from the Macbethproduction those companies just shared that looked like a much more deliberate period piece, with additional costumes by Kathleen Geldard.) These worked well enough on their own (save for one unfortunate plum house gown with tartan accents visited upon Plonka in her first scene) but seemed like a default rather than a choice advancing any larger vision.

Photos: Scott Suchman

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Agnes of God

Tue, 19 Nov 2024 11:00:36 +0000

//www.youtube.com/watch?v=MKL1cqG8R4o

On this day in 1962 soprano Regine Crespin made her Metropolitan Opera debut as the Marschallin. Mezzo Hertha Töpper debuts as Octavian and Lotte Lehmann is stage director.

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

Birthday anniversary of playwright, librettist and stage director Giovacchino Forzano (1884)

//www.youtube.com/watch?v=nli6ACkQtLI

?feature=shared

Footage from Forzano’s 1927 production of La figlia di Iorio

Birthday anniversary of conductor David Lloyd-Jones (1934)

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Ars Minerva's La Flora

Tue, 19 Nov 2024 05:12:25 +0000

* Notes * Ars Minerva gave the modern premiere of Antonio Sartorio and Marc'Antonio Ziani's 1681 La Flora last weekend at ODC Theater in San Francisco. The Sunday matinée was delightful, the music kept moving, the playing bracing but buoyant, and the singing absolutely beautiful. The libretto, written by Novello Bonis, deals with historical figures from the Roman Republic in a very convoluted plot that includes overlapping love triangles. The dictator Silla has just put down a rebellion with the help of the Roman general Pompeo. Silla wants his son-in-law, another Roman general named Servio, to divorce Silla's daughter Emilia because he wants to marry her to Pompeo. Unfortunately, Pompeo loves our titular Flora and Emilia loves her husband. Pompeo's friend Geminio also loves Flora and Pompeo's father Strabone wants his son to marry Emilia. Flora almost manages to seduce the dad, Flora and Pompeo fight and make up multiple times, and there is a conspiracy against Silla from Servio that ends in the latter's death. The singing was very lovely. Tenor Maxwell Ary is funny as Flora's servant Probo, he's charming and his voice is pretty. Tenor Sidney Ragland was more authoritative as Strabone. Mezzo-soprano Nina Jones was perfectly clean and clear as Geminio, her sound is resonant and sweet. Bass Wayne Wong is convincing as dictator Silla. Contralto Sara Couden is always impressive with her effortless sound, and did well as Servio. Soprano Aura Veruni has a fine physical presence, her mocking of Pompeo was hilarious. She also has a lot of control and nuance, and can sound jealous, angry, or smitten quite clearly in her voice. Contralto Jasmine Johnson (Pompeo) has some incredible low notes, and truly sounded like a baritone at times. Soprano Alexa Anderson (pictured) is a seductive Flora, with a lucid and brilliant tone. It was amusing to see how many costume changes she had, in one-shouldered gowns or lots of sequins. The staging was tame by Ars Minerva standards, but this served the opera well given how complicated the plot was. There were the usual video projection backdrops that looked blurry but realistic and the costumes looked contemporary. There were cell phones that were pulled out by the singers and Amazon boxes, so it seems the action was moved to present day. The orchestra, led by harpsichordist Matthew Dirst, was two violinss, two violas, a cello, theorbo, and saved from being utterly dry by the trumpet. * Tattling * There were a number of latecomers at the beginning of the first act, and most if not all of them had to climb over people to get to their seats. There was also someone in the last row who kept using their cellular phone, which angered another person who very audibly insisted it be shut off at least twice in Act I.

A Christmas story

Mon, 18 Nov 2024 14:00:48 +0000

Opening night of La bohème at the Met, the seats were packed with families with children, all set to watch Puccini’s most youth-oriented opera about how much fun you can have hanging with your homies. From the bros being bros hijinks in the first and last acts, to the lush Christmas parade in Act II, to the teen couples’ counseling sessions in Act III, I too was brought back to childhood, specifically my childhood in the 1980s. Was it just the Reagan-era Zeffirelli production, or was Puccini in fact the John Hughes or John Landis of his day, making perhaps the finest “dudes rock” masterpiece in existence? With the Ferris Bueler’s Day Off crowd scene, or the Animal House shenanigans of the bohemians in their garret, the teen bromance of it all feels so familiar. It’s all too easy to imagine John Belushi or Dan Ackroyd yucking it up in the Latin Quarter as Schaunard or Marcello.

Ailyn Pérez, as a quaveringly emotional Mimì, provided a raw vulnerability that centered her character amidst a chaotic and uneven opening night staging. She projected a halting frailty in her arias that worked well for her poor sickly character. While a fine performance, her Mimì also seemed like she was performing in a different production from the rest of the cast. Where the other singers performed as caricatures, Pérez performed social realism, presenting a crack in the make-believe and creating a distancing effect which didn’t enrich the performance as it may have been intended.

Dmytro Popov, as Rodolfo, heartbroken poet and Mimì’s paramour, was technically proficient and precise in his singing. His extraordinary voice was a salvation in a performance where his dynamic with the other characters, Mimì in particular, came off as icy. Especially given Mimì’s archly different vocal style from the rest of the cast, their scenes together lacked charisma and reciprocity. You never got the sense that they were singing to each other, just to an ideal audience off in the distance.

Emily Pogorelc, as the red headed bombshell Musetta, coursed with vitality, a perfect contrast to Mimì’s birdlike timidity. You couldn’t take your eyes off her, nor were you allowed to. She was here there and everywhere in Act II, a sexed-up Aunty Mame for the bohemian comrades of the Latin Quarter. Her bright, booming voice, part angel, part femme fatale, and part carnival barker, threw a lustrous coat of gilding across every scene she graced.

Throughout Mimì and Musetta’s iconic scenes, it seemed like I was watching an 80s recreation of female archetypes from Hollywood’s golden age. The production makes no attempt to tamp down Puccini’s chauvinism. The male leads ham it up together while the manic pixie dream seamstress and brazen good time gal are limited to performing for the audience alone. While Musetta the seductress wooed the bohemian bros and the audience simultaneously, Mimì was cut adrift from the rest of the cast. Granted, Mimì and Musetta aren’t really given many opportunities to relate to each other in the libretto either, but the dynamic could be created unscripted, through staging. Obviously, I was not expecting this woke alteration from the Zeffirelli production. I do not go looking for progressivism from lecherous Italian fascists. However, I was struck by how much better artistically the performance would have been had it leaned even a little bit into the complicity between the two female leads.

Conductor Kensho Watanabe drove the production along with youthful energy and technical exactitude. His conducting was balanced to a fault, taking us through moments both tender and uproarious with a steady hand. He didn’t create much in the way of special dynamics for the iconic moments. Choosing not to play to fan favorites is perfectly respectable, although I don’t know if it was appropriate for the material. If you’re trying to take the emotional intensity and gushing sentimentality out of La Bohème, what do you like about Romantic opera to begin with?

Other performances of note were baritone Gihoon Kim, in his Met debut role as Schaunard, the brains behind the bohemian bromance, and bass Bogdan Talos, in his Met debut as Colline, the philosopher who sings an aria to his overcoat. Kim ruffled up a sometimes stiff and schticky Act I, bestriding the stage with the brassiness of a Musetta. Puccini’s gang of bohemians need a thinker whose hijinks among the aristocracy keep them fed. Kim lapped up the role like he was born for it. Light on his feet in the dancing scene, with pristine comic timing and a warm, thunderous voice, Kim tore it up with the boho bros. Talos, meanwhile, glowered and postured to great effect, a towering, goofy Colline with a rich, tender bass voice doting upon his old coat like it was his lover.

As sleepy as this production is after 43 years at the Met, I’m glad they took it out of mothballs for another season. A warm bath of nostalgia can be good for you every so often. Although it lacks the psychedelic disco brilliance of Zeffirelli’s Turandot, it was interesting to see such an archly traditional staging, both for its glories and its abysmal failures. It was like watching a Christmas pantomime in London or one of those screenings of The Rocky Horror Picture Show where you shout things from the audience: you go for the ritual of it, the human continuity and community. When New York gets cold each fall, opera heads pile into the Met to watch Mimì die and Musetta thrust her bustle around. A worthwhile and comforting seasonal rite.

Photos: Marty Sohl

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For a’ that

Mon, 18 Nov 2024 13:03:41 +0000

There can be few poets whose work resonates as widely as that of the Ayrshire ploughboy and philanderer Robert Burns. His influence has been felt from Bengal to Massachusetts and beyond. Celebrating that influence was the the point of Confluence Concerts’ Robert Burns – A Passion for Freedom curated by Alison Mackay which played at Heliconian Hall on Friday and Saturday evenings.

It was brilliant and there was so much that I did not expect. Alison and RH Thomson had created a programme and script that took us on an uninterrupted 75 minute journey through space and time. There was Burns’ poetry of course, including a memorably dramatic reading of parts of Tam O’Shanter by Thomson, plus well known settings to traditional tunes of pieces like My Love is Like a Red, Red Rose. But there was much more. We heard texts by Rabindranath Tagore, inspired by Burns, set to tunes we associate with him and sung beautifully in Bengali by Suba Sankaram. There was poetry by Ukraine’s national poet Taras Shevchenko set to music by Mykola Lysenko sung with great emotion by Alina Kuzma showcasing Burns’ influence in that troubled land.

Burns’ influence on Frederick Douglas was celebrated in Beau Dixon’s setting of A Slave’s Lament. There were some superb performances of traditional tunes that Burns knew and collected including stunning traditional fiddling by David Greenberg. Throw in some superb lute playing by Lucas Harris, Dylan Bell on bass and vocals and wonderfully evocative projections by Ed Hanley and it couldn’t get much better.

All in all it was a fine example of what Confluence Concerts can do. It was genre bending but true to the spirit of everything performed which made for a musically satisfying and rather emotional experience. And may it go on.. ’til all the seas gang dry.

Photos courtesy of Confluence Concerts.

Gente là dentro

Mon, 18 Nov 2024 11:00:14 +0000

On this day in 1974 tenor Jose Carreras made his Metropolitan Opera debut as Cavardossi

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The Bee’s Knees

Sun, 17 Nov 2024 15:12:31 +0000

The Bee’s Knees is a new play with music, written and directed by Judy Reynolds, that opened at The Theatre Centre on Friday night. It’s set during and after WW1 and the main theme is women getting involved in politics in Canada and the often bizarre (by contemporary standards) opposition to that. It’s pure coincidence that it premiered a few days after the biggest setback for women’s rights in the western world in decades.

So we start with the rather cynical granting of the vote to some Canadian women by a government hard pressed in the 1917 “conscription election” then fast forward to the post war world of flappers, radio, speakeasies and the Charleston where war widow Dolores Cole (Shannon Pitre) has been pressured into running for Parliament by a coterie of female friends led by her manipulative younger sister Bernie (Madeline Elliott Kennedy). They are opposed by the sleazy incumbent Jerry Fields (Michael Pollard) and his friends in radio and the newspapers. And by their very old fashioned Aunt Virginia (Birgitte Solem).

It’s all rather complicated by the girls’ mother Frances McKay (Françoise Balthazar) being in a mental hospital because of incurable viral catatonia. Dolores and the doctor; Edwin Becker (Kenzie Delo), treating her fall in love which further complicates things. Jerry will stop at nothing to get reelected but is vulnerable because of his long term affair with night club singer and bar owner Rita Blue (Jamillah Ross). This ups the ante around prohibition as well as letting the writer work in some cleverly constructed musical numbers.

Pretty much everyone is playing dirty pool one way or another and ultimately the question becomes whether Dolores stays in the race and who will support her if she does. It’s all quite interesting as a satirical look at politics in the dawn of mass media populism. As a play it’s very busy with many short scenes and lots of prop shifting which is smoothed over to some extent by the musical elements. The acting is generally rather good and Ross is a more than decent singer.

The mix of satirical comedy, didacticism and sentimentality comes off quite well. It’s often quite funny and the subject matter is important but ultimately it’s perhaps a bit too nice and lacks the the biting satirical edge that makes, say, The Master Plan so funny and so incisive.

The Bee’s Knees plays at the Theatre Centre until November 24th.

