Likely Impossibilities

Don Carlo at the ROH

noreply@blogger.com (Zerbinetta) — Wed, 22 May 2013 11:54:00 +0000

While Friday night at the ROH had been dedicated to men in skirts on Saturday we switched to men in tights. I didn’t intend to see Nicholas Hytner’s somber period Don Carlo twice within only a few months, but I happened to be in London and I’m very glad I did. When I saw this same production at the Met in March, it was most notable for not being laughable; this London version was genuine high drama.

Verdi, Don Carlo. Royal Opera House Covent Garden, 5/18/2013. Production by Nicholas Hytner (revival), conducted by Antonio Pappano with Jonas Kaufmann (Don Carlo), Lianna Haroutounian (Elisabetta), Mariusz Kwiecien (Rodrigo, Marquis of Posa), Ferruccio Furlanetto (Philip II), Beatrice Uria-Monzon (Eboli, Eric Halfvorson (Grand Inquisitor).

It didn’t seem like the same production as the Met's, to be honest. Visually, it’s not the most stunning. The images are stark but not particularly memorable and some of the sets look kind of bargain basement. Here, the excellent characterization more than made up for that. The smaller ROH stage concentrated the action, the chorus somehow shrunk into the background and the whole thing ended up like a family affair. While this is an opera with an extremely sophisticated sense of relationships, its political specificity only occasionally extends beyond the level of “take these dangerous letters.” When you have a cast and production this attuned to interpersonal dynamics the contraction of everything into the domestic is perhaps unsurprising.

The least convincing part of the production, in this performance, was the noisy and violent staging of the auto-da-fe, whose brutality is appropriate enough but, stuck into this heightened atmosphere, seemed strangely at odds with everything else. When politics elsewhere seems like a pastime for the displaced libido, watching Inquisition thugs beat up some random heretics for ten minutes is something of a non sequitur (particularly when the rest of the scene returns to focus on the personal relationships of the protagonists).

At the beginning of the opera, Elisabetta and Carlo are convincingly lovey teenagers, but only an act later they have aged into very lonely adults (in Elisabetta’s case resignedly, in Carlo’s case desperately). At the end of each scene, the curtain keeps descending behind Carlo, leaving him facing the audience alone, but everyone else in this opera is pretty isolated too—something that never seemed as dominate a theme in the opera’s New York incarnation. To quickly skip to the end, I still don’t like this production’s elimination of the surprise ending in which Elisabetta and Carlo are sucked into Grandpa Carlo’s tomb. Carlo is too wimpy and unhinged to deserve the semi-heroic/tragic death this production gives him (attempting to fight off around ten soldiers and failing), while the original finale is a spooky twist befitting the drama’s grand strangeness.

The single greatest improvement of this performance over New York’s was Antonio Pappano on the podium. It’s a real shame he never conducts at the Met. No one has a better sense of color and pace in Verdi than he, and this was a grave, exciting, and polished performance. The cello solo was also great, and taken at a gloriously slow tempo.

The talk of this performance was Armenian soprano Lianna Haroutounian as Elisabetta, who was plucked out of relative obscurity to replace frequent canceler Anja Harteros for most of the run. (Harteros is in these photos; I can’t find any of Haroutounian. Imagine someone with similar hair but a good foot shorter.) Haroutounian’s quite a find, with a clear, beautiful soprano of considerable power.* This was not an entirely consistent performance; some phrases were more refined and controlled than others, and her middle voice seemed thinner than her (giant) top notes until the big aria in the last act. She’s a good and likable actress, sassy at the beginning (the opera opens with her aiming her gun at an unseen target, which she adorably missed) and steadfast yet conflicted through the rest. She’s one to watch.

(Harteros here, not Haroutounian)

As Carlo, Jonas Kaufmann was more introverted, awkward, and less predictably cute than Ramon Vargas in New York, making him a considerably more interesting sort-of protagonist. While his dark and throaty tone is never going to sound Italian, he’s got a perfect combination of subtle and loud for this role. He and Haroutounian did a fantastic job with my favorite music of the opera, the Act 2 duet, which has to switch between very gentle and sensitive singing and powerful near-shouting at the drop of a hat.

One wonders why the comparably sane Rodrigo would entrust Flanders to such an unstable figure, but, well, Mariusz Kwiecien’s Rodrigo seemed to harbor more than brotherly feelings for Carlo. This is a relatively obvious way to go with this opera, though I’m not sure if I’ve ever seen it taken this strongly before, and I’m not sure if it is the production or Kwiecien (Hvorostovsky didn’t choose this in New York, but I can’t say if the original cast did or not). It explains certain elements of walking anachronism Posa’s behavior, and adds considerable depth to this rather one-dimensional character. Unfortunately I didn’t like Kwiecien’s singing nearly as much as his acting; he showed his usually tendency towards bellowing. When he lets up it can sound nice, but that seems rare.

(again Harteros)

Ferruccio Furlanetto as Filippo was the best thing going in the New York cast, but he was far more vivid and expressive here. It’s a very sympathetic and sometimes almost pathetic portrayal: his Filippo is profoundly lonely at the top, following a searing account of the aria with a horrified reaction to the Grand Inquisitor (the production helpfully makes the latter entirely blind--he's usually at least partially but sometimes can see a bit--, allowing Filippo to react as he likes).

While Beatrice Uria-Monzon was a more convincingly sexy Eboli than most, and acted with appropriate craftiness, she was vocally the cast’s weakest link, only barely coping with the Veil Song’s coloratura and short of breath in “O don fatale” (I don't know why I can't find any photos of her either). Her top notes are on the wobbly side as well. Eric Halfvorsen was the other overlap from New York, and his and Furlanetto’s scene was again excellent. The chorus sounded very good in Act 1 but had some moments of screechiness in the higher parts of the Auto-da-Fe.

This is said to be an impossible to cast opera but I think this was a damn convincing job. You can’t really say who the main character is—for the first act and a half it seems like it’s about Carlo and then it’s about Filippo and then Elisabetta comes on and sings for ten minutes totally alone—but with a cast this consistently strong no one actually walked off with it and it was effectively an ensemble drama. This kind of meat and potatoes repertoire—or, I guess, spaghetti and meatballs—is rarely this good.

*Someone at the ROH has an ear for sopranos. They also were one of the first houses to hire the super Liudmyla Monastyrska.

Photos copyright ROH.

(Harteros again, sorry)

And Harteros yet again

Farcical aquatic ceremonies: La donna del lago at the ROH

noreply@blogger.com (Zerbinetta) — Sat, 18 May 2013 12:07:00 +0000

According to the Royal Opera House’s new production of Rossini’s La donna del lago, strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government. But while the production’s vague juxtaposition of barbaric highlanders and European-style courtiers doesn’t really work, there’s a lot of exciting singing, Joyce DiDonato as the titular aquatic lass, and Juan Diego Florez in a kilt.

Rossini, La donna del lago. Royal Opera House Covent Garden, 5/17/2013. New production premiere directed by John Fulljames with sets by Dick Bird, costumes by Yannis Thavoris, and lighting by Bruno Poet. Conducted by Michele Mariotti with Joyce DiDonato (Elena), Juan Diego Florez (Uberto), Daniela Barcellona (Malcolm), Michael Spyres (Rodrigo), Simon Orfila (Douglas).

La donna del lago is a peculiar match of style and content. The story is wildly Romantic but the musical language is a semi-anachronistic, heavily ornamented opera seria that doesn’t seem to gel with the more primal sentiments that it is expressing. (My colleague the Zwölftöner wrote about this in terms of a very different production of this same opera.) Throw in a convoluted plot and threats of fairy tale kitsch and this is a very tricky opera to stage in a dramatically interesting way. But it’s a star vehicle and Rossini singing is arguably one of the brightest corners of operatic vocalism right now, so it’s a problem that keeps coming up.

John Fulljames’s production is not convincing, however. He gives us a Scottish court of Europe-oriented aristocrats, dressed in a French style and situated in something that is simultaneously a library and, the side boxes suggest, the inevitable theater-in-theater. A sentimental landscape painting of a loch covers the paneled wall at the back, and encased in glass are the human domesticated fragments of Scotland’s wild Highlands are literally encased in glass in the middle of the room. The courtiers let Elena out of her box, she’s in a white nightie looking dazed and emerges singing her opening cavatina.

In disguise, the King (that would be Juan Diego) runs off into their Highland world--this is the main body of the opera’s plot. The courtiers constantly observe this action. At the end, Elena is not married into the court but paired off with fellow wild Highland spirit Malcolm, and they are both returned to their glass boxes.

So I guess Fulljames is setting up a juxtaposition of wild Scottish Romanticism with the vestiges of eighteenth-century Enlightenment-era court life, something like the contrast between Walter Scott’s source and Rossini’s transformation of it. Or something. The problem is that this isn’t integrated enough to feel anything more than tacked on. Also there may have been a Rossini look-alike running around. I'm not sure if that was him or not.

There are some cheap attempts to be shocking, such as the disembowelment of a goat (a small ram? a sheep?) that looked so fake as to not even make my Top Five Operatic Onstage Disembowelments (what can I say, I go to see Bieito productions a lot—but seriously, I can name a whole slew of opera houses that the ROH props department could call for tips on making that carcass look more realistic), some hanging bodies at the end that show us the cost of the court’s taming of the Scottish beasts within, and finally the Highland men do the now-expected thing where they prepare for war by groping passing women, a thing I really wish productions would stop doing. I know what you’re trying to do but you’re using women as a prop to say something about the men, and that’s problematic no matter the message.

The moment to moment Personenregie is not good at all, involving many stock gestures and static moments. I know that you can’t demand too much during this kind of obstacle course singing, but you can do better than this. The result was a certain dearth of character development. (I am not relating the plot action because its connection to the production, setting, and music, is more a matter of proximity than integration.)

The cast was, however, excellent. As you may remember I often don’t like Joyce DiDonato much, an opinion that registers as operatic heresy. But I think her voice is thin and monochromatic, and her personality is a little too Tracy Flick (of Election fame). Her self-conscious magnanimity and bland poise are too relentless to feel honest or personal. So I was pleasantly surprised how much I liked her in this. The voice will never be plush and the high notes aren’t comfortable, but she showed very little of the poor intonation that pervaded January’s Maria Stuarda at the Met, and she rose to truly affecting and technically accomplished singing in “Tanti affretti,” the final aria and the opera’s greatest hit. Character-wise, she was restrained but managed to project a certain aura of mystery and refrained from perky mugging.

My favorite singer in the cast was actually Daniela Barcellona as Malcolm, whose kilt, as someone put it during the interval, puts a new spin on “trousers role.” She has a far more sumptuous and luscious voice than DiDonato and was exciting through the entire thing, with style and color to spare, and a real connection between music and drama. Her high notes were not easy, but her low notes were extremely impressive. She showed such impressive commitment that you almost stopped feeling sorry for her having to wear such an unflattering costume.

Juan Diego Florez did more or less the same thing he always does: He sang very, very well with unfailing technique and very strong high notes, and a nasal tone that can be an acquired taste. Acting-wise he fell into conventional gestures at every turn. But he did his Rossini thing and that has an undeniable thrill factor just in its easy virtuosity. His counterpart as Rodrigo—this is an opera with four major roles, two mezzos and two tenors—was Michael Spyres, subbing for the ill Colin Lee. I liked Spyres a lot in Beatrice di Tenda last December, but this outing was a little more problematic. He took a long time to warm up and his top notes sounded weak throw Act 1, and the many excursions into his low range were loud but sounded like he had borrowed them from another singer. He did better in Act 2, with some impressive coloratura. When trading high notes with Florez in the Act 2 trio, his sweet but softer grained voice seemed wimpy compared to Florez’s formidable bleat. The production did everything it could to make Rodrigo a nasty supervillain (he cheats on lovely Elena, for example), as to make the ending tidier.

Michele Mariotti conducted a fleet performance, though the orchestra had some problem patches and coordination wasn’t always that great. The Act 2 trio was quite exciting and zippy. Most shocking was the horrific intonation of the stage band, particularly an E flat clarinet that was so out of tune I wondered if it was intentional (it is an instrument that requires patience under the best of circumstances, but here its use was plentiful and either it or (maybe?) the piccolo was constantly off pitch). Supporting roles were fine, and most quite brief.

This production is rumored to be in cooperation with the Met, but after the number of boos I heard last night I would be somewhat surprised if that goes ahead. But they took Faust, a far worse production, so who knows.

The production runs for the next few weeks.

Photos copyright ROH/Bill Cooper.

La Périchole closes the New York City Opera's season

noreply@blogger.com (Zerbinetta) — Wed, 24 Apr 2013 01:57:00 +0000

I went to see La Périchole at the New York City Opera and I wrote about it for Bachtrack:

Henri Bergson famously defined comedy as “something mechanical encrusted on the living”. One suspects that Jacques Offenbach would have been a fan of this definition, and that Christopher Alden most certainly is. Alden’s new production of La Périchole, which closes the New York City Opera’s season, is strange, abrasive, and also extremely funny, careening past the everyday to end up somewhere deeply bizarre.

You can read the whole thing here. I highly recommend this show! It is a great piece in a top-notch and hilarious Alden production, and that's a winning combination (check out the video below). It's actually been quite a fortnight for opera in New York, between Giulio Cesare, Mosè in Egitto, best of all David et Jonathas at BAM, and finally after all those Egyptians and Romans, then Israelites and Egyptians, and then Israelites and Philistines, finally ending with this insanely delightful farce that just has Peruvians.

