Likely Impossibilities

City Opera: Stuff White People Like?

noreply@blogger.com (Zerbinetta) — Thu, 19 Jan 2012 02:18:00 +0000

The downward spiral of New York City Opera is depressing. But if their planned spring season does go forward (currently it looks like it will), it will begin with La traviata at the Brooklyn Academy of Music in February. They are promoting the production with this image.

Soprano Laquita Mitchell will be singing Violetta. There's not a lot on YouTube of her singing opera rep, but based on this standard she's got a voice and is a heartfelt singer:

But it's obvious that she's not a blond white lady. Can we talk about this for a minute? You can protest that they don't have enough money to get a different poster model for this one opera. (The mysterious blonde pictured above is seen throughout their publicity materials.) Or perhaps they assembled the publicity images before their casting was complete. Since the company has become a shoestring operation this is even likely. But the result still makes me really uncomfortable.

Black Violettas are rare. I suspect this is because of the limited roles which society has allotted to women of color. Melissa Harris-Perry talked about this racism just last week on the Colbert Report. (She was promoting her book on this very topic.) Violetta's angelic femininity does not figure in the stereotypes Harris-Perry describes. But black ladies should be just as able to be beautiful and virtuous dying courtesans in operas as white ladies! It's great that Laquita Mitchell is defying tradition and will be singing Violetta at City Opera, and they should recognize this and put a woman of color on their poster, even if it's not Mitchell herself.

Also, African-Americans are woefully underrepresented in classical music both onstage and in audiences. Writing the black lady out of the publicity materials isn't a way to convince the African-Americans who think opera isn't for them to change their minds. Look at how much Broadway has diversified in the last few years as producers have discovered how to reach more African-Americans. Maybe it's time for classical music to figure out how to do the same.

La fille du régiment marches again

noreply@blogger.com (Zerbinetta) — Sat, 07 Jan 2012 19:52:00 +0000

Laurent Pelly’s whimsical production of Donizetti’s fluffy La fille du régiment is impossible to dislike. I unexpectedly went to the last performance of its current Met run last night and was again charmed. The plot of an army mascot in love and her many protective parents (both the entire regiment and her newly-rediscovered blood relations) is sweet, the music is bouncy and tuneful, and the characters are so good-hearted and adorable that they remain likeable through the heavy layer of schtick conferred by Pelly’s production. When I saw the premiere cast in 2008, I found the show a little on the slick side (here is my review from back when I was a baby blogger), but this time I think it’s a winner through and through. The choreography keeps things cute and fast-paced, and the gags work, but Pelly never forgets to use them to define the characters first--when the haughty Marquise de Berkenfield thinks the praying peasants are saluting her, or when Marie bounces onstage wearing suspenders. The set of maps is vaguely representational and fills the stage, everyone dances periodically, and the soldiers are the most harmless lot you’ve ever seen. Lord knows what war figures in this slightly updated production, but does anyone really care?

Unlike the premiere's Natalie Dessay and Juan Diego Flórez, the current cast doesn't have the slightly empty look of people who have rehearsed very, very well, and they are a little more sincere. That's a gain, but unfortunately the same star power just isn't there. Nino Machaidze sang serviceably, but her laser-bright tone was unvaryingly loud and she lacks the agility to make the coloratura sparkle rather than just come out. Her Marie doesn’t have the quicksilver gamine quality of Dessay, but her more forceful, brassy acting worked well too. If only her spoken dialogue had resembled French.* Lawrence Brownlee made a suitably adorable and boyish Tonio and his warm and round sound has more appeal than Juan Diego Flórez’s, though he lacks some of the latter’s charisma--his final entrance on a tank in particular just didn’t have that incredible sense of ridiculous triumph. I’ve never really understood the appeal of the famous string of high C’s in “Pour mon âme” (when it comes to extreme tenoring, give me a good “Vittoria!” any day**), but Brownlee dispatched them with élan. Elsewhere, Ann Murray was hilarious as the Marquise of Berkenfeld, though her voice is showing its age and is very uneven. Maurizio Muraro was an amiable Suplice. Kiri Te Kanawa displayed her underrated comic skills as the Duchess of Krakentorp and still sounded like herself in an aria from “Le villi”. I missed Marian Seldes’s “he’s on the bobsled team!” line, though.

The orchestra and Yves Abel got off to a rough start in the overture, with a lone violinist coming in smack in the middle of a dramatic pause and some other coordination issues, but the rest proceeded smoothly enough.

Between this and today’s webcast of L’elisir d’amore from Munich (in David Bösch’s surprisingly poignant production), it’s the Weekend of Adorable Donizetti, apparently.

*However I do recommend her Lobiani recipe in Die Oper kocht. It is excellent.
**After writing this I went back and looked at my review of the premiere cast and I said just about the exact same thing. At least I'm consistent!

Donizetti, La fille du régiment. Metropolitan Opera, 1/6/2012. Production by Laurent Pelly (revival), conducted by Yves Abel with Nino Machaidze (Marie), Lawrence Brownlee (Tonio), Ann Murray (Marquise of Berkenfield), Maurizio Muraro (Sulpice), Kiri Te Kanawa (Duchess of Krakentorp)

Enchanted Island: No man or woman is a...

noreply@blogger.com (Zerbinetta) — Sun, 01 Jan 2012 23:04:00 +0000

Contrary to anything you may have read, the Met’s The Enchanted Island pasticcio does not feature a cameo by a wisecracking René Pape as the Skipper.* But it’s got just about everything else. Everything, that is, except a reason for us to care. An all-star cast belts out top Baroque tunes in a beautifully designed production, but thanks to Jeremy Sams’s insipid, self-indulgent libretto, most of it ends up being much ado about nothing. Why can’t we have actual Baroque opera instead?

Various, The Enchanted Island. World premiere pasticcio, Met Opera, 12/31/2011. Assembled by Jeremy Sams, conducted by William Christie, directed by Phelim McDermott and Julian Crouch, sets by Crouch, costumes by Kevin Pollard, lights by Brian MacDevitt. With David Daniels (Prospero), Joyce DiDonato (Sycorax), Danielle De Niese (Ariel), Lisette Oropesa (Miranda), Luca Pisaroni (Caliban), Placido Domingo (Neptune), Layla Claire (Helena), Elizabeth DeShong (Hermia), Paul Appleby (Demetrius), Elliot Madore (Lysander), Anthony Roth Costanzo (Ferdinand).

The Enchanted Island has hitched itself to the eighteenth century pasticcio tradition, a conglomeration of old music set to a new story. But it’s a 21st-century creation through and through, as I think its creators would readily acknowledge.** Jeremy Sams is responsible for the libretto. In a rewrite of The Tempest, Prospero is situated on the titular island (which makes whooshing noises identical to the one on Lost) and must confront the challenges of age, Ariel, and his lady-rival Sycorax (who is already dead in the Shakespeare). But rather than the intended Ferdinand, the honeymooning four lovers from A Midsummer Night’s Dream wash up instead. While Prospero’s responsibilities to the island and Ariel seem to be the central plot problem, most of the work's time is spent with these four, who along with Miranda and Caliban go about doing what Shakespearean lovers do best: fall in love with the wrong people.

The music selection (here is a list) has some nice pieces and the sung texts are relatively smooth, but the shifts between the eight different composers selected can be rocky. Handel dominates, but the bits of French stuff harmonize poorly, and some of the Vivaldi sticks out as well. Many da capo arias’ B and A’ sections have been lost at sea, and some (presumably newly-composed) recit is pretty stylistically wonky (and I’m not sure where all the chamber-scored bits and accompagnato came from). More severe is the feeling that much of the music was chosen largely at random and shoehorned into the plot just as forcibly as the Midsummer lovers were. Some transpositions of duets and arias up and down octaves are quite peculiar (most strangely Vivaldi’s coloraturific “Dopo un’orrida procella” given to a baritone Lysander and “Arise ye subterranean winds” given to a soprano Ariel), and the expression doesn’t always line up either. Baroque music often was retexted back in the day, but that doesn’t mean that any sentiment goes.

Old story, old music--it’s less a story than a simulacrum of a story, the pale imitation of something we’ve all seen done before, and better. It unfolds bumpily and shapelessly, aided by the magical character’s spells in the service of a librettist who seems to think himself exceptionally clever. Yet there’s little genuine wit on display, and even less adult emotion, and sincerity, nor a clear emotional trajectory. These are all things you can find Baroque opera, but in the pastiche-ing they’ve been misplaced.

This was all the more dispiriting because the production is simply gorgeous, with lush costumes and projection scenery on a screen behind an elaborate second proscenium. (There are many more photos at the bottom of this post.) The visual style is original and whimsical and poetic and unfortunately rarely tries to upstage the action. Only a few Disney-ish moments of sparkle seem cheesy. The other effects are lovely, though I wish the rest of the audience hadn’t started applauding over the music when the ship sank.

But the island is disenchanted. We’re told that the superficiality proudly espoused by this work constitutes “fun.” We don’t have to wonder why Prospero is obsessed with making everyone move piles of wood because they've left that weird bit out! But, three-quarters of the way through Act 1 I found myself, probably aided by a certain degree of sleep deprivation, in the throes of an existential crisis that had been building up all season. If Enchanted Island was a failure, an attempt at a fun romp that ended up sort of tangled, then too bad, maybe the next one will work. But what if it was, on its terms, a success? What if this is our fun now? What if now all we desire of opera is this exquisitely crafted nothing, smug and regressed to childhood and utterly irrelevant to anything that makes us human? Why are we creating “art” that in many ways isn’t art at all? Maybe I should pack it in and start going to the movies more. Then I wouldn't be asking all these damn rhetorical questions.

Two things happened that while not up to salvaging the evening at least made me stop contemplating das Ende. The first was the biggest coup de theatre of the production, the entrance of Placido Domingo as Neptune. He arrives on a seashell flanked by ranks of mermaids to the strains of “Zadok the priest,” robed and wearing a gigantic beard. It’s an image of sufficient outrageousness and novelty as to overpower the fact that his subsequent scene does not advance the plot and our tenor appeared to have not looked at his music ahead of time, kept getting behind Christie, and didn’t know the words (compounded by the juxtaposition of Handel, Rameau, and Vivaldi in close quarters, one of the evening’s least felicitous moments of pastichery). The staging had finally upstaged the far inferior text with sheer audacity.

The second moment was in the second act and can be described as Caliban’s coming of age, when Helena leaves him for her recovered Demetrius. With his mother Sycorax’s revival, Caliban’s status in the plot is kind of unclear. Also he’s a monster in KISS tribute makeup. But the sting of his rejection is the most comprehensible emotion we’ve seen yet and Luca Pisaroni played him with such sweetness and honesty that I found myself, for the first time, in a real story. Joyce DiDonato’s Sycorax, to this point a scenery-chewing caricature, turns human and three-dimensional. The following masque-style dream sequence, set to French music, has a plot that seems to be misplaced from the Great Courtesans of History ballet excised from November’s Faust and features some strangely aerobic choreography from Graciela Daniele, but the change of pace is welcome--more dance would have been great. Unfortunately Caliban is more or less dropped as a character after this.