Photo credits: Marlowe Andreyko

Bei sogni del tempo primiero

Sun, 17 Nov 2024 11:00:53 +0000

On this day in 1839 Verdi‘s Oberto premiered in Milan

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Madama Butterfly

Sat, 16 Nov 2024 14:00:33 +0000

Michael Pöhn/Wiener Staatsoper

Streaming and discussion begin at 1:30 PM EST.

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That is really a noise!

Sat, 16 Nov 2024 11:00:27 +0000

//www.youtube.com/watch?v=u0er-tZOBYM

Maria Jeritza, Giacomo Lauri-Volpi, and Tullio Serafin are at the helm.

On this day in 1908 conductor Arturo Toscanini made his Metropolitan Opera debut

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

On this day in 1959 Rodgers and Hammerstein‘s The Sound of Music opened on Broadway

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

On this day in 1981 Stephen Sondheim‘s Merrily We Roll Along opened on Broadway

//www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vhvb2uHLoXA

Birthday anniversaries of composers Anton Grigoryevich Rubinstein (1829) and Paul Hindemith (1895), baritone Lawrence Tibbett (1896), conductor Richard Kraus (1902), and soprano Maralin Niska Dice (1926)

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Character assassination

Fri, 15 Nov 2024 14:00:42 +0000

For the opening night on November 9, this production—an operatic adaptation of Richard Condon’s 1959 political thriller by Kevin Puts and Mark Campbell—stood in a position that raised questions about the meaning of political power for humanity, who the beneficiaries and victims of that power are, and what we gain and lose when we grant power to others.

While exploring political intrigue and psychological manipulation in Condon’s novel, Pulitzer Prize-winning creators Puts and Campbell emphasized the fragility of identity, which resonated strongly with contemporary concerns. For instance, Puts contrasted the huge, full-throated brass chords, evoking political conspiracy, with a single note played by a single instrument to describe each character’s inner voice. The opera itself opens with a simple, repeated note that immediately set a mood of suspense and foreboding. This motif, which is later linked to the characters of Eleanor Iselin and Queen Diamond, was a powerful example of how Puts uses musical transformation to evoke changing emotional landscapes. Additionally, Campbell depicts Eleanor, who urges her son Raymond Shaw to commit an assassination, not as a traditional villain but as a woman who is a product of the system she inhabits.

To bring Puts and Campbell’s vision to life, director Alison Moritz’s semi-staged production aimed to create “a brand new living memory of this story” with performers dressed in black rather than elaborate costumes—there were not even any costumes in the costume party scene.

This bold choice placed the emotional and psychological landscape of the characters at the forefront, encouraging the audience to focus on the intricate characterizations and powerful musical expressions rather than visual spectacle (except for projections). During that same “costume” party scene, the musical shift from Eleanor’s singing to a bluegrass tune, a delightful touch, came through with clarity, enhancing a contrast between a larger political context and an individual’s fragility. Performing the opera semi-staged was a wise decision that allowed the its emotional depth to shine through, aligning well with the theme of individuals’ struggling against larger political forces.

A particularly notable aspect of this production was the opportunity it provided for numerous role debuts. Among the main characters, Mark Diamond as Sergeant Raymond Shaw, Mary Dunleavy as Eleanor Iselin, and Frederick Ballentine as Captain Ben Marco stood out in their respective roles, each offering vivid interpretations that added layers of complexity to the opera’s already anxious atmosphere.

Diamond’s voice effortlessly navigated the emotional range required for the character—from the aria recalling the lovely summer day when he first met Jocelyn Jordan, which he delivered with a soft, warm tone, to the tension-filled moments of the opera’s darker themes. Diamond’s use of his head voice was particularly impressive, capturing the fragility and psychological turmoil of Raymond as he grappled with the brainwashing imposed upon him. His performance of the aria“Lies” was an intense, gut-wrenching moment that resonated with emotional depth, underscoring Raymond’s tragic entanglement in the political machinations that controlled his life.

Dunleavy’s interpretation of Eleanor—someone who is ambitious but also trapped by the forces around her—was highly captivating, especially for her pristine high notes. On one hand, in her “It’s the Girl,” Dunleavy skillfully expressed Eleanor’s ambition with a strong and solid tone, and on the other hand, she expressed Eleanor’s vulnerability with a quietly trembling one after commanding the final assassination from Raymond.

Ballentine brought a compelling range of characteristics to Captain Ben Marco. Ballentine captured Marco’s earnest vulnerability early in the opera with a rich range of facial expressions and remarkable acting, particularly in the scene where he relived the horrors of his past through nightmares. His trembling voice, nearly on the verge of tears, was utterly captivating as he recounted the deaths of his two comrades—Ed Mavole and Bobby Lembeck—at Raymond’s hands. In a lighter moment, when Marco meets Rosie, Ballentine’s playful, almost charming interpretation of the character offered a contrast to the grimness surrounding him, giving the audience a fleeting moment of reprieve.

At the opera’s conclusion, when Marco discovers that Raymond’s trigger—what pushes him into a state of unquestioning obedience—is Queen Diamond, Marco directs Raymond to shoot Johnny with one hand, Eleanor with the other, and finally, to turn the gun on himself. Amidst the sorrow of Raymond’s tragic fate, Ballentine masterfully conveyed the complex emotions of a man torn between the anguish of his duty and the necessity of stopping Eleanor and Johnny Iselin for the greater good. His tone captured the internal conflict, balancing both the personal heartbreak and the cold, pragmatic decision to save the larger cause.

Donnie Ray Albert, as Andrew Hanley, left a brief yet profound appearance in the scene where he conveys Hanley’s shared nightmares with Marco through a letter, pulling the sound from deep within himself to vividly express Hanley’s inner torment. Kyle Albertson as Johnny was particularly impressive in the press conference scene, where he firmly stated that 207 communists were within the Department of Defense with a resonant, striking tone. Rachel Blaustein as Jocelyn added emotional gravity to the production, offering a deeply sorrowful tone during the “We Are Safe” duet with Raymond. Jamie Van Eyck as Rosie Chayney not only delivered a stable performance but also added a touch of charm to this tension-filled opera.

Music director Timothy Myers brilliantly realized Puts’s musical vision, with the music itself cleverly capturing the machinations, horror, and personal vulnerability brought on by political power.

One of the most striking moments came during the convention in Act II, where the intense, climactic choral brought a raw, terrifying energy to the opera. The sound of screaming in the aftermath of the assassination was masterfully expressed through the music, amplifying the horror of the moment and creating a palpable sense of fear. Myers skillfully led the musical direction with a deep understanding of how Puts’s music allows the audience to fully experience the opera, navigating through various sounds.

Austin Opera’s 2024 production of The Manchurian Candidate was a gripping, thought-provoking examination of power, manipulation, and identity that resonated with contemporary issues. With strong performances, bold direction, and an evocative musical score, the production once again proved the timeless relevance of Condon’s political thriller, making it a must-see for opera lovers and anyone interested in the intersection of politics and art.

Photos: Erich Schlegel

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Tosca

Fri, 15 Nov 2024 14:00:33 +0000

Karen Almond/Metropolitan Opera

Streaming and discussion start at 7:55 PM EST.

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Things will be great when you’re downtown

Fri, 15 Nov 2024 11:00:12 +0000

//www.youtube.com/watch?v=K-kYkReOW4g

On this day in 1845 William Vincent Wallace‘s opera Maritana premiered in London

On this day in 1903 Eugene d’Albert‘s opera Tiefland premiered in Prague

Happy 92nd birthday Petula Clark!

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

Happy 82nd birthday conductor Daniel Barenboim

//www.youtube.com/watch?v=WgrFsGEf12w

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Carmen at SF Opera

Fri, 15 Nov 2024 00:12:24 +0000

* Notes * A revival of Carmen opened last night at San Francisco Opera with some very fine singing and lively, brisk playing. Francesca Zambello's 2006 production is both pretty and functional, there is never a pause in the music to set up the stage. Conductor Benjamin Manis had the orchestra at a quick pace. The music was not particularly crisp and there were some moments that were not fully together, but it did not detract much from Bizet. The harp and cornets were particularly strong. At this point I have seen Zambello's staging three times, and it definitely holds up and does the job. It's not as interesting as Bieto's production we saw in 2016, no stage entrances from telephone booths or people being thrown in the air, but it does have a horse. Drogen (pictured with Christian Van Horn and the chorus, photograph by Cory Weaver), the 18-year old Gypsy Vanner gelding that appears in Acts II and IV and remained calm despite the excitement from the audience. The cast has many powerful singers. The Adlers did well, baritone Samuel Kidd was a fine Moralès and has a good sense of physicality in the scene when Micaëla is looking for Don José. Bass-baritone James McCarthy was also strong as Zuniga, brash and confident. It was fascinating to hear mezzo-soprano Nikola Printz sing Mercédès rather than Carmen, as they have often done the title role at smaller opera companies. Soprano Arianna Rodriguez is a charming Frasquita, such a lovely, dulcet voice. Soprano Louise Alder is a bit matronly for Micaëla, her voice is neither angelic nor sweet, but she certainly could be heard. Bass-baritone Christian Van Horn is convincing as Escamillo. His sound is consistent throughout his range and his volume was good. In the title role, soprano Eve-Maud Hubeaux has a dramatic and smooth sound, her voice is like a live ember. Her sensuality came through her singing rather than her movements, which were awkward and stilted. Her French is very clear, and it is obvious this is her native language. Tenor Jonathan Tetelman is a dashing Don José, his voice is very robust, but he has good technique and can vary his dynamic range. * Tattling * I heard this opera up in balcony standing room. The house looked very full, and I did notice a fair amount of whispering and checking the time on cellular devices. The young man in Row L Seat 8 looked at his phone for several minutes in Act II during the quintet. I was relieved that he left with his date at intermission.

McKenzie at Met

Thu, 14 Nov 2024 20:09:15 +0000

Today’s noon hour concert at Metropolitan United Church featured soprano McKenzie Warriner and pianist Christine Bae. Ellita Gagner was also scheduled to sing but, unfortunately, she was not able to do so due to illness. So we got a hastily reorganised programme.

It was very varied programme which showed off McKenzie’s quite broad range pretty well. “Chacun le sait” from La fille du régiment and “O zittre nicht” from Die Zauberflöte demonstrated excellent coloratura, a nicely controlled upper range and some sustained power. “The Presentation of the Rose” from Der Rosenkavalier also featured excellent high notes and the ability to navigate Strauss’ twists and turns. Some really good playing from Christine here too. Perhaps one has to hear this on piano to fully appreciate just how weird some of Strauss’ instrumental writing is!

Two contrasting art songs followed. Auf dem See is pretty straightforward Schubert and was nicely handled. Ligeti’s Der Sommer is one of those deceptively simple songs that one could easily trip over. These two didn’t. It was very controlled. Then came some rather lovely Golijov; his Lúa Descolorida, which is really lyrical in that way that Golijov manages even when dealing with less pleasant subject matter than a hymn to the moon.

When one’s husband is a composer one has to sing his music so we got Tristan Zaba’s Finishing Songs. These are settings of poems by e.e. cummings and are really easy to listen to even though quite complex with an interesting interplay of voice, piano and quite a lot of silence. The final number was McKenzie’s own arrangement of “Thyme ’tis a Pretty Flower” which rather demonstrated that you can take the girl out of Saskatchewan but you can’t take Saskatchewan out of the girl.

It was a most pleasant short concert and should you feel like watching it, it’s available on the Metropolitan United YouTube channel. The Noon at Met series has some pretty interesting programming and it’s a lovely space with excellent acoustics. It deserves to be better known.

On an evening in Roma

Thu, 14 Nov 2024 14:00:28 +0000

The concept itself is sort of silly –what more can be done to heap laurels upon a composer whose operas already constitute around one out of every five of the company’s performances? And when we do fête Puccini, in this centenary of his death, what exactly are we celebrating?