It's also basically the end for me of this season's operatic adventures in NYC, though the Phil's Dallapiccola in June will provide a coda. I recommend y'all go see Dialogues of the Carmelites at the Met, but there are only three performances and unfortunately none of them fit into my schedule. As you may remember, I have mixed feelings about this piece and have seen it twice recently, once in Robert Carsen's excellent traditional staging and once in Calixto Bieito's excellent non-traditional staging, so I don't regret it too much. It will spare you my habit of nun puns (sorry).

Anyway, I have some other stuff elsewhere coming up, so I'll see you soon-ish in any case.

Photo copyright Carol Rosegg

Les Arts Florissant's David et Jonathas at BAM

noreply@blogger.com (Zerbinetta) — Fri, 19 Apr 2013 23:03:00 +0000

I went to see David et Jonathas by Les Arts Florissants at BAM and I wrote about it for Bachtrack:

New York is again lucky to host William Christie and Les Arts Florissants at the Brooklyn Academy of Music. Their visits are always special, and it’s not just because the unique nature of their repertory – Baroque opera, usually French, which is neglected by most of New York’s major companies – nor the virtuosic ease with which they embody this otherwise-foreign idiom. Their productions have a passionate unity of purpose and a loving, handcrafted quality that somehow seems antithetical to many of our more slick and snarky local efforts. Their present offering, a touching production of Marc-Antoine Charpentier’s David et Jonathas, has little in common with 2011’s Atys, but fortunately these virtues are again in full force.

You can read the whole thing here. Highly recommended. It's a great and extremely unusual work with a fantastic musical performance and a smart production. Performances that meet one of these three requirements are unusual enough, ones that fulfill all three far more so. Still could have used some program notes, however.

This production will also be released on DVD on April 30.

Photo copyright Julia Cervantes

He came, he saw, he sang a da capo aria: Giulio Cesare at the Met

noreply@blogger.com (Zerbinetta) — Wed, 17 Apr 2013 02:56:00 +0000

Put on your dancing shoes and/or take off your shirt, there’s a new David McVicar production in town. I use “new” advisedly, since this Giulio Cesare was first seen at Glyndebourne in 2005. But it’s still a clever and often delightful piece of work, and as Met Handel goes it’s pretty convincing. The cast is a little patchy, but it’s still a good time.

Handel, Giulio Cesare. Met Opera, 4/12/2013. Sort of new production directed by David McVicar, conducted by Harry Bicket with Natalie Dessay (Cleopatra), David Daniels (Cesare), Alice Coote (Sesto), Christophe Dumaux (Tolomeo), Patricia Baron (Cornelia)

It seems tiresome to recount the details of this production, since it has already been out on DVD for so long and been seen in multiple opera houses, so I’ll be brief: it casts Caesar’s Romans as late-nineteenth century British imperialists and the Egyptians as Indians. The set shows traces of eighteenth-century design (including an old school wave machine) and also the more recent phenomenon of Bollywood. It sets up the characters well--Sesto and Cornelia are identified by their very British looks as Romans, something that some productions don’t make very clear--and it’s pretty entertaining, though rarely asks to be taken seriously or complicate this political construction any further than I’ve already explained it. You can take a more serious approach and have it work (for example I like this Francisco Negrin production), but the comic tone is fine with me too, it fits the artifice of the genre.

You do have to have some tolerance for cutesiness, though. There are vaguely Mountie-looking British soldiers periodically bopping on the beat, some groaners (Cleo puts out her cigarette in Pompey’s urn), and a lot of dancing. If you’ve seen McVicar in goofy mode before (we haven’t at the Met, really--his Trovatore and Bolena and Maria Stuarda are all dully earnest) you know what I mean. I think he's at his best at this kind of self-conscious genre stuff--his Faust is the only production of that opera I've seen that I think really works as theater--and when he tries to be Important he tends to be respectable but boring. This production succeeds in making Baroque opera fun and accessible to a far greater degree than last year’s Enchanted Island. The story moves along, there is enough visual splendor (notably colorful drapery and a very sparkly outfit for Cleo’s “V’adoro pupille”), and the da capos are mostly staged through, giving them a continuous narrative flow. (They are, also, there! Text-wise, I have no objections at all, and the ornamentation is fine.)

That being said, I think it probably worked better at Glyndebourne. The Met stage is far, far bigger, and the set is plopped in a small portion of the middle of it. The space narrower than the Met's full width, but appears to be using most of its depth, meaning the wave machine is around as far away as the Hudson and the whole thing looks like a hallway. The setting is also obviously more personal for a British audience (particularly aristocratic Glyndebourne) than an American one, though I hope most everyone at the Met understood what was going on. (Some of them had never heard a countertenor before, though. Ahem.)

Natalie Dessay was in far better voice for this performance than she was at last year’s Traviata, but I still don’t think this is quite her role or her production. Her voice sounds flimsy, with very little core or bite, and while she can act cutesy in a gamine sort of way, this production was intended for a Cleopatra far brasher and brassier and, well, Danielle DeNiese isn’t a great singer but she sold this production on the DVD. Dessay does it all OK but doesn’t own it in the same way. When Cleo became down on her luck partway through Act 2, however, Dessay seemed to come to life, suddenly becoming a much more interesting actress and singing a spectacular “Se pièta” that was actually very moving.

I’m sorry to say that David Daniels also is sounding rather worse than he did in earlier years, though he is an excellent musician and sometimes things clicked. His Cesare was effectively acted if not particularly charismatic or insightful, and sang unevenly. “Presto omai” was kind of hollow and hooting, as was some of ~~“Va tacito”~~ "Se in fiorito ameno prato" (in which David Chan was an absolutely superb violin soloist). The fast arias like “Quel torrente” went very, very fast, where Daniels’s coloratura still works well but he lost some volume and sometimes needs extra breaths. He also has a way of swaying back and forth when singing coloratura that made me want Peter Sellars to swoop in and give him a finicky prop to manipulate while singing.

The vocal star of the evening, as far as I’m concerned, was Alice Coote as Sesto, whose viola-toned mezzo sounded firm and solid throughout, including a beautifully spun-out, quite slow “Cara speme.” Sesto might not be a character who gets a lot of theatrical variety, but she did the shell-shocked thing well. As Sesto’s mother Cornelia, Patricia Bardon had a unique, vinegary sort of tone that doesn’t appeal to me very much, but it is unique. As Tolomeo, countertenor Christophe Dumaux had a more beautiful tone and more variety than Daniels, including some impressive high notes in “L’empio, sleale.” He also managed some impressive feats of athleticism that vaguely made me wonder if countertenors at French music schools need to often defend their machismo.

Harry Bicket seems to be the Met’s Handel conductor of choice, and you can see why: he makes it still sound like Handel, but also manages to fill up the house to a reasonable degree. It’s not terribly inventive leadership but he does a very tricky job smoothly. It’s also great to hear the theorbo/lute/guitar in the pit (Dan Swenberg, who also played Eliogabalo). The supporting characters I can’t be too enthusiastic about: Rachid Ben Abdeslam sounded almost voiceless and mugged as Nireno in a fey characterization that McVicar and he should have thrown out long before 2005. Guido Loconsolo was a unagile and growly Achilla, but may just have been miscast.

It’s a shame that the Met couldn’t put on a fresher production, but it’s nice to finally see some more spirited work from McVicar here, vintage or not. Baroque lovers should be relatively satisfied (probably close to as much as we can expect of Handel performed by a company unsuited to it in many ways), and this production is fun enough that it might even make some new ones. Who will hopefully write the Met demanding new productions of Ariodante or something. Well, maybe not, and if they did I doubt anyone would listen, but a girl can dream.

Further dates here.

Photos copyright Ken Howard.

Mosè in Egitto at City Opera

noreply@blogger.com (Zerbinetta) — Mon, 15 Apr 2013 12:46:00 +0000

I went to see the New York City Opera's production of Mosè in Egitto at City Center , and I wrote about it for Bachtrack.

In recent seasons, the New York City Opera has largely limited itself to chamber operas. Its newest production marks a renewed ambition: Rossini’s Mosè in Egitto, a proto grand opera that ends with nothing less than the parting of the Red Sea. Fortunately this scrappy but worthwhile performance showed that the company can tackle large-scale works on its own terms, albeit with a few stumbles along the way.

You can read the rest here. It was a frustrating afternoon: some very talented performers and interesting production ideas (Harry Kupfer's Rossini video game) that ultimately didn't quite make a full show. I still think it's worth seeing, though: it's a unique spin on an unusual piece, and that's something in itself.

A few other notes, though. I wish City Opera would show some care with its presentation. (Their website doesn't even give the address of the theater where they're performing. I had to Google it.) This performance was trumpeted as the "original version." Putting aside the problematic construction of "original" and its implied superior status, that can't be true: the third act of the first version was lost, as you can read in the introduction of the critical edition. (This production didn't even use that critical edition; the program credits Hendon Music/Boosey and Hawkes.) I would have liked some program notes, but maybe I'm alone there. If you're going to claim scholarly status, you have to do your homework.

But enough of that, the actual performance did exceed my expectations. The LED video (more like a TV than projection scenery) occasionally looks like the VHS version of the Met's Parsifal Blu-Ray. Jayce Ogren isn't a Rossini conductor but the orchestra is sounding much better than it did last season and it's good for the City Opera to have him on board as music director. There's some good singing. So still recommendable, if you like Rossini.

Photo copyright Carol Rosegg.

Elina Garanca's Carnegie Hall recital

noreply@blogger.com (Zerbinetta) — Mon, 08 Apr 2013 13:06:00 +0000

I went to hear Elina Garanca's New York recital debut on Saturday and I wrote about it for Bachtrack.

Elina Garanča can always be counted on for a coolly polished performance. Her silvery mezzo is beautiful, even throughout her range, and impeccably on pitch. She is musically tasteful, and her sound has grown in recent years. But something often seems to be missing. While she’s too accomplished to call bland, her performances rarely show evidence of a beating heart. On Saturday night, her Carnegie Hall recital debut kept in character, showing an excellent singer rather than an effective communicator.

You can read the rest here. For all I know Elina Garanca is the nicest, warmest person in the universe, but she still has trouble portraying humanity onstage. This recital was very well-prepared and she really was trying, but the effort was all too obvious.

I'll be going to Giulio Cesare at the Met at the end of this week.

Met plans outreach, new Ring Cycle

noreply@blogger.com (Zerbinetta) — Mon, 01 Apr 2013 22:24:00 +0000

Today Met Opera general manager Peter Gelb announced several new measures that will hopefully spurn increased interest in opera among younger audience members. “As I’ve been saying for years, opera is theater,” Gelb began. “But who goes to the theater anymore? Apparently not enough people. So we’re trying a new project next season: Opera is TV!”

Replacing the slate of internationally renowned opera directors (plus Bartlett Sher) will be a variety of familiar figures from the small screen. “TV is in a golden age right now, and I see no reason why we can’t copy, I mean, translate that into our own special medium. OK, so the Met stage is a little bit bigger, but we can always make the proscenium a little smaller! Plus the HD audience, you know.”

The highlight of the offerings, Gelb said, would be the Met debut of Lena Dunham, the creator of HBO’s Girls. She will helm a production of Così fan tutte set in Bushwick. Editorial assistant Ferrando and barista Gugliemo reportedly shed their plaid and disguise themselves as Goldman Sachs analysts. Gelb promised that it would be “really hip!” and the subject of approximately 100,000 blog entries from people who are weirdly offended by younger women directing something.

Other season highlights are said to be the revival of Battlestar Galactica in the form of Die Frau ohne Schatten (featuring Anne Schwanewilms as “the most ass-kicking Kaiserin you have ever seen”) and a new production of Norma inspired by Homeland. The popular favorite, however, will surely be the new Fledermaus directed by Julian Fellowes of Downton Abbey. It is said to be “very shiny and features excellent hats.” In addition, Gelb will be importing Andrei Serban’s Werther production from the Wiener Staatsoper and calling it Mad Men because “some blogger apparently did that already, and she compared Elina Garanca to January Jones too.”

Reports that a new production of Don Pasquale in the style of Two and a Half Men were cancelled at a late stage were neither confirmed nor denied.

In the second half of the press conference, Gelb confirmed the widespread rumors that April 2013 marked the final appearance of Robert Lepage’s Ring Cycle on the Met’s stage. While a 2017 revival was planned, slow ticket sales and the threats of ruinous liability insurance sent “The Machine” packing. Yet Gelb has a solution: he has commissioned German music video director Wolfgang von Regiekopf (reportedly a pseudonym for Spike Jonze, who doesn't want to accept blame) to stage a new Ring. The new production will take as its centerpiece the human faults that created the Lepage debacle, ending with the Met’s redemption, all without the dangers of utilizing the Machine itself.

While telling the story of the Ring, the cycle will simultaneously survey Gelb’s reign at the Met, all by using sets from previous Met productions. This will reportedly begin in the aestheticized wonderland of Anthony Minghella’s Butterfly, move to the wackily fantastic world of Bartlett Sher (Gelb’s office/Vallhalla), and also include excursions to such locations as the rehearsal room from Mary Zimmerman’s Sonnambula (Nibelheim), Peter Grimes’s hut (Walküre Act 1), Faust’s lab (Siegfried Act 1), that wall of greenery from Attila (Siegfried Act 2), and the airplane in Nixon in China (Götterdämmerung Act 1). One suspects the final scene may involve Gelb’s biggest Wagnerian success to date, Parsifal--though whether that would be a happy ending remains to be seen.

