Sunday, June 29, 2008
Miscellaneous updates
Off-topic diva Veronika Part danced her last leads at ABT this season (she is scheduled for a large supporting part -- Myrtha -- in two later performances of Giselle) in two terrific and well-received performances of La Bayadere. As a commenter here noted, however, word on the internet (also dutifully repeated in the papers) is that she may be staying after all. In what capacity? We'll see.
* Last week seems to have woken a number of bloggers (see sidebar links) from slumber, not least Sieglinde at Balcony Box who returns hosting Brad Wilber's invaluable Met Futures compilation. (And bearing belated praise for Johan Botha's remarkable Otello.) ACB, on the other hand, appears explaining a new increase in happy silence.
* Subscribers are now running into the new pre-season exchange policy at the Met, which involves a $5 charge per ticket for everyone. The donor base is not, I think, happy.
Wednesday, June 25, 2008
The realist's burden
Although (his terrific Pelleas the next season notwithstanding) essentially persona non grata at the Met since his impolitic press row with Cecilia Bartoli a decade ago, director Jonathan Miller has continued to have a presence in New York, directing shows at BAM and other venues around the city. The latest is a BAM staging of Stendhal's second-favorite opera, Cimarosa's "Il Matrimonio Segreto". It opened the last Wednesday of May, with some attendant promotion.
One such tidbit was a public interview and Q&A before the next day's show. Miller's talk there was consonant with both past and present press, and perhaps deserves consideration.
Miller, like director-turned-administrator Peter Mussbach (recently deposed from Berlin's State Opera), began as a doctor focused on the brain -- though Miller seems to have looked more to hardware, Mussbach to software. By his own account, directing was a fortuitous continuation of what he'd begun with medical studies and neurological research: the study of human behavior. He describes (his?) art as giving attention to the neglected details of ordinary life. It is an appealing -- if somewhat early-20th-century-flavored -- prospect he offers, art in accord with science. But what sort of art?
It's a jealous one, for sure. His dispute with Bartoli seems to have been fairly characteristic: Miller has no time for the ways of such stars, whom he continues to dismiss as "Jurassic Park singers". It's true that big names may (not least because they can) be difficult colleagues, perhaps undirectable even if cooperative. But Miller does opera a disservice by dismissing and even denigrating the very real dimension that star power adds to performance.
Similarly, though Miller pointedly attacks continental notions of "Regietheater", he has his own strong and fairly exclusive ideas of what works are "really about". The Magic Flute, for example, he pronounces with a debunker's zest to be about the Enlightenment -- and not just in general terms but as a specific attack on Empress Maria Theresa -- and thus not at all about the charming and showy elements that distinguish the current Met version. Der Rosenkavalier he judges to be falsely set during this same Empress' reign, and really about the impending doom of the Great War (so he moved it "back" to the time of its creation). And he explains, in part, his relatively short track record in directing the romantic classics to his distaste for so many of them having been set in far-back historical locales about which the composers knew nothing.
Glamour, play, suggestive half-mythical vistas: Miller's rejections of these and insistence on the primacy of the ordinary leave him with a rather austere form of realism. It's a thing quite in accord with his scientific past and upbringing (his father was also a physician), the analytic philosophy he professes to admire, and the postwar England in which he grew up -- and it's inoculated him against the more anti-human trends in directorial fashion. But this sort of jealous realism also leaves much out. The exotic pageantry of Magic Flute and the anachronistic Vienna of Der Rosenkavalier are not unfortunate detrius, no more than is the very fictionality of opera -- of art itself. It is, if anything, the other way around: if fine-grained realism has become more and more important as a means of onstage effect, it has always -- as a latecomer -- had to share billing with less enlightened vocabularies, near-atavistic elements which remind us of the first protagonist/subjects' divinity and the thread thereof persisting in their descendants. (As for realism as an end, its run in opera was very short indeed.)
* * *
Whether from theory or particular happenstance, the actual production -- a followup to Miller's 1992 staging of the same piece at Glimmerglass -- as performed at BAM wasn't wholly successful. Singing and playing were best: though tenor Chad A. Johnson had difficulty with softer singing, the rest of the mostly-young cast showed appealing and well-trained voices in their parts, while Paul Goodwin led players from the Brooklyn Philharmonic in a mostly (but not overbearingly) sprightly account of Cimarosa's Rossini-meets-Mozart writing. Theater, on the other hand, was less well served. Miller's conception (and the colloquial supertitles) strongly played up the cruel-humiliating buffo elements, equipping each of the singers (and two silent servants) with recognizable tics of character (and, in the English character's case, accent). The more veteran performers -- basses Conal Coad (Geronimo, the father) and Jonathan Best (Count Robinson) -- did well under this regime, but the others -- particularly Heidi Stober as the put-upon Carolina -- seemed limited and overdirected.