In a short, jaunty documentary preceding the opera (“Puccini: A Historical Rhapsody”) that delved into Puccini’s involvement with the Met specifically, it was more what Puccini made possible, rather than the works themselves, that was the focus; the singers (including Enrico Caruso and Geraldine Farrar, “the Taylor Swift of her day,” according to narrator and Met historian Peter Clark), the celebrities, and, implicitly, the over 120 years of dependable box office receipts. The performance the followed provided little clarity; indeed, Tuesday night’s gala was a celebration of Puccini’s more unruly proliferations, his failsafe yet not quite justly ascribed reputation as a cheap thrills incubator, rather than the composer himself. The shocker may no longer be little, but it was especially shabby.

There was even something crass (albeit in a sort of vintage, quaint way) about the slapdash way the cast was put together; Decca exclusive superstars Lise Davidsen and Met debutant Freddie De Tommaso, like Mickey and Judy with barrel chests, jetted in last week to lead the cast, with a superb Quinn Kelsey singing his first complete Scarpia on this shore. The four-performance run will culminate in an HD broadcast on November 23 before the A-list stars once again scatter to the wind. It was a tenuous premise for such high stakes occasion and the performance laid those ingrained vulnerabilities bare.

//www.youtube.com/watch?v=LduIWn-AMOg

Davidsen’s vulnerabilities, as it would seem from this performance, are primarily in the lower register. From her entrance into Sant’Andrea della Valle, chestless parlando lines failed to land – was I really having trouble hearing Lise Davidsen, of all people? The situation predictably persisted in Act II; while her high notes have a booming focus and a thrilling security, this highly professional and textually attentive singer was often subsumed by the orchestra the lower the role got. Lines which span octaves, like the thrice repeated “Che avvien?” when Scarpia hints at the horrors of Cavaradossi’s torture in Act II, made this fundamental low register weakness clear, as did Tosca’s in-alt agonized imprecations that were almost completely covered by the foreboding Dies Irae muttering of Tony Stevenson’s smarmy Spoletta.

Matters of timbral “fit” are of little interest or use to me, but the fact of the matter is that the role as yet remains unintegrated into Davidsen’s voice, which is a shame because the solidity and simultaneous warmth and brilliance of her top-heavy sound have an appealing, plainspoken drama in them, a plainspokenness that informs her largely pragmatic, unshowy, even demure characterization. This Tosca looked so deeply wounded by Cavaradossi’s painting of her romantic rival and her helplessness in the second Act was genuinely affecting. Some of this translated through to her poignant “Vissi d’arte,” where her high pianissimi were as much a thing of beauty as her blazing fortissimi elsewhere, but the first part of the aria looked and sounded like a sequence of mournful yawns as she knit the phrases together across an inconsistently developed lower/middle voice. And weaknesses like this occlude some of those declamatory moments that all Toscas surely relish – when “Ecco l’artista!” at Mario’s execution barely comes through, a discussion of interpretative priorities is probably warranted.

De Tommaso, on the other hand, seems to consider himself so perfect for his role that he has already lapsed into Caruso-stache’d caricature. The voice has a gravity and slightly covered depth with a grounded spin up top and breath control that allows for long and easy phrases, but the singing often turns vulgar. While the initial patchiness and coordination issues in “Recondita armonia” I initially credited to either nerves or Yannick Nézet-Séguin’s thoroughly ham-fisted and haphazard conducting, I realized that by “E lucevan le stelle,” so replete with sobs and scoops and galloping through any number of unwritten pitches before returning to its original key, that artistry manqué was at least in part to blame. Verbiage Pitts Sanborn applied to Rosa Ponselle’s Traviata — ”violent onslaughts on Verdi’s melodic line” – came readily to mind.

Similarly undisciplined, though to a less consequential end, was Patrick Carfizzi’s mugging, muttering Sacristan, revealing the gradual deterioration of David McVicar’s originally amblingly fluid blocking which is now in its seventh season. William Guanbo Su, on the other hand, was up to his usual focused and eloquent standard as the Jailer.

Indeed, the biggest tragedy of this Tosca was that its strongest singer was fatally knifed halfway through; Quinn Kelsey’s Scarpia is fully formed and marvelously complex. Not only can you catch every word, shaded with varying levels of arch menace, but his sound was exceptionally easily and steadily produced. He’s no moustache twirler, but savors the text with libidinal fury and sadistic glee. Especially during Act II, it was Kelsey who was the more transfixing of the two, and seemingly the only singer unfazed by Nézet-Séguin’s panoply of erratically slow tempi.

While some details in the orchestra (like the lovely harp playing by Hannah Cope and crisp pizzicato elsewhere in Act I) were nice to hear, the ad-hoc quality of the overall reading seemed both uneven and unsettling to the singers who on more than one occasion fell out of step with the orchestra. Perhaps it was a tribute to Puccini’s far-reaching capabilities that so much could go not quite right in a performance of one of his operas. Puccini, performances like this remind us, is no plug-and-play stuff. And it’s all fine and good for the Met to throw a party in his honor, because after all, it’s the Puccini on the fundraising balance sheets – and not the stage or the orchestra pit – that matters most.

Photos: Marty Sohl

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Sie jagt dich auf, schreiend entfliehst du

Thu, 14 Nov 2024 11:00:56 +0000

Born on this day in 1926 soprano Leonie Rysanek

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21C 2025

Wed, 13 Nov 2024 16:46:27 +0000

The 2025 edition of the 21C festival of contemporary music at the Royal Conservatory of Music basically runs from January 18th to 25th next year with an outlier in May. As usual it’s heavy on premières; World, North American and Canadian and there’s an intriguing mix of genres.

On the opening Saturday there’s a concert in Mazzoleni by Michelle Cann and the Imani Winds. That’s followed at 10pm by a late night show by the GGS New Music Ensemble and Brian Current. This one is always a blast and this time features music by Kalaisan Kalaichelvan, Alice Ho and Luca Francesconi.

Probably the big deal of the festival is three performances on the 21st to 23rd of Bernard Foccroulle’s The Journal of Hélène Berr; a setting of a journal written between 1942 and 1944 by a Parisian Jewish student who was deported to Auschwitz in March 1944 and died in April 1945, a few days before the liberation, in Bergen-Belsen. It will be performed in Mazzoleni Hall by soprano Elena Howard-Scott, pianist Jialiang Zhu, and the Rebanks Family Fellowship Quartet.

Not sure how I feel about this one but it’s a major event too… It’s the première of new song cycle by Aaron Davis & Margaret Atwood called Zombie Blizzard based on Atwood’s 2020 book of poetry, Dearly. The performers are Measha Brueggergosman-Lee, the Hannaford Street Silver Band (!), and the Aaron Davis Trio. The concert, in Koerner Hall on the 24th, includes additional music by Davis and Robert Fleming.

There’s a not quite final concert in Temerty Theatre on the 25th featuring Continuum Contemporary Music in pieces by Kaija Saariaho, Anna Höstman, Kotoka Suzuki, Ana Sokolović, Jocelyn Morlock and Carolyn Chen.

Then it’s fast forward to May 3rd for a concert in Koerner by Bruce Hornsby and the genre bending ensemble yMusic playing a selection of works by Hornsby.

If I rest, I Rustioni

Wed, 13 Nov 2024 16:13:09 +0000

Also sprach the Met press office.

Rustioni, the first to hold the position since never-the-bride Fabio Luisi departed in 2017, will conduct “a minimum of two operas per season.”

Yannick seems excited: “Having Daniele in this elevated role is good for the orchestra, good for the chorus, and good for opera.”

Could this herald more change in the years ahead?

Photo: Jonathan Tichler/Metropolitan Opera

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Afraid of their own shadows

Wed, 13 Nov 2024 14:00:16 +0000

They include unusually interesting pairs as Barak, the dyer, and his wife: a performance in English with Pauline Tinsley and Norman Bailey; and José van Dam in his only outing as Barak; and Christine Brewer and Franz Hawlata conducted by Sir Andrew Davis, who died earlier this year.

Probably because she made so few commercial recordings, the exciting Tinsley remains an under-appreciated singer. After her death in 2021, Trove Thursday offered some thrilling live excerpts. A noted Elektra, Tinsley also sang the Färberin in German.

For me, most anything by van Dam is worth seeking out, especially here in a role so ideally suited to the Belgian bass-baritone. His wife in this Swiss performance is the Danish soprano best known for her riveting Senta in the legendary Harry Kupfer Bayreuth Der Fliegende Holländer in which she memorably co-starred with Simon Estes.

https://

//www.youtube.com/watch?v=6dP86cMxvjA

Their Kaiserin is American soprano Karen Huffstodt who is perhaps best remembered for her recording of the French version of Salome which she undertook replacing the frequently MIA Teresa Stratas. The broadcast’s conductor is Armin Jordan, father of Philippe.

A friend of mine, a great Frau fan, was enthusiastic about Brewer’s Färberin which he heard it in Paris (opposite a radiant Eva-Maria Westbroek as the Kaiserin). I’ve never run across a recording from those Westbroek-Brewer performances, but today’s Chicago pirate also features Deborah Voigt’s famous Kaiserin and a young Quinn Kelsey as the Geisterbote.

I attended Brewer’s superb Met debut as Ariadne in 2003 and was sorry that she never returned to the company. The following year she ventured Chrysothemis in concert with the Cleveland Orchestra. She also recorded a CD of Strauss scenes with Donald Runnicles that includes Elektra’s Recognition Scene with Eric Owens giving a glimpse of another role, like Brünnhilde, that the soprano might have beautifully undertaken.

//www.youtube.com/watch?v=C02DcyAdGIo

Strauss: Die Frau ohne Schatten

(in English)
Die Kaiserin: Anne Evans
Färberin: Pauline Tinsley
Die Amme: Patricia Payne
Der Kaiser: Matti Kastu
Barak: Norman Bailey
Der Geisterbote: Geoffrey Moses
Der Einäugige: Russell Smythe
Der Einarmige: Julian Moyle
Der Bucklige: Arthur Davies
Die Erscheinung eines Jünglings: Timothy German

Conductor: Richard Armstrong
Welsh National Opera at Dominion Theatre, London
14 March 1981
Broadcast

Die Kaiserin: Karen Huffstodt
Färberin: Lisbeth Balslev
Die Amme: Nadine Denize
Der Kaiser: Michael Sylvester
Barak: Jose van Dam
Der Geisterbote: Eike Wilm Schulte
Der Einaugige: Fabrice Raviola
Der Einarmige: Andreas Kohn
Der Bucklige: Bengt Ola Morgny
Erscheinung eines Junglings: Alain Gabriel

Orchestre de la Suisse Romande
Conductor: Armin Jordan
Grand Theatre de Geneve
17 June 1997
Broadcast

Die Kaiserin: Deborah Voigt
Färberin: Christine Brewer
Die Amme: Jill Grove
Der Kaiser: Robert Dean Smith
Barak: Franz Hawlata
Der Geisterbote: Quinn Kelsey
Der Einäugige: Daniel Sutin
Der Einarmige: Andrew Funk
Der Bucklige: John Easterlin
Die Erscheinung eines Jünglings: Bryan Griffin

Conductor: Sir Andrew Davis
Lyric Opera of Chicago
16 December 2007
In-house recording

Each Frau recording 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.

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Takács Quartet: Haydn, Britten, and Beethoven, 12 November 2024

Wed, 13 Nov 2024 12:02:37 +0000

Wigmore Hall

Haydn: String Quartet in C major, op.54 no.2, Hob.III:57
Britten: String Quartet no.2 in C major, op.36
Beethoven: String Quartet no.16 in F major, op.135

Eduard Dusinberre, Harumi Rhodes (violins)

Richard O’Neill (viola)

András Féjer (cello)

It is always a joy to hear the Takács Quartet and, in my case, it had been a little while, so was all the more welcome. This Wigmore Hall recital opened with an outstanding performance of the second of Haydn’s ‘Tost’ Quartets, totally ‘inside’ the music from the off, presentation and subsequent development of Haydn’s ideas making that abundantly clear. Surprises duly registered, however often one might have heard them before: not through exaggeration, but through sound musical means, delivered as fresh as the day they were born. Haydn’s invention truly spoke throughout this first movement and beyond, structure becoming form in real time. A gravely beautiful Adagio and its flights of first violin fantasy as brought to life as Eduard Dusinberre cast shadows back into the Baroque and forward to Beethoven and beyond. It led directly into a spirited yet graceful minuet, its trio sternly impassioned as if developing sentiments from the slow movement as well as responding to its sibling. The finale’s formal experimentation again seemed to look forward to Beethoven, late Beethoven at that, its first and third sections elegant and heartfelt, full of harmonic tension and clear of direction. The brief Presto interlude achieved the paradox of skittish rigour, Haydn’s quizzical enigma enhanced.