Previously:
Met announces new initiatives

The Wiener Staatsoper's artistic revolution

Eliogabalo: when too much is just too much

noreply@blogger.com (Zerbinetta) — Mon, 25 Mar 2013 20:22:00 +0000

I went to see Francesco Cavalli's Eliogabalo as produced by the Gotham Chamber Opera at The Box and I wrote about it for Bachtrack.

Describing its new production of Francesco Cavalli’s 1668 opera Eliogabalo, the Gotham Chamber Opera compares the exploits of titular depraved Roman emperor Heliogabalus to Salome. There’s an obvious mistake here: Salome is an opera; Heliogabalus was a historical figure. While the Gotham Chamber Opera has done a valuable service by bringing this compelling, interesting opera onstage, the production unfortunately makes the same mistake, confusing a few historical accounts with the very different aesthetic of 17th-century Venetian opera.

You can read the whole thing here. (In my discussion of the intersection of seventeenth-century orchestration and burlesque, I introduced the Bachtrack editorial staff to the phrase "bump it with a trumpet.") This production didn’t work because it was one-note while seventeenth-century Venetian operas are heterogeneous. Venetian opera is closely associated with Carnival (in that respect the timing of this production was really bad--sorry, you go through one Viennese Holy Week of Faust, Parsifal, and Dialogues of the Carmelites and the idea sticks with you forever). But Eliogabalo is something far more interesting than a celebration of excess.

I thought of Calixto Bieito’s fantastic production of Platée, which I saw last summer at the Staatsoper Stuttgart (and didn’t blog about, sorry). It’s set in a nightclub, though not in the environmental theater sense of The Box. The Studio 54-like club (a good modernization of the ancien régime) provides an ostensible freedom for an outsider like Platée. But the hierarchy of court life is always lurking just beneath the surface, and the outsiders never escape their eventual punishment. Eliogabalo never leveraged its similar setting with this kind of dramatic intent.

The singing was fine but most of it was not very stylish. New York doesn’t attract enough people with extensive experience with this music. (The Wooster Group's utterly bonkers sci-fi La Didone mashup was better sung, actually, and far more compelling.) The US's cavernous opera houses and conservative programs confine all but the most famous Baroque operas to boutique outfits like Gotham, but unfortunately based on this production they lack the expertise to present these works to their best advantage. Gotham is, usually, a very strong company, and I hope they'll try another early Venetian opera soon with better results.

Parsifal and religion: a conversation

noreply@blogger.com (Zerbinetta) — Sat, 16 Mar 2013 14:39:00 +0000

I went to the final performance of Parsifal at the Met last Friday night, in the company of an old friend and great Wagnerian who also happens to be a religious studies and South Asian scholar. Since religion is a part of the production that I didn’t mention at all in my earlier review, I chatted with him about it a bit.

Since we don’t talk about the musical side of things: Asher Fisch conducted this performance instead of Daniele Gatti. I found him perfectly fine but not as compelling. I think he was obliged to more or less follow Gatti’s tempos (the performance was a mere five minutes shorter), and I don’t think that conducting at Daniele Gatti’s tempos is advisable for anyone who is not Daniele Gatti (and, in some cases, perhaps not even then). I was actually more conscious of the slowness this time around, since he didn’t find the same amount of detail and shape inside those very drawn-out phrases. The Flower Maidens' scene, however, was noticeably less hard-driven than it was under Gatti.

Now for the conversation. You may remember "Pelléas" from our earlier post on Die Walküre.

Pelléas: Let’s talk about balance. Because that's what I think the big theme of the production is. The balance of men and women is the most obvious way that the theme is expressed, but it's much larger than that. We can think of balance between humanity and the natural world, but also a proper balance in the religious sphere that the protagonists of this opera operate in.

Zerbinetta: I agree that’s the theme but I want to hear more. Because honestly I hoped that I would see the production differently this time but I really didn't. This may be due to the thought processes required to write my review of it, organizing your thoughts like that kind of fixes them in place.

Pelléas: Basically we're in this post-apocalyptic world and the knights (men) have no idea how to deal with it, so they retreat into their own world. But they don't just separate from the women, they also practice this strange version of Christianity that is wholly centered on the Eucharist, which they also pervert. But they forget everything else that is part of Christianity. The Eucharist is but one sacrament, sexual asceticism is but one lifestyle, men are but one gender. The production seems to be saying that the knights have gone down this greatly restricted path (and in so doing they’ve also forgotten even what they deem most important) but that they must more fully embrace the world, even the aspects that they may find to be sinful. One image that perfectly represents this balance is Christ being pierced on the cross. Both blood and water flow from the wound, the two central symbols of the production. Now the piercing can seem like the most sadistic, vindictive act of violence, yet it also leads to the conversion of Longinus and is therefore celebrated.

Zerbinetta: Who is Longinus?

Pelléas: The Roman soldier who pierced Christ's side on the cross. With the spear that is central to the opera. The blood from the wound represents the Eucharist, whereas the water symbolizes baptism (I’m not reading anything into that; it’s standard Christian symbolic interpretation of the image). In this production the blood is associated with the men, whereas water, and therefore baptism, is associated with women.

Zerbinetta: Which is why there isn’t very much of it. I thought the production could have done a better job telling us what Kundry’s deal was, too. Anyway, go on.

Pelléas: The dried-up river bed separating the men from the women represents this lack of balance. Yet there's memory of water flowing through the river (when Gunermez first goes to the bed the river briefly flows with water). But the water will only actually flow through the river when Parsifal baptizes Kundry in Act III, beginning the process of joining men and women, eucharist and baptism, asceticism and sensuality back together. But the majority of the time the river only flows with blood if it flows with anything.

Zerbinetta: Remember, the riverbed is also the wound!

Pelléas: Yes. But in the knight's lack of balance they only are concerned with the Eucharistic aspects of Christianity: the blood. If they participated in the balance of Christ then Amfortas' wound would pour forth with both water and blood, but instead it is only blood, and it never heals. The choreography of the Eucharistic scene makes it clear that the knights remember some aspect of the ritual, but they don't really know it. Their hand gestures mix Christian aspects of prayer with vague new-agey Eastern motifs. Additionally, the way they participate in the feast has this strange melding of the Kiss of Peace, with the men dipping their fingers into the grail, touching their mouths, and then bringing their fingers to the mouths of other brothers. But while the knights are busy pressing their fingers to each others lips the women are miming a more traditional Eucharist, lifting an imagined chalice to their lips. They remember the proper aspects of this ritual.

Zerbinetta: I got that it was a new Eucharist but I sort of assumed that was because the production wanted it to be abstract and not built on specific Christian doctrine.

Pelléas: I saw too much literal, traditional Christian symbolism to think that the director was trying to distance himself from Christianity.

Zerbinetta: But the wound isn’t a natural condition, it’s the cause of their problems! It's because Amfortas was enchanted by Klingsor and gave in to Evil Woman.

Pelléas: Amfortas was enchanted by Klingsor to give in to his version of Evil Woman. The flower maidens don't represent real femininity. They represent the overly sexualized, virginal fantasy of men. (Come on, white dresses [more like night gowns] gradually bloodied by dancing around in the pools of blood; you can’t represent an imagined or fantasized deflowering any more literally than that!) They're under Klingsor's control. It's because of this idea of women that the knights separate themselves from other women, but the only place that this fantasy actually exists is in Klingsor's domain. The actual women are normally sexualized (they leave on their high heel shoes whereas the men take off their dress shoes) but they aren't hyper sexualized.

Zerbinetta: So my next question is, I guess, what prompts Parsifal's turn towards Mitleid? And why does he have to wander however many decades between Acts 2 and 3? Did not really come up with an answer to this myself.

Pelléas: Water represents the form of balance that the knights lack. It is the water that comes from Christ's side, the water of baptism, to complement the blood. There are projections of rippling water throughout Kundry's seduction of Parsifal in Act II. It starts out rather small and subtle and then builds in intensity. The fact that her seduction is NOT sexy is important I think, it's enough to be believable, but not as over the top as the flower maidens. Her costume as both flower maiden (in Act II) and normal woman (in Act I) represents her ability to be a bridge between the unbridled sexuality of the flower maidens and the unrealized sexuality of the normal women. When she kisses Parsifal the water images begin to be broadcast around him. They've never been projected for him before.

He's been exposed to the proper balance of sexuality, but he's so startled that he can't accept it yet. So he wanders. But then in Act III he has finally come to accept it. He's able to embrace water for himself, most importantly in his baptism of Kundry which brings water to the stream again. Only after he baptizes Kundry can he step into the women's realm. Although he and Kundry have been the two characters who have been able to really approach the border and pass things across it, no one has actually crossed that border until this point. (As a total aside, for a wonderful book on the many valences of water as a female symbol, especially for female sexuality, that is both celebrated and denigrated in the Christian tradition, check out Catherine Keller’s Face of the Deep.)

Zerbinetta: I did notice that was when he crossed the river! That's also a key point in the musical development--the pure fool diminished seventh that represents Parsifal is heard with the grail rhythm underneath it for the first time--so I really appreciated the timing.

Pelléas: Well, I can't comment on that bit of music theory ;)

Zerbinetta: In general this was not the most Leitmotiv-conscious production but they did get that one perfectly. You said that balance is the most important thing, but I think of this as a more Buddhist concept than a Christian one. In a similar category, there's the Schopenhauerian negation of the Will which you haven't really mentioned but still seems to me to be very important element of the work, though perhaps not of Girard's interpretation of it. (Also in the Eastern category, there is a LOT of obvious yoga in Act 3.) But the symbols you are discussing here are all very specifically Christian. What do you think of this mixture?

Pelléas: It strikes me very much as a 19th century orientalist looking at Buddhism or The East. A lot of philosophers at the time viewed India as this pristine, primeval abode of uncorrupted man. None of this really had much to do with India, but with projections of what these Westerners wanted their present, future, or past to be. I think it's appropriate to have all of the symbolism be Christian in this context, because it's honest about what Wagner and a lot of other philosophers were doing with India at the time; the philological study was excellent but the philosophical understanding was a mess. So we're getting at this concept of balance, but balance such a vague idea that it could be Western, it could be Eastern, it could show up anywhere. The wound in Christ’s side is just as good a metaphor of balance as Buddhist equanimity or Vedantic absorption of the Self into the Ātman. But even if we're using Eastern ideas to get there our aims are fully grounded in Western sensibilities and desires, in this case to realize an authentic, historical, dogmatic, balanced Christianity.

The moment when Parsifal tells the women to intersperse with the men he comes closest to giving an authentic sign of the cross as he does in the entire production (and blesses not only those on stage, but the audience too). So even in this cathartic moment Girard is opting for something akin to Christian orthodoxy.

Zerbinetta: On a more basic note, do you have any comment on the interplanetary projections? I wasn't sure about them and some people in my comments section were as well.

Pelléas: I have no clue. It seemed rather lame to me. Definitely not symbolically interesting.

Zerbinetta: They didn’t bother me too much one way or another. OverallI I thought the production was very clean and elegant and modern. It might be a little too minimalist for its own good, though.

Pelléas: I still have questions about the production. It seems that the men are the ones who are reacting baldy to the ecological disaster. They separate from the women. They become ascetics while convinced that women are hypersexualized (when they aren't), they misremember the Eucharist (whereas the women remember it but can't perform it), they forget baptism. Yet why are the women basically passive the entire time? Why do they wait calmly for Kundry to seduce Parsifal and then have Parsifal convince the men of their folly? Why aren't they more active in trying to restore the balance that the production says that they hold the key to?

Zerbinetta: Yeah, that is a problem. I am tempted to say "because Wagner didn't write them in the score, and Wagner's music is so gestural that it's pretty hard to add that much" but then you look at Herheim's Parsifal and, like, NO. You could. That's what the ladies in Act 1 and Act 2 have in common, passivity, and it's why I didn't really think that there was an existential difference between the two (as in one group was real and the other was enchanted or projections of Amfortas’s or Klingsor’s desires).

Pelléas: Well, the lades in Act I are simply passive, but not under anyone's control. The flower maidens are definitely in control of Klingsor. The way they all writhe in unison is like a creepy anime film. Whereas in the prelude I believe the men separate from the women, but it's only when the men depart that the women move to coalesce into their own group. They passively accept their rejection, but aren't actively controlled by anyone.

Zerbinetta: Also it occurs to me that, intellectually, this production is very French. Is it OK to say that? I mean, it gives you these big ideas that are kind of vague but immensely evocative, it's like reading Zizek or something. (I am aware that Zizek isn't French. And that Girard isn’t either.) You like it and it’s kind of inspiring but at least for me you try to really process its meaning and it ends up like mist, or, well, Wagnerdampf. I can't help it, I'm intellectually Germanic, I want everything to be logical and add up.

Pelléas: I feel that it's important to try to point out the deep symbolic nature of the production. Because when you approach it in that respect it's all actually quite coherent and logically argued. It’s quite ingenious actually, because so much of this symbology is in the libretto itself, so Girard isn’t upsetting the traditionalists. But he supplements it in subtle ways and makes it much more intellectually compelling than they would be otherwise.

Zerbinetta: Well, I like your reading, but it’s relatively narrow. While I find it overall more convincing, ingenious, and detailed than Opera Cake’s, I’m not sure about treating these things like puzzles, and this one in particular seems almost actively resistant to specific interpretation. Kind of like Parsifal itself, I guess. You used to have to haul out to Bayreuth just to see it. It does a lot to present itself as a mystic, precious artifact that is full of meaning--but just try explaining exactly what all of that meaning is!