Carolina, who has been secretly married to Paolino (the tenor part) and must watch both herself and him wooed by others, is perhaps the only sympathetic figure in the piece. Yet whether intentionally or unintentionally, at the director or singer's behest, this production played down that role. Carolina, in body and phrase, is too dully self-satisfied at the beginning and simply stepped-on later, and her eventual victory is more just relief than pleasure. It has long been the genius of singers to endow even the most scheming & shallow "-ina" role with the unmistakable grace of real feeling, and its absence in the rather more likely Carolina leaves a hole.
In fact real feeling peeks out only in spinster aunt Fidalma's first-act praise of marriage (well sung by mezzo Fredrika Brillembourg) and quickly recedes thereafter. Perhaps it's an attempt to sidestep the stickier aspects of the story -- e.g. Paolino's inability to face his own culpability in creating the mess, a thread that's never actually resolved -- but the exaggerated buffo pitilessness actually highlights it. The worse Carolina's relatives act, the worse Paolino looks in having arranged for his patron to marry one of them (Carolina's sister, perhaps the worst of the bunch).
Cimarosa wasn't Mozart, but I fear this production highlighted rather than hid his deficiencies.
One such tidbit was a public interview and Q&A before the next day's show. Miller's talk there was consonant with both past and present press, and perhaps deserves consideration.
Miller, like director-turned-administrator Peter Mussbach (recently deposed from Berlin's State Opera), began as a doctor focused on the brain -- though Miller seems to have looked more to hardware, Mussbach to software. By his own account, directing was a fortuitous continuation of what he'd begun with medical studies and neurological research: the study of human behavior. He describes (his?) art as giving attention to the neglected details of ordinary life. It is an appealing -- if somewhat early-20th-century-flavored -- prospect he offers, art in accord with science. But what sort of art?
It's a jealous one, for sure. His dispute with Bartoli seems to have been fairly characteristic: Miller has no time for the ways of such stars, whom he continues to dismiss as "Jurassic Park singers". It's true that big names may (not least because they can) be difficult colleagues, perhaps undirectable even if cooperative. But Miller does opera a disservice by dismissing and even denigrating the very real dimension that star power adds to performance.
Similarly, though Miller pointedly attacks continental notions of "Regietheater", he has his own strong and fairly exclusive ideas of what works are "really about". The Magic Flute, for example, he pronounces with a debunker's zest to be about the Enlightenment -- and not just in general terms but as a specific attack on Empress Maria Theresa -- and thus not at all about the charming and showy elements that distinguish the current Met version. Der Rosenkavalier he judges to be falsely set during this same Empress' reign, and really about the impending doom of the Great War (so he moved it "back" to the time of its creation). And he explains, in part, his relatively short track record in directing the romantic classics to his distaste for so many of them having been set in far-back historical locales about which the composers knew nothing.
Glamour, play, suggestive half-mythical vistas: Miller's rejections of these and insistence on the primacy of the ordinary leave him with a rather austere form of realism. It's a thing quite in accord with his scientific past and upbringing (his father was also a physician), the analytic philosophy he professes to admire, and the postwar England in which he grew up -- and it's inoculated him against the more anti-human trends in directorial fashion. But this sort of jealous realism also leaves much out. The exotic pageantry of Magic Flute and the anachronistic Vienna of Der Rosenkavalier are not unfortunate detrius, no more than is the very fictionality of opera -- of art itself. It is, if anything, the other way around: if fine-grained realism has become more and more important as a means of onstage effect, it has always -- as a latecomer -- had to share billing with less enlightened vocabularies, near-atavistic elements which remind us of the first protagonist/subjects' divinity and the thread thereof persisting in their descendants. (As for realism as an end, its run in opera was very short indeed.)