Such is one’s fate in a work whose cast is the operatic equivalent of Love, Actually so prepare for a list discussing the singers. We’ve already covered Placido, and Pisaroni, who sings as well and expressively as he acts, and DiDonato, whose coloratura is great and stage presence significant but whose singing has this kind of constant tension that keeps her sound edgy and tightly wound, including in some places where that isn’t ideal. Danielle De Niese managed to make the very annoying Ariel not that irritating, though he (Ariel) bears the brunt of the plot mechanics. She (De Niese) engaged in some approximatura at inadvisably fast tempos in Act 1 but carried off the popular Vivaldi showpiece “Agitata da due venti” surprisingly well--though, it must be said, the aria is cut down to only its first section.

The most beautiful tones of the evening were from the lyric sopranos Lisette Oropesa as Miranda and Layla Claire as Helena, both of whom I hope I will be hearing lots more of in roles where they can develop characters. Mezzo Elizabeth DeShong was great in “Where shall I fly” from Hercules, I mean here she was Hermia. David Daniels was in the nominally central role of Prospero but did not make a strong impression and sounded thin and effortful, though his singing is musical. Stronger was the powerful countertenor of Anthony Roth Costanzo in the Fortinbras-like role of Ferdinand, who made the most of his one aria and duet. As Demetrius and Lysander, Paul Appleby and Elliot Madore were fine but made less of an impression than the women.

William Christie must, for better or worse, must bear much responsibility for this affair as well. As for his conducting, it was good. It was, as one would expect, very fast. This had a much less percussive and crisp effect with the Met’s modern orchestra than it would have with a historical practice one, and sometimes the singers were challenged. Still, he knows the style and got the orchestra sounding more Baroque than I would have expected. The instrumentation was small but not so small as to sound dinky.

But the entire thing left a bitter taste, a dumbed- and watered-down evening that is for the most part not actually that fun. I suspect this was a one-off experiment, and it’s not one I would be eager to repeat. Can we give a real Baroque opera a shot next time, please?

*It also lacks a cameo by Jean-Paul Fouchécourt crying “Ze plane! Ze plane!”
**See also Text and Smacked, I mean, Text and Act.

More photos:

Photo copyright Ken Howard/Metropolitan Opera

The Best of 2011

noreply@blogger.com (Zerbinetta) — Tue, 27 Dec 2011 17:30:00 +0000

I saw a lot of exciting stuff this year! Later I might ruminate about why most of it was during the seven months of the year I spent in Europe rather than during the five I spent in New York, but first here are some highlights.

I made lists of five this year, because ten seemed excessive when you have multiple categories. Except for the first opera list they are not in any particular order.

Opera

Parsifal (Bayreuth): This took “the right opera in the right place” to a whole new level. The ritualistic experience of Parsifal in the theater for which it was written becomes a self-reflexive story of its own history from seclusion to militancy to a guarded redemption. For better or worse, we control this postmodern Gesamtkunstwerk now. Truly worth the pilgrimage.
Fidelio (Bayerische Staatsoper): This phantasmagorical production by Calixto Bieito dispensed with most literal narrative, but its stark images of torture and struggle were somehow incredibly Beethovenian, and stuck with me for longer than almost anything else this year. Like Parsifal, it was something of a slow burn and I don’t think I had finished processing when I wrote about it. Those productions are the best. (The production dated from late 2010 but I saw it in 2011.)
Der Rosenkavalier (Bayerische Staatsoper): Otto Schenk’s production owes less to Strauss than it does to Masterpiece Theater, but with the magnificent Anja Harteros and Sophie Koch in the leading roles it had life in it yet (mostly musical). Lucy Crowe was great too, Piotr Beczala was the Italian Tenor you always want, and conductor Constantin Trinks made a promising Bay Staats debut.
Rusalka (Semperoper Dresden): A middle-aged man in crisis finds his fantasies have little relation to reality. It might not have much to do with The Little Mermaid, but this psychothriller was true to Dvorák’s beautiful, sentimental music at every moment. (My top opera of last year was also a revisionist Rusalka--Martin Kusej’s in Munich--which, in a very different way, also suggested the forest nymph is a projection of male desire.)
Atys (Les Arts Florissants): This arrived at the Brooklyn Academy of Music preordained as the Event of the Year, but nearly lived up to expectations, largely through the force of William Christie’s wonderful orchestra and the elegant, self-consciously formal production. Next year a different French Baroque opera, please?

Concerts

Maurizio Pollini’s Konzerthaus recital
Pierre Boulez, Daniel Barenboim, and the Staatskapelle Berlin’s Wagner and Liszt
Fabio Biondi, Ann Hallenberg, and co. revive Ariosti’s La fede ne’ tradimenti at the Konzerthaus
Daniel Barenboim and the Staatskapelle Berlin (again) in Chaikovsky’s Symphony No. 6
The Opera Orchestra of New York's Adriana Lecouvreur, surprisingly better than the staged version

Singers

Anna Netrebko in Anna Bolena (Wiener Staatsoper and Metropolitan Opera)
Evelyn Herlitzius in Die Frau ohne Schatten (Salzburger Festspiele)
Jonas Kaufmann in Fidelio (Bayerische Staatsoper) and Werther (Wiener Staatsoper)
Krassimira Stoyanova in Eugene Onegin (De Nederlandse Opera)
Bejun Mehta in Rodelinda (Theater an der Wien)

Conductors (Opera)

Christian Thielemann, Die Frau ohne Schatten (Salzburger Festspiele with the Wiener Philharmoniker)
Mariss Jansons, Eugene Onegin (De Nederlandse Opera with the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra)
Fabio Luisi, Don Giovanni and Siegfried (Metropolitan Opera)
Yannick Nézet-Séguin, Faust (Metropolitan Opera)
Franz Welser-Möst, Kat’a Kabanová (Wiener Staatsoper)

More Great Achievements in Operatic Direction (Met, Are You Listening?)

Peter Konwitschny, La Traviata (Oper Graz) and Tristan und Isolde (Bayerische Staatsoper, revival)
Calixto Bieito, Dialogues of the Carmelites (Komische Oper Berlin)
Mariame Clément, Castor et Pollux (Theater an der Wien)
Richard Jones, Anna Nicole (Royal Opera House) and Hansel and Gretel (Metropolitan Opera, revival)
Rebecca Taichman, Dark Sisters (Gotham Chamber Opera/Music Theatre Group)

Special Awards:
Halls of Fame: I’m always grateful for the chance to see anything at the Bayerische Staatsoper and the Theater an der Wien, who make everything new.

Halls of Shame: The Wiener Staatsoper for their wretched, slapdash revivals and both the Metropolitan Opera and the Wiener Staatsoper for their visionless, confused new productions.

“Oper für alle” Award: The Komische Oper Berlin, for combining accessible and affordable tickets with an adventurous and ambitious program (and during the summer festival a really interesting program of lectures and, uh, free wine). All operas are performed in German, but now they have titles in multiple languages.

Least Predictable: You never know what you’re going to get with conductor Daniele Gatti. I loved his Parsifal, was oddly persuaded by his Fidelio, and his Mahler 9 with the Wiener Philharmoniker was the single worst concert I heard all year.

Most Predictable: You do know what you’re going to get with the Met’s new chief conductor, Fabio Luisi. His work is brisk, well-paced, perfectly balanced, and phrased with elegance. Grandeur and dramatic weight, though, can be scarce.

Up and Coming: They’re at various stages of their careers, but I hope to hear lots more from conductors Cornelius Meister and Tomas Netophil, sopranos Gal James, Meagan Miller and Caitlin Lynch, mezzos Anita Rachvelishvili and Elisabeth Kulman, tenor Michael Fabiano, baritone Iain Paterson, and bass Dmitry Ivanshchenko.

Let's hope for an exciting 2012!

The music of The Enchanted Island

noreply@blogger.com (Zerbinetta) — Sat, 24 Dec 2011 00:14:00 +0000

The Met has released a list of the music used in their upcoming pasticcio, The Enchanted Island. The selection ranges from well-known ("Agitata da due venti" is ~~apparently David Daniels's~~ or possibly Danielle De Niese's 11:00 number, and "Endless pleasure" from Semele is set as a quartet [?]) to relatively obscure items. Handel dominates, and the French music provides most of the dances. Placido Domingo will arrive as Neptune to the strains of "Zadok the priest," best known to British people for its use in coronations and as the "Champion's League" theme song.

In case you were wondering, the plot will combine The Tempest and A Midsummer Night's Dream. You can read a synopsis here (PDF). It sounds a little complicated?

I spent some time on the YouTubes and put together these playlists of the originals. The first contains the music of Act 1 and the second Act 2, in the order they will appear. (Remember that in the pasticcio they will be contrafacted, that is given new texts.) I wasn't able to find everything but did locate most of it. Some of the videos are longer excerpts of which the pasticcio will use only a part. A few of the interpretations here aren't ideal, but many are outstanding, reminding us how far Baroque performance has come in the last decade. (Keep an eye out for our favorite Simone Kermes, who brings her best dance moves to Vivaldi's "Dopo un' orrida procella." Sadly, her Met debut is yet to be announced.)

Previously: Enchanted Island and baroque opera

Have yourself a bombastic operatic Christmas

noreply@blogger.com (Zerbinetta) — Thu, 22 Dec 2011 22:35:00 +0000

If you want to escape the tyranny of pop singers cooing Christmas music, how about opera singers bellowing Christmas music instead? Sure, you could go for the Messiah, or Jessica Duchen's tasteful and highbrow selections, or the glory of Alex Ross's Messiah on Crack, but you know you really want chimes, children's choirs, harps, and Roberto Alagna singing in German. Here follows the worst and a few of the best attempts of opera singers celebrating Christmas. (For some reason these selections seem to hail disproportionately from German-speaking countries. I cannot imagine why.)

Bryn Terfel and Bing Crosby, "White Christmas"

That's right, it's a duet (before Angela teamed up with Maria Callas). Not only does Bryn harmonize with Bing, he also stars in a a bargain basement green screened video in which he throws a CGI snowball. That's how you know you've reached the classical crossover big time.

Leontyne Price, "God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen"

If you actually want something to enjoy unironically for some reason, Leontyne Price’s traditional carols are lovely. Someone tell that harpsichordist to stop practicing his or her etudes, though.

Roberto Alagna and Thomas Hampson, "O Tannenbaum"

The biggest problem facing opera singers attempting traditional carols is an inability to relax. This is the most notable attribute of Thomas Hampson's meticulous, perfectly pronounced, and less than rousing rendition of "O Tanenbaum," though there's also the novelty value of Roberto Alagna singing in German, and the orchestra earns its paycheck at the end.

Kiri Te Kanawa and the King's Singers, A Little Christmas Music

Kiri Te Kanawa has a reputation for blank humorlessness, but this is pretty hilarious.

Placido Domingo, Ying Huang, Michael Bolton, medley

Trust the Viennese to forge this unholy musical alliance. Poor Ying Huang is like, “They told me I'd be singing with Placido Domingo. They didn't mention the Austrian children or Michael Bolton. I’m on TV so I’m just going to smile. Later I'll fire my agent.”

Kurt Rydl, "Jingle Bells" and "Santa Claus is Coming to Town" (from Intermezzo)

I imagine Santa is a bass. But American Christmas carols sung by a cavernous-voiced Austrian bass (or, as Intermezzo puts it, "Der Megabass" are undeniably ridiculous.

“O Holy Night” (in French “Cantique de Nöel” or “Minuit, chrétiens”) is a carol whose demands can make amateurs and pop singers, well, fall on our knees. But Adolphe Adam’s big sing is a magnet for opera types, who are often better equipped for its grandiosity than they would be for something more modest.