At the same time this production leaves open so many ways of thinking about it, and I think most of them are on the whole progressive and positive. There are poisonous, dangerous messages in most traditional readings of this piece (arguably the most Wagner-adjacent ones), whatever the beauties of the music, and this production seems to avoid those pretty much entirely. That's important. To salvage a message like this out of it seems to be a significant achievement.

Photos copyright Ken Howard/Met

Spanish Inquisition arrives as expected (Don Carlo)

noreply@blogger.com (Zerbinetta) — Fri, 08 Mar 2013 02:43:00 +0000

I kid, I kid. Don Carlo (better yet, Don Carlos) might be Verdi’s grandest tragedy, it also might be my favorite Verdi opera. This current Met revival unfortunately features turgid conducting and a cast that, with the exception of Ferruccio Furlanetto as Filippo, is adequate at best. But I have to give them some credit, which should be shared with Nicholas Hytner’s production. This is a work that easily slips into Bad Opera Comedy. You know: we’ve got a fainting tenor, a veil swap, an abduction by dead emperor, and the nineteenth century’s idea of incest. (The Met titles seemed particularly sensitive about the latter point. Whenever Elisabetta or Carlo said “figlio” or “madre,” they just didn't translate it.) But this performance never went into laugh zone and stayed tragic and dignified. While rarely inspired, it’s basically credible and unlike the Carlo I saw in Vienna in June, never threatened to put me to sleep.

Since I might be the last person in the world to see Nicholas Hytner’s production (which is also in London), I’m not going to describe it in detail, though this was my first experience of it. I don’t mean to damn it with the faint praise of “effective,” but that kind of pared-down traditional, vaguely modern, no really big ideas style is kind of its thing. The sets are simple and stark, the costumes mostly black, white, and red. Everything moves along quickly and it’s handsome without being indulgent, which is good. The Personenregie tended towards the cliched at many points, but there were enough original touches to suggest it was once better. The production doesn’t seem to have particularly strong perspectives on any of its characters, so there was that. And I’m not sure why the priest in the auto-da-fé scene was quite so chatty. And I wish the final Carlo ex machina had been preseved instead of the monk instead just appearing and looking scary. But the story is told in a straightforward, uncluttered way and for the Met this is an achievement.

So if we’re going to give up on Big Ideas, and we’re going to have to (I’m going to only say it once, but Peter Konwitschny’s production of Don Carlos was one of the major things that got me into this whole racket, and if you haven’t seen it you owe it to yourself), let’s get onto the performances. With more good ones this production could be really grand. All were hampered by the lugubrious baton of Lorin Maazel, who never met a tempo he didn’t want to slow down. The orchestra had, sometimes, an impressive solidity, but mostly it just seemed to wander, and the singers struggled to stay with it. Since the first run of this production at the Met was conducted by speed demon Yannick Nézét-Seguin, I vaguely wonder if Maazel was obliged to restore the cosmic balance of the Don Carlo continuum. I’d have preferred if he hadn’t. The orchestra did fine, the cello solo was excellent, but the chorus sounded out of sorts and there were some major coordination issues.

Overall I found Ramon Vargas’s Don Carlo more convincing than his take on the role last June, but nature gave him the voice (and face) of a lyric tenor, and ultimately I don’t think that makes a Carlo. (He couldn't help but play "yeah, that's a picture of me, HI" for laughs.) Carlo’s singing is mostly in the ensembles, and he just didn’t power through the other voices, particularly in his upper range. He’s always stylish and never exactly inaudible, but never particularly compelling either. As Rodrigo, Dmitri Hvorostovsky sported some unfortunately vintage (though not the correct vintage) facial hair--which does not appear in the official production photos--and didn’t sound that great either, a considerable step downwards from when I heard him sing this in around 2006. The sound is forced and gravelly, somehow squeezed.

On the ladies’ side, listening to Anna Smirnova do her best with the Veil Song is a bit like watching a football player attempt yoga. It’s not really in her very loud, metallic mezzo’s skill set. I guess “O don fatale” is, but then you notice that the voice is quite shrill. She brought decibels, but not much in the music or acting departments. Barbara Frittoli probably knows how Elisabetta should sound, but I don’t think she’s got the voice to deliver it anymore, and sounded awfully wobbly, particularly at louder volumes and higher pitches. She was also not an actress of insight in this particular production.

That leaves us with Ferruccio Furlanetto, the best thing about this performance bar none. He was the only one who has created a complex character. His Filipo is not entirely happy to be king, but doesn’t want to follow in Carlos V’s footsteps either, and is very very lonely. His entire “Ella gianmai m’ammo!” was incredibly introspective and vulnerable, yet sung with true basso depth and warmth. (This was a particular contrast to René Pape’s take on the aria last June, which was, despite the claims of the text, a declaration of vocal supremacy. Listen to how amazing my legato is!) Eric Halfvorsen was a chilling Grand Inquisitor, and their scene together was a highlight. Supporting roles were uneven, with Miklós Sebestyén a weak monk and the Voice from Above following up on the Parsifal Voice from Above's act by being exceptionally out of tune.

I’m glad I saw this because I’m almost always glad to see this opera, but a more convincingly lifelike conductor would have helped a lot. If you want to talk about how this opera is even better when it's in its proper French, we can do that in the comments.

Don Carlo runs through March 16. Photos follow the break.

Don Carlo, Met Opera, 3/6/2012. Production by Nicholas Hytner (revival), conducted by Lorin Maazel with Ramón Vargas (Don Carlo), Ferruccio Furlanetto (King Philip II), Barbara Frittoli (Elisabetta), Dmitri Hvorostovsky (Rodrigo), Anna Smirnova (Princess Eboli), Eric Halfvorsen (Grand Inquisitor)

Photos copyright Ken Howard/Met

Around the Carousel at the NY Phil

noreply@blogger.com (Zerbinetta) — Fri, 01 Mar 2013 21:40:00 +0000

I went to see the classic American musical Carousel as performed by the New York Philharmonic with Nathan Gunn, Kelli O'Hara, and Stephanie Blythe, and I wrote about it for Bachtrack.

While musicals are normally outside the purview of major symphony orchestras, fans of Rodgers and Hammerstein can only be grateful for the New York Philharmonic’s beautiful staging of Carousel, currently onstage at Avery Fisher Hall. Broadway has changed a lot since Carousel premièred in 1945, and the big voices, big string sections, and homespun spirit that the Philharmonic has brought to this five-performance run arguably serve the material better than today’s Great White Way could. It is a treat to hear this score performed so well.

You can read the rest here. Go see this if you can, it's gorgeous. It's a troubling and in some ways very disturbing show, but I think they deal with the problematic elements in a way where they seem like part of the difficulties of life and love (Julie is clearly, particularly in this production, a lady with issues) not an endorsement of anything violent. That last line, though--you'll see what--is pretty awful in any context.

I love musicals, but don't go to them too often on Broadway because the tiny, heavily synthesized orchestras and heavily amplified singing really grate on my ears. Even some of the nominally classy productions like Sunday in the Park with George feature awful synthesized bands and I just can't enjoy them much. (I did like the orchestra in the recent Follies revival, though the production itself was flawed.) I'd rather go see a college production with a full band. Additionally, college musical theater is more reliably fun than college opera, because the music is far less technically demanding to sing.

But there are still a ton of great Broadway singers out there, so it was a real pleasure to hear them in this production with a proper orchestra and relatively natural acoustic. (I neglected to mention this in the review, but Carousel was, as one would expect with a musical, amplified, noticeably but not nearly as artificially as you hear on Broadway--and keep in mind that Avery Fisher is far larger than a Broadway theater.) I'm not very up on many current Broadway performers (see above) other than the really obvious ones, so it was great to discover Jessie Mueller as Carrie, who has a wonderful voice.

Carousel runs through Saturday and will be broadcast on PBS in April. Highly recommended.

The Turn of the Screw at City Opera

noreply@blogger.com (Zerbinetta) — Mon, 25 Feb 2013 21:24:00 +0000

Britten with Star Wars

I went to see The Turn of the Screw at the New York City Opera and I wrote about it for Bachtrack:

Benjamin Britten’s 1954 opera The Turn of the Screw is a sensible choice for the New York City Opera: its chamber orchestration and emotional intimacy make it unsuitable for production by the Met Opera (against which every other company in town must define itself), and its claustrophobia would seem to offer a great opportunity for one of the company’s more innovative directors to create something creepy and unexpected. It also enjoys the name recognition to fill seats – which has, unfortunately, been an issue for the company’s more adventurous recent efforts. But while this production, which opened at the Brooklyn Academy of Music on Sunday afternoon, offers a step forward in musical values from some of the company’s other recent efforts, it doesn’t really do this striking work justice.

Click here to read the whole thing.

It was good to see this opera being performed in the right kind of space, and it was good to hear the City Opera return to thoroughly professional musical values (some of their efforts last season left me in doubt), but the production is, er, screwed up.

The best voice and best performance in the cast belonged to Sara Jakubiak as the Governess. Note to Germans: she'll be singing in Dresden soon (Rosalinde) and is in the ensemble at Frankfurt starting next season.

I am sorry to have missed City Opera's production of Powder Her Face, but the scheduling was impossible for me.

The Turn of the Screw runs through March 2.

Photo copyright Richard Termine.

Parsifal: the Met's knights to remember

noreply@blogger.com (Zerbinetta) — Sat, 16 Feb 2013 17:25:00 +0000

The most enthralling section of Met’s new production of Parsifal is a portion that, in most productions, is the most dreaded: the first two-thirds of Act 3. Too often it's a bore, but here it’s hypnotic, sinking the audience deeply into the ritualistic and the very slow, from the music to the movements onstage. It is drama like this--grave and mysterious--that this production does best.

In many ways this performance was a big win for the Met. This is a musically outstanding Parsifal with great performances that balance the human and the mythic. There are many disturbing and sad things in it. The production is beautiful and has some striking visual moments. But these moments aren’t quite enough to make an interpretation, and I was left moved but with some big questions.

Wagner, Parsifal. Metropolitan Opera, 2/15/2012. New production premiere directed by François Girard, conducted by Daniele Gatti with Jonas Kaufmann (Parsifal), René Pape (Gurnemanz), Katarina Dalayman (Kundry), Peter Mattei (Amfortas), Evgeny Nikitin (Klingsor)

The setting of François Girard's production is quite abstract. Before the performance, an undulating reflection of the opera house’s lights on the curtain informs us that this is a story about us. The staged prelude shows a lineup of anonymous men and women. Only Parsifal stands out, smack in the middle but not participating. The men take off their jackets and ties and separate from the women. This is not very much to occur during the 14 or so minutes of prelude (bless you, Gatti), and it goes by, like the music, with ceremonial gravity.

The lights come up on a brown-orange desert wasteland bisected by a dried-up river (Michael Levine is the set designer). On the cyc, projections show, for now, a serious of scary storm-is-a-comin' clouds. These evolve later into a series of planets, vague plumes of smoke, and what looks like extreme closeups of naked skin (the Met should hire the designer, Peter Flaherty, to do a makeover on the Lepage Screensavers). The men form a single tight circle on the right, the women loiter on the other side of the river on the left. All the male knight characters emerge from this circle; Kundry never crosses the river.

(actually Act 3)

The stage pictures are fairly static but the acting gives the characters real humanity and vulnerability--Amfortas is dragged around by two knights, unable to stand alone, and Parsifal collapses when he hears of his mother’s death (whether Parsifal should have as much Mitleid for the swan and Act 1 Amfortas as he shows… well, I’m not as sure about that). But there’s also a ritual quality to the knights’ choreographed prayer movements and occasional simultaneous reactions, preserving (along with the abstraction of the setting) a sense of mystery. This combination is the best thing about the production. Other things are quite traditional: Kundry is given a conventional crazy lady interpretation, and the grail is a glowing golden goblet in a box. The swan is a swan, though also a symbol of femininity, brought on by a Flower Maiden and kept only on the women’s side of the stage.

At the end of the act, the dried-up river opens up into a chasm and Parsifal looks down into it. In Act 2, we’re down there, and it’s Klingsor’s lair, and it’s also Amfortas’s wound, which we get because of the enormous pool of blood covering most of the stage (the looming walls with a gap upstage center it also look like a giant vagina--somehow Act 2 of Parsifal is the locus classicus of vaginal set design). While the first act mixed the aesthetic with the symbolic, here the aesthetic takes over nearly completely. Klingsor is a bloody version of the knights, the flower maidens a mixture of dancers and singers with knee-length black hair and white dresses and their own spears (the very effective choreography is by Carolyn Choa). Everyone splashes around in the blood, Kundry attempts to seduce Parsifal (none too sexily here, it comes across as maternal if anything) on a conveniently appearing bed that also starts seeping blood, and finally Parsifal claims the spear with a gesture that I couldn’t quite identify and a straightforward grab from Klingsor.