Whether from theory or particular happenstance, the actual production -- a followup to Miller's 1992 staging of the same piece at Glimmerglass -- as performed at BAM wasn't wholly successful. Singing and playing were best: though tenor Chad A. Johnson had difficulty with softer singing, the rest of the mostly-young cast showed appealing and well-trained voices in their parts, while Paul Goodwin led players from the Brooklyn Philharmonic in a mostly (but not overbearingly) sprightly account of Cimarosa's Rossini-meets-Mozart writing. Theater, on the other hand, was less well served. Miller's conception (and the colloquial supertitles) strongly played up the cruel-humiliating buffo elements, equipping each of the singers (and two silent servants) with recognizable tics of character (and, in the English character's case, accent). The more veteran performers -- basses Conal Coad (Geronimo, the father) and Jonathan Best (Count Robinson) -- did well under this regime, but the others -- particularly Heidi Stober as the put-upon Carolina -- seemed limited and overdirected.
Carolina, who has been secretly married to Paolino (the tenor part) and must watch both herself and him wooed by others, is perhaps the only sympathetic figure in the piece. Yet whether intentionally or unintentionally, at the director or singer's behest, this production played down that role. Carolina, in body and phrase, is too dully self-satisfied at the beginning and simply stepped-on later, and her eventual victory is more just relief than pleasure. It has long been the genius of singers to endow even the most scheming & shallow "-ina" role with the unmistakable grace of real feeling, and its absence in the rather more likely Carolina leaves a hole.
In fact real feeling peeks out only in spinster aunt Fidalma's first-act praise of marriage (well sung by mezzo Fredrika Brillembourg) and quickly recedes thereafter. Perhaps it's an attempt to sidestep the stickier aspects of the story -- e.g. Paolino's inability to face his own culpability in creating the mess, a thread that's never actually resolved -- but the exaggerated buffo pitilessness actually highlights it. The worse Carolina's relatives act, the worse Paolino looks in having arranged for his patron to marry one of them (Carolina's sister, perhaps the worst of the bunch).
Cimarosa wasn't Mozart, but I fear this production highlighted rather than hid his deficiencies.
Tuesday, June 17, 2008
AP vs... the future
This is, honestly, hilarious -- mostly because it will fail miserably and only damage the Associated Press brand.
Sunday, June 15, 2008
Apologies
A trip out of town resulted in a more thorough incommunicado than I'd expected. A review from before that should follow soon.
Sunday, June 01, 2008
Farewell to the off-topic diva
At this point most who care have likely long since seen this interview or simply heard the news: ballerina Veronika Part -- this blog's official off-topic diva -- is leaving ABT after this season.
Her time at ABT was surely frustrating -- if perhaps not nearly as sad and awful as that piece might have us think. Each of her lead roles here has shown her rare expressive and communicative art, but the company -- like her previous home, the Mariinsky -- seems never to have taken her seriously. Was it that she -- tall, not super-thin, more artist than technician -- is too idiosyncratic for these institutions' current shape? Was it poor luck, as the scapegoat for McKenzie's awful Burger King production of Sleeping Beauty (in which she got her one and only production premiere)? Dislike from the New York Times?
Whatever the case, Part has meanwhile earned at least a cult following in the city. And the time here's helped her, if perhaps not as much as it could or should have: Odile in yesterday's matinee Swan Lake showed a cruel and reckless glamour alien to the dancer who first arrived with the Mariinsky on their 2002 tour.
At any rate, I can't write about dance, so I'll only note that there are two more opportunities to see Part before she leaves the company.
Afterwards -- I hope, for myself, that these aren't her last New York performances. But I hope for her, as for every artist, that she finds a situation where she is able to give her best.
Her time at ABT was surely frustrating -- if perhaps not nearly as sad and awful as that piece might have us think. Each of her lead roles here has shown her rare expressive and communicative art, but the company -- like her previous home, the Mariinsky -- seems never to have taken her seriously. Was it that she -- tall, not super-thin, more artist than technician -- is too idiosyncratic for these institutions' current shape? Was it poor luck, as the scapegoat for McKenzie's awful Burger King production of Sleeping Beauty (in which she got her one and only production premiere)? Dislike from the New York Times?
Whatever the case, Part has meanwhile earned at least a cult following in the city. And the time here's helped her, if perhaps not as much as it could or should have: Odile in yesterday's matinee Swan Lake showed a cruel and reckless glamour alien to the dancer who first arrived with the Mariinsky on their 2002 tour.
At any rate, I can't write about dance, so I'll only note that there are two more opportunities to see Part before she leaves the company.
Afterwards -- I hope, for myself, that these aren't her last New York performances. But I hope for her, as for every artist, that she finds a situation where she is able to give her best.
