Not much to my taste this last week before Thanksgiving. Those excited by Handel or new works may feel differently.
Metropolitan Opera:
Rodelinda (M/SE), Satyagraha (T/SM), Nabucco (Th), Boheme (F)
Rodelinda (with Fleming and Blythe) and La Boheme (with a lesser-known cast) make their first appearances this season, while Nabucco closes (Guleghina's already gone, but Lee and Lucic remain).
Carnegie Hall:
The Theater of Early Music Handel arias/duets (T)
Baltimore Symphony Jeanne d'Arc au bûcher (S)
The former ensemble is countertenor Daniel Taylor's, and he alternates and duets here with soprano Deborah York.
Gerald W. Lynch Theater at John Jay College (899 10th Ave.):
Dark Sisters (T)
Final performance of the premiere run.
Juilliard School (Peter Jay Sharp Theater):
Kommilitonen! (W/F/SuM)
US premiere of this piece by Peter Maxwell Davies and librettist David Pountney. I suppose the student theme of the piece is in accord with its commission by Juilliard and London's Royal Academy of Music.
Rubin Museum of Art (150 W. 17th St.):
Numinous City (W)
Concert performance of Pete Wyer's work in progress. Includes a panel discussion with the artists and the main character -- and, for a bit more, a guided tour of the Himalayan-focused museum by said main character (a former Tibetan nun) (!).
Monday, November 14, 2011
Saturday, November 12, 2011
Becoming who they are
Anna Bolena - Metropolitan Opera, 10/28/2011
Meade, Costello, Abdrazakov, Gubanova, Mumford / Armiliato
Il Barbiere di Siviglia - Metropolitan Opera, 10/29/2011
Pogossov, Leonard, Kudrya, Muraro, Ramey / Benini
It's a treat to hear what soprano Angela Meade has become. I'd somehow missed her several Met appearances since the famous 2007 Met Council Finals that opened the door to the 2008 emergency substitution that launched her career here. At the time she was a work in progress, the impact of the sound not quite matching the dramatic coloratura repertory she would have to sing. Four-and-a-half years later and her voice is a formidable whole, totally focused and clear from top to bottom and a pleasure to hear at all times. Most impressive, to my ears: the absence of the typical young singer's reluctance to really sound chest notes. On the other hand, the top is nice but not (as with other singers) climactically outstanding, and the trills this time were rather fakey, but that's nitpicking. Meade can really sing any of these parts, and I'm looking forward to her run of Ernani (with, for three of six nights, last season's very good emergency tenor debutant Roberto di Biasio replacing the tragically dead Salvatore Licitra) in February.
Stephen Costello also first stepped on the Met stage in 2007, in his case as Arturo in the Met's opening-night debut of the current Lucia. His expressive middle voice made quite an impression that evening, and it again serves him well here. His high notes, however, aren't made of the same stuff, and we'll see if the early bel canto tenor stuff that highlights them will continue to be for him.
Bass Ildar Abdrazakov not only sang well but looked perfectly like Henry VIII, bass-baritone Keith Miller impressed again as Anna's brother, and mezzo Ekaterina Gubanova (as Jane Seymour) made a nice foil to Meade in this bigger chance than her debut as Giulietta. Marco Armiliato conducted, as ever, with a firm and helpful hand.
With all these really good voices present, it's either to the glory of this house or the absurdity of its and the opera world's casting system (and, to be fair, lack of feature parts) that the greatest, grandest sound and singing of the show was in the small if significant pants part of Mark Smeaton. I've known that young mezzo Tamara Mumford would be fantastic from the very first time I heard her sing, but whether she'd be recognized and allowed to fully show her talents -- that's still to be seen.
What did the evening lack? Drama, more or less. Donizetti and Felice Romani provide some charged scenes (of which the performers made much) but the whole -- basically another court cautionary tale -- doesn't hold together particularly well. It isn't helped by David McVicar's production. Unlike his bold and vigorous Trovatore, McVicar's work here is bland and monochrome: a more tasteful version of what Nick Hytner gave us in last year's Don Carlo. The fact that drives the story -- Bolena, in a classic tragic trope (see Simon Boccanegra, for example), is herself a usurper, as the chorus reminds us at the very start, and her downfall comes from and with regretting that initial choice -- is dulled and obscured by the all-too-tasteful (if also nicely girth-obscuring) costuming and absent character-direction.
* * *
The next evening's Barber was a similar tale on a lesser scale. Isabel Leonard's mezzo was more defined and interesting than I'd yet heard, and though she can't singlehandedly carry a Barber in the same way as, say, DiDonato she's definitely a plausible major-house lead. Debuting Russian tenor Alexey Kudrya has some nice sounds in the middle but the top is actually sort of a trial, making Rossini not the best fit. Whether Cessa piu resistere (the final-act aria, used to better effect by the heroine as Cenerentola's finale) was cut because of this or some other reason I'm not sure. Rodion Pogossov is a decent "busy" traditional Figaro (though, obviously, no Mattei), and I enjoyed the professionalism of Maurizio Muraro's comic work as Bartolo. Samuel Ramey is still trooping on, though at this point he sounds depressingly like the old version of Paul Plishka (who himself was rather better in his youth).
Meade, Costello, Abdrazakov, Gubanova, Mumford / Armiliato
Il Barbiere di Siviglia - Metropolitan Opera, 10/29/2011
Pogossov, Leonard, Kudrya, Muraro, Ramey / Benini
It's a treat to hear what soprano Angela Meade has become. I'd somehow missed her several Met appearances since the famous 2007 Met Council Finals that opened the door to the 2008 emergency substitution that launched her career here. At the time she was a work in progress, the impact of the sound not quite matching the dramatic coloratura repertory she would have to sing. Four-and-a-half years later and her voice is a formidable whole, totally focused and clear from top to bottom and a pleasure to hear at all times. Most impressive, to my ears: the absence of the typical young singer's reluctance to really sound chest notes. On the other hand, the top is nice but not (as with other singers) climactically outstanding, and the trills this time were rather fakey, but that's nitpicking. Meade can really sing any of these parts, and I'm looking forward to her run of Ernani (with, for three of six nights, last season's very good emergency tenor debutant Roberto di Biasio replacing the tragically dead Salvatore Licitra) in February.
Stephen Costello also first stepped on the Met stage in 2007, in his case as Arturo in the Met's opening-night debut of the current Lucia. His expressive middle voice made quite an impression that evening, and it again serves him well here. His high notes, however, aren't made of the same stuff, and we'll see if the early bel canto tenor stuff that highlights them will continue to be for him.
Bass Ildar Abdrazakov not only sang well but looked perfectly like Henry VIII, bass-baritone Keith Miller impressed again as Anna's brother, and mezzo Ekaterina Gubanova (as Jane Seymour) made a nice foil to Meade in this bigger chance than her debut as Giulietta. Marco Armiliato conducted, as ever, with a firm and helpful hand.
With all these really good voices present, it's either to the glory of this house or the absurdity of its and the opera world's casting system (and, to be fair, lack of feature parts) that the greatest, grandest sound and singing of the show was in the small if significant pants part of Mark Smeaton. I've known that young mezzo Tamara Mumford would be fantastic from the very first time I heard her sing, but whether she'd be recognized and allowed to fully show her talents -- that's still to be seen.
What did the evening lack? Drama, more or less. Donizetti and Felice Romani provide some charged scenes (of which the performers made much) but the whole -- basically another court cautionary tale -- doesn't hold together particularly well. It isn't helped by David McVicar's production. Unlike his bold and vigorous Trovatore, McVicar's work here is bland and monochrome: a more tasteful version of what Nick Hytner gave us in last year's Don Carlo. The fact that drives the story -- Bolena, in a classic tragic trope (see Simon Boccanegra, for example), is herself a usurper, as the chorus reminds us at the very start, and her downfall comes from and with regretting that initial choice -- is dulled and obscured by the all-too-tasteful (if also nicely girth-obscuring) costuming and absent character-direction.