Act 3 returns to the wasteland, this time pocked with waiting graves for the dying knights. Parsifal reappears, first as a decrepit, unidentifiable (meaning that he is wearing a cloak over his face, in lieu of armor) pilgrim, walking only with the assistance of the spear, then gradually turning into a (shirtless) ecstatic mystic. He also, after baptizing Kundry, crosses the magic river onto the women’s side, and gets the white shirt that marks him as a Grail knight. The return to the Grail Temple reveals knights who can no longer stand together in a circle (or apparently notice the male-female divide). Amfortas ends up in Titurel’s grave, when Kundry (!) finally appears with the Grail box. Then Parsifal shows up, indicates to the women to intersperse themselves with the men, restores the Grail’s power by sticking the spear into it. He lifts up the grail, Kundry collapses lifeless (Wagner says “entseelt”--her soul has finally departed), and all are blessed. (No dove.*)

So it is in many ways a very moving production, with Peter Mattei’s agonized Amfortas and Jonas Kaufmann’s messianic Parsifal taking acting honors. Some of it feels familiar from Syberberg and Lehnhoff (particularly the post-apocalyptic atmosphere), but that's OK. It is, for the most part, enthralling to watch. But I have to say I have grave doubts as to the Meaning of it All. I think preserving a sense of mystery and wonder is crucial to Parsifal’s appeal. But this production does make several big gestures towards having a vision of the drama’s allegorical meaning, too. They aren’t plentiful, as a maximalist who has watched the Herheim Parsifal too many times I find it intellectually quite sparse. Since it doesn’t venture too much, I’m not inclined to cut the production a lot of slack for things that don’t make sense, and I think it has some big issues.

The production’s thesis seems to be that the world--as exemplified by Monsalvat-- is out of joint, the men and women separated and the knights closed into themselves. By making them mix it up and giving Kundry a role in the Grail ceremony, Parsifal restores balance. But by choosing gender as the signifier of spiritual imbalance, Girard makes things very hard for himself. The production ignores the really crucial and pernicious portrayal of women in Act 2. Inside the wound or not, they're still women. (It’s a too infrequently noted hypocrisy of Parsifal that the opera argues that women are the source for the evil from which the knights have to be purified, and yet indulges the work’s audience in a prolonged scene of women singing together and besieging the male hero. Lord, make me chaste, but let me spend a long weekend at the Venusburg first.)

Girard’s idea of the women’s exclusion from society as the source of the knights’ problems really appeals to me. But I’m afraid that if you stage Act 2 as a conventional male gaze sensual extravaganza, which he does, it doesn’t really convince. Parsifal is a confusing work, sure, but it has some central themes that are pretty clear: the knights have been tainted by sensual temptation. Redemption can only come from a pure fool (Parsifal), who first needs to learn compassion. He becomes a sexual ascetic after refusing Kundry’s seduction. So Girard’s idea of inverting this demands some serious intervention in the portrayal of seduction as the source of the knight’s problems as well as Parsifal’s awakening to asceticism, something that he does not do.

The production is largely, sorry, redeemed by the strength and humanity of its performances, and the music. Conductor Daniele Gatti gave a lyrical, mournful rendition of the score, with very slow tempos (a bit faster than his even slower Bayreuth ones). Gurnemanz’s Act 1 monologue, Amfortas’s Act 3 speech, and “Nur wine Waffe taugt” were particularly extreme: the first static, the second spent, the third majestic. “Hier war das Tosen”--the first Flower Maiden section--was, on the other hand, hard-driven. Gatti impresses more through his subtlety than his brilliance, but this was a rendition with a great deal of dramatic gravity. The orchestra sounded better than they have in some time, with the exception of some unfortunate clams in the brass, including a very prominent one in the prelude.

The cast is probably one of the best you could assemble today. Jonas Kaufmann is a fantastic Act 3 Parsifal and an excellent Act 1 and 2 one. He sings and acts this score with remarkable subtlety and musicality, evolving from a bright-sounding and curious boy to an exhausted and finally triumphant mystic, the latter with remarkable stage presence and a darkened sound in which the years between Acts 2 and 3 were audible. He was audibly pacing himself, but sounded great at the biggest moments, most memorably the final section of "Amfortas! Die Wunde!" (you can see a video of the first part of this below). Peter Mattei is a highly unusual Amfortas. This role is usually barked and spat out, but he sings it with warmth and somewhat Italianate style, and acts it with enough agony that never became aimless flailing. He also can cope with Gatti’s extreme tempos, and make them meaningful. René Pape is a Gurnemanz of depth and honeyed tone, who makes those monologues go by as quickly as they could, and with rare authority and nobility.

Katarina Dalayman as Kundry had a rough Act 1, with a rather unruly dramatic soprano that didn’t always sound quite when it needed to. But lack of control isn’t always a bad thing in a Kundry (nor is trouble with high notes, and she had that as well), and she actually managed the lyrical moments in Act 2 very well, building up to the dramatic high points with excellent timing. It’s a shame that the production didn’t do more with her character. Evgeny Nikitin (he of the Bayreuth tattoo scandal) was a suitably nasty Klingsor. As Titurel, debutant Rúni Brattaberg sounded cavernous, but it’s hard to judge as I believe he was amplified from above. The Flower Maidens were a good group, and the minor knights were fine. The Voice from Above experienced some intonational issues.

It is well worth seeing, first and foremost for the music. The production provides an engrossing sensory experience that should be accessible for those not familiar with the opera, but more experienced Wagnerians may be somewhat troubled by the logical gaps and selectivity of the production. It remains, however, a big win for the Met.

More photos below the video. Parsifal continues through February and early March; the inevitable HD broadcast is on March 2.

*Wagner literalists: I want to see someone stage Amfortas's vision exactly as he describes it in the libretto, with the letters in the air.

Photos copyright Ken Howard/Met.
Video:

Photos:

[Tenor] + Wagner

noreply@blogger.com (Zerbinetta) — Fri, 15 Feb 2013 03:01:00 +0000

It's Wagner Year. In case you did not remember that the composer was born in 1813, two very prominent German tenors would like to remind you with their new CDs. (It's Verdi Year too, but he'll have to wait.)

Klaus Florian Vogt's Wagner was released in Europe in January, Jonas Kaufmann's Wagner internationally this week. The former is, for Americans, a bit tricky to locate, and thus I have not heard it yet. Amazon does have it... out of stock. (It's not available as a download as far as I can find.) The latter is on iTunes and Amazon and such.

It's hard not to compare and contrast because the two have extremely different voices yet—particularly if you include their earlier CDs in this fach, Kaufmann's Sehnsucht and Vogt's Helden—they are singing almost the same music. No, really, they are:

(*on a different Jonas Kaufmann CD. Also, sorry about the chronological issues above.)

In both cases this includes roles neither has attempted onstage (yet, at least)—in Vogt's case Tristan, in Kaufmann's Tannhäuser, and Siegfried and Rienzi for both.

(The below will be old news for anyone who has heard these guys, but if you haven't it should be interesting.) Vogt has an unbelievably pure, angelic timbre that sounds like it is not of this earth. On recordings his voice resembles a very light tenor, but somehow live he projects perfectly over a large orchestra (though as Siegmund I thought his low notes were lacking). He has lovely diction and tends towards dramatic understatement, making his singing hypnotically placid. While he has sung Lohengrin at the Met (a while ago), most of his career is in Europe, as suggested by the minimal American availability of this CD. His most popular role is Lohengrin, here is his "In fernem Land" from Bayreuth in 2011. Andris Nelsons conducts.

Kaufmann is the more internationally known quantity, and his voice couldn't be more different from Vogt's: forceful, dark, heavy, and yet still brilliant on the top notes. He tends to sing with great variety of colors and dynamics, as well lots of drama. Here is his "In fernem Land" from La Scala in 2012, you can hear and see the differences. Daniel Barenboim conducts. Annette Dasch is Elsa, as she is for Vogt above.

I don't want to review either of these CDs yet (I just downloaded the Kaufmann and have listened to it only once so far--but the Tannhäuser and Siegfried excerpts both knocked my socks off). Meanwhile, let's talk about something superficial that doesn't require listening to anything: why do all these CDs have such odd cover art? Cast your vote for the "best" in the poll below.

On his first CD, Klaus Florian wants you to join his cult. It's like Scientology, but with more Leitmotiven. I went to the concert where he recorded this album, by the way, and I wrote about it. He didn't wear armor.

On his first Wagner effort, Jonas tries to revive the Victorian "living painting" thing.

On his second CD, Klaus Florian has finally located the World Ash Tree! (Probably somewhere in the Englischer Garten.)

On his second Wagner CD, Jonas is auditioning for the operatic adaptation of Taken 2 (Getookt).

Which one is the most epic? (I don't mean good, I mean, well, memorable.)
(May not work on RSS views--click to the full entry to vote.) You know where you can find me again. (I'll be reporting after tomorrow's Parsifal premiere.)

A Parsifal Leitmotiv guide

noreply@blogger.com (Zerbinetta) — Sat, 09 Feb 2013 15:06:00 +0000

they left out the Ni-Motiv.

The Met's new production of Parsifal, premiering on February 15, is one of the most-anticipated events of the season in New York. (For me, at least. See also.) In my continuing quest to be useful, and as a sequel to my Ring Leitmotiv guide of last year, here is a guide to the motives and other recurring themes of Parsifal for your reference and appreciation. This one I did not make myself, it is from an old public domain piano-vocal edition of the score. Not all the terms and associations are really up with current thinking on this piece, but if you're just getting started it should suit you fine. After the jump you can find it as an embedded PDF (which you can download here as well), with my translations of the German terms following.

This table lists the motives in approximate order of appearance. Since some motives appear only very briefly in Act 1 and are far more prominent in Act 2 (all the magic garden stuff), they might seem out of order, but they aren't.

Note for newbies: Parsifal won't appear on anyone's Most Accessible Operas list, but if you have patience it rewards your efforts. It was my first Wagner opera, er, music drama, er, Bühnenweihfestspiel, which I don't advise for others but it just... happened and I got into it eventually. Don't expect it to necessarily be immediately appealing, though, you need to let it sink in. Though maybe you're a Parsifal idiot savant, a Parsifal Parsifal. Who knows? (Also, you could try reading this book chapter, and I am recommending in part for its title, which is "Strange Love, or, How We Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Parsifal," and also for the phrase, "a kind of Armageddon cocktail with large twists of Schopenhauer and Buddha," but mostly because it is very clear, informative, and thought-provoking.)

Here is the key to all that archaic German, in painfully literal translation.

Liebesmahlthema: theme of the love feast (i.e. Last Supper), Leidens-M.: motive of sorrow, Speer-M.: motive of the spear
Grals-M: motive of the Grail
Glaubenstheme: Theme of belief/faith (Umgestaltungen des Glaubensthema: transformations of the theme of belief/faith)
M. der Schwermut: motive of melancholy
Heilesbuße-M.: motive of the healing/salvation-giving kiss
Amfortas-M.: Amfortas motive
M. der Verheißung (Toren-M.): motive of promise (fool motive)
Ritter-M.: rider/knight motive (Kundry)
Kundry-M.: Kundry motive
M. des Dienens: motive of servitude
Waldesmelodie: forest melody
Zauber-M.: motive of magic
Leidens-M.: motive of sorrow (see theme of the love-feast)
Speer-M.: motive of the spear (see theme of the love-feast)
Charfreitags-M. (i.e. Karfreitag): motive of Good Friday
Klingsor-M.: Klingsor motive
Kose-M.: motive of caressing
Mädchenklage: maidens' plaint
Minnebegehr-M.: motive of the desire for courtly love (sorry, not so translatable -ed.)
Streit-M.: motive of conflict
Schmeichel-M.: motive of flattery
Schwan-M. (Lohengrin): swan motive (Lohengrin)
Parsifal-M.: Parsifal motive
Herzeleide-M.: Herzeleide motive (Parsifal's mother -ed.)
Gralsglocken-M.: motive of the grail bells
Hingebungs-M.: motive of devotion
Schmerzensweh-M.: motive of suffering (Herzeleide)
M. des Sehnens: motive of yearning (Kundry)
Verführungsfigur: figure of seduction
M. der Öde: motive of desolation
M. des Irrens: motive of deception
Entsühnungsmelodie: melody of atonement
Blumenauethema: theme of the field of flowers
Segesspruch: indication of blessing
Totenfeierthema: funeral theme
Weihegruß: salutation of consecration

Met takes a bet on a new Rigoletto

noreply@blogger.com (Zerbinetta) — Tue, 29 Jan 2013 16:14:00 +0000

The Met has been turning out productions that look like they belong in Vegas for decades. I guess that it makes a certain amount of sense that they would eventually, in the their quest for theatrical creativity that will still satisfy the rather conservative audience, come up with something that is actually set in Vegas. But while the Met’s usual goal seems to be something like The Venetian, or, hell, Cirque de Soleil (hello, Robert Lepage), this here Rigoletto is an update set in historical 1960s Vegas, which means dangerous and sleazy stuff rather than Zeffirelli’s dancing cows in Traviata. Rigoletto, a story about an absolute ruler who abducts and rapes an innocent girl, whose father then takes out a hit on him, could be dangerous and sleazy? My stars, look at what they’re doing at the Met these days. So shocking.

To be fair, the audience seemed to realize that nothing very alarming is going on in this tame, relatively entertaining production. From my seat the boos were surprisingly few. The real problem is, fairly unusually for a Met new production, some seriously mediocre music-making.

Verdi, Rigoletto. Metropolitan Opera, 1/28/2013. New production premiere directed by Michael Mayer, sets by Christine Jones, costumes by Susan Hilferty, lights by Kevin Adams, choreography by Steven Hoggett. Conducted by Michele Mariotti with Zeljko Lucic (Rigoletto), Piotr Beczala (Duke), Diana Damrau (Gilda), Stefan Kocán (Sparafucile), and Oksana Volkova (Maddalena).