La Scala silliness
Words fail me in regard to this story, but this photoshop (via Victoria, who may in fact have made it) is amusing...
I predict, however, that the Gore Effect will cause the premiere to be buried in snow.
Friday, May 23, 2008
Stop and start
The 2007-2008 season, like most at the Met, ended uneventfully: a series of good performances, yes, but no climactic closing event. But after last Saturday evening's Macbeth -- the end of the season at the house -- were two Met Orchestra concerts at Carnegie Hall. It was hard to feel the season over with these after-events remaining.
Both -- an all-Mussorgsky concert with Gergiev and Rene Pape and last night's mix of Carter, Schumann, and Tchaikovsky with Levine and Jonathan Biss -- turned out to be successes, though neither soloist entirely satisfied. Pape has, of course, an Important Voice, but doesn't always deliver much more: in this case, his reliance on prompters in the house turned into a rather homogenizing outing-with-a-music-stand at Carnegie. I've seen Matthias Goerne interpret brilliantly while staring at reference material, but the Songs & Dances of Death were fairly heavy going here. The Boris Godunov monologue fared better, but I was surprised to see Pape singing from a score to a part he's already done complete.
Biss, too, is a terrific pianist of his type, but I've always found him too much Eusebius and not enough Florestan -- even (rare) violence comes out tasteful and refined.
At any rate, the orchestra responded quite well to Gergiev (in his last outing as Principal Guest Conductor) and Levine, though I haven't entirely warmed up to new oboist Nathan Hughes, and Elaine Douvas -- for whatever reason -- hasn't been the same since about two seasons ago. It was a good -- if non-operatic -- close to to a successful season.
* * *
I've contemplated moving from New York (both more and less seriously) several times over this blog's history. Each time I wondered what I would do with the blog, which from the first has focused on the actual experience of opera in the flesh. There's actually much to say about the (mediated) experience of opera far from its performance centers, and it's occurred to me that, without actually leaving New York (and -- to be clear -- I don't currently intend to move), I might mine this vein during summers, when the city is as operatically provincial and distant as any other you might name.
So expect in this space an inaugural "offseason edition" of An Unamplified Voice, different in flavor and content. It's a first try, though, so please bear with me.
Both -- an all-Mussorgsky concert with Gergiev and Rene Pape and last night's mix of Carter, Schumann, and Tchaikovsky with Levine and Jonathan Biss -- turned out to be successes, though neither soloist entirely satisfied. Pape has, of course, an Important Voice, but doesn't always deliver much more: in this case, his reliance on prompters in the house turned into a rather homogenizing outing-with-a-music-stand at Carnegie. I've seen Matthias Goerne interpret brilliantly while staring at reference material, but the Songs & Dances of Death were fairly heavy going here. The Boris Godunov monologue fared better, but I was surprised to see Pape singing from a score to a part he's already done complete.
Biss, too, is a terrific pianist of his type, but I've always found him too much Eusebius and not enough Florestan -- even (rare) violence comes out tasteful and refined.
At any rate, the orchestra responded quite well to Gergiev (in his last outing as Principal Guest Conductor) and Levine, though I haven't entirely warmed up to new oboist Nathan Hughes, and Elaine Douvas -- for whatever reason -- hasn't been the same since about two seasons ago. It was a good -- if non-operatic -- close to to a successful season.
I've contemplated moving from New York (both more and less seriously) several times over this blog's history. Each time I wondered what I would do with the blog, which from the first has focused on the actual experience of opera in the flesh. There's actually much to say about the (mediated) experience of opera far from its performance centers, and it's occurred to me that, without actually leaving New York (and -- to be clear -- I don't currently intend to move), I might mine this vein during summers, when the city is as operatically provincial and distant as any other you might name.
So expect in this space an inaugural "offseason edition" of An Unamplified Voice, different in flavor and content. It's a first try, though, so please bear with me.
Tuesday, May 20, 2008
The renouncers
The last Met performance this season of Mozart's Abduction from the Seraglio -- almost two weeks ago now, I'm afraid -- was, as reports had suggested, a modest but real success. I was pleasantly surprised by the second couple: Aleksandra Kurzak finessed the high notes a bit but played Blonde with a winningly earthy womanliness, and Steve Davislim showed a light but charming tenor, just the thing for Pedrillo. Kristinn Sigmundsson has neither huge round sound nor the trick low notes but I could listen to his ease and fluency as Osmin all day. (I'd love to hear him as Ochs.) Polenzani was pure pleasure to hear as usual.