Jussi Björling, my favorite of the lot (in Swedish)

Duet by Juan Diego Flórez (in French) and Elina Garanca (in English, sort of)

Jonas Kaufmann (French and German)

Jessye Norman (English, and the grandest of them all)

Georges Thill (the most French, suggested by Lisa below)

Franco Corelli (the most Italian, suggested by Anonymous below)

More suggestions welcome in the comments!

Faust, or, You Only Live Twice

noreply@blogger.com (Zerbinetta) — Wed, 21 Dec 2011 14:58:00 +0000

I went to Faust at the Met again last night and found it much more enjoyable that the opening night I saw a few weeks ago. This was in part because without exception the cast was more assured and in better voice, but it was in part because I knew what to ignore. Des McAnuff's chaotic production does not improve upon a second viewing; it is still confused and confusing in points both large and small. If Faust, here a nuclear scientist with a heavy conscience, is going to back to try to live a better life, why does he behave like such a schmuck? (My original idea was that his rejuvenation was merely a flashback to the life that made him so sadface in the first place, but according to McAnuff this isn't so.) Why does the chorus spend so much time filing through doors? Why is there a swordfight in 19-whatever? Can I find Marguerite's Act IV getup at Urban Outfitters? I have no more answers now than I did at the prima.

But setting that aside I found much more to appreciate in the cast. First, the best thing going remains Yannick Nézet-Séguin's conducting, which has such grace and lyricism and so little sugar and bombast that even a Gounod-aphobe like me can like it. The orchestra was on excellent form. Jonas Kaufmann sounded much freer and more assured in the title role and it's really exciting singing if somewhat unidiomatic (excellent high C this time). Acting-wise his Faust still doesn't add up but at least his temperature has risen a few degrees, less deadly serious, more cynical, and working his seduction of Marguerite like a courtesan whose rent is overdue. René Pape's Méphistophélès remains understated, a dapper and wry mischief-maker, and his voice has such ease and silkiness that you'd take any offer he made you pretty quickly.

The biggest change for me was utterly falling for Marina Poplavskaya's Marguerite this time, though more in an acting that vocal sense. Her guilelessness and isolation in her opening scenes, her never self-pitying hopelessness in the later ones and finally her delirium at the end all convinced. How good could this production have been if it were about her story? (Way better.) Vocally, she got through the opera more solidly this time, though her hollow and uneven tone is not pleasant, and the last few minutes were rough. Russell Braun again provided warm and mellifluous but not especially memorable support as Valentin, Michéle Losier was an excellent Siebel (as a recent Parterre review noted, she looks like an escapee from Newsies), and Theodora Hanslowe as Marthe got off to an unsure start but was quite funny in her scene with Pape (she was subbing for Wendy White as Marthe after the latter's fall off the set on Saturday night--thankfully she is alright but of course is taking a break).

I've been writing about a lot of new productions recently, where I really try to take everything as a piece (because that's how they should function). But many performances are easier when you appreciate the good and leave out the bad--it's a shame this Faust falls into that category even upon its first run of performances, but I actually am glad I saw it again. Also, can someone give me Faust's lab's red wine-dispensing water cooler for Christmas? Sometimes it'd make work much nicer. Thanks.

Performances remain with different casts--Roberto Alagna leading on December 23 and 28 (I have been there already this year, cartweels, ukulele, and all) and Joseph Calleja in January (utterly beautiful voice, allergic to acting).

Gounod, Faust. Metropolitan Opera, 12/20/2011, cast same as listed here except with Theodora Hanslowe as Marthe.

Some videos from the recent HD simulcast:

The NY Phil's cabaret for the end of the world

noreply@blogger.com (Zerbinetta) — Mon, 19 Dec 2011 02:37:00 +0000

Last night’s New York Philharmonic Contact new music concert conducted by Alan Gilbert at Symphony Space featured free beer and an alarming number of people under 35. I fit right in for once!

Composer HK Gruber introduced his greatest hit, Frankenstein!! (1979) saying he didn’t intend to write a party piece. Honestly it seems like that is sort of what he did, albeit a party for Weimar revivalists eager to witness Pierrot Lunaire as rewritten by Edward Gorey. It’s a setting of twisted children’s poems set for a wild array of orchestral and toy instruments including kazoos, hoses (spun over the head), and exploding paper bags. Above all this was Gruber’s own voice, a Sprechstimme “channsonier” reminiscent (at this advanced point in his career) of Ernst Busch, intoning in accented English about John Wayne or rats or whatever. It’s great surreal fun and has some lovely moments and some genuinely intense ones too, a cabaret for the end of the world. As the Zwölftöner assured me, it’s a piece you have to hear once. (Apparently Frankenstein!! will be on at the Konzerthaus in Vienna soon, too--auf Deutsch, natürlich. I imagine it is better that way, but it really does have to be in the language of its audience.)

In fact each piece was preceded by the composer saying something about it. This struck me as a good idea because it puts a face to the music and the composers, while a little awkward, seemed friendly. But this introduction is a powerful thing in directing your listening of the subsequent piece, particularly when you are only an occasional new music listener like me.

This was particularly notable in the first half. Brazilian composer Alexandre Lunsqui introduced his piece “Fibers, Yarn and Wire” (premiere) as inspired by two photographs and talked about ideas of handcraft and weaving. The subsequent piece somehow didn’t sound like what I expected (I didn’t expect the heavy use of pan flute-like whistles, for one thing), bu I was still hearing it in terms of these images. It’s an engaging quasi-minimalist journey with steady rhythmic pulse and vaguely jazzy tone and structure. The quiet (unraveling?) ending is surprisingly nice.

Magnus Lindberg introduced his Gran Duo (2000) in far more technical terms, describing metronome markings and contrasting material and transformation between the wind and brass sections. (It’s not a duo at all but written for the winds and brass sections of a large orchestra, and owes a debt to Stravinsky's Symphonies of Wind Instruments.) I ended up listening to it wondering if this was the part he was talking about where fast music was played slowly and whether we’d gotten yet to the spot where the metronome markings stop increasing and start decreasing. The writing is well crafted and virtuosic but I ended up finding it very "PhD music" and not too interesting, or perhaps just too dense to appreciate on a single hearing. The Philharmonic brass sounded great, though.

New York Philharmonic, Contact! series at Symphony Space, 12/17/2011.

Hansel and Gretel at the Met, not just for the kids

noreply@blogger.com (Zerbinetta) — Sat, 17 Dec 2011 16:34:00 +0000

Revival may have dulled the edges of Richard Jones’s Hansel and Gretel, but this Met production still has a lot to recommend it. It’s got good and some great singing (thank you, Aleksandra Kurzak), a super score played very well by the orchestra, and Jones’s alternately harsh, grotesque, and sweet production is the most fully conceived and realized evening I’ve had at the Met this season.

Humperdinck, Hansel and Gretel. Metropolitan Opera, 12/16/2011. Production by Richard Jones (revival), English translation by David Pountney, conducted by Robin Ticciati with Aleksandra Kurzak (Gretel), Kate Lindsey (Hansel), Robert Brubaker (Witch), Michaela Martens (Mother), Dwayne Croft (Father).

This production is well-known and already available on DVD but this was my first time seeing it so I’m going to describe it anyway. The Met performs this opera in David Pountney’s English translation. In lieu of photos of the current cast these ones show the 2009 cast--I will change this when I can.

Jones’s production starts off brutally realistic and gets increasingly surreal as the acts proceed. The whole thing is out of some mid-century British children’s novel that probably featured a character named Olive (also much detail about ration stamps and expecting extensive knowledge of outdated British coins--oh no, we’ve only a crown and sixpence remaining!). Each act takes place in a kitchen, representing the children's hunger. The first is the bare one of Hansel and Gretel’s parents, the second is the ghostly one of the forest (with the loud interior decoration that has led me to call this director Wallpaper Jones), and the third is the ghastly one of the Witch. The children dream not of angels but of chefs bringing extravagant food, and you get the sense that Jones’s heart isn’t really in the prayer at the end. Like today’s children, he would prefer to see them break off a leg from the baked-up Witch.

The acting in this revival is on the broad side, and the timing isn’t always quite right. It was probably tighter the first time around--perhaps also in Chicago or Cardiff, where this production was first seen. But it stands up well, with magical and clever visual touches that play to both adults and children, from the glittery Sandman to the housewife Dew Fairy to the delightfully sloppy food fight in Act 3 (one of the messiest Messy Stage productions I’ve seen--a family-friendly version of Calixto Bieito’s Don Giovanni). It's cute without being sugary and gets that grotesque meanness of an old school fairy tale but also the timeless pleasure of sticking a cream pie in someone's face. It's fun without talking down to anyone, and that's a hard thing to achieve.

Purists may be offended by the lack of an actual gingerbread house, but in my opinion this is the kind of staging the Met needs more of in any repertory. It’s inventive, it's visually strong, it’s not too challenging, and it revives pretty well. Perhaps unsurprisingly, Wallpaper Jones is an old pro at opera staging, not a newcomer from another discipline. Not all his productions are successful (though even his semi-failures like the Munich Lohengrin are interesting), but his work here is so many miles ahead of any of the Met’s new productions this season it’s not even funny.

One thing that was new about this revival was its conductor, Robin Ticciati, making his Met debut. It’s a badly kept secret that even though this opera is often considered a kiddie piece Humperdinck's score is really, really good, a kind of fairy tale, more melodic Wagner. Excellent conducting can make a big impression. Ticciati sometimes got that, but I found a lot of it slack and unfocused, and transitions didn’t always flow smoothly. It wasn’t bad, but it could have been much better. The orchestra, however, was playing wonderfully.

The vocal star of the evening was Aleksandra Kurzak as Gretel, singing with youthful, radiant tone and excellent musicianship. Her English enunciation was clear if not always quite correct (her vowels sometimes weren’t the right ones), and she managed to play the youthful stuff as cute without being cloying. Kate Lindsey’s Hansel was less interesting. She’s a very solid and reliable singer with a soprano-like mezzo, but I can’t help but find her bland and generic. Acting-wise, she’s obviously experienced playing boys but sometimes her dance-happy hyperactivity wasn’t quite in the style of the production--she got a lot of laughs, though.

The Witch was, as often, played by a tenor in drag, here Robert Brubaker (last seen by me in my Most Confusing Opera Experience of 2011, Der König Kandaules at the Wiener Volksoper). He camped it up in fine style without quite stealing the show, and sang more pleasantly than you have any right to expect in this character role. Michaela Martens was a highlight as the Mother, her rich dramatic mezzo rather overqualified for such a short role. Dwayne Croft was less present as a character than the father could be--the most conspicuous sign of a toned-down revival, I suspect--but sang with bass-like resonance. The bit roles were strong, particularly Jennifer Johnson Cano as the Sandman.

It took me a few revivals to actually see this production. I generally avoid sites where children congregate en masse, and while they were generally well-behaved it was still chattier than normal. But I’m glad I finally did see it. More Richard Jones at the Met, please.

Performances continue through the holidays.