I have no doubt Britten’s Second Quartet received a performance of similar commitment and excellence, though the work itself pales beside Haydn (and Beethoven), suggesting, as the composer’s instrumental music often does, that words and, in many cases, a stage were necessary if not to ignite then to discipline his compositional imagination. It was certainly a very different tradition from Haydn’s that came to mind in the first two movements, that of relatively recent Russian music: Prokofiev at his more discursive more than Shostakovich, though the latter’s hysterical tendencies exhibited themselves from time to time. The Takács players imbued their performance with character and rigour, and the second movement at least did not outstay its welcome. For all the talk of Purcell – and indeed the overt attempt at homage – the chacony finale seemed lacking in his spirit or much of any other. This performance made as good sense of it as any, but to me it remained grey music, without much in the way of the Peter Grimes-like dramatic leavening of the first movement’s opening.

Where the rot set in was Britten’s notorious verdict on Beethoven. Give me that rot any day, especially in so all-encompassing a performance as that of the Takács Quartet of his final quartet, op.135. Its opening was inviting, good-humoured, and mysterious in equal measure. That sense of productive, generative balance was typical of the first movement as a whole, imbued with the character as well as the tempo of an Allegretto, ever developing in a reading as spacious as it was intense. It very much felt as if it picked up where Haydn and also the Beethoven of the Eighth Symphony had left off. The ensuing Vivace similarly balanced control and freedom, regularity and the danger of careering out of control. Deeply felt and beautifully sung, the slow movement’s balance between introversion and extroversion was inevitably weighted toward the former, yet outward expression told in the moment, both at micro- and macro-levels. It was played and thus heard as if in a single breath. Following a questing introduction, sad and vehement, seeming both to confront the terrible, tragic truth of existence and yet also to move on, Meistersinger-like, to cope with it in complexity, the finale seemed to hark back to earlier Beethoven, the Razumovsky quartets in particular, yet also to know that it could not merely return. And yet, it persisted. Such, after all, is our lot. If our world is going to end, then let it be here.

You can hear the grass as it grows

Wed, 13 Nov 2024 11:00:59 +0000

Born on this day in 1914 librettist and composer John La Touche

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Raining, cats and dogs

Tue, 12 Nov 2024 17:23:00 +0000

The Redwood Theatre was packed on a wet Sunday evening for the latest gala from Opera Revue. This time the theme was circus with guests Kalen Davidson juggling and setting things on fire, Haley Shannon on aerial silks, Ambur Braid doing Ambur things and Walter Bowen Braid jumping through hoops. The usual gang; Danie Friesen, Alex Hajek and Claire Elise-Harris were of course also clowning it.

The lions and tigers and the panther failed to show up (and Alex mislaid the ten foot Burmese python) but Alex and Danie did manage a near purrfect rendition of the Rossini cat duet to kick things off. There was lots of circus related stuff of course including a good chunk of Pagliacci (natch) plus “Send in the Clowns”. Somehow “Nessun Dorma” found it’s way in but I may have slept through that one. The singing was interspersed by some serious knife juggling and some fancy fire eating. The aerial silks thing was a reminder of when the space was actually used for practice by circus folk. They’ve cleaned up the broken glass. Also, in the absence of Pierre Poilievre, Danie smacked Alex in the chops with a pie.

Then there was Ms. Braid doing her thing. Like sitting on the stage apron and knocking out some of Die Farberin’s music from Die Frau ohne Schatten like you do. It was to dye for. Her second appearance went one further. Instead of singing an aria from an opera most people have never seen she sang one from an opera most people have never heard of; Halévy’s La Juive. Absolutely fantastic singing, with bonus canine accompaniment, but I’ve been trying, unsuccessfully, to make a circus connection while avoiding any suggestion it’s a potboiler.

But seriously (yeah right) it was a fun evening with some really very good music making and a change up on the extras. The formula works again!

Photo credit: Ryan Harper

Aïda, harder not smarter

Tue, 12 Nov 2024 15:00:21 +0000

But beyond the opera’s ingrained pomp, however, one wonders why this work – so unrewardingly ambitious, so difficult to cast, so affectively weird — was chosen for this festive occasion. Surely it was not to feature one singer in particular; the afternoon’s highest profile performer, bass Morris Robinson, was fêted at length onstage for the 25^th anniversary of his BLO debut but hardly shown off to any great lengths in the smallish role of Ramfis. (Falstaff, albeit an unconventional one, would have been a better and more à propos choice for this bunch.) And surely not as some sort of culmination or commentary surrounding BLO’s much touted engagement initiatives concerning the matters of politics or representation that fully encompass Aïda’s baggage – in fact, predictably (and lamentably) sanitized subtitles and a mea culpa program note by Anne Bogart here were the extent of the grappling with the issues that animated last season’s courageous and fully staged Madama Butterfly. Nor was it an opportunity for Music Director David Angus to wade into philological debates, the only changes made to the score being the excision of any dance music. And they couldn’t have known when selecting the opera last year how demoralized and fatigued we’d all be of talking about loud and brassy theocracies by the end of this week.

But Aïda they chose, so it was love and intrigue in the shadow of the pyramids we got. But it was an Aïda that often worked harder rather than smarter, its celebratory purpose often dragged below the surface of Verdi’s gurgling Nile despite good intentions.

Nobody seemed more well intentioned than soprano Michelle Johnson in the title role, but her vibrant dramatic involvement couldn’t redeem such a thoroughly uncoordinated vocal performance. Her main repertoire consists of later works (Tosca, Mimì, Turandot, Bess etc.) that subject the vocal line to less exposure, but she’s no stranger to Aïda which was what made Sunday’s clucky performance in part so disconcerting. The tessitura doesn’t exceed her abilities (though the C of “O patria mia” was practically physically hurdled into), but the full-scale lack of any sort of legato, of any inclination towards an artful negotiation between registers and textures which make this perpetually anguished character just barely more than a cipher, made for tedious listening.

More than in any other Verdi opera, the music for both female protagonists — concentrated around register breaks — derives most of its visceral impact from the anticipation of where a note will come from in the voice and what that shading will bring to a line, not if it will merely be audible or healthy-sounding. Everyone in this opera is always judging, fuming, fretting, hedging, lying; Verdi keeps us guessing by obliging singers to differentiate how those very interior emotions sound externally, which is no easy assignment. That sense of anticipatory drive, however, presupposes a vocal security that was absent here.

A similar sense of ambivalence characterized Alice Chung’s Amneris; she came into her own in the Judgement Scene which elicited the afternoon’s strongest applause, but the rest of the role would have benefitted from the histrionic attention she lavished on that moment. Up to that point (despite what her gowns might have you believe), it had been a performance practically free of chest voice, the music massaged into her smooth and sweet middle voice, and without a trace of imperiousness in her handling of the text. Dramatic mezzo repertoire is perhaps not temperamentally intuitive for this singer, but the raw materials are not without promise.

Tenor Diego Torre as Radames was more consistent, singing with both more of a vocal core and genuine squillo. But even his “Celeste Aïda” had an ungainly wavering towards the top (the lilting Fs, not the concluding, robust B-flat) that betrayed more a lack of style than a lack of ability. Only in some of the lower male voices did the elements come to coalesce on a more steady basis; Robinson, the afternoon’s honoree, has an authoritative ease with text if a slightly unfocused overall sound and Brian Major, a real singing actor with a bright and even-tempered baritone, provided a much needed jolt in his Act II arrival as Amonasro.

David Angus valiantly marshalled the choral and orchestral forces with uniformity and verve; despite some seriously problematic sharp playing in the principal trumpets, the orchestra made a fine and cohesive sound and the combined forces of the Boston Lyric Opera Chorus and the Back Bay Chorale were formidable, especially during the Triumphal Scene (which was briefly paused midway through while a chorister underwent a medical emergency onstage – she was stabilized shortly thereafter). Nathan Troup had the off-book soloists moving through a semi-staging in gala attire with fluidity and while the vaguely Futurist scene-setting projections by Jeff Grantz of Illuminus didn’t make much sense, the projections on the wall of the theater during the Triumphal Scene earned their oohs and ahhs.

Not that Aïda is a remotely easy piece to perform, but nearly everything about this performance felt like more work than it needed to be. Perhaps the hubristic choice of opera was one of the inevitable curatorial growing pains that the hand of new Artistic Director Nina Yoshida Nelsen might steady when she begins planning her own seasons in earnest. But overshadowing the afternoon was the unfortunate irony that this performance benefitting community programs (anchored in the newly opened Opera + Community Studios) was itself unable to actually offer an artistically sound genuine article towards which people might eventually be educated. I previously looked at BLO’s opera-void spring season with some sadness — only a Sarah Ruhl/Vivaldi mashup starring Anthony Roth Costanzo as well as a production of Carousel remain. After Sunday, I think this time out might be necessary.

Photos: Nile Scott Studios

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Mixte blessings

Tue, 12 Nov 2024 14:00:34 +0000

I am particularly grateful that LA Opera has taken such strides in the last few seasons to expand its recital series. Back when I was a neophyte opera lover, we had two big concert venues for visiting opera royalty: Royce Hall at UCLA (where I attended my very first recital ever with Leontyne Price) and the Ambassador Auditorium in Pasadena. For whatever reason, neither of these programs continue now but I have wonderful memories of both theaters, most especially because my first voice coach Adele Gray, who loved me like a son, tried to bash as much of the song literature into my thick tenor skull as she had the infinite patience for. She always used to say that I knew more operatic repertoire than she did but she had a wide ranging love for German Lied and French Mélodie and I am the better for it.

That is why I was just moderately excited when LA Opera announced that French tenor Benjamin Bernheim would be coming to concertize at the Wallis Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts in Beverly Hills, 90210. (As a matter of fact, that neighborhood of Los Angeles is designated as the BHPO -Beverly HIlls Post Office.) The gorgeous Renaissance Revival building that was the Post Office was closed in 1999 and sold back to the city of Beverly Hills, but not before it was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1985.

At some point the great arts and education philanthropist Wallace Annenberg took up the cause and in 2003, construction began to save the original building and build a two-theater complex onto it on the block of prime real estate it occupied. It gave us the 500-seat Goldsmith Theater and the 150-seat Lovelace Studio Theater as well as a lovely promenade terrace and a sculpture garden off the main lobby with the most beautiful weeping walls. My sincere thanks to Ms. Annenberg and all of the generous souls who fight so hard to make our cultural life richer; we all know where we’d be if we had only our government on which to rely for arts funding, even in the best of times.

Mr. Bernheim has just released his third album with his label Deutsche Grammophon entitled Douce France which offers up a varied repertoire of music by the great French Romantic composers and a little music hall as an encore of sorts, all with piano accompaniment. This was Mr. Bernheim’s North American recital debut which started in San Juan before he heads over to the continent and he was given an exceptionally warm welcome by an audience of obvious Francophile connoisseurs.

//www.youtube.com/watch?v=KSKkuj-4u28

He opened the program with Charles Gonoud’s “L’absent” and followed with Reynaldo Hahn’s “L’heure exquise,” neither of which were tracks on the recent release but were both welcome. I’d never heard the Gonoud at all and it has a particularly beautiful harp-like underscoring. The delicate Hahn piece I’m very familiar with and Mr. Bernheim’s dexterity in his use of voix mixte was most welcome.

He ended the first half with Ernest Chausson’s “Poème de l’amour et de la mer” which is two long songs joined by a piano interlude. Its elegiac qualities were brought forward by both Mr. Bernheim and his very talented pianist, Carrie-Ann Matheson.

The music of the first half mostly tended to introspective reveries and subsequently our tenor’s interpretations were in the same vein. He was careful with his emotions but not his singing, so much so that he sang the first two pieces almost completely with his eyes closed. His demeanor on the platform also tended to a certain stiffness which seemed odd, as I’d already seen him twice on video in operatic performances where he seemed nothing if not involved and ductile.