If there was any disappointment it was in fact Diana Damrau, who despite her comic affinity is even worse of a serious actress than I'd feared. Worse than the expectedly cool and less-than-traurig "Traurigkeit" was the exaggerated bobbing (with, unfortunately, accompanying heavy sonic accent) of her body that was supposed to stand in elsewhere for strong feeling. That said, she can sing "Marten aller Arten", which counts for a lot.
David Robertson conducted with emphasis on clean light textures, but used a light hand outside of the well-coordinated ensembles that were the evening's highlight. Another modernist approach, but much more effective than Bicket's for this month's Clemenzas.
Polenzani, Kurzak, and Davislim reunite in Chicago next March for another Abduction, with Erin Wall as Konstanze. Looks promising.
* * *
I did see another performance of La Clemenza di Tito -- the last this season. The singing was again notable, but what most stuck me was how strongly -- between Tamar Iveri's Vitellia and Susan Graham's Sesto -- the mixed and unclean feelings of a poisonous relationship were made tangible. Iveri can't sing her part as strongly as her predecessor Melanie Diener, but Diener was no schemer and the relationships in that last revival never came into such focus.
Also, I've never seen an audience made so enthusiastic by Mozartean opera seria.
If there was any disappointment it was in fact Diana Damrau, who despite her comic affinity is even worse of a serious actress than I'd feared. Worse than the expectedly cool and less-than-traurig "Traurigkeit" was the exaggerated bobbing (with, unfortunately, accompanying heavy sonic accent) of her body that was supposed to stand in elsewhere for strong feeling. That said, she can sing "Marten aller Arten", which counts for a lot.
David Robertson conducted with emphasis on clean light textures, but used a light hand outside of the well-coordinated ensembles that were the evening's highlight. Another modernist approach, but much more effective than Bicket's for this month's Clemenzas.
Polenzani, Kurzak, and Davislim reunite in Chicago next March for another Abduction, with Erin Wall as Konstanze. Looks promising.
I did see another performance of La Clemenza di Tito -- the last this season. The singing was again notable, but what most stuck me was how strongly -- between Tamar Iveri's Vitellia and Susan Graham's Sesto -- the mixed and unclean feelings of a poisonous relationship were made tangible. Iveri can't sing her part as strongly as her predecessor Melanie Diener, but Diener was no schemer and the relationships in that last revival never came into such focus.
Also, I've never seen an audience made so enthusiastic by Mozartean opera seria.
Tuesday, May 13, 2008
Calleja, mediated
Just a quick note upon hearing Joseph Calleja's Macduff over Sirius.
In the house the overpowering first impression -- to my ears, at any rate -- of his sound is its spaciousness. It's within this heroic-scale frame that his distinctive throwback vibrato fits and works, bringing character and life to his lyric sound. The close-miked broadcast squashes any sense of space and size on top of making the vibrato more prominent in an absolute sense. As is so often the case, a very different impression.
His most recent solo CD ("The Golden Voice"), on the other hand, seems engineered to hide the distinctive timbre his vibrato imparts, and a lot of less detailed speakers will effectively erase it. But its main problem is something else: specifically, that the disc was recorded almost exactly three years ago, when he was just 27. Every year for a young singer is crucial, and the difference between the struggling-with-pitch tenor of promise on the disc and the remarkable singer of even a year-and-a-half later was huge. And the show-stopper we're hearing this month is nowhere near captured on disc.
UPDATE (5/14): From his teacher's liner notes for this disc, it appears that Calleja's professional debut was as Macduff -- in Malta, 11 years ago.
In the house the overpowering first impression -- to my ears, at any rate -- of his sound is its spaciousness. It's within this heroic-scale frame that his distinctive throwback vibrato fits and works, bringing character and life to his lyric sound. The close-miked broadcast squashes any sense of space and size on top of making the vibrato more prominent in an absolute sense. As is so often the case, a very different impression.
His most recent solo CD ("The Golden Voice"), on the other hand, seems engineered to hide the distinctive timbre his vibrato imparts, and a lot of less detailed speakers will effectively erase it. But its main problem is something else: specifically, that the disc was recorded almost exactly three years ago, when he was just 27. Every year for a young singer is crucial, and the difference between the struggling-with-pitch tenor of promise on the disc and the remarkable singer of even a year-and-a-half later was huge. And the show-stopper we're hearing this month is nowhere near captured on disc.