Conventional opera fan wisdom had written off this production by Michael Mayer as a total train wreck before anyone even saw it. He’s a Broadway director with no opera experience, and that often goes badly. But let me say before I start to criticize it: it’s not great and has basically no emotional payoff, but it’s still pretty much watchable, and I’d take it any day over several other recent productions--Elisir, the Ring and Faust, just to name a few.

The setting is 1960’s Las Vegas, den of sin. We don’t see terribly much sin--David McVicar’s Rigoletto is far more debauched--but there are enough shiny suits to know that none of these courtiers are up to anything good. There’s about ten seconds of pole dancing at the start of Act 3, which was enough to get the audience buzzing but come on, guys, this is the modern world, it’s not much. The Duke is a vaguely shady sort of Sinatra-type singer, who apparently has his pick of the ladies (or “good-looking dolls,” as the subtitles put it) and does “Questo o quella” as an elaborate production number involving some showgirls with feathers. This is, it turns out, the most complicated aria staging in the whole production by a long shot, and the Met has helpfully put a video up on their website and you can watch it here. (Considering that Piotr Beczala is singing the Duke, here we have another sort of Pole dancing.)

Christine Jones’s sets are big and colorful and deal ably with the excess space. She alternates large spaces with smaller ones defined only by light frames--effectively so in Act 3 but more confusingly in Act 1. It uses lots of neon to decent effect, including some palm trees in Act 1 and some flashy lighting bolts in Act 3. Monterone is an Arab, supposedly an outsider, but since his introduction is right after some casino Egyptian kitsch I was unsure whether he was supposed to be taken seriously, because he looks pretty silly in those surroundings, honestly, and it robs the moment of its power. There’s clever stuff too--I liked Sparafucile and Rigoletto meeting at a sad late night bar, and the set’s elevators doors get people on and off helpfully. But there’s certain carelessness with details that gives a few bits a somewhat amateur touch. The Duke’s elaborate break-in to Rigoletto’s house by way of the garden wall makes no sense here (I’m not saying you have to do it the way the libretto says but you have to come up with some reason they’re singing what they are), and the passed out drunk chorus all waking up together just in time to sing the chorus after “Parmi veder le lagrime” (with a nice light change) is unintentionally hilarious.

This is basically a traditional Rigoletto in updated dress. The story is told fairly clearly with no major logical gaps or problems. It goes, and Rigoletto is such an expertly paced work that it never feels too slack. But the design concept and the characters never connect with each other, and the characterization is catch as catch can. Rigoletto is some kind of outsider jester figure in an ugly cardigan, but his relationship with his surroundings is never clear, and the performance here becomes a major problem (more on that in a second).

More seriously, Mayer never demands us to take the material seriously. That’s OK, but nor does he seem to find enough fun in the over-the-top nature of his setting to make it intense in a different sense either. The smartass Damon Runyon titles, which elaborate and interpolate (most memorably a line about making sure Rigoletto has enough gas in his car to get to the river, once he has Gilda’s body in the trunk) constantly take us out of the drama. The whole thing is PG at most, with no real sense of danger. (OK, Monterone gets knocked off. There’s that. But I want to see Gilda’s kidnapping for once be really frightening, not bordering on unintentional comedy. She gets stuffed into an Egyptian sarcophagus here.) For all its garish color this production is kind of bland and lacking in oomph. It entertains well enough, but it never punches you in the gut, it’s too slick and superficial for its own good. It needed a little more dirty, scary melodrama to get under our skin.

One major issue was the lack of focus in the performances and conducting. The cast is basically up their doing their standard Rigoletto characterizations, with little that connects them to the setting or each other. Also putting a lid on everything is Michele Mariotti’s tired, endlessly unexciting conducting. Seriously, he makes Richard Bonynge sound like Giulini. I was sitting in rear orchestra, which is a bad place acoustically, but I was amazed at how quiet and unexciting the whole thing sounded, with no snap or energy whatsoever. The first diminished seventh chord had no sting, slow tempos were very slow and not flexible, and fast ones had no drive. I have to wonder how Mariotti got this job with such poor results. The orchestra sounded fine, though.

The biggest casualty otherwise was Zeljko Lucic in the title role, who also seemed to be having a poor night vocally. His Rigoletto was undersung and underacted, with little stature, soul, or edge. His lyric voice has fine warm tone and he was never inaudible, but nor did he have the force or heft that would make him the main character. Something big was missing here, particularly in the seriously underwhelming “Cortigiani.” The “Si, la vendetta” triplets got away from him, but the lack of bite was more serious.

Piotr Beczala wasn’t in quite his best voice either, sounding a little congested around the middle of his range. But that’s only according to his very high standards, and his Duke was still beautifully sung, with sweet tone and fine musicality and just enough freedom of rhythm to make the character. Acting-wise he is more animated than Lucic and did everything with enthusiasm and good spirit, but at least from rear orchestra he never quite vanished into the role. He’s a little bit too much of a nice, modest sort of guy, more naturally Gualtier Maldè than Duca. One needs, strangely enough, a more self-regarding tenor here. (The second cast has Vittorio Grigolo, just saying.)

Diana Damrau was the finest actor in the cast, her Gilda a compelling portrait of insecurity, curiosity, and helplessness. This is a totally unbelievable character, but she plays up the sheltered aspect enough to make it kind of make sense. After two babies her voice has newfound warm and luster, and she’s not a tweety bird Gilda. Sometimes she sings just under or over the pitch, which irritates me a bit, but this was still a complete portrayal. If only the various performances had seemed to have a little more to do with each other! Some parts kind of work but it seem like it's mostly by chance, at times everything falls into static park and bark.

In the smaller roles, Stefan Kocan showed excellent feeling for the concept as a greasy Sparafucile, and sang loudly enough if not particularly cavernously. I remember my friend Scott saying of the Maddalena in an old Met Rigoletto video (I believe this one), “I wonder how it feels to be the breasts of the production.” In this case the relevant body parts are the legs and they belong to Oksana Volkova but she also does a perfectly OK job singing one of the most thankless roles in Verdi.

The best thing is that I can see this production working much better with a cast and conductor that can get it together a little more. There’s no grand concept here, but it makes a big visual impression and with more energy and magnetism from the performers it would be a lot more exciting. The second cast has, as well as ideally egotistical Grigolo, super Rigoletto George Gagnidze and wonderful Lisette Oropesa as Gilda, so it might be worth checking out. ~~Unfortunately it also has Mariotti~~. Mariotti is replaced by the always adequate Marco Armiliato, who in this case should be an improvement. The inevitable HD broadcast features the first cast and will be on February 16.

Dates and tickets here.

But it’s ironic, isn’t it? We’d all dismissed the production when it turns out that the music should have been our concern all along.

The only photos I can find so far are just of the sets with techies and no singers, but here are a few to give you an idea of the look. All copyright Ron Berard/Metropolitan Opera.

Special knight's offer

noreply@blogger.com (Zerbinetta) — Thu, 24 Jan 2013 13:36:00 +0000

A dear friend of mine has had to cancel her trip to New York and is selling two tickets to the Met's Parsifal premiere on February 15, 2013 (this performance). These are two excellent very front orchestra seats--if Tony Pappano were conducting, they would come with a grunting advisory. (I cannot provide any information on Daniele Gatti's sound effects or lack thereof.) Please email me at likelyimpossibilities [at] gmail [dot] com if you're interested and I'll put you in touch with her.

A brief word of warning, however: nearly six hours of operatic chastity promotion may not be the best idea for a belated Valentine's Day date night.

UPDATE: The tickets have been sold.

Jonas Kaufmann's miller in Jersey

noreply@blogger.com (Zerbinetta) — Fri, 18 Jan 2013 15:31:00 +0000

A number of New Yorkers stopped making fun of New Jersey for long enough to go hear Jonas Kaufmann sing Die schöne Müllerin in Princeton last night (at least judging by the small mob headed towards the Dinky at the end). It was worth it: this was a really great performance, and surprisingly different from his recording of a few years ago. On the whole, this one was far more interesting (and the recording is not bad!).

Jonas Kaufmann, tenor; Helmut Deutsch, piano. Schubert, Die schöne Müllerin. McCarter Theater, Princeton, NJ, 1/17/2013.

I should first say that unlike at Kaufmann’s Met recital and last summer’s Winterreise, this time I actually sat close enough for a proper Lieder experience (and this theater was much smaller, as well), so that might be part of the reason I thought it was so good. You pick up a lot more at close range; this rep wasn’t written for people in the Family Circle.

Kaufmann fully identifies with the miller character rather than going for the slight narrative detachment or touch of ironic commentary of many lieder singers. This might make his Müllerin more compelling than his Winterreise—the miller goes through a much more drastic transformation and range of moods. This was a compelling journey with a not-so-stable character, delivered with beautiful musicality, excellent diction, and an engagingly natural and outgoing stage presence that supported his embodied (rather than narrated) interpretation.

It might be a little hard to buy Kaufmann’s Heldentenor-tending voice as the rather wimpy and tentative miller boy. What hunter wouldn’t run if faced with his mighty high Gs in “Der Jäger”’s “kehrt um”? And the burly heft of the arpeggios in the “Was ich hebe, was ich trage” section of “Am Feierabend” belied this first line of the stanza, “Ach, wie ist mein Arm so schwach!” Peter Pears or Mark Padmore he ain’t. (Not that Padmore can’t work up a good bellow when he wants to, but he uses the visible strain and effort expended for dramatic effect. With Kaufmann there is no obvious effort.) But it makes sense once you think of it as an internal monologue; the miller's frustrations can be scaled to a Heldentenor range of desperation. And most of this was delivered at a moderate to soft dynamic level, with big voice moments being the exception.

I really liked what Helmut Deutsch did with the piano part, producing a smoothly-flowing brook that never clunked but shifted colors and textures very subtly. Kaufmann was also subtle and varied, particularly in the strophic songs, where he followed the narrative of the text through the repeating music. His miller started off earnest and curious but already by “Dankgesang an den Bach,” the first sign of the girl, less enchanted than perturbed. “Der Neugierige” was one of the highlights of the cycle, the first two stanzas halting and broken, the rest slow and sustained.

The “Dein ist mein Herz” refrain of “Ungeduld” got a varied treatment from soft to thundering, and you got the feeling that the affection between the miller and his would-be girlfriend had never really been mutual. “Des Müllers Blumen” showed a smooth legato, and “Mein!” returned to a kind of rushed desperation. Some of the grace notes may have been sacrificed for the sake of Lohengrin (but in the video linked above Peter Pears misses a few of them as well).

After “Pause,” the rest was pretty much bleak. He already seemed to suspect that green was trouble from its first appearance (it was at this point that I realized I had subconsciously chosen a green sweater that morning--must be reading Intermezzo too much), and “Der Jäger” and “Eifersucht und Stolz” were taken at a rapid pace. “Trockne Blumen” I found most interesting. The final, E major section is often treated as a euphoric vision of the afterlife--the dead flowers in the miller’s grave are transformed into blooming ones, which remind the girl of his faithfulness to her--here the flowers served as a vengeful, nasty reminder that she done him wrong. This miller isn’t about to forgive his (mostly imaginary) girlfriend so easily.

This even extended to “Des Baches Wiegenlied,” mostly done in hushed mezza voce but becoming vehement at “hinweg, hinweg.” Apparently the brook isn’t forgiving either, though very end was more peaceful. Unusually, we got an encore, which was the eminently appropriate “Der Jüngling an der Quelle,” another boy contemplating watery abandonment, with the attendant rippling piano figures.

A really absorbing and interesting performance, and probably the best Liederabend I've heard from Jonas Kaufmann.

French Revolution defeats Roberto Alagna

noreply@blogger.com (Zerbinetta) — Mon, 07 Jan 2013 22:46:00 +0000

I went to see Andrea Chénier at the Opera Orchestra of New York and I wrote about it for Bachtrack.

Yesterday I went to see a convoluted story about French revolutionaries, as belted out at top volume to serviceable but hardly creative ballads. No, I didn’t go to the Les misérables movie. I went to see Roberto Alagna in Opera Orchestra of New York’s concert presentation of Umberto Giordano’s Andrea Chénier.

Read the rest here. This was bad, people. Roberto Alagna had barely learned the music, had no conception of the role, and seemed not quite present all afternoon. Alberto Veronesi is not a master conductor and didn't offer anything to make up for this deficit, nor was he probably the ideal choice to lead someone unsure through this rhythmically tricky music for the first time. Kristin Lewis had some issues and this role was a little more than her voice can handle right now, volume-wise--at least with Veronesi's insensitive conducting, in the unfriendly surroundings of Avery Fisher--but the sound is interesting, and I would like to give her another chance under happier circumstances. George Petean was the real pro here, and turned in a thoroughly decent performance, though not as scene-stealing as Rosalind Elias.

But a sad spectacle. I like Alagna (sometimes, it seems, inexplicably), the guy still has an attractive voice and considerable charm, but this was embarrassing for everyone. Maybe it's personal issues, maybe he just didn't take this gig seriously, but I hope this is just a temporary slip.

Photo copyright Stephanie Berger.

Best Performances of 2012

noreply@blogger.com (Zerbinetta) — Sun, 06 Jan 2013 15:24:00 +0000

"You aren't about to leave Serse off your Best Performances list, are you?"