Trailer (different cast):

Bavarian State Opera to conquer the interwebs

noreply@blogger.com (Zerbinetta) — Thu, 15 Dec 2011 13:57:00 +0000

Following the example of Brussels's La Monnaie, the Bayerische Staatsoper (Bavarian State Opera) has announced a test program to stream video of their productions over the internet. The first two productions will be their delightful steampunk post-apocalyptic Elisir d'amore (pictured) on Saturday, January 7 with Pavol Breslik and Adriana Kucerová (which I saw about a year ago). The second will be--you might want to sit down--Don Carlo on January 22 with Jonas Kaufmann, Anja Harteros, René Pape, and Mariusz Kwiecien with Asher Fisch conducting and what looks like a rather traditional production by Jürgen Rose. It's not stated that the broadcasts will be archived online for later viewing (as La Monnaie's or Arte Live Web's are), so you might have to be there live. Thankfully they are both on weekend afternoons for those of us in the Americas.

Since this happens to be my very favorite opera house and I've missed my regular trips there this season, I think this is pretty good news. Also, don't forget that in late March we will get Stefan Herheim's miraculous Rusalka from Brussels.

The Bay Staats's press release is here.

Daniel Harding and Joshua Bell with the NY Phil

noreply@blogger.com (Zerbinetta) — Sun, 11 Dec 2011 16:13:00 +0000

I know Bell would prefer HIS picture be here but he didn't earn that.

I went to hear Daniel Harding conduct the NY Phil in Le sacre du printemps, also featuring Joshua Bell playing the Chaikovsky Violin Concerto, and I wrote about it for Bachtrack.

For one of the most iconic works in the art music repertoire, The Rite of Spring actually isn’t performed very often. This week it made a welcome appearance on a New York Philharmonic program under the baton of British conductor Daniel Harding. It turned out to be the main event of an otherwise routine evening.

You can read the full review here. The Sacre was mighty impressive, the best I've heard the Phil play in a while. I don't think it was my favorite angle on the piece--I'd prefer something more extreme in one direction or another--but the precision and committment were extremely satisfying. I haven't heard Harding conduct in some time (last and only other time was the Chéreau Così in Vienna, I think) and he's going on my list of Good Young Ones along with Andris Nelsons and Yannick Nézet-Séguin.

I cannot say the same for Joshua Bell. He gave us all the notes (in record time, possibly) and put a glam sheen on them too, but there was precious little music. I've heard him play much better performances than this one, I know he has it in him, so this superficiality was disappointing.

In Stardirigent: The Movie, Daniel Harding will totally be played by Damian Lewis, don't you think?

Photo copyright Deutsche Grammophon/Harald Hoffmann.

Opera as Repertory Drama, or, What is a Concept?

noreply@blogger.com (Zerbinetta) — Sun, 04 Dec 2011 16:39:00 +0000

Your opera house is putting on a new production of repertory staple opera X. It’s on the schedule because Diva Y wants to sing the leading role, because your old production resembles a diorama in the Museum of Natural History and was condemned by OSHA, whatever. You call up a director and design team and they show up at your office to pitch their idea.

The director says, “This is a story about forbidden love in a time of chaos, authoritarianism, and paranoia. We’re going to set it in China during the Cultural Revolution.”

Your response is
a) We were thinking of going in a more traditional direction; there’s nothing about China in the libretto. Besides, Diva Y wants to wear a bustle.
b) Great! That’ll look nice on the bus stops and maybe we can get a new audience out of Chinatown. After all, they’re our future overlords. (awkward chuckle)
c) If that’s what the opera is about, what is your production about?

My answer is c). As a director, you’re given this relic, this opera. It’s a big book, but it’s also the weight of centuries of accrued tradition. Your job is to navigate a way through both of these things.

Opera still consecrates the idea that we, together in the here and now, become an essential element of a ritual. There’s a Holy Writ, namely the score, which is transformed, body and soul. When someone like Konwitschny breaks open this holy writ... he turns against blind pornographic indulgence and attempts to create the conditions to read theater as living theater must be read: alert and critical, with the belief that we can create a better life.
-Stefan Herheim

When a director does something unexpected, they are often reflexively accused by the conserverati of “hating opera.” Usually this is because the director dispensed with some detail to which the accuser has a sentimental attachment, and is ridiculous. But a director might benefit from hating opera a tiny bit--or at least hating opera as it is usually performed. It gives him or her critical distance from the work. He or she doesn’t sigh every time Tosca enters with her flowery stick in Act 1, and this distance is what allows them to do something new. Creating a space between the score and this particular interpretation of it lets the audience sees something living, something other than a comfortable rote reenactment of something they have seen many times before (something other than, one could say, operatic masturbation).

1. Make sets. 2. ? 3. Success!

While the setting created by the sets and costumes seem the most obvious way to establish an interpretation, they don’t do the director's work for them. Even if they set the thing on Mars, the production will be empty unless it grew from a detailed and insightful perspective on the opera’s text. And productions with traditional looks aren’t necessarily traditional in their content. The director’s perspective doesn’t have to be oppositional or ironic--it just has to be there, and be comprehensibly articulated.

He or she has to listen to the opera and interrogate it, and listen to its reception and interrogate that too, and not take any meaning for granted. (Actually not being acquainted with operatic style or, more direly, the opera one is directing is an impediment--ignorance and unconditional love are two sides of the same coin.) Most likely, a lot of time has passed between the composition of this opera and the present day. What has changed? How do we relate to this today? How will the production confront those differences?

This makes it sound like the production is going to be a lot of work for the audience, but I think the boredom of sitting through something that has no conviction or coherence is a far more onerous trial that the challenge of being confronted with something new.

Previously in Regarding Regietheater:

New Met Faust bombs

noreply@blogger.com (Zerbinetta) — Wed, 30 Nov 2011 16:56:00 +0000

You can’t accuse Des McAnuff’s new Met Opera Faust of the interpretive timidity that has plagued the house so far this season--we have atom bombs, manic dancing, time travel, and other things that suggest this is a “bold” production. The problem is that it’s incoherent and has minimal contact with this mostly lovely rendition of the opera’s score. Even the cast can’t save it, and it’s a strangely incomplete show.

Gounod, Faust. Metropolitan Opera, 11/29/11. New production premiere directed by Des McAnuff, sets by Robert Brill, costumes by Paul Tazewell, lights by Peter Mumford. Conducted by Yanick Nézet-Séguin with Jonas Kaufmann (Faust), Marina Poplavskaya (Marguerite), René Pape (Méphistophélès), Russell Braun (Valentin), Michèle Losier (Siebel).

Staging this opera is a challenge. It’s a light revue of romanticism and religious claptrap without the kind of metaphysics or ontological beard-tugging we expect from the Faust legend. Gounod’s plot and music never aspire to evoke anything beyond what can we can see and hear, even though his subject seems inherently symbolic. McAnuff clearly wants to reintroduce the philosophical and symbolic side of the Faust legend. His Faust is an atomic scientist with a guilt complex about all that he has wrought, and in the moments before he kills himself, a version of his sorry life flashes before his eyes. Innocence is corrupted and the world goes to shit and so on--truly an offer from Méphistophélès that he cannot refuse. Méphistophélès, a lot of mirroring and identical suits suggest, is just part of his own psyche.

But once Faust has gone back to his youthful state, this concept doesn’t do much for the plot. Newly young Faust sees Marguerite as the innocent world that he can’t help but destroy. But establishing her as Faust’s projection isn’t very helpful when her very Catholic downfall and eventual redemption are at the center of the plot. And why does this earnest guy abandon her in the first place (the eternal difficulty of reconciling a sex life with the pursuit of a PhD in the hard sciences)? There’s also the matter that the war the soldiers are leaving for and returning from is World War I, which produces nothing more horrible than some limps and jumpiness. Without starting the Genocide Olympics I don’t think you get to play the atom bomb history card and then just ignore that you have also drawn the World War I one--the era of gas, famine, and mass warfare without penicillin. Good times.

The execution is rather clumsy. The blocking is OK but not at all musical. The metal unit set makes the entire setting lab-like with spiral staircases and multiple levels of walkways, justified by the idea that it’s all in Faust’s head, and the white coats of the lab occasionally reappear. It’s functional enough but the sight lines aren’t great and it’s ugly, made more so by the attempt to soften things up with some roses in the love duet (see below for many more pictures). Lighting is harsh and some cues were badly mistimed. Crowd scenes are cluttered and include some incredibly awkward dancing--why Méphistophélès does the Robot during the "Veau d’or" beats me. Some giant projections of Faust and mostly Margeurite’s faces on the scrims are confusing and seem lifted out of Robert Lepage’s Damnation de Faust. (And why her visage first appears during Valentin's music in the prelude is a puzzle.)

Yet other things are totally old school, like the surprisingly not bad sword fight between Faust and Valentin. There is also a giant soldier puppet, and one of Death? (Just saying.) By the Walpurgisnacht we are back in the World War II era, with an appearance by your obligatory writhing demons, here apparent nuclear bomb victims. The bomb finally goes off, via a projection, and there is also a chorus of scientists with those mushroom cloud glasses I remember from Doctor Atomic. The final scene is minimalist and Marguerite is saved by running up a lot of stairs into the sky. Old Faust reappears and finally gets to die properly. There you go.

Perhaps I should stop trying to explaining it. It’s not without ideas but it’s an attempt at abstraction that never adds up. What does Faust want, anyway? He's totally passive here. Adding the science seems to make too many other things not work, and fails to show Gounod’s sometimes flimsy score to best advantage. The music has charm and gentle lyricism, but the production isn’t interested in what’s on the surface.

Unfortunately this really held back the strong cast, none of whom seemed to be feeling it. Yannick Nézet-Séguin’s conducting was very fine and the orchestra sounded great. He’s something like the Fabio Luisi of French repertoire, transparent and stylish and fleet (with a few exceptions that got drawn-out tempos such as “Salut” and the love duet). The HIP aesthetic seems to have gone mainstream, huh? I wish the staging had been half as elegant.

Among the cast René Pape was the only person who seemed to be engaged and having any fun, playing Méphistophélès for laughs and singing with suave strength and wit. He’s not really evil, but he’s certainly up to no good. (Nuclear bombs, those mischievous little buggers.) The “Veau d’or” was taken at an energetic tempo, giving this moribund evening some life.

Jonas Kaufmann was a strangely distant and underplayed Faust; the assignment to play a skirt-chaser as a moral philosopher seemed to rob him of charisma and personality. Except for a few moments of poignant detachment he looked to be on autopilot. I have to wonder if someone with less taste and more smarm would be more effective here.* After getting off to a somewhat intonationally suspect start (perhaps a reaction to his heinous mustache as Old Faust, who knows) he did some really luscious singing, particularly in the love duet, with incredibly long breath and natural phrasing. His is a heroic voice for this lyric role, but he still managed a respectable high C in “Salut” and the weight in his lower register helped in Act 1.

This was the first time I had heard Marina Poplavskaya since her 2007 debut in War and Peace. She's now something of a Gebrauchsdiva for the house (and for the ROH) but that belies her peculiarity, and she seems miscast as Marguerite. Her acidic, often hollow-sounding voice varies enormously in color from note to note, she doesn’t really do legato, and tended to coo in the love duet with some seriously strange phrasing (and weird French). A few high notes, notably the As in the Jewel Song, were just shrieks. Her husky tone plus standoffish presence don’t play well as virginal innocence, and she only looked really at home when she put on an enormous tiara from the jewel box and cast a Turandot look. (And she only sometimes remembered the weight of her eight-months-large pregnant belly later on.) Her prison mad scene, though, was actually quite affecting and intense despite extremely uneven singing. She's not boring, I'll give her that, and I was glad this performance included the Spinning Song, one of the score's best moments.