The next evening's Barber was a similar tale on a lesser scale. Isabel Leonard's mezzo was more defined and interesting than I'd yet heard, and though she can't singlehandedly carry a Barber in the same way as, say, DiDonato she's definitely a plausible major-house lead. Debuting Russian tenor Alexey Kudrya has some nice sounds in the middle but the top is actually sort of a trial, making Rossini not the best fit. Whether Cessa piu resistere (the final-act aria, used to better effect by the heroine as Cenerentola's finale) was cut because of this or some other reason I'm not sure. Rodion Pogossov is a decent "busy" traditional Figaro (though, obviously, no Mattei), and I enjoyed the professionalism of Maurizio Muraro's comic work as Bartolo. Samuel Ramey is still trooping on, though at this point he sounds depressingly like the old version of Paul Plishka (who himself was rather better in his youth).
The week in NY opera (Nov. 7-Nov. 13)
UPDATE (11/12): Not sure how I missed tonight's Angelika Kirchschlager recital with Thibaudet at Carnegie. Nor had I seen that I'm quoted in the recital series brochure...
A number of new opera offerings this week, as well as the usual Met stuff and a big OONY event.
Metropolitan Opera:
Don Giovanni (M/F), Satyagraha (T/SE), Nabucco (W/SM)
Siegfried has come and gone (post later today), as have Maria Guleghina and Yonghoon Lee in Nabucco. With Kwiecien's Giovanni disappointing (again, more later) and Gerald Finley's last version -- admittedly in a long-ago production -- almost unwatchable, that opera is less promising for the rest of its run as well.
Carnegie Hall:
Opera Orchestra of New York Adriana Lecouvreur (T)
NY Lyric Opera Theatre Mozart selections (SE)
Amigos De La Zarzuela Zarzuela concert (Sunday 2pm)
If you're (understandably) finding the Met week a bit short on star power, Tuesday night's OONY performance with Gheorghiu and Kaufmann may be the thing. The other events are considerably more modest, both in the small Weill space.
Cary Hall, The DiMenna Center for Classical Music (450 West 37th St.):
American Lyric Theater The Poe Project (Th)
I reviewed, several years ago, an early public event in ALT's "Composer/Librettist Development Program". This seems to be one of that program's subsequent fruits: a concert presentation (with full orchestra) of three short operas on a Poe theme, set to texts by three of the librettists from that initial debut -- Quincy Long, Royce Vavrek, and Deborah Brevoort.
Gerald W. Lynch Theater at John Jay College (899 10th Ave.):
Dark Sisters (F/SE)
Premiere of Nico Muhly and librettist Stephen Karam's new opera. According to the press blurb:
Bruno Walter Auditorium (Amsterdam Ave. entrance of Lincoln Center's library):
New York Opera Forum Il Trovatore (Sunday 1:30pm)
Young singers, concert version.
A number of new opera offerings this week, as well as the usual Met stuff and a big OONY event.
Metropolitan Opera:
Don Giovanni (M/F), Satyagraha (T/SE), Nabucco (W/SM)
Siegfried has come and gone (post later today), as have Maria Guleghina and Yonghoon Lee in Nabucco. With Kwiecien's Giovanni disappointing (again, more later) and Gerald Finley's last version -- admittedly in a long-ago production -- almost unwatchable, that opera is less promising for the rest of its run as well.
Carnegie Hall:
Opera Orchestra of New York Adriana Lecouvreur (T)
NY Lyric Opera Theatre Mozart selections (SE)
Amigos De La Zarzuela Zarzuela concert (Sunday 2pm)
If you're (understandably) finding the Met week a bit short on star power, Tuesday night's OONY performance with Gheorghiu and Kaufmann may be the thing. The other events are considerably more modest, both in the small Weill space.
Cary Hall, The DiMenna Center for Classical Music (450 West 37th St.):
American Lyric Theater The Poe Project (Th)
I reviewed, several years ago, an early public event in ALT's "Composer/Librettist Development Program". This seems to be one of that program's subsequent fruits: a concert presentation (with full orchestra) of three short operas on a Poe theme, set to texts by three of the librettists from that initial debut -- Quincy Long, Royce Vavrek, and Deborah Brevoort.
Gerald W. Lynch Theater at John Jay College (899 10th Ave.):
Dark Sisters (F/SE)
Premiere of Nico Muhly and librettist Stephen Karam's new opera. According to the press blurb:
In a world where personal identity is forbidden, Dark Sisters follows one woman's dangerous attempt to escape her life as a member of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (FLDS), a polygamous sect based in the Southwestern United States.This material doesn't seem the most promising basis for an opera, but who can really know in advance? Very good young cast.
Bruno Walter Auditorium (Amsterdam Ave. entrance of Lincoln Center's library):
New York Opera Forum Il Trovatore (Sunday 1:30pm)
Young singers, concert version.
Tuesday, November 08, 2011
The stranger
Don Giovanni - Metropolitan Opera, 10/31/2011
Kwiecien, Pisaroni, Rebeka, Frittoli, Erdmann, Vargas, Bloom, Kocan / Langree
Those hoping that the originally-scheduled lead of this new production to provide a more integrated portrayal of Giovanni than his predecessor were not, unfortunately, so rewarded. In fact Mariusz Kwiecien seemed to be in a different show altogether. Not for him the telling and interesting interactions with the human environment Grandage so nicely places around Don Giovanni, the world the unscrupulous nobleman was born to enjoy and exploit -- nor even the thrilling opposition to its norms with which Bryn Terfel made such success a decade ago (as one can see on DVD). Kwiecien's Giovanni is neither suave nor malevolent, energized neither positively nor negatively by his milieu, interested neither in the surrounding women, bantering with Leporello, nor food & drink (he, unlike Mattei, never actually eats during the dinner scene), and mostly notable for aloofness and bursts of blank anger. A dangerous man, perhaps in line with current "realistic" ideas, but the take is uninteresting, unrewarding, and quite at odds with the production. He sang well, but not well enough to make up for all of this. Perhaps lingering back pain was to blame? I suspect and fear not.
The decision to first cast Kwiecien -- and to put him up front in the moviecast -- makes even less sense when one sees him standing a head shorter than Pisaroni -- with whom, despite all rehearsal, there's not much chemistry. Very odd.
The rest of the cast was mostly unchanged. New conductor Louis Langree was good, catching the spirit of the piece much better than in his last run.
* * *
Reader Carol Prisant wrote, about my original review post:
Kwiecien, Pisaroni, Rebeka, Frittoli, Erdmann, Vargas, Bloom, Kocan / Langree
Those hoping that the originally-scheduled lead of this new production to provide a more integrated portrayal of Giovanni than his predecessor were not, unfortunately, so rewarded. In fact Mariusz Kwiecien seemed to be in a different show altogether. Not for him the telling and interesting interactions with the human environment Grandage so nicely places around Don Giovanni, the world the unscrupulous nobleman was born to enjoy and exploit -- nor even the thrilling opposition to its norms with which Bryn Terfel made such success a decade ago (as one can see on DVD). Kwiecien's Giovanni is neither suave nor malevolent, energized neither positively nor negatively by his milieu, interested neither in the surrounding women, bantering with Leporello, nor food & drink (he, unlike Mattei, never actually eats during the dinner scene), and mostly notable for aloofness and bursts of blank anger. A dangerous man, perhaps in line with current "realistic" ideas, but the take is uninteresting, unrewarding, and quite at odds with the production. He sang well, but not well enough to make up for all of this. Perhaps lingering back pain was to blame? I suspect and fear not.
The decision to first cast Kwiecien -- and to put him up front in the moviecast -- makes even less sense when one sees him standing a head shorter than Pisaroni -- with whom, despite all rehearsal, there's not much chemistry. Very odd.
The rest of the cast was mostly unchanged. New conductor Louis Langree was good, catching the spirit of the piece much better than in his last run.