Apparently all we needed to get Mr. Bernheim out of his shell was a little Berlioz. After the break he offered up three of the composer’s “Les nuits d’été.” In a change from the printed program, he gave us a charming and piquant “Villanelle” which he offered with a twinkle in his eye. Then, an absolutely rapturous “Le spectre de la rose” with a great opening up of emotion and absolutely stunning, long-breathed, phrasing. The final “Sur les lagunes” is arguably a tough sing for a tenor with its especially wide range, but there’s no question he made a success of it. I wasn’t even aware that these songs had originally been written for piano accompaniment, and arranged for all voice types (save bass), having been so used to the familiar soprano/mezzo orchestral version.

Our tenor gave us a welcome from the stage and informed us that in the next set of three Henri Duparc songs they would be substituting the announced, “Extase” with “Chanson triste”. His “L’invitation au voyage” was just about all you could want and Ms. Matheson once again showed us what an able accompanist she was as the two of them surrounded us with that special aural perfume that only Duparc can conjure. Closing that portion with an amorous but beautifully nuanced, “Phidylé”.

//www.youtube.com/watch?v=U3IBkABCQac

We then got three modern “Boulevard” pieces. Joseph Kosma’s “Les feuilles mortes” (which most of us know as Johnny Mercer’s “Autumn Leaves”), Charles Trenet’s “Douce France,” and Jacques Brel’s “Quand on n’a que l’amour.” All proved conclusively that if Mssr. Bernheim’s high notes ever give out he’s got a second career waiting for him as a chanteur.

As an encore we got Gabriel Faure’s “Hymne à Apollon” which he sang at the closing ceremonies of the Paris Olympics which was nice to hear sans the fog machines, Cirque du Soleil acrobats and excessive reverb to say nothing of the French superhero costume with cape. He then rang us all out with Werther’s “Pourquoi me réveiller” and I hope we get some sort of widely available document of him in that role soon.

Throughout the evening his phrasing – as well as, most especially, his diction — was absolutely sovereign. It’s such a pleasure to hear anyone sing French this well because it is so very rare. The beautiful balance of the passionate and elegant that he captured so well is rarer still. He has a bright, sunny tone that really opens up powerfully to a ringing top when he needs it. The frosting is his exquisite word coloring.

The contribution of Ms. Matheson cannot be underestimated. Mr. Bernheim seemed all too aware as throughout the evening he bowed only with her, only taking a very brief solo bow at the evening’s end. She also did the very lovely transcriptions for the Berlioz to tailor them specifically to his gifts.

Speaking of tailoring, our tenor was business-casual in a black suit with an open-collared white shirt, which I didn’t mind. The house lights were kept at half so we could read the texts in our programs, rather than providing the supertitles which seems more and more common nowadays for recitals. In a house this small, I think it bridged the distance that constantly referring to the screen above the proscenium brings, making his performance that much more immediate. There’s no question that Mr. Bernheim is a singer and communicator of the very highest order and I hope we see more of him. So, as they say, Vive la France!

Photo: Christine Bush, CAMI Music LLC

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Talk about Popp muzik

Tue, 12 Nov 2024 11:00:37 +0000

Born on this day in 1939 soprano Lucia Popp

The post Talk about Popp muzik appeared first on parterre box.

Horizon

Mon, 11 Nov 2024 21:14:00 +0000

Horizon is a choral work in seven movements by Croatian composer Dalibor Bukvić. Scored for (mostly) unaccompanied female voices, it’s meant to evoke the ambiance of the prehistoric Vučedol culture, which flourished between 3000 and 2200 B.C. in what is now (mostly) Croatia which could stand in this context for the ritual side of any pre-literate culture.

There is text; Croatian (I think) and Latin, whispered, declaimed and sung but there’s more vocalise and some recorded bird song plus, on a couple of tracks quite sparse and sometimes atonal piano accompaniment. It does evoke a sense of ritual, mystery and connection to Nature and it’s enjoyable to listen to.

The two choirs are the Brevis Vocal Ensemble and the Women’s Choir of the Academy of Arts and Culture in Osijek conducted by Antoaneta Radočaj-Jerković with Davor Dedić on piano. Clearly these are skilled and versatile choirs who cope with a lot of complexity here.

It’s a digital only release available as MP3 and in 44.1kHz/16bit and 48kHz/24bit WAV and FLAC. I listened to the hi-res version which atmospheric but quite clear. There’s no booklet but as is usual with Navona there’s a webpage with bios, notes etc.

Catalogue information: Navona Records NV6669

The Mata Hari Songbook

Sun, 10 Nov 2024 13:15:45 +0000

My review of The Mata Hari Songbook by John Burge and Craig Walker, performed by the composer and Patricia O’Callaghan, is now available at La Scena Musicale.

Catalogue information: Centrediscs CMCCD 34424

Eugene Onegin, HGO, 8 November 2024

Sat, 09 Nov 2024 19:19:44 +0000

Jacksons Lane Arts Centre

Eugene Onegin: Ambrose Connolly
Tatiana: Nicola Said
Lensky: Martins Smaukstelis
Olga: Katey Rylands
Prince Gremin: Wonsick Oh
Mme Larina: Erin Spence
Filipyevna: Hannah Morley
Zaretsky: Conall O’Neil
Monsieur Triquet: Quito Clothier

Director: Eleanor Burke
Associate director: Finn Lacey
Designs: Emeline Beroud
Lighting: Trui Malten
Movement: Alex Gotch
Fight director: Rich Gittens

HGO Chorus and Orchestra

Oliver Cope (conductor)

Eugene Onegin (Ambrose Connolly)

HGO’s new Eugene Onegin is not only one of the most impressive productions I have seen yet from the company; it is one of the most impressive of the work I have seen for quite some time too. It would be easy to dwell on what it is not: it is not a lavish big-house staging with big ‘names’; it has a tiny one-to-a-part orchestra; and so on. That focuses attention in different ways, to a certain extent intrinsically: one hears things differently in arrangements, of course, an intriguing case in point being the way one perceives the band almost diegetically during the ball scene. Acting at close quarters offers a very different, in many ways more intense experience too, visually and aurally; one learns much from the detail of facial expressions that would be missed by the greater part of an audience elsewhere Yet none of that would count for very much at all, were it not for the excellence of staging, performances, and ensemble. Almost as if one were attending a performance of, say, Schoenberg’s Society for Private Musical Performances, one begins to wonder whether one needs the ‘original’ experience at all. There is room for both, of course, and must be; HGO’s raison d’être is to offer singers at the start of their professional careers opportunities to sing in full-scale, interesting productions before London audiences. Yet it is testament on this occasion to the success of this first night, that I did not feel remotely troubled by having missed Covent Garden’s new staging and having gone to this instead.

Eleanor Burke’s staging sets the work maybe 30 or 40 years ago: it could be just before or just after the fall of socialism, or whatever it is, but that is not really the point. Even in the final act, skilfully evoking with, as elsewhere, minimal resources, what might be some sort of St Petersburg art show, founded in new prosperity (for some), again the point is not so much political as the passing of time. Time and regret are crucial to the work, of course, as to the production. There is nothing pretty, let alone prettified, about the countryside in which this opens; one can well imagine its protagonists would feel some relief on leaving it—save if, like Lensky, they were dead; or, like Tatiana and Onegin, they endure other miserable fates.

These are lonely people, trying to pretend otherwise, trying to make their way in the world, and relying on various crutches – alcohol, drugs, sex, and above all each other – to do so. That again, does not in itself become the point, but rather contextualises the drama and permits it to emerge. Another such crutch lies in literature and in the world of art more broadly. Onegin initially hands Tatiana a book, later returned to him. She writes her letter in it, and that appears to mark some stage in growing up as well as more obvious awakening. Whether ultimately it helps them make sense of themselves and their situation is perhaps questionable, though. Tragedy lies in the consequences of what they do there and then; they cannot always simply learn from their mistakes, since it will often be too late.

Olga (Katey Rylands), Tatiana (Nicola Said)

For once, one does not find everything, or indeed anything very much, a metaphor for Tchaikovsky’s homosexuality. The strong direction gives the overt drama a new lease of life and one believes in these characters as themselves, Lensky and Olga as much as Onegin and Tatiana, the troubled community in which they grow up too, different characters sketched intriguingly, becoming a chorus when called upon, yet clearly having lives, problems, and personalities of their own. The most real connection – at least before it is all too late – may still lie between Onegin and Lensky, but the devastation felt by both, again realising that they too have destroyed what they had, something that cannot be put back together, seems very much to be what it overtly seems to be. That does not mean other paths might not be or have been followed. A splendid cabaret turn from Quito Clothier’s Monsieur Triquet – very well sung too – acts as a beacon of fascination, awakening, and perhaps liberation for the assembled company. What happens when he and Onegin disappear after the ball, returning for the duel, could doubtless be read in another way. Again, I am not sure that is the point, though, and it has not granted them neither enlightenment nor fulfilment. It merely points the way to the pill-induced disorientation, laced with probably unsatisfactory sexual experimentation, Onegin suffers in his time of wayfaring on the way to St Petersburg: a metaphor for whistling one’s life away, as much as the thing itself.

M. Triquet (Quito Clothier)

Ambrose Connolly and Martins Smaukstelis presented a contrasted and complementary pair as Onegin and Lensky, dark and blond, introvert and extrovert, brooding and apparently fun-loving, capable of shocking, volatile exchange in the whirlwind transformations of the ball, here Tatiana's disastrous eighteenth birthday party. Onegin’s flirtation with Olga, cruelly mocking Lensky, can rarely have felt so overtly real, Smaukstelis in turn seeming to retreat in collapse to his childhood. This was accomplished by excellent acting and singing, their Russian (insofar as I can judge) matching their command of vocal line. Moving unmistakeably, yet not without regret, from girl to woman, Nicola Said’s Tatiana likewise matched dramatic, verbal, and ‘purely’ musical qualities to a degree that would have impressed on any stage. Katey Rylands illuminated Olga’s particular path, first fun-loving and yet ultimately as nagged with doubt and regret, to complete an outstanding central quartet. A Prince Gremin will almost always stand out, his aria such a Tchaikovskian gift. That does not negate the moving excellence with which Wonsick Oh presented it; far from it. Erin Spence’s Mme Larina and Hanna Morley’s Filpyevna were entirely convincing in their new setting, unquestionably more than stock characters; so too were Conall O’Neill’s dark and dangerous Zaretsky, and the broader chorus out of which he stepped.

Lensky (Martins Smaukstelis)

Oliver Cope’s musical direction was equally crucial to the evening’s success of the evening. To conduct such a performance is at least as stiff a test as with full orchestra; Cope passed with flying colours, as did his band of soloists, whose cultivated chamber playing metamorphosed seemingly without effort into statements, clashes, and tragic entanglements of full-scale Romantic emotions. Interplay between public and private was located above all here in the orchestra, not least given the fruitful scenographic limitations on such a stage. Pacing and balance were well judged, in the service of an excellent musicodramatic continuity impossible to divorce from what was unfolding ‘onstage’. Clearly a consequence of dedicated, intensive collaboration, all was more than the sum of its considerable parts. Highly recommended.

Opéra Magazine's vocal 'pick of the month' ('coup de coeur') for November 2024.

Sat, 09 Nov 2024 15:07:00 +0000

The November issue of France's Opéra Magazine finally turned up in the post the other day. This month's favourite recording is Carlo Vistoli's Vivaldi album, Sacro furore, featuring the Stabat Mater and other sacred works, interspersed with instrumental numbers, on Harmonia Mundi. Georg Kallweit conducts the Akademie für Alte Musik Berlin.

The reviewer writes that this album 'confirms the eminent place he occupies, today, in the rich constellation of countertenors.' They give it the first of this month's 'Diamond' awards. I think if you root around you can probably find all of the album on YT.

They give a second 'Diamant' to Bruno de Sá's Mille Affetti: Opera and Sacred Arias, which this time 'confirms he is one of the most exceptional performers of the baroque repertoire of the beginning of this century.' Jaroslaw Thiel conducts the Wroclaw Baroque Orchestra, on Erato, and again, I think you can find it all online.