Russell Braun had solid tone and style but a very wide vibrato and uneven production as Valentin. Michèle Loisier was a bright spot as Siébel, with a big and bright mezzo. The chorus sounded fine, though they almost lost Nézet-Séguin in the waltz.

All in all it is a disappointment, and strangely unfulfiling. Gounod's score is so modest; there's just no compelling dramatic centerpiece.

It seems to me that the Met imported the wrong London Faust. This one is from the English National Opera, but David McVicar’s Royal Opera production is a delight that does a great job reading the piece, so check that one out on DVD. If you want to see this Met one I won’t stop you, it runs until January 19 including second cast Faust Roberto Alagna and third cast Joseph Calleja.

*Roberto Alagna will be singing a few performances in December.

Video (pictures below):

Way more pictures. That none show Valentin while alive is the fault of the Met photographers, not me:

All photos copyright Ken Howard/Metropolitan Opera

Long weekend reading

noreply@blogger.com (Zerbinetta) — Fri, 25 Nov 2011 15:39:00 +0000

Don't go near that mall, Americans (and non-Americans)! Waste time on the internet instead!

The Wiener Volksoper has revived Stefan Herheim's 2004 production of Madama Butterfly. Here's a review by the Zwölftöner. (Bachtrack)

(If you are interested in music in Vienna, you should be reading his excellent blog, Von heute auf morgen.)

Also Viennese: Franz Welser-Möst talks to the Salzburger Nachrichten about life at the Wiener Staatsoper, in German. (Salzburger Nachrichten, thanks to Intermezzo for the tip)

Arte Live Web is streaming the Bolshoi's grand reopening production of Glinka's Ruslan and Lyudmila, conducted by Vladimir Jurowski and directed by Dmitri Tcherniakov. I haven't gotten a chance to watch it yet but I've heard very good things and am looking forward to it! FYI: no subtitles. (Arte Live Web)

John at Opera Ramblings has some interesting thoughts following up on my "Opera Isn't Theater" post. (Opera Ramblings)

This article on concert presenters in Berlin is interesting if you read German. (Otherwise it will be pretty incomprehensible.) (Tagesspiegel)

Not shopping? Not quite on topic, but if you like Jeremy Denk's piece on content and gadgets you should also check out Maria Bustillos's on Apple's design philosophy. (Think Denk, The Awl)

Here are some caricatures based on the Bay Staats's current Contes d'Hoffmann, courtesy of Rolando Villazón. (Bayerische Staatsoper im Blog)

Honegger's Joan of Arc at Carnegie

noreply@blogger.com (Zerbinetta) — Mon, 21 Nov 2011 13:54:00 +0000

I rarely miss a concert with a really big and really obscure piece of music. Naturally I went to see Marin Alsop conduct Honegger's Jeanne d'Arc au bûcher, and I wrote about it for Bachtrack.

The short life and terrifying death of Joan of Arc are the subject of Arthur Honegger’s Jeanne d’Arc au bûcher ("Joan of Arc at the Stake"), a curious masterpiece of an oratorio dating from 1938. The nearly-forgotten work received a well-deserved resurrection by Marin Alsop and the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra at Carnegie Hall on Saturday night.

You can read the full review here.

Addendum: It's a peculiar work and I'm not sure if I'm really inside the style yet, but I'm glad that I heard it. I'm reluctant to pass strong aesthetic judgement on it because I don't have a very firm grasp on Honegger in general, but I'm inclined to put it more in the category of intriguing curiosity than important rediscovery.

According to this from the Baltimore City Paper, the orchestra-overpowering chorus was around 120 strong.

Nico Muhly's Dark Sisters

noreply@blogger.com (Zerbinetta) — Sat, 19 Nov 2011 20:54:00 +0000

Nico Muhly is one of the most well known and prolific names in the American under-40 compositional set, with major premieres and CDs all over the place. His first opera, Two Boys, was seen this year at the English National Opera (and will be coming to the Met in the future), and his second, Dark Sisters, was just premiered by the Gotham Chamber Opera (along with the Music-Theatre Group co-producing). Everyone else has already written about it and new music isn't quite my fach, but I did see it so I thought I should register my thoughts. It’s an honorable effort but less than fully satisfying.

The plot deals with a police raid on a polygamous household somewhere in the West of the type associated with Warren Jeffs. We open with the five wives, and the only other cast members are one daughter and the husband--so there’s a lot of Rosenkavalier trio-ing going on, particularly since all except one of the women are sopranos of a more or less lyric sort (and the exception is a lyric mezzo). There is rather less variety in their vocal writing than in, say, Poulenc’s in Dialogues of the Carmelites. Compounding this problem is Stephen Karam's largely static libretto, which shies away from staging dramatic events in favor of lots of meditations and kindly conversations. While the women are eventually developed as characters, the action is awfully thin and several dramatic events stay unnecessarily offstage. I like this idea for an opera--it’s a contemporary topic with a lot of emotional punch. But it’s underdeveloped here.

Muhly’s music is often compared to that of his mentor Philip Glass, but he’s not such a strict minimalist, and the influence of Renaissance English music in all its consonant contrapuntal glory is quite audible. The repeating figures are largely kept to the orchestra (a chamber ensemble of around a dozen players). So I’m going to describe it as Janacek only with Tallis in the place of the folk song. Most of it is at an andante con moto tempo, mezzo forte. It’s very beautiful, but it’s often underwritten and lacking in character, and lacks contrast in a drama already suffering from sameness.

One other strength of the opera is its scale, which has a nice intimacy befitting Gotham Chamber Opera. Rebecca Taichman’s production is really excellent, balancing naturalistic acting and more poetic images in a way that flows naturally. (It’s not a fair comparison, but it’s better than any direction we’ve seen at the Met so far this season.) The simple production emphasizes a harsh natural world that fits the music, though its symbolism is never really echoed in the libretto (the wives seem to suffer less from an empty world than a crowded and confined one). The cast is also excellent, particularly Caitlin Lynch’s even, rich tone as the most resistant of the wives, Eliza. Jennifer Check, who often sings small roles at the Met, showed a beautiful piano and luminous color as Almera. There wasn’t really a weak link in the cast, which also included Jennifer Zetlan in the Soeur Constance role and Kevin Burdette as both the husband and a TV interviewer in the second act. (The composer and librettist could have helped him make the former a more complex figure, though.)

Muhly is be in a difficult position. He’s gotten so much attention so early on that expectations are very, perhaps unreasonably, high. (One thinks of Dudamel.) Don’t write him off, but I’m not convinced he’s there yet.

One performance remains, tonight, November 19, then the opera travels to Philadelphia in the spring.

Nico Muhly and Stephen Karam, Dark Sisters. Gotham Chamber Opera/Music-Theatre Group, 11/12/2011. Production directed by Rebecca Taichman and conducted by Neal Goren. Full cast listed here.

On “Enchanted Island"

noreply@blogger.com (Zerbinetta) — Wed, 16 Nov 2011 02:18:00 +0000

photo Grove Music Online

I should be writing about Dark Sisters right now but to quote Rick Perry I stepped in it on Twitter this morning regarding the prospects for the Met’s new Baroque pasticcio, The Enchanted Island, and I wanted to explain a bit more without the constraint of 140-character installments. While I tend to be pessimistic, condemning a piece before it even premieres is rather mean-spirited and I should probably avoid doing it. But I can’t shake the feeling that this won’t be doing Baroque opera (a field in which I have had, sigh, some degree of involvement) any favors and here’s why.

A pasticcio is a conglomeration of various preexisting pieces into a new dramatic whole. They were indeed extremely popular in the Baroque as a vehicle for various greatest hits, as Horace Walpole said, “Our operas begin tomorrow with a pasticcio, full of my most favorite songs.” Almost all early operas were subject to some substitution and addition of music by other composers. It wasn’t until opera reached northern Europe around 1700 that newly assembled works became established--those cities lacked their own composers to assure a steady stream of new works. The Grove entry includes this recipe from an anonymous 1705 account of music in London:

Pick out about an hundred Italian Airs from several Authors, good, or bad, it signifies nothing. Among these, make use of fifty five, or fifty six, of such as please your Fancy best, and Marshall ’em in the manner you think most convenient. When this is done, you must employ a Poet to write some English Words, the Airs of which are to be adapted to the Italian Musick. In the next place you must agree with some Composer to provide the Recitative … When this is done, you must make a Bargain with some Mungril Italian Poet to Translate the Part of the English that is to be Perform’d in Italian; and then deliver it into the Hands of some Amanuensis, that understands Musick better than your self, to Transcribe the Score, and the Parts.

The pasticcio became a way for in-demand composers to become more prolific, cranking out new works from old music. Handel did this a great deal.

My initial objection to Enchanted Island was that the Met website lists the included composers as Rameau, Handel, Vivaldi, “and others.” This mixture of Italian and French styles seems to me a recipe for trouble, others protested that this contrast was part of the genre. But I don’t think it is! I couldn’t find records of a single pasticcio that includes a French composer. Sometimes Gluck was mixed in, and other German (or British) composers who wrote in more or less an Italian style, but never a French one. The two schools were considered independent. It’s really a big difference. I fear that Enchanted Island will fall into the trap Burney saw in a production of Orfeo, in which “the unity, simplicity, and dramatic excellence of this opera, which had gained the composer so much credit on the Continent, were greatly diminished here by the heterogeneous mixture of Music, of other composers, in a quite different style.”

But the larger question is of the Met's duty to Baroque repertory. I’m not sure if it should have one at all; the theater is just too big to go about it properly and the lack of a period instrument band in the pit is a major problem. But if they are going to do it they should try to do the genre justice. Of Baroque composers, in the modern era the Met has produced only Handel. But Enchanted Island seems more a way of producing something with a star cast and spectacle than it is to introduce new music to the Met audience. Why go to the lengths and risk to create a new work when there are many, many wonderful Baroque operas that the Met has never produced? For all the house’s size, one of the really grand French Baroque works by Lully or Rameau could maybe work.

It seems our concept of the authority of the composer is variable. We turn our noses up at cutting Wagner and Strauss but let Baroque works get slashed apart. The justification for this is historical--it was only in the late nineteenth century that the idea of Werktreue got started, and earlier composers never expected that their texts would have such closed status (though in the present day we sometimes extend Werktreue back as far as Mozart--just ask Riccardo Muti about early Verdi or Cecilia Bartoli about her alternate Susannah aria). But it seems to me like a double standard. Why do we grant Wagner greater sanctity than Handel just because he lived at a time when his works were considered more closed? Why are we so eager to chop up the Baroque repertory, music that the Met has shown little advocacy for in the past? Why can’t we accord it at least a modicum more respect and allow it to speak on its own terms? (A modern concoction that doesn’t even follow the rules of the eighteenth-century pasticcio is not it!)

I didn’t mean to develop this so far before Enchanted Island even happens--for all I know it will be an ahistoric blast and will justify its existence in practice by being totally fun. But I’m still not happy with it in theory.