Reader Carol Prisant wrote, about my original review post:
At Don Giovanni last night, I took particular notice - per your complaint - of the Commendatore's costume. There's more of a rationale for the "skeleton" effect you observed than you may have realized, because that's actually silver passementerie on his uniform, and it appears on his cuffs as well. I think the intention may have been to suggest a corpse, but the gentleman remains a commander, even in death.I do agree that Vargas has been great, and Mattei's absence this time really made the show his. As far as the Commendatore, though, I think this officer idea is the intention (and a sensible and clever enough one in theory), and when one looks for it one can see traces on the cuffs, but absent similarly silver epaulettes it's difficult to see anything but the bad Halloween costume in his whole figure. One hopes this will change sooner rather than later.
That aside, I agree with your general assessment of this production. (You might have mentioned Ramon Vargas, though. The best Ottavio I've heard in years!)
Far from the madding crowd
Siegfried - Metropolitan Opera, 11/1/2011
Morris, Voigt, Terfel, Siegel, Bardon, König, Owens, Erdmann / Inouye
Despite the substitutions, despite the almost comically literal visions for which Robert Lepage deployed his huge mechanical-technical apparatus, despite the heavyhanded video crew that ruined far too many seat views and nearly ground the show to a halt with a series of loud camera orders during the performance, and despite the production mishap midway through Act III that, among other things, caused Brünnhilde to have to walk across the stage, sans armor, to her resting spot -- well, despite all of that, this Siegfried was the success of the season, the first real touch of opera's divine spark.
The substitutes, first of all, did well. American tenor Jay Hunter Morris doesn't have the prettiest natural sound, but it's decent enough, hardly ugly, and sounded well over the orchestra. The performance itself was better than that: Morris sang through the entire daunting part of Siegfried without deterioration or faking, flagging neither for the declamatory forging song in Act I, nor the lyrical reflections and duet with the bird in Act II (though this was the hardest), nor the final duet with the vocally fresh Brünnhilde. His character's enacted boyishness is a bit one-note -- missing the subtle variations and responses of Christian Franz -- but it does fit. Conductor Derrick Inouye, meanwhile, shaped each line -- and the piece as a whole -- both beautifully and urgently. It didn't have the layers of texture and overall sound that Levine's Wagner has brought, but the orchestra played very well for him, and I'd be surprised if Luisi's performances were much better.
It's surprising how well this second iteration of Brünnhilde fits Deborah Voigt's new voice. The unhappy tones at the top still crop up, but the weight of the voice is still solid through the part's range, and she does pretty well with the shifts in mood. Bryn Terfel is somewhere between his Rheingold and Valkyrie selves: vocally strong, as in Valkyrie, but not quite engaged with what's going on, as in Rheingold. He's still finding his way through the Ring, so the next rounds may be better. The supporting men are again excellent -- Eric Owens still good in a smaller Alberich appearance, Gerhard Siegel an interestingly Beckmesserian Mime, and Hans-Peter König with a proper Fafner voice.
The decision to have König appear transformed back into giant form and give his dying words on stage and unamplified was about the only notable good decision in this new production. At this point one it's all what one expects, and though there aren't any big insights (obviously) or any visual marvels (unless a scheduled one failed to appear when the apparatus went wrong in the last act), it's all pretty enough and doesn't get in the way of the tale.
And what a tale! Seeing Siegfried solo, not sandwiched between its more famous relatives, this time brought the series' quirks better into focus. For Wagner's uneasy relationship with civilization -- so unbearable to see in Götterdämmerung -- is as evident here as in that sequel, if more benignly. Siegfried grows up -- wins greatness, fortune, and a bride -- without ever actually meeting anyone or even being seen by anyone not directly tied to his story. This makes some mythical sense (though the Boy Who Went Out To Learn Fear did so in a much more recognizable and populated world), but is not at all in accord with man's traditional story, in which civilization appears, if nowhere else, as the great testing ground and obstacle to love. Wagner knew this well --- he wrote that story himself as well, in Meistersinger (positive, as Sachs navigates Walther through the tight-knit city world) and Tristan (negative, as duty and Melot's searching eye twice halt the course of love at first sight), the two operas he wrote between the acts of Siegfried. But he simplified the course of things here nonetheless.
Why? The answer, I think, goes both forwards and backwards. Looking ahead, we see in the sequel that Siegfried, for all his one-on-one/face-to-face prowess, is fatally undone in his very first contact with civilization, quickly becoming a pawn of Gibichung intrigue. Wagner, having started from this conclusion (writing his libretti backwards, from the only actual source material, before writing the music forwards), needed to round out Siegfried's original path for a fully rounded story, and did so quite well. That seems sensible. But going backwards, one wonders -- why did Wagner begin from this conclusion? For the most strange thing about the Ring, which one immediately notices even without being able to put one's finger on it, is that although it often touches on and discusses clans and civilizations, and though it contains a lineup of characters recognizable therefrom (Fricka, as I've noted, isn't all that distant from papa Germont), the cycle itself doesn't, until the all-too-Meyerbeerian final installment, actually present any such thing on stage. Nearly all significant action is through intimate dialogues, Wagner's strength from the beginning... In fact, if we look at his output, we see that Wagner was really bad at public scenes: blustering too much, never quite conveying the shifting moods, the quick full joy and rage and sorrow of a crowd as Verdi and his Italian predecessors so naturally did, and never really showing anything except a contest. (The great and awful success of Meistersinger is in expanding that entry point -- the contest -- so much that it can encompass everything else that's human.)
The interesting thing, then, is that Wagner ended up -- for whatever reason -- attached to a scene and a topic contrary to the natural course of his talents. So perhaps that's how we should take his statement about "the characters owe[ing] their immense, striking significance to the wider context": that he could literally not stand writing this Germanic-civilizational nonsense without elaborating beforehand in a way more in accord with his inclinations. Only after taking the story back before the dawn of time, writing prehistory after prehistory without the burden of recognizably organized human relations, could Wagner get around to confronting the civilizational question, providing both his yes and no, and writing amazing music to the dramatic mess he'd created for himself in the more confused state shown by Götterdämmerung's (again, all-too-Meyerbeerian) libretto.
And so: Siegfried, who here stands happy, as great as he can be, without and before any entanglement in the vaster/smaller, more complicated world his creator afterwards felt obligated to address. In here, instead: birds, dragons, wicked stepparents, and the love of one who waited just for him.
Morris, Voigt, Terfel, Siegel, Bardon, König, Owens, Erdmann / Inouye
Despite the substitutions, despite the almost comically literal visions for which Robert Lepage deployed his huge mechanical-technical apparatus, despite the heavyhanded video crew that ruined far too many seat views and nearly ground the show to a halt with a series of loud camera orders during the performance, and despite the production mishap midway through Act III that, among other things, caused Brünnhilde to have to walk across the stage, sans armor, to her resting spot -- well, despite all of that, this Siegfried was the success of the season, the first real touch of opera's divine spark.
The substitutes, first of all, did well. American tenor Jay Hunter Morris doesn't have the prettiest natural sound, but it's decent enough, hardly ugly, and sounded well over the orchestra. The performance itself was better than that: Morris sang through the entire daunting part of Siegfried without deterioration or faking, flagging neither for the declamatory forging song in Act I, nor the lyrical reflections and duet with the bird in Act II (though this was the hardest), nor the final duet with the vocally fresh Brünnhilde. His character's enacted boyishness is a bit one-note -- missing the subtle variations and responses of Christian Franz -- but it does fit. Conductor Derrick Inouye, meanwhile, shaped each line -- and the piece as a whole -- both beautifully and urgently. It didn't have the layers of texture and overall sound that Levine's Wagner has brought, but the orchestra played very well for him, and I'd be surprised if Luisi's performances were much better.
It's surprising how well this second iteration of Brünnhilde fits Deborah Voigt's new voice. The unhappy tones at the top still crop up, but the weight of the voice is still solid through the part's range, and she does pretty well with the shifts in mood. Bryn Terfel is somewhere between his Rheingold and Valkyrie selves: vocally strong, as in Valkyrie, but not quite engaged with what's going on, as in Rheingold. He's still finding his way through the Ring, so the next rounds may be better. The supporting men are again excellent -- Eric Owens still good in a smaller Alberich appearance, Gerhard Siegel an interestingly Beckmesserian Mime, and Hans-Peter König with a proper Fafner voice.