UPDATE (5/14): From his teacher's liner notes for this disc, it appears that Calleja's professional debut was as Macduff -- in Malta, 11 years ago.
Fabrication, the conclusion?
Perhaps it's just coincidence (and, given the paper's chronic financial woes of late, not a surprising one) but the New York Times has bought out the reviewer (Bernard Holland) who couldn't be bothered to attend the OONY Gala he reviewed.
Holland never showed signs of actually enjoying opera -- and in fact seemed to resent much of the standard rep -- so perhaps this is a relief for him as well.
Holland never showed signs of actually enjoying opera -- and in fact seemed to resent much of the standard rep -- so perhaps this is a relief for him as well.
Saturday, May 10, 2008
Seeing stars
It's a glorious indulgence of luxury casting that brings us this month's return (beginning last night) of Verdi's Macbeth at the Met. Where else could you find -- for one aria each! -- Rene Pape pressed into service as Banquo and Joseph Calleja as Macduff? Pape, as ever, makes the most of his short turn (actually, I admit I've never found any of his longer parts as effective as his Marke, Escamillo, or Pogner). Meanwhile, it's been a very good year for tenors, but if the next Björling or Pavarotti is already out there, it can be no one but the 30-year-old Calleja. As he did in last season's Rigoletto, Calleja put on a display of old-school (pre-veristic) singing that brought the house down -- and, amazingly for the short part of Macduff, earned him the biggest ovation at curtain-calls. Lyric beauty plus natural unforced power plus stage ease equals stardom, but add bel canto mastery and an instantly-recognizable throwback timbre to the mix and you have a truly sui generis tenor whose potential equals the greatest. (Let's hope he's not prone to overdoing either food or drink...)
The danger of superstar bit players, though, is that they might unbalance the show. It actually happens here: nominal leads Carlos Alvarez and Hasmik Papian are commendable but workmanlike, so their fates fail to dominate the proceedings as they should. The fall-winter casts, despite flaws, seemed to sell the piece better. The January night I saw them, Guleghina (as ever) chewed scenery like no tomorrow and was in pretty good if unsubtle voice, while Lado Ataneli sang well and seemed more decisively engaged in the events than Alvarez. Banquo and Macduff were John Relyea and Dimitri Pittas: two young singers who sang strongly, but not so overpoweringly as to throw off ensemble balance. Even Levine seemed more comfortable back then (but then, he hadn't just returned from a weeks-long Boston run of Troyens).
I'm not sure why so many seemed to dislike this production. Adrian Noble is a British Shakespeare director, so what's the surprise when it looks like a British Shakespeare production? There was no great revelation, but the simple color/light-dark contrasts work, set elements and costumes are handsome and uncluttered (the cut-out space above was nice), and I found the walking-on-chairs bit appropriately eerie.
Its present incarnation is less than the sum of its parts, perhaps, but Calleja's not to be missed.
UPDATE (10:30PM): A little bird tells me that this cast didn't have stage and orchestra rehearsals until the day of the performance. So no wonder those who were called upon to do more than stand and sing one aria came off less well... Expect better, perhaps, in future shows as the principals become familiar with the thing.
The danger of superstar bit players, though, is that they might unbalance the show. It actually happens here: nominal leads Carlos Alvarez and Hasmik Papian are commendable but workmanlike, so their fates fail to dominate the proceedings as they should. The fall-winter casts, despite flaws, seemed to sell the piece better. The January night I saw them, Guleghina (as ever) chewed scenery like no tomorrow and was in pretty good if unsubtle voice, while Lado Ataneli sang well and seemed more decisively engaged in the events than Alvarez. Banquo and Macduff were John Relyea and Dimitri Pittas: two young singers who sang strongly, but not so overpoweringly as to throw off ensemble balance. Even Levine seemed more comfortable back then (but then, he hadn't just returned from a weeks-long Boston run of Troyens).
I'm not sure why so many seemed to dislike this production. Adrian Noble is a British Shakespeare director, so what's the surprise when it looks like a British Shakespeare production? There was no great revelation, but the simple color/light-dark contrasts work, set elements and costumes are handsome and uncluttered (the cut-out space above was nice), and I found the walking-on-chairs bit appropriately eerie.
Its present incarnation is less than the sum of its parts, perhaps, but Calleja's not to be missed.