Fabio Luisi and the Wiener Symphoniker in NYC

noreply@blogger.com (Zerbinetta) — Mon, 14 Nov 2011 23:26:00 +0000

Of course I couldn't miss a chance to reunite with the Wiener Symphoniker on Sunday. (known in these parts as the Vienna Symphony Orchestra--where the "orchestra" came from, I know not). I wrote about it for Bachtrack.

The Italian conductor Fabio Luisi has become an increasingly familiar and welcome face to New York audiences. Recently appointed Principal Conductor at the Metropolitan Opera, he is primarily known here as an operatic conductor. But he has also been the chief conductor of the Vienna Symphony Orchestra (known as the Wiener Symphoniker in German) since 2005, and on Sunday the Viennese joined him in Avery Fisher Hall. While the warhorse program recalled the taste of the city’s other major orchestra--the arch-conservative Vienna Philharmonic--it was a fine afternoon.

Click here to read the whole thing. I like Luisi a lot but I was really going to this concert to hear Schmidt's fantastic Symphony No. 4, which was swapped with Beethoven's Symphony No. 7, a piece the Symphoniker could probably play in their sleep. (The obvious explanation is that this change had to do with the amount of time Luisi has been spending at the Met.) I was quite disappointed.

It's interesting how Luisi's reputation in New York is so much better than it is in Vienna. He keeps canceling Symphoniker gigs to conduct at the Met, which doesn't endear him to the Viennese, but most of the people I talked to managed to both be pissed about his absenteeism and denigrate his conducting skills. In my experience he is a better opera conductor than a symphonic conductor, and he doesn't conduct opera in Vienna much (as one of the many, many conductors who doesn't get along with the Staatsoper), but he's still a fine musician, far above average, and I was surprised at how low Viennese audiences rated him. I think there might be some national prejudice here--his repertoire overlaps to a dangerous extent with Christian Thielemann's. But anyway, Vienna, New York is happy to take Luisi off your hands.

I'd prefer you send him over with Schmidt next time, though.

Gheorghiu and Kaufmann turn violet again in Adriana Lecouvreur

noreply@blogger.com (Zerbinetta) — Wed, 09 Nov 2011 18:11:00 +0000

(Not in concert.)

I went to see the ever-elusive Angela Gheorghiu and the happily ubiquitous Jonas Kaufmann in the Opera Orchestra of New York's concert Adriana Lecouvreur at Carnegie Hall last night and I wrote about it for Bachtrack:

“I will return! I want to again be intoxicated by the triumphant smile of art!” proclaims the actress Adriana Lecouvreur in the extravagant opera of the same title. With this role, the soprano Angela Gheorghiu returned to New York in the first performance of the Opera Orchestra of New York’s Carnegie Hall season. After financial difficulties the company itself has been making a comeback as well, under new musical director Alberto Veronesi. For over 40 years, the group has produced concert performance of lesser-known operas with outstanding casts, and this evening was a fine continuation of that tradition, with strong performances from Jonas Kaufmann, Ambrogio Maestri, and Anita Rachvelishvili in the other major roles.

Click here to read the full review.

I saw them in this last year in London and then I was conflicted between being overwhelmed and oddly not-quite-whelmed. In concert, this opera actually seems to work better. The music isn't quite top drawer but it has a kind of sincerity and directness that can be both beguiling and exciting. This came through more clearly without having to think about the silly plot or David McVicar's futile attempt to give the happenings some symbolic substance. The opera has emotional power but it lacks strong dramatic syntax, and it's better when you focus on the former strength rather than the latter weakness. (It should be noted, though, that Angela's couture for this concert was most impressive as well, both dresses very 1970's, the first resembling a disco ball and the second a low-cut nightgown with a rhinestone belt and attached cape.)

This didn't stop me from writing down some silly surtitles, though:

Love is a flame, friendship is its ashes.
I love him with the fiery recklessness of one who has had her heart taken for the first time.
You're the sun that gilds the eternal Arctic night.
Their eyes flash like pairs of blades, showing no mercy.
Our love defies fate, eludes death in golden dreams.

Nevertheless, I was totally crying at the end, go figure.

Richard Tucker Gala: The stars are loud

noreply@blogger.com (Zerbinetta) — Mon, 07 Nov 2011 06:08:00 +0000

Some of the stars came out for the Richard Tucker Foundation’s annual gala at Avery Fisher Hall on Sunday night. With a program dominated by 19th-century Italian meatballs (despite a complete absence of actual Italians onstage), there was much drinking, cursing, praying, pleading to Mama, and other traditional operatic activities as sung by loud voices such as Dolora Zajick, Stephanie Blythe, Bryn Terfel and Jonas Kaufmann. The recipient of this year’s award was Angela Meade, who also sang, but in my following write-up, everyone gets a prize.

Marcello Giordani and Marina Poplavskaya canceled; René Pape disappeared off the program sometime last week. (This is all normal operating procedure for this gala.) Angela Gheorghiu was rumored to be materializing to sing Carmen mit dem Jonas, but her name was not mentioned once and La Scala Carmen Anita Rachvelishvili turned up to do it instead--meaning that instead of Don José-ing his Adriana of Tuesday’s Adriana Lecouvreur, Kaufmann Don José-ed his Principessa instead. Also the chorus was not the Met chorus but rather the New York Choral Society and they sounded excellent.

Orchestra: Saint-Saens, Bacchanale from Samson et Delila
Emmanuel Villaume was conducting and did a fine, unobtrusive job (well, there were some strange tempos later on but I don’t know if that was him or the singers). The orchestra was “members of the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra.” This was a sassy and zippy choice for an opener, I approve. I quickly realized that from my third-tier seat I could hear the strings barely at all, but considering the notoriously awful acoustics of Avery Fisher I’m not going to blame Villaume for this. Luckily the voices later on came through loud and clear. It helped that this was one loud bunch of singers.
Verdict: Most Brassy

Angela Meade: Verdi, “Santo di patria” from Attila
I heard Angela Meade’s Met debut in Ernani back in 2008 and I was astonished at how much she’s grown (back then I was tipped off by a friend who went to high school with her, but she’s a secret no longer). She still has a big, clear, easy tone and agile coloratura but now sings with thrust and incisiveness, and a sense of pace that I didn’t remember at all from her before. Only a final high note came out a little shrill. This was exciting, gutsy stuff. Brava.
Verdict: Most Thrilling

Zeljko Lucic: Verdi, “Eri tu” from Un ballo in maschera
Lucic has a lovely warm tone but not a lot of power at the top. The first half of this aria came out as barked, but the second half showed he can sing a good legato when he puts his mind to it. The bit with the cello at the start was shaky in the orchestra.
Verdict: Most Blah (sorry Zeljko)

Bryn Terfel: Donizetti, “Udite, udite, o rustici” from L’elisir d’amore
The evening’s comedy act came from our current Wotan. To serve as his elixir, Terfel kept pulling bottles of beer from his jacket, including a Guinness, a Brooklyn Lager, and what I believe was a Sam Adams. That plus a lot of other gags made this more about the entertainment than the singing, but who cares to hear an amazingly sung Dulcamara anyway? Also, he seemed to chug the whole Brooklyn Lager at the end, showing fine taste in beer if not in consumption habits.
Verdict: Most Fun

Jonas Kaufmann: Mascagni, “Mamma, quel vino è generoso” from Cavalleria rusticana
The programming sequence was unfortunate here; this was Very Serious Stuff after we’d just had lots of hijinks. But there was a real emotional intensity and trajectory to this that drew me in quickly enough. At times the phrasing was micromanaged but done so cannily that I almost didn’t notice. Also his fortes are really formidable and there were excellent pianos too. Powerful!
Verdict: Most Serious, possibly also Most Demented (Good Division)

Stephanie Blythe: Thomas, “Connais-tu le pays” from Mignon
Everyone knows Stephanie Blythe can sing loudly but I at least forget that she can sing really prettily too. This had a gorgeous simplicity and floated quality that opened up naturally on the high notes. Very very nice!
Verdict: Most Enchanting

Dolora Zajick: Chaikovsky, “Tsar vishnikh sil” from The Maid of Orleans
I was coming at this with a disadvantage because I don’t know the opera so I might have missed a lot, but I found it sung with conviction but rather unvariably. She’s monumental, but she’s kind of monochromatic.
Verdict: Most Resembling a Tank

Yonghoon Lee: Massenet, “O Souverain, ô juge, ô père” from Le Cid
Lee has such a beautiful instrument but he shows even less musical variety than Zajick. Pretty much his only mode is a squillo-infused bellow, which is exciting but I never got the feeling he was taking me on a journey, and I DO know this aria. The tempo was on the (very) slow side.
Verdict: Most Squillo

Meade, Zajick, and Frank Porretta: Bellini, Finale of Act I of Norma
Meade was again exciting, Zajick contributed some great chest voice (which is not quite what one listens to Bellini for but no mind) and I didn’t notice Porretta too much.
Verdict: Best Parterre Comment Thread Bait

(The squillo in this concert seemed unhappily apportioned. If Lee could give a little of his to Frank Porretta, they’d both be better off.)

Kaufmann and Terfel: Verdi, “Dio che nell’alma infondere” from Don Carlo
Has Terfel ever sung this role onstage? I don’t think he has. Kaufmann looked more comfortable with it, to no surprise (or maybe it was the beer). But they blend surprisingly well and both have such hefty, heroic sounds that it sounded most unusually Wagnerian.
Verdict: Most Beneficial to Flanders

Maria Guleghina: Puccini, Vissi d’arte from Tosca
Like everyone else said when they saw her in Nabucco (sorry, the early Verdi, I can’t do it), very loud vocal train wreck Maria Guleghina sounds surprisingly good right now! Her vibrato is still far wider than Broadway but she sounded amazingly in control, and sang a legit piano at the end. But she must have been miffed at only getting to sing one aria, because she sang it at a tempo where it could have been two.
Verdict: Slowest, also Most Demented (Probably Bad? Division)

Zajick and Lee: Mascagni, “Tu qui, Santuzza?” from Cavalleria rusticana
Lee’s Turiddu is seemingly less conflicted than Kaufmann’s. Nevertheless, Zajick went for it with an enthusiasm to make up for the lack of staging, and Lee sounded quite impassioned before kind of running out of steam at the end. To be fair, if I had gotten cursed like that I’d probably crumple too.
Verdict: Loudest

Anita Rachvelishvili and Kaufmann: Bizet, Act IV Duet from Carmen
This was my first time hearing Anita R., whose difficult last name was horribly mangled by Barry Tucker in his introduction. She’s got an even, sexy mezzo soprano that was very effective, though it seemed this time like Don José gets the more interesting singing in this scene. Or maybe that was just because Kaufmann was kind of totally fabulous in this, which he was. They tried to semi-stage it and, well, points for effort. I couldn’t see all of it from my seat location so I won’t comment further.
Verdict: Program Choice Most Unsuited to Concert Presentation

Terfel, Meade, and Blythe with additional help, Verdi, Fugue and Finale from Falstaff
This is a good way to end such a concert! It was quite well-balanced for a minimally rehearsed effort. but that’s partly because it’s composed so cleverly.
Verdict: Most Contrapuntal (sorry, I know that’s weak)

See you from Adriana on Tuesday. Hopefully our favorite current Romanian diva will show, if she doesn't we'll probably get Guleghina, which I'm dreading only slightly less now than I was earlier.