The decision to have König appear transformed back into giant form and give his dying words on stage and unamplified was about the only notable good decision in this new production. At this point one it's all what one expects, and though there aren't any big insights (obviously) or any visual marvels (unless a scheduled one failed to appear when the apparatus went wrong in the last act), it's all pretty enough and doesn't get in the way of the tale.
And what a tale! Seeing Siegfried solo, not sandwiched between its more famous relatives, this time brought the series' quirks better into focus. For Wagner's uneasy relationship with civilization -- so unbearable to see in Götterdämmerung -- is as evident here as in that sequel, if more benignly. Siegfried grows up -- wins greatness, fortune, and a bride -- without ever actually meeting anyone or even being seen by anyone not directly tied to his story. This makes some mythical sense (though the Boy Who Went Out To Learn Fear did so in a much more recognizable and populated world), but is not at all in accord with man's traditional story, in which civilization appears, if nowhere else, as the great testing ground and obstacle to love. Wagner knew this well --- he wrote that story himself as well, in Meistersinger (positive, as Sachs navigates Walther through the tight-knit city world) and Tristan (negative, as duty and Melot's searching eye twice halt the course of love at first sight), the two operas he wrote between the acts of Siegfried. But he simplified the course of things here nonetheless.
Why? The answer, I think, goes both forwards and backwards. Looking ahead, we see in the sequel that Siegfried, for all his one-on-one/face-to-face prowess, is fatally undone in his very first contact with civilization, quickly becoming a pawn of Gibichung intrigue. Wagner, having started from this conclusion (writing his libretti backwards, from the only actual source material, before writing the music forwards), needed to round out Siegfried's original path for a fully rounded story, and did so quite well. That seems sensible. But going backwards, one wonders -- why did Wagner begin from this conclusion? For the most strange thing about the Ring, which one immediately notices even without being able to put one's finger on it, is that although it often touches on and discusses clans and civilizations, and though it contains a lineup of characters recognizable therefrom (Fricka, as I've noted, isn't all that distant from papa Germont), the cycle itself doesn't, until the all-too-Meyerbeerian final installment, actually present any such thing on stage. Nearly all significant action is through intimate dialogues, Wagner's strength from the beginning... In fact, if we look at his output, we see that Wagner was really bad at public scenes: blustering too much, never quite conveying the shifting moods, the quick full joy and rage and sorrow of a crowd as Verdi and his Italian predecessors so naturally did, and never really showing anything except a contest. (The great and awful success of Meistersinger is in expanding that entry point -- the contest -- so much that it can encompass everything else that's human.)
The interesting thing, then, is that Wagner ended up -- for whatever reason -- attached to a scene and a topic contrary to the natural course of his talents. So perhaps that's how we should take his statement about "the characters owe[ing] their immense, striking significance to the wider context": that he could literally not stand writing this Germanic-civilizational nonsense without elaborating beforehand in a way more in accord with his inclinations. Only after taking the story back before the dawn of time, writing prehistory after prehistory without the burden of recognizably organized human relations, could Wagner get around to confronting the civilizational question, providing both his yes and no, and writing amazing music to the dramatic mess he'd created for himself in the more confused state shown by Götterdämmerung's (again, all-too-Meyerbeerian) libretto.
And so: Siegfried, who here stands happy, as great as he can be, without and before any entanglement in the vaster/smaller, more complicated world his creator afterwards felt obligated to address. In here, instead: birds, dragons, wicked stepparents, and the love of one who waited just for him.
Friday, November 04, 2011
Notes on the first month of Nabucco
Maria Guleghina: indeed rejuvenated after a scary low two seasons back.
Yonghoon Lee: a young Corelli!?
Paolo Carignani: nicely idiomatic, as in his 2008 Traviata debut.
Everything else (including chorus and nominal lead Zeljko Lucic): rip-roaring success in this new Met warhorse.
Yonghoon Lee: a young Corelli!?
Paolo Carignani: nicely idiomatic, as in his 2008 Traviata debut.
Everything else (including chorus and nominal lead Zeljko Lucic): rip-roaring success in this new Met warhorse.
Monday, October 31, 2011
The week in NY opera (Oct. 31-Nov. 6)
Metropolitan Opera:
Don Giovanni (M/Th), Siegfried (T/SM), Nabucco (W/SE), Satyagraha (F)
Louis Langree conducts the final four fall Don Giovannis, with one hopes more vigor than his last run in the show. Derrick Inouye and official Levine fill-in Fabio Luisi split the last non-Ring Siegfrieds (the moviecast of which is this week's matinee). Wednesday's Nabucco is the last chance to see Maria Guleghina's Abigaille this season, while Saturday's is most notable for starting at 9pm (!!!). Satyagraha -- in a striking production -- begins a seven-show return to the Met on Friday.
I'll be at at least one of each except Satyagraha, so more thoughts on those afterwards.
Carnegie Hall:
Remarkable Theater Brigade: Opera Shorts (F)
The Opera Shorts program (in the small Weill hall) is, as you may guess, a pile of short new operas, in this case by William Bolcom, Tom Cipullo, Jake Heggie, Marie Incontrera, Mike McFerron, Christian McLeer, Anne Phillips, Patrick Soluri, and Davide Zannoni.
Avery Fischer Hall:
Richard Tucker Gala (Sunday 6:30pm)
Yes, it's the annual Tucker Gala, with all the stars in or available for the city at this time of year. Scheduled this time: Blythe, Giordani, Guleghina, Yonghoon Lee, Lučić, Pape, Poplavskaya, Terfel, Zajick, and this year's honoree Angela Meade, just off some impressive Puritani performances (more on these soon).
OT:
Andras Schiff plays, among other things, Beethoven's Diabelli Variations on Carnegie Hall's big stage Monday night.
Don Giovanni (M/Th), Siegfried (T/SM), Nabucco (W/SE), Satyagraha (F)
Louis Langree conducts the final four fall Don Giovannis, with one hopes more vigor than his last run in the show. Derrick Inouye and official Levine fill-in Fabio Luisi split the last non-Ring Siegfrieds (the moviecast of which is this week's matinee). Wednesday's Nabucco is the last chance to see Maria Guleghina's Abigaille this season, while Saturday's is most notable for starting at 9pm (!!!). Satyagraha -- in a striking production -- begins a seven-show return to the Met on Friday.
I'll be at at least one of each except Satyagraha, so more thoughts on those afterwards.
Carnegie Hall:
Remarkable Theater Brigade: Opera Shorts (F)
The Opera Shorts program (in the small Weill hall) is, as you may guess, a pile of short new operas, in this case by William Bolcom, Tom Cipullo, Jake Heggie, Marie Incontrera, Mike McFerron, Christian McLeer, Anne Phillips, Patrick Soluri, and Davide Zannoni.
Avery Fischer Hall:
Richard Tucker Gala (Sunday 6:30pm)
Yes, it's the annual Tucker Gala, with all the stars in or available for the city at this time of year. Scheduled this time: Blythe, Giordani, Guleghina, Yonghoon Lee, Lučić, Pape, Poplavskaya, Terfel, Zajick, and this year's honoree Angela Meade, just off some impressive Puritani performances (more on these soon).
OT:
Andras Schiff plays, among other things, Beethoven's Diabelli Variations on Carnegie Hall's big stage Monday night.
Monday, October 24, 2011
The week in NY opera (Oct. 24-30)
And tenor week begins! If only Roberto Alagna could have scheduled something here this week as well...
Metropolitan Opera:
Anna Bolena (M/F), Don Giovanni (T/SM), Barber (W/SE), Siegfried (Th)
Jonas Kaufmann recital (Sunday 4pm)
Lots of cast changes this week. Netrebko is done with Anna Bolena until February -- Angela Meade, one of the 2007 Met Council winners spotlighted in The Audition does these last fall performances after taking over to reported success on Friday. Unfortunately Mattei is also done in Don Giovanni, and we'll see what originally-scheduled Mariusz Kwiecien has to offer here. Mattei's also still out of playing Figaro (he didn't do last Wednesday's either, unfortunately), though Russian tenor Alexey Kudrya debuts midweek as Almaviva. Thursday, of course, is the big recent change: instead of debuting with one-time-sub Gary Lehman in the title part, the new Met Siegfried features Jay Hunter Morris, who debuted in one of those amazing 2007 Jenůfas.