I felt like I had a disproportionate number of "almosts" this year--plenty of wonderful singing, playing, conducting, directing, etc., but almost every performance came with a serious caveat that some other element was seriously lacking (e.g., I loved Christopher Alden's production of Così at the City Opera, and the cast was overall quite excellent, but the orchestra was oy). So it usually goes in opera. While my "best performances" list is short, tons of great stuff didn't fit in here here--Nina Stemme's Brünnhilde! Christian Gerhaher! The Makropulos Case! But if you want to see what I have to think about any of them, well, read the archives of this blog, because if I relived everything this would be really long. On that note, I had best proceed.

Best Performances of 2012

Serse (Komische Oper): Who knew that Regietheater wizard Stefan Herheim would turn into Mel Brooks when attempting Baroque opera? This production had a joyous and knowing attitude towards opera, and super performances from the Komische Oper ensemble. Some of it was a little recycled, but that was kind of the point, and I’ve actually found myself describing it to explain how Baroque opera works, it’s that spot-on. This production needs to be on DVD, so I can watch it whenever I’m feeling sad about life.

Der Ring des Nibelungen (Bayerische Staatsoper): A modest Ring for unsure times, it suggested that in the end all we need is love. Fair enough, for the Ring. While sometimes too minimal for me to have strong opinions about (until a somewhat discordant, blaringly ideological Götterdämmerung), it did have a quiet poetry, and some achingly earnest performances from Anja Kampe, Nina Stemme, and Wolfgang Koch, and the entire cast did the text and drama proud. Even without directly comparing it to the Met’s DOA Lepage Ring, it had palpable life.

Lulu (Semper Oper Dresden): A scintillating performance by Gisela Stille in the title role, Cornelius Meister’s eloquent conducting, a marvelously committed cast in… another Herheim production, this one with some seriously scary clowns. I know I'm boring by just praising him all the time, but his work has a way of growing and gaining coherence in your memory as time passes, as you make sense of it for yourself.

Excellent Musical Performances: Wozzeck in concert at Avery Fisher Hall (not reviewed, sorry), La clemenza di Tito (Met), Khovanshchina (Met)

Excellent Productions (new or relatively new): Così fan tutte (Christopher Alden, City Opera), Mitridate, re di Ponto (David Bösch, Bayerische Staatsoper), Wozzeck (Andreas Kriegenburg, Bayerische Staatsoper)

Best Individual Performances

ANJAAA! (with KLAUS FLORIAAAN!)

Anja Kampe (Sieglinde, Die Walküre, Bayerische Staatsoper) Such raw, vivid expression! My offer of a year or two ago to found an Anja Kampe Fan Club still stands.

Anna Netrebko (Mimì, La bohème, Salzburg) The perfect role for her lush voice and earnestly vivacious presence.

Elina Garanca (Sesto, La clemenza di Tito, Met). I never thought I would say that! Very elegant.

Simon Keenlyside (Wozzeck, Wozzeck, Munich and Bayerische Staatsoper) Terrifying.

Classing Up the Joint, AKA Fabulous Performances Under Questionable Circumstances:

Bryn Terfel (Wotan, Ring, Met) There was more to one of his monologues than to whole acts of Lepage.

Waltraud Meier (Waltraute, Götterdämmerung, Met) There was also more to hers. A cameo that nearly redeemed the whole evening.

Anna Caterina Antonacci (Cassandre, Les Troyens, ROH) Maybe the Trojans didn’t believe her Cassandra, but the audience definitely did.

Jonas Kaufmann (Bacchus, Ariadne auf Naxos, Salzburg) Great singing with shamelessly bonkers acting.

Best Conductors

Esa-Pekka Salonen (Wozzeck, not reviewed)

Cornelius Meister (Lulu)
~~Mikhail~~ Kirill (SORRY) Petrenko (Khovanshchina)

Names to Watch

Guanqun Yu (Leonora, Trovatore, Met)

Jennifer Rowley (Orasia, Orpheus, City Opera)

Jamie Barton (Agnese, Beatrice di Tenda, Collegiate Chorale)

Hannah Hipp (Anna, Les Troyens, ROH)

Paul Appleby (Hylas, Les Troyens, Met)

Ryan Speedo Green (The Mandarin, Turandot, Met)

Least Awful New Met Production

Un ballo in maschera. It seemed like a decent production with a few issues, unlike most of the rest, which were issues without the potential for goodness. (Runner-up: Manon.)

Most Interesting Performance That Wasn’t Actually Good

Fidelio (Dresden). The singing ranged from bad to really bad (Evelyn Herlitzius can be epic, but on this night she wasn’t), but this production has been hanging around since 1989. That’s a momentous date, particularly when you’re talking about Fidelio.

Best Trend

Video streaming on the internet from European opera houses. Unlike the Met HD broadcasts, these free, not that high quality productions (meaning the quality of the recording, not of the performance--the picture isn't high def, the stage lights aren't brightened for the occasion, and the sound can be a little tinny) aren’t aiming to replace the live opera experience (which is my biggest problem with the Met program, it teaches us to be numb to the virtues of liveness), and they make great, unique stuff accessible worldwide to people who would otherwise not see them. The leaders in this category are Brussels’s La Monnaie and Munich’s Bayerische Staatsoper. The TV channels Arte and Medici also produce webcasts, which tend to be very high quality but often have regional restrictions (though sometimes you can find these, ahem, elsewhere--big thanks to those kind souls who disseminate things like the Bayreuth Parsifal and La Scala Lohengrin, both of which I loved).

Worst Trend
Assuming that you audience is uninterested in complexity and depth, both intellectual and emotional. The Met's worst efforts this year--the Ring and Enchanted Island--presumed the attention span and maturity of a 13-year old (or less). Dumbing things down left us with shows that were insipid, shallow, and actually pretty boring. While not everyone has a great knowledge of opera, operagoers are generally educated and curious people accustomed to films and books that are drastically more sophisticated that the kinds of things going on at many American opera houses. They can be spoken to like adults. (Some of them may find this surprising, OK, but they can learn.)

Let's hope for a great 2013!

Maria Stuarda loses her head on the eve of 2013

noreply@blogger.com (Zerbinetta) — Wed, 02 Jan 2013 04:06:00 +0000

"I had a dream my gala would be/So different from this pilgrim dress I'm wearing..."

One of the less-noted trends of the Peter Gelb era has been the renaissance of bel canto (and bel canto-adjacent) opera at the Met. So far we have had new productions of Anna Bolena, L’elisir d’amore, La fille du régiment, Lucia di Lammermoor, La sonnambula, Armida, Il barbiere di Siviglia, and Le Comte Ory (as well as Don Pasquale just before Gelb’s regime began). To this list you can now add Maria Stuarda, the middle installment of a Donizetti “Queens” trilogy directed by David McVicar. (This began with Bolena last season, the final entry will be Roberto Devereux, reportedly featuring Sondra Radvonovsky next season.)

I think bel canto has proven compatible with two of Gelb’s artistic priorities: star casting and slick but literal-minded storytelling (the latter often in the guise of “accessibility”). Most of these productions have been sold on the fame of their casts. Many of the operas themselves have colorful settings and no obvious complicating social or metaphysical angles (Mary Zimmerman’s high-concept Sonnambula was an exception in this regard). They are primarily showpieces. But for this rep to be anything more than routine and mundane you need real star quality singing and charisma. Unfortunately only a few of these productions have found the people capable of that.

Maria Stuarda is OK, but there’s still a certain fire missing.

Donizetti, Maria Stuarda. Metropolitan Opera, 12/31/2012. New production premiere directed by David McVicar with sets and costumes by John Macfarlane, lights by Jennifer Tipton, and choreography by Leah Hausman, conducted by Maurizio Benini with Joyce DiDonato (Maria Stuarda), Elza van den Heever (Elisabetta), Matthew Rose (Talbot), Joshua Hopkins (Cecil), Maria Zifchak (Anna).

I guess you have to give David McVicar some credit. Unlike quite a few Met directors, he definitely knows what he is doing and rarely produces the giant “WTF?” moments many other recent stagings have induced. But he hasn’t been very inspired recently, either, and this production is no exception.

McVicar’s Maria Stuarda production is more colorful and flashy than last year’s Anna Bolena, but otherwise similar. The costumes are exaggerated period with some tweaks of design and color, the sets minimal and austere. (Both are designed by John Macfarlane.) We open with a big old party, a convenient place for McVicar to stick his compulsory acrobats. But almost everyone is wearing pure white, which cuts down on the bacchanalia factor.

The rest of the evening is less busy, with about one striking thing per scene while the rest is by the book. Queen E wears a wide red skirt that opens like curtains to reveal pants (performing masculinity oh so subtly) while her rival Maria Stuarda (Mary Queen of Scots) and her cohort dress in plain black. There are a few strong images: the tiny windows of Mary’s prison, the backdrop filling with the orders she wrote when she was queen, and her sad end, in which she reveals a red dress for her final ascent to a giant executioner. (This executioner is, by the way, fully clothed--where is the McVicar of yore?)

McVicar and the cast create a stark contrast between serious, gracious, and feminine Maria and cranky, assertive Elizabeth, the latter adopting a lurching gait and little royal dignity. (I don’t remember the opera’s Schiller source, which I saw in an excellent Donmar Warehouse production a few years ago, as nearly this unsubtle.) Maria is meant to excite the most sympathy, but is shorted on exposition and backstory, and in this production rarely appears more than mildly perturbed. Elisabetta is a far more interesting character, and here developed much more vividly. She has a country to run and alliances to make. Who really cares for this plain imprisoned lady who only occasionally works up a decent curse?

The production is, as a backdrop, perfectly OK. It would be fine as a frame for brilliant and passionate performances. Unfortunately we didn’t really get those and it remains kind of weak sauce. Both ladies are miscast and neither projected on the grand scale required.

This was conceived as a vehicle for Joyce DiDonato. While the role of Maria Stuarda is usually sung by a soprano, some transposition makes it workable for her mezzo. There’s a long history of this kind of transposition, I don’t object (though in the final scene having a true soprano floating above is more effective), but DiDonato just doesn’t seem right even when it has been lowered. While she sings the notes with exemplary musicality, expression, and taste, her sound is more thin than plush, which in this kind of thing is a problem. Under pressure her tone acquires a pronounced bleaty vibrato, at soft dynamics the vibrato disappears entirely. And her intonation is (or was in this performance, at least) highly problematic, tending flat towards the ends of phrases and in cadenzas wavering all over the place. Sometimes she caught it and corrected but I found it a constant distraction preventing me from ever becoming immersed in her performance.

I wasn’t terribly convinced by her acting, either, which seemed too mild to play up to me in the Family Circle. A few big moments--that curse--were staged as Dramatic Actions, but then her voice didn’t really back her up. Maybe it was more convincing closer up, but she never convinced me of her star-ness. I’m sorry to pile on but these are pretty serious issues for a major singer in a new production.

Elza van den Heever gives a striking performance as Elisabetta, with a variety of impressive costumes, but her hip-swaying is more Judi Dench as Queen Elizabeth than it is Cate Blanchett as Queen Elizabeth. I did appreciate her spirit, though, and she takes far greater dramatic risks than DiDonato appears to. Her voice lacks the sheer tonal beauty and evenness between registers to be ideal for this repertoire, and has a very prominent vibrato. But it’s certainly an interesting and compelling instrument, very powerful at the top and well-controlled (impressive coloratura for such a large voice), and it will be interesting to see how she develops (possibly in a Wagner-Strauss sort of direction?).

Matthew Polenzani is better as Leicester than he was as Nemorino in the fall. He is vocally impeccable, with a far wider tonal palette than either of the ladies, and the voice is just the right size. The older, more established Leicester is a better fit for his personality and age than goofy young Nemorino was. But the role is basically standard tenor posturing, and he never really got a big star moment. The supporting cast was competent but bland, with none sticking very strongly in my memory. The chorus, though, was fabulous, and made the music sound far better than it deserves to (bel canto choruses are, I must admit, a pet peeve of mine--so boring!), and Maurizio Benini’s conducting seemed perfectly fine to me, certainly better than his work in Elisir.

But there’s nothing here that holds a candle to Anna Netrebko in Anna Bolena. I’m sure it will satisfy Joyce DiDonato fans, because there is indeed a lot of Joyce DiDonato, but to me it was rarely more than middling. Since bel canto is not really my preferred variety of opera, my standards for enjoyment may be unduly high, but this one didn't draw me in.

Maria Stuarda runs through January, with the inevitable HD broadcast on January 19.

Video Clip:

My most popular posts of 2012

noreply@blogger.com (Zerbinetta) — Mon, 31 Dec 2012 02:01:00 +0000

I haven't had much time to devote to blogging recently, but promise I will come up with a best of 2012 piece soon. In the meantime, here are the ten most popular posts that I wrote in 2012, as measured by Google Analytics. Nine out of the ten most popular events were viewable on video internationally, either as part of the Met's HD broadcast series or via the Internet (the exception was Jonas Kaufmann's I'm-not-dead Winterreise, which attracted great interest for another reason).

This reminds us how greatly the experience of opera has changed in only a few years, shifting a form seen primarily in live performance or as audio only to one very often seen on video. On the whole I think this is a great thing, bringing new audiences to opera while moving it away from the voice fetishism that primarily aural experience encourages and into the realm of the Gesamtkunstwerk. But there are concerns as well. Video always loses the aura of live performance, and no closeups can substitute. And it can also have a stifling effect on, well, any opera company that can't grab a piece of the video pie.This list is dominated by the Met, though Salzburg also appears. (The Wiener Staatsoper's Don Carlo, which was not taped, was No. 13.)