Opera Isn't Theater

noreply@blogger.com (Zerbinetta) — Sat, 05 Nov 2011 15:29:00 +0000

Our Hero, Walter Felsenstein (bust at the Komische Oper)

First, if you haven’t read James Jorden’s excellent piece at Musical America about the ailing Gelb regime at the Met, please go do so!

I want to look at one specific aspect of the issue. Peter Gelb thinks the way of bringing new blood into opera is to hire theater directors. But many of his recent imports--such as Michael Grandage (Don Giovanni) and Robert Lepage (the Ring, who granted has a somewhat longer history in opera)--seem utterly at a loss when confronted with opera. (The same goes for Dominique Meyer's choices at the Wiener Staatsoper like André Engel and Eric Génovèse.) What makes the work so different?

A spoken-word theater director’s text is a script composed only of words. An opera director has a musical score of both notes and words. The music adds new and complex structural and expressive dimensions to the text. First, the timing of how the words unfold is determined not by the director and actors as in a spoken play but by the rhythm of the score and by the conductor and singers, which can make the theater director feel very constricted. What do you during this long orchestra bit? I imagine this is particularly a problem for directors like Lepage and Mary Zimmerman, who often write their own texts or are directing new works.

But much more importantly, the director is responsible for staging the music (in Peter Konwitschny’s term, Musik-inszenieren) as well as the words. In a number opera, this means confronting the structural divisions of the music--recitative, aria, ensemble, etc. In any opera, this means acknowledging, exploiting, and visualizing the gestural and expressive qualities of the music.

Here is a classic example, from La traviata. Gérmont is about to launch into his pitch to Violetta about why she needs to leave Alfredo and reveals the existence of his daughter:

Skip this paragraph if you don't like music theory: The recit has been cruising through some unresolved diminished chords, which gives it an uneasy and awkward feeling. When he says “due figli,” “two children,” it’s finally clear why Gérmont is visiting Violetta. The orchestra correspondingly crashes in with the clarity of an accented major triad on A-flat, albeit in second inversion. Violetta repeats, “Di due figli?” and the orchestra resolves the cadential 6/4 into an E-flat major triad. Now she’s realized why he is there too. It turns out that this is the dominant chord of the [quasi-]aria's key of A-flat major.

Version with less theory: As Gérmont finally gets to his point and announces his daughter's existence, the previously unstable harmony settles, and we can hear Violetta start to listen to him when she joins him in a stable key, a key he continues in his "Pura siccome un angelo."

Moving on: Gérmont’s line “Pura siccome un angelo” is rather suave, and the exact music repeats with the next line of the text. He’s hanging around middle C, a strong and highish part of the voice where a baritone is going to sound forceful. But he’s marked dolcissimo cantabile and is on the third of the chord, not the stronger root or fifth. And what’s with that sixteenth note neighbor-tone blip on “angelo” and “figlia”? It’s not harmonically important, but it gives the vocal line a little bump that could be interpreted to mean any number of things.

That’s the thing: musical expression doesn’t have specific semantic content. These musical events could mean any number of things. Violetta could be shocked, injured, or even relieved when she repeats “two children,” but we know something happens in this particular spot when we switch from diminshed chords to major triads. It’s the director’s job to translate this musical expression into a plausible emotional narrative in the stage action. It can even go against the music, but it has to be conscious of it. You can’t just stage the words. You don’t have to be musically educated--though in my opinion it is a big, big help--but you need to listen with a sensitive ear to every note. And this is not something directors accustomed to working only with words necessarily naturally know how to do.

For the creative director, this can be a great opportunity. Since so much of opera's drama is contained in the powerful but flexible narrative of music, it’s easy to depart from the specifics of the libretto (setting, events) as long as your alternative still makes sense on some level (enter Stefan Herheim). Unfortunately the level that most directors choose is “tradition.” The small rotating repertoire and short rehearsal periods of many opera houses leads easily to ossification of productions, performers and audience members, and for popular operas it seems way easier to choose the way everyone’s seen before. Even if no one can remember exactly why Don José always rips off Carmen’s mantilla in that measure, they do it because it is what is done.

The theoretical advantage of bringing in theater directors is that in all their operatic innocence they will see things in a fresh way.* But staging opera requires specific musical skills to create something dynamic and new, and recent new Met directors seem to have fallen either deep into a stogy tradition of which they profess ignorance (Michael Grandage) or a flatness that has no content at all (Robert Lepage). And that’s not staging opera.

Here is how Willy Decker stages the Traviata moment. Despite some overacting from Thomas Hampson it is well done:

*Grandage said he wanted a production that would be comprehensible to new operagoers. JJ rightly calls him out on this point. I’d like to add that as a member of the Youthful Demographic most of my non-opera buff friends think that opera is frumpy and old-fashioned. Some of them like a good ruffly dress-up, but just as many if not more would like to see something modern and fresh. And give new audience members some credit, they aren’t so easily confused. You know Grandage called some 22-year old to get him or her to explain Inception to him.

Previously in Regarding Regietheater:

Epic Met Lieder from Jonas Kaufmann

noreply@blogger.com (Zerbinetta) — Mon, 31 Oct 2011 03:59:00 +0000

(Not at the Met.)

Just because one can sell almost the entire giant Met singing an arty Lieder program, as Jonas Kaufmann managed to do this afternoon, doesn’t mean it’s necessarily a good idea to do so. That being said, he showed up, hair decorously tamed for the occasion, and is singularly equipped to succeed in this format. He has the elegance and musical refinement to sing art songs but never quite loses the large-format emotionalism of a singing actor. I had trouble shaking the feeling that I was watching from Central Park, but a good concert it was.

Jonas Kaufmann in Recital, Metropolitan Opera, 10/30/2011. Helmut Deutsch, piano. Program: Liszt, “ Vergiftet sind meine Lieder,” “Im Rhein, im schönen Strome,” “Freundvoll und leidvoll,” Der König in Thule, Ihr Glocken von Marling, Die drei Zigeuner. Mahler; Five Rücker Lieder. Duparc, L’invitation au voyage, Phildylé, Le Manoir de Rosamunde, Chanson triste, La vie antéieure. Strauss, Schlechtes Wetter, “Schön sind, coh kalt die Himmelsterne, Befreit, Heimliche Aufforderung, Morgen!, Cäcilie. Encores: Strauss, ”Breit über mein Haupt,“ ”Ach weh, mir unglückhaftem Mann,“ Freundliche Vision, Zueignung; Lehár, ”Dein ist mein ganzes Herz.“

I'm getting a lot of Googlers who want to ID the encores. They were "Breit' über mein Haupt," "Ach weh, mir unglückhaftem Mann," Freundliche Vision and Zueignung (all Strauss) and Lehár, "Dein ist mein ganzes Herz." (Yes, I knew them all from ear, but I'm a Strauss nerd.)

This was mostly the same program I heard Kaufmann give last July (the Strauss set, whose order I did not like at all in July, has thankfully been reconfigured), and my impressions are pretty similar, though I thought Kaufmann was possibly in even better voice today than his excellent July outing. His tone is dark and substantial but he maintains a remarkable liquid legato and dynamic control that is amazing for a voice of his size, and he has formidable musicality and attention to detail. He can fill the Met and even raise its roof when required, but it still took me some adjustment to scale to something so delicate in a hall of this size.

I again didn’t think the Liszt set was that great, but maybe these songs are just not my cup of tea. (I am ready for Liszt Year to be over, honestly.) They are so generic in expression that they came off more as lessons in beautiful piano singing (“Ihr Glocken von Marling”), declamation (“Vergiftet sind meine Lieder”) or flowing rhythms (“Der König in Thule”) than as dramatic statements. Only the spooky “Drei Zigeuner” really picked up speed. (The Met obviously didn't check with Kaufmann as to whether he was going to sing the coda of this song, which is marked as optional in my score--he did not but the text was still in the program. I think it's better without.)

Mahler’s Rückert-Lieder, however, were extremely good, with Kaufmann’s talent for singing and not getting lost in extremely long phrases allowing for slow tempos in “Ich atmet’ einen linden Duft” and “Ich bin der Welt abhanden gekommen,” the latter registering particularly strongly in its stillness and desolation. I missed the woodwind glissandos in “Um Mitternacht” but for this song the piano version gets a great intense claustrophobia.“Um Mitternacht” was placed at the end, my preferred ordering (on my CD Bernstein puts “Ich bin der Welt abhanden gekommen” last, which makes the surrender of “Um Mitternacht” far less powerful and besides is just a bummer). Here the size of the Met actually began to prove useful, and Kaufmann put a lot of heft into the final section to good effect.

The second half’s Duparc set was less idiomatic; Kaufmann’s voice has warmth but it’s more like a fireplace than a sunbeam and the climax moments sometimes sounded a bit too muscular. But his French is excellent and his pianos continued to be gorgeous. Despite fabulous modulations, Duparc’s music can sound to me a little monotonous at times so I appreciated Kaufmann’s variety in tone color. I still haven’t figured out what in tarnation the secret of “La Vie Antérieure” could be, maybe I should write this M. Baudelaire and ask him. (Sorry if you could not tell I’m writing this after some wine.)

The naturalness and comfort of his Strauss made the Duparc sound downright studious. Strauss has this way in his songs and sometimes his operas of careening towards high As and Bs that sends most non-soprano singers for a total train wreck (it being difficult to careen up towards something)

from "Schlechtes Wetter"

but Kaufmann treats them like they’re not only the easiest thing but the best thing to show off his excellent and powerful high notes. “Befreit” might be sappy but it’s a song that always gets to me and as I said on Twitter afterwards that this particular rendition left me like a 13-year-old who has just seen The Notebook, I am not kidding here. These were mostly not witty Strauss songs (though we got one of those in the encores) but their big expression and sweeping romanticism were a good fit for the giant hall.

I have not mentioned Helmut Deutsch’s piano playing up to this point, which I think is fitting. He is absolutely correct and impeccably supportive, but very much in the background. Sometimes I think a stronger hand would have been more interesting, but there was nothing to object to by any means (except the clunker at the very end of “Cäcilie,” the final song of the program, when we got a major and a minor chord simultaneously--not a good end, and Deutsch stretched out the coda of “Breit’ über mein Haupt,” the first encore, perhaps in recompense).

Actually choosing the huge Met for his New York recital debut (as this was, amazingly) might have played rather well to Kaufmann’s strengths. He’s not working on as many levels as a Quasthoff or Gerhaher would be (I am also including the recitals I’ve seen him do in much smaller venues here), he’s doing tasteful, beautiful singing with direct expression that could reach me up in the Family Circle. So not such a bad idea at all. We got a whole cartload of encores, all Strauss (the highlight of which was an impassioned “Zueignung”) up to a marvelously schmaltzy “Dein ist mein ganzes Herz,” from Franz Lehár’s Das Land des Lächelns, which is way less familiar here than it is with the blue-haired contingent in Austria and Germany, but still went down very well.

See you from the Tucker Gala next weekend, if not sooner.

Siegfried at the Met: Old swords in new forges

noreply@blogger.com (Zerbinetta) — Fri, 28 Oct 2011 16:38:00 +0000

The third installment of Robert Lepage’s new Ring cycle planted itself on the Met stage last night. This was the first of the three that I have seen live (I saw Walküre in a movie theater), and I am a little confused as to how so many computer screensavers projected onto a spinning picket fence help tell the story. And Lepage doesn’t really seem to have any idea of how to stage Wagner’s music as opposed to the words. But musical values were very good. That’s life at the Met.