Sunday offers the first solo recital at the house in quite a while: Jonas Kaufmann, not in opera but Romantic song.
Carnegie Hall:
Thomas Florio recital (Sunday 2pm)
Fouchécourt/LeRoi duo recital (Sunday 7:30pm)
Florio is a young baritone of whom I'd never heard; legendary French high tenor Jean-Paul Fouchécourt shares the stage with French soprano Gaële LeRoi that evening. The headline event of the week -- an Anna Netrebko recital scheduled for Wednesday in the big hall -- was cancelled last Friday for doctor-ordered rest.
Le Poisson Rouge (158 Bleecker Street):
Joseph Calleja CD release event (M)
I suppose if you're reading this post, you probably already know that Calleja is, in my estimation, the most special of a great current generation of tenors. Not just a perfunctory bash, his show at the downtown 2-drink-minimum venue will apparently feature performances by Calleja, Luca Pisaroni, soprano Katie Van Kooten, violinist Daniel Hope, and an actual chamber orchestra. For those outside the city, there's also a live NPR webcast, after the recent coverage of Calleja on that network.
Even if he doesn't bring the magic of, say, last season's Edgardo, it should be fun.
Metropolitan Opera:
Anna Bolena (M/F), Don Giovanni (T/SM), Barber (W/SE), Siegfried (Th)
Jonas Kaufmann recital (Sunday 4pm)
Lots of cast changes this week. Netrebko is done with Anna Bolena until February -- Angela Meade, one of the 2007 Met Council winners spotlighted in The Audition does these last fall performances after taking over to reported success on Friday. Unfortunately Mattei is also done in Don Giovanni, and we'll see what originally-scheduled Mariusz Kwiecien has to offer here. Mattei's also still out of playing Figaro (he didn't do last Wednesday's either, unfortunately), though Russian tenor Alexey Kudrya debuts midweek as Almaviva. Thursday, of course, is the big recent change: instead of debuting with one-time-sub Gary Lehman in the title part, the new Met Siegfried features Jay Hunter Morris, who debuted in one of those amazing 2007 Jenůfas.
Sunday offers the first solo recital at the house in quite a while: Jonas Kaufmann, not in opera but Romantic song.
Carnegie Hall:
Thomas Florio recital (Sunday 2pm)
Fouchécourt/LeRoi duo recital (Sunday 7:30pm)
Florio is a young baritone of whom I'd never heard; legendary French high tenor Jean-Paul Fouchécourt shares the stage with French soprano Gaële LeRoi that evening. The headline event of the week -- an Anna Netrebko recital scheduled for Wednesday in the big hall -- was cancelled last Friday for doctor-ordered rest.
Le Poisson Rouge (158 Bleecker Street):
Joseph Calleja CD release event (M)
I suppose if you're reading this post, you probably already know that Calleja is, in my estimation, the most special of a great current generation of tenors. Not just a perfunctory bash, his show at the downtown 2-drink-minimum venue will apparently feature performances by Calleja, Luca Pisaroni, soprano Katie Van Kooten, violinist Daniel Hope, and an actual chamber orchestra. For those outside the city, there's also a live NPR webcast, after the recent coverage of Calleja on that network.
Even if he doesn't bring the magic of, say, last season's Edgardo, it should be fun.
Friday, October 21, 2011
The women (featuring the men)
Don Giovanni - Metropolitan Opera, 10/13/2011
Mattei, Pisaroni, Rebeka, Frittoli, Erdmann, Vargas, Bloom, Kocan / Luisi
While not exactly one of the show's great nights at the Met, last Thursday's premiere of Michael Grandage's new Don Giovanni production was, for the house, something perhaps more important: the reappearance of a solid frame in which good and great performances of Mozart's perennial can continue to be offered.
Marthe Keller's excessively genteel Don Giovanni monopolized the Met stage since 2004, inspiring at times similar dramatic evisceration in the pit. Grandage's replacement production comes from the same general place -- the recognizably civilized world in which both Mozart and his creation grew up, rendered in moving set segments -- but all the significant details are recast. Keller's recurring trope was emptiness: the large expanses of featureless brick (unfortunately presaging the Gelb era as a whole), the meaningless stage-business elaborations (most notably the double- and triple-length exchanging of costumes for the serenade scene, all to no enlightening effect), and, of course, a finale in which the stone guest fails to appear except as a barely-visible lipsynching apparition in a mirror (which mirror also takes the place of hell, the devils, etc.). Perhaps we were meant to dream these spaces full of more interesting happenings than the actual show was willing to provide us... Grandage and his set/costume designer Christopher Oram actually render a filled-in scene, and it's a very particular human one.
His moving parts are in two pairs: two flat half-walls that come together out front, and two concave-curved half-walls that come together (and apart) behind. Each of these half-walls is a three-by-three grid of square panels (with a single one-by-three center column of panels sometimes appearing between the halves in the rear), and each of the panels is colored in a different pastel shade. It's a little like watching a backdrop wall of children's blocks. (The visibility of the coloring, though, comes and goes with the lighting.)
But this is not another flat, more clever-than-engaging set like those in last season's Don Carlo. The distressed and weathered-looking border between the squares adds visual inflection, as well as an echo of Jonathan Miller's now-familiar Figaro production. But most of the character is within the panels themselves, which are in the form of Spanish balconies, from which the players appear, climb, observe, and are observed. These familiar Spanish details help us place the people who appear thereon: some familiar -- Giovanni's initial business on and descent from Anna's balcony is a bit physically tricky, and couldn't have been good for Kwiecien's unfortunate back -- and others not. Grandage's biggest liberty is his staging of the catalog aria, during which the scene opens for the first time to wholly reveal the rear panels... which themselves open to reveal the recalled conquests Leporello is counting.
They don't look quite displeased -- which is one running theme of the production -- but it is these women's dressed and accessorized collective presence that makes the strongest effect. For Don Giovanni, at least, the world isn't empty but rather prominently full of the female form, and Grandage creates that around him. First in the catalog, later in the crowd and party scenes, and even at the supper for the Commendatore -- at which six of the eight footmen are in fact women -- the womanizer has his necessary context.
When the statue does, arrive, though, it's in the one real mistake of the production -- a skeleton-shirt that looks just like a cheap Halloween costume/t-shirt. This could use a change. The maximalist fire show at Giovanni's descent to hell, however, is a welcome relief after Keller's mirror business.
* * *
The cast, meanwhile, was more notable on the men's side. Don Giovanni is the part Peter Mattei and his height, charm, and seductive baritone were born to play, and he does it memorably here -- though short rehearsal has resulted in an incarnation that seems not quite native to this particular production. This should change, if he continues in the part. Mattei still has fine boyish chemistry with his Leporello, Luca Pisaroni, who's an enjoyably no-nonsense servant, neither too broad nor too grand. Ramon Vargas is yet another fine Ottavio (the Met's done well here of late), with remarkable breath and phrasing in Il mio tesoro that brought down the house, while Stefan Kocan again was a plus as the Commendatore.
The ladies were a more mixed success. Best was debutant Mojca Erdmann, who though not vocally imposing in Zerlina's middle-of-the-road part (she threw some flourishes into the end of "Vedrai carino", apparently to alert listeners that she's really a high soprano) played the most nuanced version of the character I've seen. Per Erdmann and Grandage, Zerlina isn't the dime-a-dozen town flirt or trollop too often presented by the lazy, but a live mixture of sense (she instinctively moves to settle Masetto even as she herself is unsettled), naivete, groundedness and sensibility whose one weak point -- old fantasies of the nobleman who'll take her away from it all -- Giovanni knows unerringly how to hit. When we see her charge and thrill to this suddenly-unfolding possibility it's not lasciviousness but the limit of her common sense that's exposed -- and actually makes her more charming.