UPDATE (10:30PM): A little bird tells me that this cast didn't have stage and orchestra rehearsals until the day of the performance. So no wonder those who were called upon to do more than stand and sing one aria came off less well... Expect better, perhaps, in future shows as the principals become familiar with the thing.
Sunday, May 04, 2008
Star turn
After the male-centeredness of Stephen Wadsworth's kitschy, over-the-top direction of Iphigenie earlier this season made Susan Graham's character a bit player and third wheel in her own eponymous opera, Graham now finds herself better-highlighted by the revival of Ponnelle's classic "La Clemenza di Tito" production. Her Sesto here is one of the peak assumptions that make operagoing worth it. It would be worth seeing even in a lesser cast, and makes even the superficial sheen and relentlessly airless regularity of Harry Bicket's conducting bearable.Bicket was terrific in Rodelinda but is the main liability here, playing up only the public side of Mozart's writing and burying the private (ideally, as heard in, say, Levine's most recent Cosi, the two intertwine and inseparably interpenetrate) to the point of straitjacketing the wind solos (here, by Anthony McGill and James Ognibene). But the singers make it work. Tamar Iveri -- though, like most singers, she has issues at one end of Vitellia's great range (here, it's the bottom that's recessed, particularly noticeable in her Act II scena) -- makes excellent dramatic sense. Anke Vondung I found unexciting as Cherubino earlier, but the more serious Annio suits her better and she did well in his aria. (I noted last time that though she's German, Vondung's even-tempered, evenly-produced singing reminds me of an American mezzo's, and she naturally fits alongside Graham.) Ramon Vargas took a bit to warm up but offers a voice of real authority in the title role.
Of course, we know how good Vargas is. Graham I've always liked, but the control and naked feeling she shows in Sesto's "Deh, per questo istante solo" is actually revelatory. Her parts here have been so straightforward that to see her visibly and audibly drowning in Sesto's self-loathing is a shock -- of the best sort.
UPDATE (8PM): The AP wire brings a rave review. Another refined and positive perspective is offered at I Hear Voices, where it seems Rodrigo Maffei Libonati has finally put up a blog.
Thursday, May 01, 2008
Raising the curtain
Three years ago, I posted some thoughts on La Clemenza di Tito -- Mozart's masterpiece of 1791 -- and the Met's now-revived (as of this coming Saturday) production thereof.
Given Susan Graham's successes (elsewhere) as Sesto and how terrific Ramon Vargas has been of late, it's a shame this run seems so poorly sold. Of course, that Gelb and the press only seem to promote revivals for sopranos doesn't help...
* * *
Meanwhile, if you're considering seeing The First Emperor, do yourself a favor and don't.
Given Susan Graham's successes (elsewhere) as Sesto and how terrific Ramon Vargas has been of late, it's a shame this run seems so poorly sold. Of course, that Gelb and the press only seem to promote revivals for sopranos doesn't help...
Meanwhile, if you're considering seeing The First Emperor, do yourself a favor and don't.
Wednesday, April 30, 2008
Is this a prank?
It's not who's doing it, it's what he's doing:
Possibilities: leg-pulling; not-for-the-main-stage; improbable success; disaster.
When the commission came through from New York's Metropolitan Opera, [Rufus] Wainwright became inspired by the most obvious of tales: a day in the life of an opera singer. Prima Donna will explore "the construct of the diva, from Maria Callas to Norma Desmond, and the Jean-Jacques Beineix movie Diva, from the 80s. And God darn it, there's a bit of me in that too".Eh!?
Wainwright will be composing the opera as well as writing its libretto - in French.
Possibilities: leg-pulling; not-for-the-main-stage; improbable success; disaster.
Addenda
The author of that much-discussed WSJ piece last week blogs her reaction to the big Fille aria:
I’m not an opera expert, but I’ve been paying a lot of attention to it lately, as I reported an article about the Metropolitan Opera for the Wall Street Journal. So when The New York Times posted a recording of the "Ah! Mes Amis” aria sung by Peruvian tenor Juan Diego Flórez during the performance of “La Fille du Regiment” at the Met on April 21, I clicked on the link. In it, Florez hits high C, which is about as high as men can reach, nine times. You hear the crowd roar, and you hear Florez do it all over again. I felt a lump in my throat and a tear in my eye.The correspondent who sent this link notes that Florez encored the piece again last night.
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