Wagner, Siegfried. Metropolitan Opera, 10/27/2011. New production premiere directed by Robert Lepage with sets by Carl Fillion, costumes by François St-Aubin, lighting by Etienne Boucher, video by Pedro Pires. Conducted by Fabio Luisi with Jay Hunter Morris (Siegfried), Bryn Terfel (Wanderer), Gerhard Siegel (Mime), Eric Owens (Alberich), Hans-Peter König (Fafner), Deborah Voigt (Brünnhilde), Mojca Erdmann (Forest Bird), Patricia Bardon (Erda).

As you probably have read elsewhere, the entire cycle works on a unit set known as the Machine. A narrow raked apron downstage is backed by a trench, where much of the action happens with really wonky sight lines. Above the trench hover a line of gigantic slats that spin on a horizontal axis into various configurations. The apron and slats are smooth light gray metal and serve as a surface for various video projections, the trench is black. Supposedly some of the video projections used 3-D technology this time around, but from my seat in the Family Circle and lack of previous shows to compare to I didn't notice anything. The design has a central dissonance. The costumes, projected images (trees, a mountain landscape, a waterfall) and set pieces placed in the trench area are all raggedly naturalistic, with rough surfaces and earth tones. It’s a look similar to the old Otto Schenk production that this one replaces. But the Schenk was at least uniform: the set covered the whole stage and was similarly craggy. Here, the Machine and its surroundings are all smooth and clean futurism, cool black and gray and sharp edges. It’s a weird melange that for lack of any unifying idea makes everything look unfinished and oddly antiseptic. There's no aura.

The undercooked visuals are symptomatic of the project’s larger lack of a plan. The Machine can’t move at many speeds, and the projections are often busily flitting away with waterfalls and fire and such, and both seem oblivious to the motion of the music--as does Lepage’s work with singers, as when Siegfried bounded onstage to Mime’s motive at the beginning of Act 2. Overall, there is no real suggestion of what the Ring could possibly be about, just a bunch of grunge band types standing still and singing. (According to this story in Opera News, the non-static parts of Act 1 of Walküre came only thanks to direct intervention by Jonas Kaufmann and James Levine. I don't even know what to say to that.)

We see some intervening time pass during the prelude, including a rather unpleasant implication for Mime that I’ve already considered. Mime’s workshop in Act 1 is placed in the Machine’s trench, and it’s mighty cramped down there, with little blocking to speak of (and Lepage’s penchant for realism doesn’t extend to giving Siegfried tongs to hold his sword--which still produces steam when thrust into a projected pool of water--apparently heroes can handle very hot objects). Act 2 finds the Machine doing a forest act, and, yes, the bird is a projection. Fafner is a snake-like dragon who is not very mobile. Act 3 was plagued with groans from the Machine during some very delicate music, as well as some crashes and yelling from backstage. We switch from the Nature Images screensaver to the vague outer-spacey one my MacBook calls Flurry. Erda emerges as a cool mirrored fin de siècle type dress, which kind of doesn’t go with anything except the Machine, and Wotan inexplicably gets a giant yoga mat with runes on it. The final scene I found the most effective from a staging perspective, as the machine works best when it turns a bit less realistic, showing fire on the sides and mountain in the middle.

Fabio Luisi’s conducting (deputizing for again-injured Levine) owed more to the aesthetic of the Machine than the costumes. Luisi is great at bringing clarity and order to these monster scores, fishing out out details and keeping everything totally together while remaining very singer-friendly. But in this performance I found his work too brisk and controlled and efficient at first, and not exciting enough. (His tempos are significantly faster than Levine's.) The orchestra’s sound was impeccable, but lacked weight and intensity. Luckily they seemed to gain momentum over the course of the evening. The Forest Murmurs were lovely, and the horn solos excellent.

The production suffered an even later replacement in Jay Hunter Morris’s Siegfried, who only joined the production last week. He sang a lyrical Siegfried unusually, amazingly beautifully, with strong and pleasant tone and consistent musicality, not really running out of steam until the final scene. Thanks to Luisi’s sensitive conducting, he was rarely drowned out (except for his entrance), but unfortunately the voice is ultimately too small to have enough presence and heft to really score in the heroic moments of the role. The first half of the Forging Song (the melting portion) was taken at an unusually slow tempo, and he did not have the necessary exuberance. This was perhaps a necessary trade-off for his sensitivity elsewhere, and in all not a bad compromise. He's a very energetic stage presence, though his characterization was unsurprisingly generalized (and I was watching this from the very distant Family Circle, remember).

Bryn Terfel’s Wanderer was less resonant and plummy than his Wotan in Walküre, sometimes sounding shouty, but his command of the text and music was tremendous and moving, despite being burdened with the costume from hell. Gerhard Siegel was a more sweetly sung Mime than most, lacking the hard nasal edge that you usually hear in this role. It sounded much nicer than usual, but in a production that didn’t give the role a clear profile ended up a little bland. Eric Owens was a cavernous marvel as Alberich, though he and Terfel sounded awfully similar in their short scene. Hans-Peter König was also very loud and deep as Fafner. Patricia Bardon sang with feeling as Erda, but the role seems a strain for her. Mojca Erdmann sang the Woodbird with a very wide vibrato and mushy German.

Deborah Voigt went in and out as Brünnhilde, getting off to a strong start with “Heil dir, Sonne!” Unfortunately after that her voice sounded extremely uneven, with wobbles in the lower and shrieks in the extreme upper areas. A few notes around the top of the staff are still very strong, and she’s loud, but this was not good. I am a little worried about her Götterdämmerung Brünnhilde.

But as for the whole cycle, well, I don’t think there’s much hope at this point. I must say that I’m really looking forward to Andreas Kriegenburg and Kent Nagano’s cycle in Munich, though, which I will hopefully be seeing next summer.

Photos copyright Ken Howard/Met Opera.

Video Preview:

Lepage's Siegfried and baby thievery

noreply@blogger.com (Zerbinetta) — Fri, 28 Oct 2011 13:24:00 +0000

Not Lepage (Parsifal in Bayreuth)

Later I'll have much more on last night's premiere of Siegfried from the Met. But I wanted to deal with one point independently, because if I explained it fully in my real review it would hijack the whole post.

In Robert Lepage's new production, we see Mime find the infant Siegfried during the Prelude. He sneaks up on the dying Sieglinde, grabs her baby, and runs off. (Please correct me if I missed something here, I was in the Family Circle and it was dimly lit. But that's what I saw. It was quick.) This directly contradicts his later accounts of Siegfried's birth, where he says Sieglinde also gave him the pieces of Nothung the sword and told him to name the baby Siegfried (and also presumably the identity of Siegmund, which Mime does not tell Siegfried). OK, Mime is plausibly an unreliable narrator and found those things out in other ways. But Lepage never does anything else to show or explore the implications that Mime is lying when he is talking to Siegfried about his birth, it's left hanging.

But much more severe is the implication that Mime is not an accidental adoptive father but rather a baby snatcher. The character of Mime is already a locus of several topoi of antisemitism: greediness, a whining voice, a hunched walk. The idea of Jews stealing (Christian) babies is part of blood libel (a short history of the term is here), the accusation that Jews will use their blood in some ritual, historically one of the nastiest myths of anti-Semites. I may be hyper-aware of this particular idea because it was self-consciously presented by Stefan Herheim in his Bayreuth production of Parsifal. Kundry, dressed as a nurse, steals the baby Parsifal from his mother Herzeleide (see photo above).

I am honestly rather shocked that Lepage did this. There is no Get Out of Jail Free card when it comes to antisemitism and Wagner, you absolutely have to be aware of the issues and either avoid presenting racist stereotypes at all or clearly foreground them (as Herheim does above). (Following three sentences added later to clarify:) Lepage's lack of dramturgical context makes the moment interpretively messy, but more grievously he replicates the dog whistle way that these topoi work. It seems like a random insertion if you aren't familiar with the ideology, but if you know anything about the history of antisemitism you will make the association right away (Mime = Jew = bad). And I don't think that this is an association that needs reviving.

I'm sure that this is cluelessness or naivité from a director who shows that he doesn't know much about Wagner, but that no one else pointed it out is distressing.

Updated to add: my regular Siegfried piece is here.

More on the rest later today. Thanks to the Zwölftöner for his lecture on Mime and antisemitism when we saw Siegfried in Vienna last April.

Don Giovanni in the Trees

noreply@blogger.com (Zerbinetta) — Wed, 26 Oct 2011 12:27:00 +0000

A forest is a dangerous place: a symbol for the unknown and the unconscious, both the embrace and the threats of nature and a natural state. In fairy tales, characters enter the forest to find themselves, but they inevitably find peril as well.

In this 2008 Salzburg Festival production on DVD (Amazon), Claus Guth stages Don Giovanni in just such a forest, a group of pines that rotate on a turntable to disorienting effect. Is there a world outside of it? Sometimes mist rises threateningly in the background. But despite the presence of a bus stop and Don Ottavio’s car, there’s no exit. Don Giovanni and Leporello are a mortally wounded and drug-addled Vladimir and Estragon who are waiting for... something.

I needed an antidote to the Met’s empty Don Giovanni of a few weeks ago, and this production was perfect. I don’t agree with all of it, but it’s fascinating and very smartly done. The Commendatore seems to escape the duel OK, but Don Giovanni is mortally wounded and spends the rest of the opera dying; it’s never clear whether the rest of the events are actually happening or just his fervid memories or delusions. This twist plus the surreal setting mean there’s a fair amount of the plot that is not staged literally (the Serenade is sung out to the audience as a memory of seductions gone by, almost a mad scene), but this actually makes the episodic second act work unusually smoothly. The characters are modernized: Donna Anna is repressed housewife engaged to the useless yuppie Ottavio (yeah, this problem), Donna Elvira is a repressed businesswoman who is actually sex-crazed (kind of an ugly characterization, but I can see how it comes out of the text). It’s dark and spooky--literally in terms of darkness--and the sextet at the end gets the axe. (It’s the Vienna version of the score, which means there’s the little Leporello-Zerlina duet but no Il mio tesoro and no final sextet. The cans of Pilsner Urquell may be an allusion to the opera’s Prague premiere, though.)

The main disappointment of the production is Bertrand de Billy’s bland conducting. He goes with HIP fleetness, but the Wiener Philharmoniker plays with so much vibrato that the pitch in the overture actually doesn’t seem quite stable somehow. Fortunately the cast can both sing really well and carry off the complex production convincingly. Christopher Maltman gives an intense performance in the title role, with the kind of magnetism required of a Don Giovanni and a beautiful, fairly light voice. Other vocal highlights are Dorothea Röschmann’s powerhouse Donna Elvira and Ekaterina Siurina’s impeccable Zerlina. Theatrically, Erwin Schrott’s Leporello carries the show. I’ve seen Schrott as the Don in several different productions (I’m not a particular fan but there were a few years when you basically couldn’t see a Don Giovanni without him in the title role), but I wonder if he isn’t actually better as Leporello. It suits his low voice better, and also his wit and comic timing (his Don was sometimes too funny). Anyway, here Leporello is going through some drug issues and it isn’t going well. The cast’s only major weakness is Annette Dasch as Donna Anna, whose squally tone and iffy intonation are tough on the ears, though she acts well. Matthew Polenzani is a well-sung but rather faceless Ottavio.

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