The other debutant, Marina Rebeka, sang strongly and intelligently as Donna Anna, but -- as, to a lesser extent, with Tamar Iveri years ago -- I found her basic vocal production really unappealing. It's not a easy sound, with almost a female countertenor character that failed to grow on me even after she tamed some early hootiness. The rest of the audience, for what it's worth, seemed to approve.
Finally, Barbara Frittoli was about as successful as in last year's Carmens: that is, she performed well despite being not quite sound in the actual singing. Elvira is a difficult part, and audiences have made vocal allowances for years, but after the unqualified back-to-back successes of Susan Graham and Dorothea Röschmann, it's hard to go back to those old ways.
Perhaps Levine would have gotten more out of Frittoli: she sang with him regularly, including in the Cosi six years ago that was something like the high point of the entire Levine era. In that run she still had sonic flaws, but the Met Orchestra played at a level of sound and phrase it's rarely touched since, natural and gorgeous breaths coming one after the other to touch the simultaneous highs and lows of Da Ponte's story.
That didn't happen last week, and may never happen again. Fabio Luisi, in the first of what's sure to be a string of unfair but not unwarranted comparisons, conducted with his usual precision, a nice bit of energy, and some really well-managed phrasing in the slow intros to the second act's arias. He's significantly better in this than Louis Langree or Lothar Koenigs, but still... New York audiences have been spoiled, and Luisi doesn't bring either the daemonic or sublime elements (or both!) to the fever pitch that Levine's Mozart has unforgettably shown.
Still, it's a good start to a production that should see more casts and conductors before it's done. Let's hope Mattei remains.
Mattei, Pisaroni, Rebeka, Frittoli, Erdmann, Vargas, Bloom, Kocan / Luisi
While not exactly one of the show's great nights at the Met, last Thursday's premiere of Michael Grandage's new Don Giovanni production was, for the house, something perhaps more important: the reappearance of a solid frame in which good and great performances of Mozart's perennial can continue to be offered.
Marthe Keller's excessively genteel Don Giovanni monopolized the Met stage since 2004, inspiring at times similar dramatic evisceration in the pit. Grandage's replacement production comes from the same general place -- the recognizably civilized world in which both Mozart and his creation grew up, rendered in moving set segments -- but all the significant details are recast. Keller's recurring trope was emptiness: the large expanses of featureless brick (unfortunately presaging the Gelb era as a whole), the meaningless stage-business elaborations (most notably the double- and triple-length exchanging of costumes for the serenade scene, all to no enlightening effect), and, of course, a finale in which the stone guest fails to appear except as a barely-visible lipsynching apparition in a mirror (which mirror also takes the place of hell, the devils, etc.). Perhaps we were meant to dream these spaces full of more interesting happenings than the actual show was willing to provide us... Grandage and his set/costume designer Christopher Oram actually render a filled-in scene, and it's a very particular human one.
His moving parts are in two pairs: two flat half-walls that come together out front, and two concave-curved half-walls that come together (and apart) behind. Each of these half-walls is a three-by-three grid of square panels (with a single one-by-three center column of panels sometimes appearing between the halves in the rear), and each of the panels is colored in a different pastel shade. It's a little like watching a backdrop wall of children's blocks. (The visibility of the coloring, though, comes and goes with the lighting.)
But this is not another flat, more clever-than-engaging set like those in last season's Don Carlo. The distressed and weathered-looking border between the squares adds visual inflection, as well as an echo of Jonathan Miller's now-familiar Figaro production. But most of the character is within the panels themselves, which are in the form of Spanish balconies, from which the players appear, climb, observe, and are observed. These familiar Spanish details help us place the people who appear thereon: some familiar -- Giovanni's initial business on and descent from Anna's balcony is a bit physically tricky, and couldn't have been good for Kwiecien's unfortunate back -- and others not. Grandage's biggest liberty is his staging of the catalog aria, during which the scene opens for the first time to wholly reveal the rear panels... which themselves open to reveal the recalled conquests Leporello is counting.
They don't look quite displeased -- which is one running theme of the production -- but it is these women's dressed and accessorized collective presence that makes the strongest effect. For Don Giovanni, at least, the world isn't empty but rather prominently full of the female form, and Grandage creates that around him. First in the catalog, later in the crowd and party scenes, and even at the supper for the Commendatore -- at which six of the eight footmen are in fact women -- the womanizer has his necessary context.
When the statue does, arrive, though, it's in the one real mistake of the production -- a skeleton-shirt that looks just like a cheap Halloween costume/t-shirt. This could use a change. The maximalist fire show at Giovanni's descent to hell, however, is a welcome relief after Keller's mirror business.
The cast, meanwhile, was more notable on the men's side. Don Giovanni is the part Peter Mattei and his height, charm, and seductive baritone were born to play, and he does it memorably here -- though short rehearsal has resulted in an incarnation that seems not quite native to this particular production. This should change, if he continues in the part. Mattei still has fine boyish chemistry with his Leporello, Luca Pisaroni, who's an enjoyably no-nonsense servant, neither too broad nor too grand. Ramon Vargas is yet another fine Ottavio (the Met's done well here of late), with remarkable breath and phrasing in Il mio tesoro that brought down the house, while Stefan Kocan again was a plus as the Commendatore.
The ladies were a more mixed success. Best was debutant Mojca Erdmann, who though not vocally imposing in Zerlina's middle-of-the-road part (she threw some flourishes into the end of "Vedrai carino", apparently to alert listeners that she's really a high soprano) played the most nuanced version of the character I've seen. Per Erdmann and Grandage, Zerlina isn't the dime-a-dozen town flirt or trollop too often presented by the lazy, but a live mixture of sense (she instinctively moves to settle Masetto even as she herself is unsettled), naivete, groundedness and sensibility whose one weak point -- old fantasies of the nobleman who'll take her away from it all -- Giovanni knows unerringly how to hit. When we see her charge and thrill to this suddenly-unfolding possibility it's not lasciviousness but the limit of her common sense that's exposed -- and actually makes her more charming.
The other debutant, Marina Rebeka, sang strongly and intelligently as Donna Anna, but -- as, to a lesser extent, with Tamar Iveri years ago -- I found her basic vocal production really unappealing. It's not a easy sound, with almost a female countertenor character that failed to grow on me even after she tamed some early hootiness. The rest of the audience, for what it's worth, seemed to approve.
Finally, Barbara Frittoli was about as successful as in last year's Carmens: that is, she performed well despite being not quite sound in the actual singing. Elvira is a difficult part, and audiences have made vocal allowances for years, but after the unqualified back-to-back successes of Susan Graham and Dorothea Röschmann, it's hard to go back to those old ways.
Perhaps Levine would have gotten more out of Frittoli: she sang with him regularly, including in the Cosi six years ago that was something like the high point of the entire Levine era. In that run she still had sonic flaws, but the Met Orchestra played at a level of sound and phrase it's rarely touched since, natural and gorgeous breaths coming one after the other to touch the simultaneous highs and lows of Da Ponte's story.
That didn't happen last week, and may never happen again. Fabio Luisi, in the first of what's sure to be a string of unfair but not unwarranted comparisons, conducted with his usual precision, a nice bit of energy, and some really well-managed phrasing in the slow intros to the second act's arias. He's significantly better in this than Louis Langree or Lothar Koenigs, but still... New York audiences have been spoiled, and Luisi doesn't bring either the daemonic or sublime elements (or both!) to the fever pitch that Levine's Mozart has unforgettably shown.
Still, it's a good start to a production that should see more casts and conductors before it's done. Let's hope Mattei remains.
Monday, October 17, 2011
The week in NY opera (Oct. 17-23)
Metropolitan Opera:
Don Giovanni (M/SE), Anna Bolena (T/F), Barber (W/SM), Nabucco (Th)
The new Don Giovanni is good (many more words on this in the afternoon). Mattei continues to fill in for at least the two performances this week -- while also headlining Wednesday's Barber of Seville. Figaro qua, Figaro là! Saturday's Barber is Rodion Pogossov.