One 'dazzling' 'Diamond' is also awarded to a DVD this month: Martinu's The Greek Passion, staged by Simon Stone in Salzburg last year, with Gabor Bretz, Charles Workman, Sara Jakubiak... and the VPO under Maxime Pascal, on Cmajor.

'Admirably conducted, sung and staged,' the DVD 'confirms' (what else?) that it is 'one of the 20th century's most absolute masterpieces.'

Dego/LSO/Rustioni - Liszt, Mendelssohn, and Schubert, 7 November 2024

Sat, 09 Nov 2024 14:30:10 +0000

Barbican Hall

Liszt: Les Préludes, S 97
Mendelssohn: Violin Concerto in E minor, op.64
Schubert: Symphony no.9 in C major, ‘Great’, D 644

Francesca Dego (violin)

London Symphony Orchestra

Daniele Rustioni (conductor)

Images: Mark Allan

This was a slightly curious concert: much to admire and very little, if anything, to which to object, the LSO on excellent form throughout. Yet the performance of Schubert’s ‘Great’ C major Symphony rarely ignited as it might have done, a case of being almost yet not quite there under Daniele Rustioni’s direction, and Mendelssohn’s Violin Concerto received an unusual, interesting, yet again not entirely convincing performance from Francesca Dego.

Liszt’s symphonic poem Les Préludes came off best, in an outstanding performance from orchestra and conductor alike. From the opening bar, they conjured up a splendidly Lisztian sound – easier said than done with orchestra, as opposed to piano – and showed themselves adept at managing those all-important transitions and transformations. What can all too readily sound stiff, even from the most exalted names, here evinced first-rate continuity and flexibility; it was refreshingly free of brashness, let alone vulgarity, too. Lyrical, even operatic, it seemed to confirm Wagner’s unhistorical placing of Liszt’s symphonic poems as an intermediate stage between Beethoven’s symphonies and his own music dramas. Exemplary woodwind playing and blend, melting strings (with an especially spirited cello section, where called for), and big-hearted climaxes that lacked nothing in power combined to form a performance of power and sensitivity.

Rustioni’s way with the Mendelssohn was often as impressive. He began the first movement swiftly, yet never drove too hard, and lightly emphasised its darker undercurrents, as if to confound absurd preconceptions of this as ‘pleasant’ music. Dego’s sound was often on the smaller, silvery side, worlds away from, say, Anne-Sophie Mutter, yet always cut through, and line was secure and finely spun; any qualms were really a matter of taste. She had a nice line in telling rubato too. The cadenza in particular was captivating, likewise the closing accelerando. Her tone in the slow movement was often a little nervy, even wiry: again, clearly an interpretative choice, since it was not always like that, but a little odd. There was nothing routine to the performance, though, which showed commendable metrical flexibility. A quicksilver finale pulsed with life and good humour, with all the give and take of chamber music. It made me smile, and goodness knows we need something like that in the world right now.

The introduction to the first movement of the Schubert trod a middle path between old and new. (The labels make little intrinsic sense, but perhaps remain the easiest way to describe broad interpretative trends.) It was certainly alla breve, yet sounded less rushed than has became the case, nonetheless lacking the grandeur – and meaning – of ‘old’, whether Klemperer and Furtwängler, or Colin Davis and Daniel Barenboim (Barenboim’s 2015 VPO performance in Berlin by some way the best live performance I have heard). It was elegant and euphonious, and had a sense of heading somewhere, the movement ‘proper’ then being taken at a perfectly reasonable tempo. Likewise, it evinced vigour and rigour, still flying by, all the time retaining creditably cultivated orchestral sound. The Andante con moto was bracingly swift, yet retained flexibility and an admirably Viennese sound. Solo playing was comfortably the equal of any one would hear around the world, and the orchestra as a whole offered a winning match of transparency and warmth. The third and fourth movements, both played very well and far from lacking in energy, nonetheless seemed to outstay their welcome, repetition supplanting development: a pity, given the swagger of the scherzo and the initial excitement of the finale.

Mark Berry

Recreating the staging of Carmen’s première

Sat, 09 Nov 2024 14:12:47 +0000

My review of Palazetto Bru-Zane’s new video recording of Bizet’s Carmen aimed at recreating the original staging of 1875 is now available at La Scena Musicale.

The Case for the Existence of God

Fri, 08 Nov 2024 15:19:02 +0000

Samuel D. Hunter’s play The Case for the Existence of God, in a production directed by Ted Dykstra, opened at Coal Mine Theatre on Thursday night. It’s a story about the somewhat unlikely friendship between two would be single fathers in a small town in Idaho. It’s mostly pretty sad but with some really funny moments. We can come back to the God thing.

Keith (Mazin Elsadig) is a black gay mortgage broker from a well to do middle class family. He has a little girl that he is “fostering to adopt” though there are issues with her biological father and, though it’s not made explicit, a single gay guy adopting in a conservative and religious state. Ryan (Noah Reid) is what once used to be referred to when I worked in the southern US as “white trash” (now they are referred to as “senator” and “judge”). His parents were both addicts. H’e estranged from his mother and his father died when he was nine. He works in a yoghurt plant. He’s in the process of splitting up with his more educated wife who wants sole custody of their daughter.

Ryan and Keith meet at their daughters’ day-care and bond over Ryan’s need for a loan to buy back land that belonged to his great grandparents. His financial case is hopeless as, it turns out, are the prospects of the two men keeping much, if any, contact with the girls. A drink sodden and tumultuous friendship plays out against a backdrop of institutional indifference though the cleverly staged and surprising ending suggests some sort of redemption.

Technically, as theatre, it’s excellent. The scenes are run together with just enough cues to let us work out that time has passed. The acting is superb. There’s a wonderful awkwardness about how each stage of the relationship between Ryan and Keith is negotiated and when things go badly wrong, as they do, there’s some spectacularly explosive acting. All of this plays out in a “cube” that serves as various spaces delineated by changes of props and subtle lighting cues (both Nick Blais) and an atmospheric sound design (Aaron Jensen). It’s slick in a good way.

Is there a “spiritual” dimension to the two men’s attempt to be fathers? I don’t know. It probably depends a lot on the viewer’s background and experience. Does it make a “Case for the Existence of God”? Like most such arguments it’s probably more compelling if one imagines God as a malevolent trickster rather than wise and benevolent.

A Case for the Existence of God runs at Coal Mine Theatre until December 1st.

Photo credit: Cylla von Tiedemann

Giuseppe Giacomini

Thu, 07 Nov 2024 02:50:38 +0000

Giuseppe Giacomini (1940-2021) was one of the greatest tenors active during the last 30 years of the 20th century. Despite the excellence of his singing, he never achieved the widespread fame accorded his exact contemporaries – Luciano Pavarotti and Placido Domingo. Nevertheless, his career was quite successful; he appeared at all the major opera houses, always to great acclaim. He achieved a full slate of honors and seemed to get better as he aged. Giacomini’s prizes and honors include the title Kammersänger of the Staatsoper in Wien, the Gold Viotti, the Giovanni Zenatello Prize, the CA Capelli Prize, the Gold Mascagni, and the Giovanni Martinelli Prize. He was also Commendatore of the Ordine di San Gregorio Magno, a Vatican order of knighthood.

I last heard him in Sicily about 25 years ago in an outdoor performance of Turandot at the Giardini Bellini outside of Catania. The two soprano leads were inferior, but he was terrific. Nessun Dorma drove the Sicilians to a frenzied demand for an encore which the conductor refused.

He gave 85 performances at the Met between 1976 and 1988. He continued to sing well into his 60s without losing effectiveness. Known to his friends and admirers as ‘Bepi’, he had a winning personality and was free of the flamboyance commonly associated with a star tenor. His gentle personality may have lessened his fame. I have heard that he left the Met when he was at the peak of his powers because the company wouldn’t let him sing Otello mostly limiting the role to Placido Domingo whose voice did not have the full dramatic weight as did Giacomini’s. I can’t vouch for the accuracy of this rumor.

Giacomini’s voice was a full-fledged dramatic tenor with a free top. He could shade his sound to the appropriate level of the music he sang. He sang all the standard Italian roles to great effect. The following excerpts, in addition to the one linked above, show why his services were always in high demand.

Otello’s entrance lasts only about half a minute, but in this brief span Verdi depicts the gullible general’s character in a flourish of direct and heroic tones. Esultate. Giacomini’s baritonal sound and command of the passagio make for fine reading of this great entrance. It doesn’t take long for Otello to lose his grasp on reality and bemoan his future as a cuckold. Ora e per sempre addio. The thunderous duet that closes Act 2 depicts Iago’s manipulation of Otello to the point of uxoricide. Sherill Milnes is the baritone. Si pel ciel.

Sticking to Verdi, Giacomini belts out Manrico’s ‘Di quella pira’ though the high C sounds more like a B natural to me. Listeners with perfect pitch can confirm or deny my suspicion. Di quella pira. The tenor aria from La Forza del Destino is one of the finest anybody has ever written. Its recitative is better than most other composer’s arias. La vita e inferno. Giacomini’s performance of the aria is heroic.

Amilcare Pochielli’s only lasting opera is La Gioconda. The work’s most well-known aria is for the tenor. Cielo e mar starts Act 2. This recording, from a recital, shows Giacomini’s stentorian tones to great advantage.

Giacomini recorded Pietro Mascagni’s Cavalleria Rusticana with Jessye Norman as Santuzza. The role was one not typical of those usually sung by the soprano, but she acquits herself well on the recording. Ah! lo vedi is the duet during which Turridu forcible rejects Santuzza whose virtue he has compromised. Giacomini was the only Italian in the cast of this complete recording which nevertheless holds up quite well against its numerous competitors. The Brindisi (Drinking Song) comes just before Turridu is challenged to his fatal duel with the husband of the woman with whom he has been carrying on an illicit affair.

Another verismo composer known for only one opera (Andrea Chenier) was Umberto Giordano. Tenors love to sing the title role as he has four arias. The best known of these is the first act Improvviso which tests a spinto tenor to his limit. It’s hard to understand how a composer could write as good an opera as Chenier and not reach that level again. Giacomini’s rendition of the aria is one of the finest available.

Finally, Puccini. E lucevan le stelle require grace more than force. Giacomini gives a fine and sensitive performance of the ubiquitous aria. Or son sei mesi is in Act 2 of The Girl of the Golden West. It is noteworthy for the blaze of B-flats that come near its end. Ch’ella mi creda occurs in the opera’s last act. It’s the hero’s wish that his lover Minnie not be told that he was hanged. Of course, she arrives to free him using a pistol as a debating point. The two then ride off together into the sunrise (they’re in California). Giacomini’s singing here is splendid.

He was a great tenor who deserves more recognition than he has received though his standing among opera aficionados is already assured.

WEDO/Barenboim - Mendelssohn and Brahms, 4 November 2024

Wed, 06 Nov 2024 15:42:55 +0000

Royal Festival Hall

Mendelssohn: Symphony no.4 in A major, op.90
Brahms: Symphony no.4 in E minor, op.98

West-Eastern Divan Orchestra

Daniel Barenboim (conductor)

Images: Pete Woodhead

A performance from Daniel Barenboim and the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra has always been an experience hors concours. That has not changed; it is arguably all the more so than ever. The warmth of applause Barenboim received coming on stage was in itself striking, arguably beyond even that Bernard Haitink did during his later years; that with which Barenboim and the orchestra met on departing was something else again. The reasons for this are obvious and do not need rehearsing, but they are very much part of the context in which any listener from this planet, perhaps even from beyond, would experience this concert.

Mendelssohn’s Italian Symphony was not a work I associated with Barenboim, but that was clearly a matter of my ignorance, since he conducted it, as he would Brahms’s Fourth Symphony, without a score. The manner in which it opened banished any such doubt for good: buoyant, transparent, directed, at an ideal tempo, and imbued with chiaroscuro. Ravishing woodwind solos characterised not only this first movement but the performance as a whole. Split violins brought the dialogue further to life—and what a luxury it was to hear this music with an orchestra ranging from sixteen firsts to eight double basses. That depth of strings truly told in the struggle of the development, more Beethovenian than one generally hears, and all the better for it. Indeed, it was not only Beethoven but the Beethoven of Furtwängler who increasingly came to mind: surely a matter not entirely dissociated from the state of the world around us and, above all, around these extraordinary young musicians and their wise guide and mentor. It was likewise perhaps my imagination, but I am not sure I have heard the second movement sound so mournful. It was neither slow nor lugubrious, but told of an underlying pain that could never be put into words (thinking of Mendelssohn’s own aesthetic claim). This processional, steeped in the deepest melancholy, maintained its line from beginning to end, detail and broad sweep in perfect equipoise. Moving to the major mode brought Schubertian bitter-sweetness. The close, alas, brought a less than welcome intervention from mobile telephone.