La bohème, Salzburg Festival: Anna Netrebko was so awesome as Mimì that she got both Piotr Beczala and Jonas Kaufmann as Rodolfo. Simultaneously.
Götterdämmerung, Metropolitan Opera. "[It] just sort of fizzled out."
La traviata, Metropolitan Opera. "A Violetta whose sole affect is fragility."
The Enchanted Island, Metropolitan Opera. That's not a Baroque oboe, it's the sound of your soul getting sucked out of your chest by this revue.*
Die Walküre, Metropolitan Opera. "No one has their own story to tell, nor the imperative to speak it."
Jonas Kaufmann, Winterreise, Bayerische Staatsoper. Simple, honest, effective.
Un ballo in maschera, Metropolitan Opera. "The best new production this house has seen in some time."
Otello, Metropolitan Opera. "A simulacrum of drama that’s less convincing than Iago’s case for Desdemona as the Sluttiest Slut of Cyprus."
L’elisir d’amore, Metropolitan Opera. Sorry, you were saying? I dozed off there for a second.
Ariadne auf Naxos, Salzburg Festival. A dubious vision ran amok, bulldozing irony in the process.

You may notice that many of these assessments are negative. Only one of the performances on this list made my favorite performances of 2012 list, which may be why I run a blog and not a giant opera company, alas.

*The performance was in 2011, but I wrote about it in 2012.

Troy again

noreply@blogger.com (Zerbinetta) — Wed, 19 Dec 2012 03:48:00 +0000

Les Troyens is a wonderful, unique, and rare opera (also REALLY BIG), but it’s not one that sells itself. Without an equally strong and unique cast and production--from each of the principals to the chorus and choreography--its five and a half hours can become a bit of a slog. While there are some considerable virtues in the Met’s current revival, it’s only an intermittently satisfying affair.

Berlioz, Les Troyens. Metropolitan Opera, 12/17/2013. Production by Francesca Zambello (revival), conducted by Fabio Luisi with Susan Graham (Didon), Deborah Voigt (Cassandre), Marcello Giordani (Énée), way too many more, see here

Francesca Zambello’s production is fairly traditional, with a few Virgilian Easter eggs and non sequitur insertions that pass for vision. Maria Bjørnson’s multi-level George Tsypin-esque set is neither particularly effective nor intrusive, though its textured strips of metal make it resemble a high-end corporate lobby. (The sight lines are bad, too. In Act 2 I couldn’t see the ghost of Hector at all.) The costumes are traditional colorful robes and armor in the Troy portion and in the Carthage half consist of lots of all-white robes and royal purple. Zambello tends towards the heavy-handed and cluttered. Some plot points are underlined and circled, such as Ascagne taking Dido’s ring and Andromache’s screaming, while other developments seem quite badly timed, such as Dido and Aeneas finding love at the beginning of the Hunt kind of robs the rest of the act of its point.

After having seen three different productions of this opera live (this one, David McVicar’s in London,* and David Pountney’s in Berlin), I have come to three conclusions (besides that Troy is far, far easier to effectively stage than Carthage):

   1.   The Carthaginians don’t have chairs. They lounge on cushions.
   2.   The Carthaginians always look like the members of a New Age cult. White robes, little in the way of gender differentiation (apparently a side effect of having a queen?).
   3.   The dancing is usually awful, and goes on for far too long.

I actually liked Doug Varone’s choreography of the Chasse royal a lot, where he has a chance to build the drama to some developmental music, and wished Dido and Aeneas hadn’t been providing visual distraction as well as premature macking. But the insertion of dance at other points, such as Iopas’s song and the jazz hand-filled Laocöon ensemble, is irritating, and the long dance sections of Acts 3 and 4 outstay their welcome. Overall, at least as revived here it’s a generic, uninspired production--in Carthage considerably less egregious than David McVicar’s recent effort but also far less visually arresting in Troy. I must say that this production's moderately-sized, literal horse is far less impressive than both McVicar’s steampunk fire-snorter and the Pountney production's take, where giant feet kicked at the Trojans from overhead.

The problem with a lackluster Troyens is that you become acutely aware of how uneven the piece is. It’s not that much of it’s bad (I think it’s 98% genius, and the 2% is mostly the Dance of the Nubian Slave Girls), but it doesn’t fit together without consistent energy and vision. In this performance, I was not convinced that we really needed two peripheral beatific tenor arias, plus, well, I adore the whiny soldiers in Act 5. They’re my second favorite whiny soldier duo in opera, beat only by Nero’s guard in Poppea. The glance into their lives, plus the respite of Hylas's music, are what gives the opera its epic quality. But if they don’t have some spirit you just want to get on with it.

next up: Dance of the Campaign Pollsters

The best thing about Fabio Luisi’s conducting is that it kept everything moving. I liked his work in the quieter music best, such as the lovely Didon-Anna duets, where he found a nice gentle flow. And the processions and choruses had a good solid momentum, with only a few coordination issues early on. The chorus, by the way, might be the real star of Les Troyens, and while I found the Met chorus somewhat less impressive than the ROH’s last summer, it was still a strong showing. Where I thought Luisi was less satisfying was in the quirky stuff that makes Berlioz so special, stuff like the ostinatos, the irregular phrases, the sudden turns. Stuff like this moment. Luisi has a tendency to make it all sound like early Beethoven, and pleasantly bland early Beethoven at that. More lurching energy, more neuroticism was needed.

Besides the chorus, Susan Graham is the star of this production. Her Didon is absolutely beautifully sung and acted, with more depth and intensity than I remember in her performance on the Châtelet DVD. She expertly balances musical grace with the text, giving her Didon dignity and stature, convincingly regal but also human. Her voice is bright but also slightly grainy, a perfect size for this role and by the end she becomes a real tragedienne at the end. Her only issue is high notes: the big and prominent B flat in “Chers Tyriens” simply entirely failed to come out both times, leading to a somewhat anticlimactic end. I’m guessing there isn’t a lot of time with Octavian in her future (which is a shame, because she is otherwise outstanding there!).

I wonder if Marcello Giordani took the widespread rumors of his imminent replacement personally. (How could you not?) For the first three acts he seemed to be giving it his all, and managed a little better than I expected. His voice is aging, the high notes extraordinarily loud but not very pretty, the disconnected lower range hollow-sounding and weak. It was in Act 4 where the problems really began to show, with a can belto “Nuit d’ivresse” that completely drowned out Graham’s more appropriately nuanced efforts, and his Act 5 “Inutiles regrets” were indeed regrettable, involving something resembling a high C and some B flats but also a lot of vaguely rhythmic, somewhat pitched shouting towards the end. His acting is acceptable but not exactly dashing or charismatic. I would not at all be surprised if he were sent packing to, uh, Italie before the HD broadcast (“he’s not Italian! he’s Sicilian!” -my relatives, my family comes from southern Italy). The rumored replacement is Bryan Hymel, who, with indisputable competence if not terribly much beauty, sang the role earlier in London this year.

Deborah Voigt’s wan, poorly sung Cassandre made me long for London’s brilliant Anna Caterina Antonacci. Voigt was always a Chrysothemis, someone who plants themselves in front of the conductor and makes a glorious sound. Cassandre is a role that requires the charisma and madness of a mystic, which Voigt has never possessed. What’s more, the sound is gone, the voice small and sour, a shadow of her past. She vocalizes through the music with rather unpleasant tone and unclear French, rarely looking at her Coroebus. Very disappointing.

The army of supporting cast was strong, for the most part. Karen Cargill's warm, rich low mezzo as Anna was a highlight, and she made an excellent contrast to Graham. Paul Appleby sang Hylas with a sweet tenor and honest, simple phrasing. In contrast Eric Cutler was a Iopas with a large but uneven voice and fussy phrasing (with a fussy staging from Zambello), somewhat miscast and unaware that less is sometimes more. Julie Boulianne sounded clear as Ascagne with some strange flirty direction. Stephen Gaertner stood in for Dwayne Croft as Chorèbe and showed a strong, full dark baritone. The two most prominent basses, Kwangchoul Youn (long time, no see!) as Narbal and Richard Bernstein as Panthée, were both excellent.

There’s great stuff in this production, but it requires patient waiting through considerable quantities of not so great stuff to get to all of it. Still, recommended under the general “come on, it’s Troyens” rule.

Les Troyens continues through December with an HD broadcast on January 5.

*Like the set of David McVicar’s London production, this Met one (which came first) also features, in the Carthage set, a raked circular thing center stage that has little buildings on it (these look more like building blocks while McV’s were very clearly a city). Unfortunately I have no pictures of the NYC incarnation; here is the London one:

Coincidence? Errrrr.

Photos copyright Met.

When you needa Aida

noreply@blogger.com (Zerbinetta) — Tue, 18 Dec 2012 21:59:00 +0000

"He's alive!" "You're toast."

Nearly every year the Met schedule contains innumerable performances of Aida. This being a difficult-to-cast opera that sells without big names, the singing is often not that great (Latonia Moore’s Aida last season was an excellent exception, though I heard her only on the radio). This year the Egyptology made the HD broadcast schedule, and for two performances in the run--the broadcast and the one before it--the cast aligned into Liudmyla Monastyrska, Roberto Alagna, and Olga Borodina, what you could possibly call an all-star Aida. Unfortunately it ended up being a little too cautious to be exciting. Nothing like that time I went to Basel to see that awesome Aida with all the disembowelment! Sorry, I never get tired of saying that.

Verdi, Aida. Metropolitan Opera, 12/12/12. Production by Sonja Frisell, conducted by Fabio Luisi with Liudmyla Monastyrska (Aida), Roberto Alagna (Radames), Olga Borodina (Amneris), George Gagnidze (Amonasro), Stefan Kocan (Ramfis).

I went to see this last Wednesday (sorry not to write earlier… shit happens), but the HD cameras were already everywhere (they record the performance before as a backup). This was, overall, a strangely bloodless and small-scale performance, and I seriously think the singers were playing to the scale of the movie screen's close-ups, not the big theater. From my spot in the orchestra standing room during Act 1, the acting was strangely muted and blank. OK, so this is often a park and bark opera, but lots of important and dramatic plot happens and the visuals of the production are so Cleopatra (the Liz Taylor one) that you hope for some big melodramatic acting too. Then a gentleman who was not feeling well left at the first intermission and gave me his seat in row H center, which is ridiculously close to the action, and while I could see many more details in the acting and in some ways appreciated its subtlety, I still found it underplayed. (The sound is a lot better there than in standing room, too.)

Of course another factor was Mr. Smooth, Fabio Luisi, on the podium. On the one hand, he doesn’t go for cheesy bombast and always keeps things moving swiftly. On the other an Aida that sounds more like Mozart is, outside a few of the more ethereal moments, not very exciting. This was, as always, professionally done, with Monastyrska particularly tuned in to his work. (Some of the other singers, not so much, which I will get to shortly.) The orchestra was fine, as was the chorus, but it was all a little too held back to be fully involving.

Soprano Liudmyla Monastyrska has risen to the big leagues almost overnight and it’s easy to tell why. She’s got the killer combination of tremendous volume, solid technique, and decent musicality, and made real music out of a part that is often struggled through. The voice is more notable for its volume than its beauty, but she varies the color more than many in her fach. What she lacks, so far, is a personality as big as her voice, and a sense that she is making the role her own. Still, she was rock-solid, untiring, and the favorite note of Aida-fanciers, the high C in “O patria mia,” was impeccable.

This was Roberto Alagna’s first Radamès of this run, though he has sung it at the Met before. Some lack of security was evident between him and Luisi. I was glad that his voice was more controlled than the last time I heard him, and while the tone is duller than in years past he is still a solid singer. But Radamès is not a happy role for him, and he has to undersing and strategize to get through the evening. I am belatedly convinced that the loggionisti in Milan were correct, even if they were not very polite. He didn’t give that notorious “Celeste Aida” ending a shot, instead singing a lower variation (preceding it with some unwelcome falsetto), and he was also strangely restrained in the acting department, his usual exuberance tamed. We can be thankful for small favors--he seems to have lightened up on the bronzer since I last saw him in this, and also covered up his chest this time. (The Met should be ashamed of the audible Velcro on that armor, though. Audible Velcro is the Scourge of Opera.)

Olga Borodina got a fair amount of grief for this Amneris from other audience members, and I agree that like Alagna she is past her strongest years. The high notes are perilous and the high Bs in the Judgement Scene were cut off abruptly. But I found a great deal to enjoy in her singing; the rest of her voice has incredible depth and richness. And she was more engaged and animated than some of her colleagues. Finally, bug-eyed baritone George Gagnidze provided his usual reliable villainous snarling. The guy is not exactly a star--there’s not a lot of vocal glamor there--but damn if he doesn’t always get the job done in fine style. Supporting roles were on the underpowered side.

The production, well, on the bright side, I’m glad they’re now using way less blackface than they did on this old video of it. And Alexei Ratmansky’s dances, an addition from a season or two ago, are a good cut above average (though the execution left something to be desired). But overall the thing looks like a costume party in the Met Museum where everyone is doing the Ancient Egyptian equivalent of Civil War reenactment. It’s too familiar and clichéd to be more than mundane, and not over the top enough to be fun. Time for a new production here, I think. Should the budget not allow, I have an idea. Inclined to agree with Edward Said that this opera represents the authority of Europe’s vision of Egypt of the 1860s, I suggest finding a Verdi lookalike, putting a pith helmet on his head, give him a sheaf of manuscript paper and a shovel and set him loose on this production. For once it would kind of make sense.

Photo copyright Met (no name attached).

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