Carnegie Hall:
The English Concert (Th)
Layla Claire recital (F)
Harry Bicket conducts the former group with countertenor Andreas Scholl in a mostly-Purcell program at Zankel the day before Lindemann soprano Claire makes her official NYC recital debut at Weill.
Various locations:
NY Opera Forum L'Italiana in Algeri (Th/SM/SuM)
Young singers, concert version.
OT:
Colin Davis and the London Symphony play two big choral pieces on the weekend at Avery Fischer: Beethoven's Missa Solemnis Friday and Britten's War Requiem on Sunday afternoon.
UPDATE (noon): sorry, transit nightmares are tying up the day. No DG review until tomorrow.
Don Giovanni (M/SE), Anna Bolena (T/F), Barber (W/SM), Nabucco (Th)
The new Don Giovanni is good (many more words on this in the afternoon). Mattei continues to fill in for at least the two performances this week -- while also headlining Wednesday's Barber of Seville. Figaro qua, Figaro là! Saturday's Barber is Rodion Pogossov.
Carnegie Hall:
The English Concert (Th)
Layla Claire recital (F)
Harry Bicket conducts the former group with countertenor Andreas Scholl in a mostly-Purcell program at Zankel the day before Lindemann soprano Claire makes her official NYC recital debut at Weill.
Various locations:
NY Opera Forum L'Italiana in Algeri (Th/SM/SuM)
Young singers, concert version.
OT:
Colin Davis and the London Symphony play two big choral pieces on the weekend at Avery Fischer: Beethoven's Missa Solemnis Friday and Britten's War Requiem on Sunday afternoon.
UPDATE (noon): sorry, transit nightmares are tying up the day. No DG review until tomorrow.
Tuesday, October 11, 2011
Where he belongs
The most absurd thing about Thursday's Don Giovanni was that it would have been the Met's second new production in a row premiered by somebody other than the greatest Don Giovanni of the age. (The Zeffirelli version before that was before his time.) So while it's awful that a back injury has sidelined not only the conductor but the previously-scheduled lead Mariusz Kwiecien (a fine singer-actor in his own right), having Peter Mattei on the stage in his best part Thursday -- and not in one of his pleasant but second-rate parts tonight and Friday -- is only fitting.
See you all there.
See you all there.
Monday, October 10, 2011
The week in NY opera (Oct. 10-16)
Metropolitan Opera:
Anna Bolena (M/SM), Barber (T/F), Nabucco (W/SE), Don Giovanni (Th)
The Met season's third week brings its second premiere (Michael Grandage's new production, now conducted by Luisi instead of Levine, with debuts by Marina Rebeka and Mojca Erdmann) and its first Saturday matinee moviecast (the season-opening Anna Bolena).
Le Poisson Rouge (158 Bleecker Street):
Gotham Chamber Opera and Nico Muhly Conspire (Th)
The unwieldy name is at least descriptive -- a local chamber opera group and young composer Nico Muhly get together to play Muhly, Mozart, Purcell, Sibelius, and Glass. Among the participants: once and perhaps future blogger ACB.
DiCapo Opera Theatre:
Tosca (F/Su)
Last of four performances.
Anna Bolena (M/SM), Barber (T/F), Nabucco (W/SE), Don Giovanni (Th)
The Met season's third week brings its second premiere (Michael Grandage's new production, now conducted by Luisi instead of Levine, with debuts by Marina Rebeka and Mojca Erdmann) and its first Saturday matinee moviecast (the season-opening Anna Bolena).
Le Poisson Rouge (158 Bleecker Street):
Gotham Chamber Opera and Nico Muhly Conspire (Th)
The unwieldy name is at least descriptive -- a local chamber opera group and young composer Nico Muhly get together to play Muhly, Mozart, Purcell, Sibelius, and Glass. Among the participants: once and perhaps future blogger ACB.
DiCapo Opera Theatre:
Tosca (F/Su)
Last of four performances.
Sunday, October 09, 2011
Esprit de corps
Atys - Les Arts Florissants, 9/20/2011
Lyon, Reinhold, de Negri / Christie
William Christie and his company, seen at Lincoln Center in a Rameau double-bill in March, brought their forces -- including two of the leads from March -- to Brooklyn to kick off the BAM fall season last month. The piece? Not amusements by Rameau but a single four-hour work from the decade before Rameau's birth: Lully's rather more grand and weighty Atys.
Atys is, in a sense, a rebuttal to my complaint about the French baroque last time: by no means merely elegant, the opera tells of a dutiful and upright man driven by love to a fatal conflict with king and god. Its story -- at least in this most general sense -- isn't so far from Norma's or Don Carlo(s)'s or any number of other classic operatic tragedies'. But the telling is essentially different, for the court origin of the show permeates form as well as content.
It's the form that's most striking. Atys may be a tragic character, but his tale is only incidentally experienced as one: his figure and fate do not loom large before us as events progress to their awful end. Instead, charged personal scenes ever dissolve into the true musical and rhythmic life of the piece -- its orchestral and choral ensembles and dances, and the glorious central dream ensemble. Its strongest moments are presented as they're meant to be experienced: collectively, as part of the grand court orbiting Louis XIV. The pleasures (refined, covert, stately, raucous, fleeting), sorrows (melancholy, sublimated), terrors (covert -- of course), and not least pride of the courtier existence are given wondrous voice, but the show ever returns faithfully to the limits this perspective sets. The characters themselves do not -- their course runs the full tragic course -- but they don't set the opera's tone; their suffering is, until the end, furtive and their expressions transient. Only the goddess gets to air her unhappiness without such interruption, at the memorable Act III curtain.
As before, the contrast with Tchaikovsky is instructive. Petipa's French-Russian story-ballets -- most famously set to Tchaikovsky's music -- are basically the last survivor of court art in the West. The court roots are evident even in the cut and watered-down renditions we often see here: in the grand, colorful, and sometimes suffocating pageantry of the civilized acts; in the use of the observing king/queen/dignitary to frame character dance sequences therein; and even in the elaborate hierarchies within the companies that perform these shows. But it's the Romantic parts that make these shows, the white dream acts in which hierarchical civilization itself dissolves and the leads stand before us -- and each other -- in all their personal subjectivity. These spaces are what's missing from Atys, and so for a modern viewer watching Lully's opera is disconcertingly like watching Swan Lake (well, OK, La Bayadere) minus the lake. The leads are ever enmeshed in their context, never freely a deux.
(As an aside, the romantic in romantic ballet also strongly colors that form's pre-romantic court spaces as well: the enactment/doubling of the court theater relationship on stage wouldn't be necessary if that arrangement itself weren't in doubt after the romantic rediscovery of self; and in fact one might see the basic ballet metaplot as the European romantic's discontent with the great alliance he made with the mannered world for a century -- or more, we see its anachronistic affinity to this day -- after this initial explosive discovery... but that's going far from the subject.)
Of course Lully's protagonists get neither full-throated arias nor elaborately virtuosic solo dances to aid their individuation, but the era's general limitation on form isn't coincidence -- it accords perfectly well with the aims of this piece. So too do the details of the story -- its content. Lully's opera tells, in its most basic outline, of the classic court danger: a well-placed courtier falls (fatally) from his rank when his desire conflicts with his lord's. But the details are arranged by librettist Philippe Quinault to make the moral not so stark, the fear not so salient. The ruler's powers are here divided between two characters -- the wronged king Celenus, betrothed to Atys' beloved, and the goddess Cybele, jealously but unrequitedly in love with Atys -- and the more visibly representative earthly lord is assigned only the social and personal part. The ultimate power of the ruler, over the life and death of his subjects, whether for good reason or not, is here -- more palatably for all concerned -- only in the hands of the imaginary goddess (that is to say not, as in real life, in the hands of the same king). That this allocation allows the dream interlude and story to air another classic court danger -- the vengeance of a spurned lover -- is doubly fortunate. Furthermore, there's the turn later of Atys ultimately falling victim to yet another court pitfall, the abuse of ministerial power... These rearrangements and misdirections do more than the prologue's effusive direct praise to make the show Sun King friendly.