Was the minuet too loving? I imagine some might have thought so. For me, as a one-off, it offered a fond backward glance to a world before, ever vanished, yet tantalisingly close, whether to Mozart or whatever one might choose politically. Again, woodwind were to die for. Horns and bassoons in the trio, beautifully hushed, seemed to recall the world of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, building to a stern climax with militaristic trumpets and drums. In that context, the finale offered a wake-up call in several senses. Fast, furious, unrelenting, it had never terrified me as it did here. String figuration again darted from the Dream music, the Scherzo in particular, yet turned to acid, disturbingly close to the world of, say, Mahler’s Fifth. Throughout, the sense of purpose evoked Beethoven and anticipated Brahms.

The first concert I heard Barenboim conduct was of Brahms, in this very hall: not the Fourth Symphony, but rather the Third and First. He still has much to tell us and much to surprise us with. If the candle occasionally flickers, as here in the great finale, which almost yet not quite fell apart; it continues ultimately to burn, perhaps all the more movingly for its infallibility. There is little doubt that the Divan musicians would follow him to the end of the earth and there is hope in that. The first movement, deeply sad without sentimentality, felt well-nigh overwhelming. It may have been on the slow side, but it pulsed with life both in its harmonic fundamentals and in the motivic working of inner parts: Schenker and Schoenberg united, as so often in the best of Barenboim’s (and anyone else’s) performances. It became more frightening, more vehement, its insistence frightening, sweeter passages arguably still more so. Its fragility remained deeply moving. The development opened as if showing us a musical (and political) wasteland, from which the world somehow, just about, picked itself up. Horn calls and massed string portamenti sent chills, properly ambiguous, down the spine. Battle between first and second violins towards the close told its own unmistakeable story.

The second movement, intriguingly, seemed to take up whether the inner movements of the Mendelssohn had left off, building rhythmically (those hemiolas!) and harmonically into a tragic statement of Beethovenian stature, whose virginal tenderness troubled still more than external defiance. Truth, here, was the essence. It was not beautiful; nor was it intended to be. Yet in the richness of Brahms’s inner parts, there lay hope, as there did in something later, warmer, aptly (given Barenboim’s history) Elgarian. He may not have seemed to be doing very much, yet detail remained within his hands, as witnessed by a subtle signal to the firsts to tone down, instantly obeyed. The scherzo-like third movement offered ebullient contrast, as if a thunderbolt from Zeus. In dialectical contrast, it became almost balletic, only adding to the sense of what humanly was at stake. The passacaglia was as implacable, as naked in its honesty: the final, complete tragic utterance, laden with all the cares of the world and yet still able to speak, to resist, to bear witness. At times, it almost stood still; at others, it pressed on. All was part of the same flow, all rooted in harmony, musically Sophoclean.

The Scherzo from A Midsummer Night’s Dream, as at the Waldbühne this summer, made for a fitting, featherlight encore: charming, yet with depth rarely achieved and perhaps never surpassed. Encapsulating so much of what had gone before, it also offered something refreshingly new. Again, a sign of hope.

Gerstein/BBC SO/Oramo - Bacewicz and Busoni, 1 November 2024

Tue, 05 Nov 2024 23:16:03 +0000

Barbican Hall

Grażyna Bacewicz: Symphony no.2
Ferruccio Busoni: Piano Concerto in C major, op.83

Kirill Gerstein (piano)

BBC Symphony Chorus

BBC Symphony Orchestra

Sakari Oramo (conductor)

Images: Copyright: BBC/Sarah-Louise Bennett

The centenary of Ferruccio Busoni’s death fell earlier this year, not that ninety-nine per cent of the musical world appears to have noticed. Where are the operas, even his masterpiece and summa, Doktor Faust this year, or any other? His Turandot will never rival Puccini’s for popularity, nor for various other attributes, least of all disturbingly alluring sadism. Yet, though I admire both, I think Busoni’s is ultimately the better piece. In the meantime, the BBC Symphony Chorus and Orchestra, Sakari Oramo, and Kirill Gerstein offered a rare opportunity to hear his genre- and much-else-defying Piano Concerto, which in its finale offers a male chorus setting of words from the Danish Romantic Adam Oelenschläger’s Aladdin, in Oelenschläger’s own German translation (long since superseded), which Busoni at one point considered turning into an opera. If that sounds more like Beethoven’s Ninth than any of his piano concertos – not, if truth be told, the work has much in common with either – then it points to an important truth: namely, that this superlative pianist and veteran of many a piano concerto, historical and contemporary, chose in his own to write, without sparing the pianist great technical challenges, a work that was more operatic symphony with piano than concerto in any traditional sense, adversarial or otherwise.

A composer such as Busoni needs a champion, and Gerstein probably has better claim than any other current performing musician to the title. During the 2022-23 season, he gave a series of three concerts at the Wigmore Hall, entitled ‘Busoni and his World’. I attended two and left enriched by both. He has also been performing the Piano Concerto, a live recording with Sakari Oramo and the Boston Symphony Orchestra having been warmly acclaimed. I have yet to hear it, but if it is anything like this performance with Oramo and the BBC Symphony Orchestra, it should be snapped up by anyone with the slightest interest or curiosity. I suspect it will be in broad outline, since swift overall timings of about seventy minutes are common to both. For the sake of comparison, John Ogdon takes about seventy-eight and Victoria Postnikova manages to stretch it to almost ninety. A signal achievement of this performance, though was that such thoughts never entered the mind. The work did not even seem long, but rather, like a Mahler symphony, the precise length that it needed to be, compelling from beginning to end.

Indeed, from the outset, soloist, conductor, and for the most part orchestra approached it as if it were a repertory piece. The first movement flowed with notable fluency, with no question as to its depths. Whatever this is, it is not a ‘surface’ work. There was a Beethovenian strength to the string foundations, the Seventh Symphony in particular coming to mind. Gerstein, on his first entry, showed himself both secure in command and inviting—even if we did not yet quite know to what he and Busoni were inviting us. He made the massive piano chords sing in themselves, but equally in counterpoint with the orchestra, unleashing Faustian energy yet also relishing the more ‘feminine’ – in the old, gendered typology – passages in which Doktor Faust itself is at its least successful. If the creation of music from often simple elements required Beethovenian struggle, it rarely sounded like it, the effect closer to Mozart, to Liszt, and occasionally to Brahms. One sensed if not the birth of Busoni’s Junge Klassität, then a milestone in its evolution.

That Classical-Romantic line ran through the following Pezzo giocoso too, its energy almost yet not quite delirious in piano and orchestra alike. Like its predecessor, it seemed effortlessly to capture the protean spirit of its composer, here pointing, tambourine and all, toward the warm, Mediterranean south. The longer Pezzo serioso struck, unsurprisingly, a more serious, even Teutonic note, pianistic shadows and rays of winter sun from the worlds of Beethoven and Brahms set against surprisingly Wagnerian trombones: a magical combination. Form was unerringly communicated as was a musical narrative perhaps closer to that of Liszt’s symphonic poems than to Strauss. Faustian tones became more pronounced, as if the good doctor himself were seated at the piano, performing his own concerto. The fourth movement tarantella sounded as a truly Italian vision, albeit an Italy different from anyone else’s. In its Lisztian figuration, we experienced a unique, even outrageous fever. And how could we not smile at the evocation of Rossini on entering the realm of commedia dell’arte?

The transition to the final movement, as the male chorus stood, was a thing of wonder. Busoni instructed that it should be invisible, and the effect would doubtless be all the more magical if it were, if perhaps at the cost of intelligibility, though we had (welcome) surtitles in this case. A quietly ecstatic new and final chapter opened: ‘Lifet up your hearts to the Power Eternal. Feel Allah’s presence. Behold all his works.’ A splendidly warm and consoling choral sound led us into a realm in which it was difficult not to think, perhaps through a Goethian lens, of Die Zauberflöte—and of Mahler. The rapturous acclaim with which Gerstein and his fellow performers met was fully justified. I have no doubt it will prove to be one of my musical memories of 2024.

Preceding it, we had heard Grażyna Bacewicz’s Second Symphony, a much shorter and more modest work, far from without its virtues, yet paling when placed beside the Busoni. The BBC SO and Oramo summoned just the right sort of mid-century sound in a committed performance of this 1951 work. Other composers came to mind, Prokofiev and Bartók in the first movement, Hindemith later on, but Bacewicz was never merely to be reduced to them, her personal contrasts of ‘voice’ and texture holding the attention throughout. The second movement evoked unease through traditional harmony and counterpoint. The third, a scherzo proved incisive and ambiguous. In the finale, not for the first time, the composer showed her ability not only to write a melody but to ensure that it was generated from the material in which it found itself. Bacewicz’s symphony could probably have found a more suitable home than this concert, but it was a good opportunity to make its acquaintance.

Benjamin - Picture a day like this, at the Opéra Comique in Paris

Tue, 05 Nov 2024 10:39:00 +0000

Opéra Comique, Paris, Wednesday October 30 2024

Conductor: George Benjamin. Production, sets and lighting: Marie-Christine Soma, Daniel Jeanneteau. Costumes: Marie La Rocca. Videos: Hicham Berrada. Woman: Marianne Crebassa. Zabelle: Anna Prohaska. Lover 1/Composer: Beate Mordal. Lover 2/Composer's assistant: Cameron Shahbazi. Artisan/collector: John Brancy. Actors: Matthieu Baquey, Lisa Grandmottet, Eulalie Rambaud. Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France.

My first opera of the new season in Paris, after kicking off in Brussels with Kris Defoort’s thought-provoking The Day of our Singing, was another nearly-new work, totally new to me: Sir George Benjamin’s Picture a day like this. Like Benjamin’s much-admired Written on Skin, The Day of our Singing has (like all his operas, in fact) a libretto by Martin Crimp, was first performed at the Aix Festival (in this case in 2023), and has now had its Paris premiere at the Opéra Comique, under Sir George himself. In all, seven houses co-commissioned and are co-producing this piece, and it has already travelled to Aix, London and Strasbourg. But as, for most people reading this post, it’s likely to be new, I'll include an outline of the story and some words about the score that anyone already familiar with them can simply skip.

Martin Crimp has called the opera ‘a kind of Alice in Wonderland, but for adults’. It certainly involves a quest, in seven brief scenes - the work totals no more than 75 minutes, without a break - but what seemed more obvious to me than Alice, as I watched, was its roots in oriental myths, legends and fairy tales. Without directly imitating oriental verse, the poetic libretto is dotted with allusions to it, from the very first scene:

In the first garden ran four streams

Of life. Quince, almond, lilac, violet

Flowered. In the deep shade of the Cypress tree

No one felt pain: there was no death.

The writing brings to mind oriental painting - ‘miniatures’ (to use a term dismissed by specialists as a western misrepresentation). Indeed, the Süddeutsche Zeitung’s critic referred, in 2023, to ‘this taut, sharp miniature,’ (which, he pursued, proved that Benjamin is ‘the finest opera composer of today…a work of depth of feeling, humanistic artistry and expressive rigour…a drama that is miraculously condensed’).

The plot is simple enough. A woman’s infant dies, but, in Scene 1, she is told:

Find one happy person in this world

And cut one button from their sleeve.

Do it before night

And your child will live.

On a dark stage, surrounded only by semi-reflective panels, she is given an itinerary on a sheet of paper, and sets off on her quest, through a series of encounters involving hopes raised and dashed, recalling Judith opening the doors in Bluebeard’s castle.