* * *
It's not, of course, only to imperial Russian taste to look back fondly at the particular joys and sorrows of the French court eras. Not only modern France -- where Christie's company is based and well appreciated -- but modern New York (as one can hear from Christie's reception every year) has a cadre of connoisseurs whose aesthetic inclinations run in this direction, not least Ronald P. Stanton who seems to have funded this revival of Jean-Marie Villégier's 1987 wonderfully and appropriately elaborated production himself. The difference, of course, is that New York has no permanent companies to elaborate these ideals. It's no surprise, I think, that a city built on commerce and finance has more of a taste for upheaval and violent individual expressions than for works deliberately excluding (or limiting) those elements, but this Atys -- like many shows built for a particular minority taste -- is a great one-off.
Christie's counterbalance -- and that of "early music" productions more generally -- to the old and somewhat alien social landscape of the court is ever to recreate it on fresh new talent. Atys presents, of course, many familiar Les Arts Florissants veterans, but its prime female lead -- the goddess Cybele herself -- is given to a mezzo with the company's young artists' program, Anna Reinhold. She acquits herself excellently, and though the particularly vocal demands of the piece aren't great, her Cybele comes closest to having the sort of individual tragic presence with which one traditionally associates opera.
Lyon, Reinhold, de Negri / Christie
William Christie and his company, seen at Lincoln Center in a Rameau double-bill in March, brought their forces -- including two of the leads from March -- to Brooklyn to kick off the BAM fall season last month. The piece? Not amusements by Rameau but a single four-hour work from the decade before Rameau's birth: Lully's rather more grand and weighty Atys.
Atys is, in a sense, a rebuttal to my complaint about the French baroque last time: by no means merely elegant, the opera tells of a dutiful and upright man driven by love to a fatal conflict with king and god. Its story -- at least in this most general sense -- isn't so far from Norma's or Don Carlo(s)'s or any number of other classic operatic tragedies'. But the telling is essentially different, for the court origin of the show permeates form as well as content.
It's the form that's most striking. Atys may be a tragic character, but his tale is only incidentally experienced as one: his figure and fate do not loom large before us as events progress to their awful end. Instead, charged personal scenes ever dissolve into the true musical and rhythmic life of the piece -- its orchestral and choral ensembles and dances, and the glorious central dream ensemble. Its strongest moments are presented as they're meant to be experienced: collectively, as part of the grand court orbiting Louis XIV. The pleasures (refined, covert, stately, raucous, fleeting), sorrows (melancholy, sublimated), terrors (covert -- of course), and not least pride of the courtier existence are given wondrous voice, but the show ever returns faithfully to the limits this perspective sets. The characters themselves do not -- their course runs the full tragic course -- but they don't set the opera's tone; their suffering is, until the end, furtive and their expressions transient. Only the goddess gets to air her unhappiness without such interruption, at the memorable Act III curtain.
As before, the contrast with Tchaikovsky is instructive. Petipa's French-Russian story-ballets -- most famously set to Tchaikovsky's music -- are basically the last survivor of court art in the West. The court roots are evident even in the cut and watered-down renditions we often see here: in the grand, colorful, and sometimes suffocating pageantry of the civilized acts; in the use of the observing king/queen/dignitary to frame character dance sequences therein; and even in the elaborate hierarchies within the companies that perform these shows. But it's the Romantic parts that make these shows, the white dream acts in which hierarchical civilization itself dissolves and the leads stand before us -- and each other -- in all their personal subjectivity. These spaces are what's missing from Atys, and so for a modern viewer watching Lully's opera is disconcertingly like watching Swan Lake (well, OK, La Bayadere) minus the lake. The leads are ever enmeshed in their context, never freely a deux.
(As an aside, the romantic in romantic ballet also strongly colors that form's pre-romantic court spaces as well: the enactment/doubling of the court theater relationship on stage wouldn't be necessary if that arrangement itself weren't in doubt after the romantic rediscovery of self; and in fact one might see the basic ballet metaplot as the European romantic's discontent with the great alliance he made with the mannered world for a century -- or more, we see its anachronistic affinity to this day -- after this initial explosive discovery... but that's going far from the subject.)
Of course Lully's protagonists get neither full-throated arias nor elaborately virtuosic solo dances to aid their individuation, but the era's general limitation on form isn't coincidence -- it accords perfectly well with the aims of this piece. So too do the details of the story -- its content. Lully's opera tells, in its most basic outline, of the classic court danger: a well-placed courtier falls (fatally) from his rank when his desire conflicts with his lord's. But the details are arranged by librettist Philippe Quinault to make the moral not so stark, the fear not so salient. The ruler's powers are here divided between two characters -- the wronged king Celenus, betrothed to Atys' beloved, and the goddess Cybele, jealously but unrequitedly in love with Atys -- and the more visibly representative earthly lord is assigned only the social and personal part. The ultimate power of the ruler, over the life and death of his subjects, whether for good reason or not, is here -- more palatably for all concerned -- only in the hands of the imaginary goddess (that is to say not, as in real life, in the hands of the same king). That this allocation allows the dream interlude and story to air another classic court danger -- the vengeance of a spurned lover -- is doubly fortunate. Furthermore, there's the turn later of Atys ultimately falling victim to yet another court pitfall, the abuse of ministerial power... These rearrangements and misdirections do more than the prologue's effusive direct praise to make the show Sun King friendly.
It's not, of course, only to imperial Russian taste to look back fondly at the particular joys and sorrows of the French court eras. Not only modern France -- where Christie's company is based and well appreciated -- but modern New York (as one can hear from Christie's reception every year) has a cadre of connoisseurs whose aesthetic inclinations run in this direction, not least Ronald P. Stanton who seems to have funded this revival of Jean-Marie Villégier's 1987 wonderfully and appropriately elaborated production himself. The difference, of course, is that New York has no permanent companies to elaborate these ideals. It's no surprise, I think, that a city built on commerce and finance has more of a taste for upheaval and violent individual expressions than for works deliberately excluding (or limiting) those elements, but this Atys -- like many shows built for a particular minority taste -- is a great one-off.
Christie's counterbalance -- and that of "early music" productions more generally -- to the old and somewhat alien social landscape of the court is ever to recreate it on fresh new talent. Atys presents, of course, many familiar Les Arts Florissants veterans, but its prime female lead -- the goddess Cybele herself -- is given to a mezzo with the company's young artists' program, Anna Reinhold. She acquits herself excellently, and though the particularly vocal demands of the piece aren't great, her Cybele comes closest to having the sort of individual tragic presence with which one traditionally associates opera.
Monday, October 03, 2011
The week in NY opera (Oct. 3-9)
Still no great variety of events. Carnegie Hall opens its season with another Gergiev show, but no opera.
Metropolitan Opera:
Anna Bolena (M/Th), Barber (Tu/SM), Nabucco (W/SE)
Reshuffling of last week's shows.
Dicapo Opera Theatre:
Tosca (Th/S)
It's the curtain-raiser of this small company's thirtieth season.
Metropolitan Opera:
Anna Bolena (M/Th), Barber (Tu/SM), Nabucco (W/SE)
Reshuffling of last week's shows.
Dicapo Opera Theatre:
Tosca (Th/S)
It's the curtain-raiser of this small company's thirtieth season.
Saturday, October 01, 2011
Season eight
This back-dated post indexes the blog's commentary on the 2011-2012 Metropolitan Opera season. It will be updated as new reviews are posted.
Season preview
Don Giovanni, and another cast
Anna Bolena
Il Barbiere di Siviglia
Siegfried
Nabucco
Rodelinda
Faust, and another cast
Manon
The Makropulos Case
Season preview
Don Giovanni, and another cast
Anna Bolena
Il Barbiere di Siviglia
Siegfried
Nabucco
Rodelinda
Faust, and another cast
Manon
The Makropulos Case
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