She begins by apologetically interrupting the coitus of two cute, smiling lovers, writhing half-dressed on a mattress - here, less messily, a light-box brought to centre-stage by actors in cassocks and boots. They seem happy, but soon fall out over the man’s polyamorous affairs - with either sex or any ‘in between.’ Next, the actor-stagehands wheel in a kind of museum vitrine, in which sits the Artisan, in a blue suit encrusted with glistening buttons, cradling a fading bouquet. He can enumerate every beautiful button he has made. But he soon starts to rave, revealing his failure and the scars of self-mutilation.

She moves on, and meets a world-famous composer, in a gabardine, with her smarmy assistant in a sharp suit, no socks in his dress shoes, phone to his ear, scuttling busily along a moving walkway. The composer, immensely rich and famous (Crimp’s text is not without dark humour), should be happy. But when the Woman mentions this to her, the walkway stops dead. The composer is burnt out; her life is empty.

The Woman pauses, now alone, to sing a searing aria, the emotional core of the work, expressing her frustration with fate. ‘Dead stems of flowers come to life again.’ Why not her son? Then, in scene six, on a stage now filled with a maze of framed translucent screens, she meets the Collector, his camel coat slung over the shoulders of a dapper suit, who owns ‘rooms full of miracles,’ including a Matisse. But money can’t buy him the love he longs for. Moved nonetheless by her grief, he leads her to Zabelle’s garden, represented by the projection, on a scrim, of a luxurious, Ernst-like garden of (toxic?) chemicals sprouting profusely in water.

When she begs to share Zabelle’s happiness, Zabelle tells her story: ‘Picture a day like this…’, which grimly mirrors the Woman’s and ends, enigmatically, ‘I am happy, but only because I don’t exist.’ The Woman, at the end of her voyage through bereavement, the stages of grief, hope and disillusion, now has a tiny button in her hand. But what does it mean?

The almost clinical directing avoids too-obvious pathos, making the central Aria all the more striking. The acting is crisp and fresh, and though the successive vignettes leave little time for character development, it manages to achieve it, in particular through subtle, changing facial expressions and eye movements that reminded me of Bob Wilson’s work. I was glad to be near the front., as this detail must have been lost on people sitting farther away. In motion, for example, Cameron Shahbazi’s face is fascinating, as anyone interested can see by visiting his Instagram account.

Once, nearly twenty years ago, I likened the arias strung together in a Händel opera to the collection of precious objets d’art in the Galerie d’Apollon at the Louvre. ‘Each one is different, they are all very precious, and each is its own perfect little world.’ I was reminded of that by George Benjamin’s score. It calls for about twenty musicians, but considerably more instruments: the wind players, for example, switch to basset horn, tenor and bass recorders, bass flute, bass and contrabass clarinet, and contrabassoon. These low, velvety sounds contrast with the sparkle of piccolo and piccolo trumpet, whip-cracks, cymbals and bells, harp and celeste. Like those objets d’art, the music is exquisitely crafted, ‘gold and silver, porphyry, jade, rock crystal, lapis lazuli and more’ as I wrote two decades back, ‘expertly and imaginatively wrought into a coherent, deeply satisfying form.’ And, also like Händel’s, Benjamin’s music cleaves ingeniously to the text, sometimes, despite the sad subject-matter, wittily underscoring the character’s failings and disappointments.

The Paris cast sing as if the parts had been written expressly to suit their voices. Which they had, as (apart from the orchestra) this run reunited, under the composer’s sure han, the original performers, all excellent, from the Aix premiere. Beate Mordal’s bright, crisp lyric soprano interacted nicely with Cameron Shahbazi’s grainier, more insinuating sound, just right for those ‘bad-boy’ baroque parts like Tolomeo, which he sings. John Brancy offers a firm, clear baritone and a handsome, engaging presence. Anna Prohaska’s multi-hued soprano contrasts well with Marianne Crebassa’s stoic straightforwardness. But Crebassa, on stage from beginning to end, obviously plays the central role, both dramatically and vocally. Her dark, rich, complex timbre, with undertones of old British contraltos, fills the house in a way few voices do. A triumph of contained vehemence.

Picture a day like this is, however, more an opera of ideas and (sometimes wrenching) emotions, than of action. That's one of the reasons I think it’s less likely to be a ‘popular hit’ than Written on Skin, compared to which its ‘fable’ format, its string of brief scenes, is relatively static. Also, while Benjamin’s skilful score glows, glitters, sighs, burbles and occasionally screams, it does so largely at La Fontaine’s ‘allure de sénateur’: a senatorial pace. You get little sense of varying tempo, more of a trance-inducing regularity. Any longer might have been too much.

To cheer us up after this study of bereavement, grief and the elusiveness of happiness, I’ll end with a game. As Picture a day like this lasts little more than an hour, opera houses may want to pair it with another work. The question is, what?

Losing Religion: Das Rheingold at the Bayerische Staatsoper

Mon, 04 Nov 2024 15:23:42 +0000

Wagner – Das Rheingold

Wotan – Nicholas Brownlee
Donner – Milan Siljanov
Froh – Ian Koziara
Loge – Sean Panikkar
Alberich – Markus Brück
Mime – Matthias Klink
Fasolt – Matthew Rose
Fafner – Timo Riihonen
Fricka – Ekaterina Gubanova
Freia – Mirjam Mesak
Erda – Wiebke Lehmkuhl
Woglinde – Sarah Brady
Wellgunde – Verity Wingate
Floßhilde – Zhang Yajie

Bayerisches Staatsorchester / Vladimir Jurowski.
Stage director – Tobias Kratzer.

Bayerische Staatsoper, Nationaltheater, Munich, Germany. Sunday, November 3rd, 2024.

With the premiere last week of this Das Rheingold a new Ring has begun in Munich. The staging has been confided to Tobias Kratzer and the musical direction to Vladimir Jurowski. Tonight, I joined for the third performance of a sold-out run in this venerable house, where Wagner’s score was first heard. To be in a house that has such a tradition with this work is a privilege, but what is an even greater privilege is that with this new Rheingold we seem to be witnessing what is a production for the third decade of the twenty-first century, both in its visuals and in the relative youthfulness of the casting.

Kratzer has given us a Rheingold for our troubled times. The Rhinemaidens are seen wearing casual hoodies and taking selfies of their opening interactions with Alberich, and it’s clear that Kratzer sets the action very much in the present day. The descent into Niebelheim is accompanied with a video of Wotan taking a premium economy flight to New York, while Niebelheim itself is a garage where Alberich works from his computer selling arms. The return shows a video of Wotan arguing with a customs agent about bringing a frog back into Germany. Even though the twenty-first century setting might be seen as quotidian, for a work that deals in super-human traits, Kratzer doesn’t make it so. He brings out the fantasy inherent in the work: whether in the Rhinemaidens being able to make furniture move by waving their hands, or Alberich indeed turning into a serpent or a frog. The technical audacity of Kratzer’s staging is staggering – be it in the frequent use of pyrotechnics, the film, or the special effects he incorporates, this is very much the work of a creative team operating at the peak of its powers.

Yet, Kratzer’s staging is about so much more than special effects. His personenregie is simply outstanding, transforming every single individual on that stage into clear, believable and coherent characters. The drama is brought to life so fully, not only through the audacious visuals, but also because the characters he incorporates within are so believable. Kratzer mines deeply the relationship between godhood and power in his staging. Compared with the Rhinemaidens, Alberich and Mime in modern dress, Wotan and the gods are seen in more classic costumes, although Wotan did have to go buy a suit to descend to Niebelheim. Valhalla is a large altar piece, one that could be at home in the Sagrada Familia, upon which the gods take their seats at the end. And yet, Kratzer makes it clear that the order that the gods preside over is ultimately doomed – whether in the way that he brings out premonitions of the Götterdämmerung while Erda gave her warning, with the gods circulating around a space in flames, or the fact that Wotan’s walk to Niebelheim was accompanied by images of churches ablaze. I found this such a coherent and fascinating insight, the idea that the gods’ hold over the population was under threat through the rebelling against and questioning of the religion that gave them power. Kratzer’s staging abounds in so much insight, the sheer detail he brings out in the visuals and the acting through the course of the evening is simply staggering. He makes us consider the power relations inherent in the work, the abuse of that power, and what happens when a population rises against it. While the answer to the latter will be something that will undoubtedly become apparent later in the cycle, Kratzer has already given us so much to think about.

The evening opened with the theatre in complete darkness, the pedal E-flat that starts the journey ahead emerging out of nothingness. Jurowski led his orchestra on sensational form tonight. His tempo choices were mercurial, the gear changes imperceptible but present if one focused on them. The Rhine took form in a flowing tempo, which he pulled back with the entry of the Rhinemaidens. The range of colour Jurowski achieved from the band was seemingly limitless, bringing out the richness of the harmonies in the lower brass at the entry of the giants in a way I’d never heard before. The orchestra played the room as much as they played the score, the wealth of orchestral colour filling the space in a blaze of sound in those closing pages. The harps were divided into two groups in the stage-side boxes, and the way that the antiphonal interplay between the two groups enhanced the texture was simply magical. The evening came in at around two and a half hours, so a fairly standard running time, and yet nothing ever dragged or felt rushed. On the contrary, I could gladly have listened it immediately again. The quality of the playing tonight was exceptional.

Nicholas Brownlee is a new name to me but he has a burgeoning career in Germany, having been an ensemble member in Karlsruhe and is now based in Frankfurt. His Wotan most definitely held the stage. He sang with scrupulous attention to the text, the words absolutely clear, in immaculate German. Perhaps with time, he will deepen his use of the text to colour the words more – there was a slight sense here of him having mastered the text but not yet completely living it. The voice is in fantastic shape, big rich and resonant, absolutely even from top to bottom. The top rang out powerfully, filling the house in a wave of sound, while the bottom was rich and full. Brownlee is still relatively young, singing a role that has ruined many voices over the years. He’s a major talent and I very much hope he will nurture it.

Sean Panikkar gave us a superb Loge. I haven’t always been convinced by Panikkar in the past but tonight he completely won me over. The role is ideal for his focused, bright, medium-weight tenor, with a plangent edge to the tone. He also sang his music in impeccable German, the words always forward and he coloured the tone with care and attention. He gave us a real sense that he was living his character, in all of his irony, and in his half-god status together with Kratzer, brought out in his final lines that he may be part of the downfall of the regime – ‘wer weiß was ich tu’. Ekaterina Gubanova brought her customary plush mezzo and verbal acuity to the role of Fricka. The middle of the voice is so rich and generous, although the bottom was somewhat less rounded and I longed for her to dip into a fuller chestiness. Mirjam Mesak sang Freia in a diamantine, bright soprano, and focused tone. Milan Siljanov sang Donner in a firm baritone, although he was occasionally casual with pitching, while Ian Koziara sang Froh with lyrical charm.

Markus Brück took a few moments to find his best form as Alberich, the voice initially rather grey and colourless. He then grew into a towering performance of great physical bravery, appearing naked having transformed back from the frog for his confrontation with Wotan and Loge. He dispatched his music with powerful intensity and generous force, the voice ringing out with ease, and so much communicated through that union of text and physicality. Similarly, Matthias Klink gave us a textually clear Mime, although he did have a tendency to sacrifice the integrity of the tone in the service of characterization. Wiebke Lehmkuhl gave us a striking Erda, her warnings intoned in a contralto of rare beauty and fullness of tone. We also had two imposing giants in the form of Matthew Rose as Fasolt and Timo Riihonen as Fafner, both dressed as priests and prostrating themselves in front of Wotan. Both Rose and Riihonen sang with big, booming tone and clarity of text. The Rhinemaidens, Sarah Brady, Verity Wingate and Zhang Yajie were energetic and charming in tone.

With this Rheingold, Kratzer and Jurowski have given us the start of a Ring that promises so much. Kratzer’s staging is a parable on the power of religion and corruption, and what happens to those within the power structure when the populace starts to question and rebel. Yet he also makes it not just about the quotidian, but also the fantasy inherent in the work. The sheer detail of his personenregie, the immense teamwork that was clear through the special effects (pyrotechnics and film) and the sheer imagination and ability to realize it, were absolutely staggering. Musically, it was an evening that had so many multiple rewards, the clarity of the text, the superlative orchestral playing, and Jurowski’s organic direction. If you can get to Munich and are lucky enough to be able to secure a ticket, run. This is a major evening in a production I predict will come to be seen as seminal in the performance history of this work.