an unamplified voice

The week in NY opera (May 6-12)

2013-05-06T16:36:00.000-04:00

The end... for a while anyway. As usual (or not), it more or less ends in fire and flood.

Metropolitan Opera
Valkyrie (M), Giulio Cesare (T/F), Siegfried (W), Dialogues (Th/SE), Twilight (SM)
Actually, this 2012-13 Met season ends with the guillotine on Saturday night. Before then, though, is most of Ring Cycle 3.

The week in NY opera (April 29-May 5)

2013-04-30T16:36:00.002-04:00

This week brings, among other things, the most interesting Fleming program I can remember.

Metropolitan Opera
Giulio Cesare (T/F), Rigoletto (W), Twilight (Th), Dialogues (SM), Rheingold (SE)
The second-to-last week of the season brings the final Rigoletto and the first Dialogues of the Carmelites -- which always revives well, but has sold much better this season than I recall from the past. Ring Cycle 3 starts Saturday night with Greer Grimsley as Wotan; Deborah Voigt and debuting tenor Lars Cleveman will join him in later installments next week.

Carnegie Hall
Collegiate Chorale Song of Norway (T)
Renee Fleming et al. "Vienna: Window to Modernity" (SE)
The WWII-era Grieg mashup by Hollywood/Broadway operettists Robert Wright and George Forrest plays -- in concert, but with dancing -- tonight. Saturday, Fleming is joined by Jeremy Denk, the Emerson String Quartet, and other string players as they evoke Vienna from the time of late Brahms and Wagner to early Schoenberg to unknowns from the '30s. This rich song repertoire has always suited her well -- better, to my ear, than the cooler Strauss parts that has been much of her operatic diet.

Peter Jay Sharp Theater
Juilliard Opera The Cunning Little Vixen (T/Th)
This actually opened with a sold-out premiere on Sunday, but the new Emma Griffin production of the Janacek opera (in English translation) plays twice more this week.

OT: Carnegie Hall
Richard Goode recital (W)
Beethoven's last three piano sonatas and some of his op. 119 bagatelles.

The birth of... tragedy

2013-04-30T07:00:00.000-04:00

Die Walküre - Metropolitan Opera, 4/26/2013
Dalayman, Serafin, O'Neill, Delavan, Blythe, König / Luisi

The plot of Wagner's Ring cycle begins, of course, with Rheingold, but story doesn't enter the picture until the first act of this opera. Perhaps Wagner saw it clearly himself in calling Rheingold the preliminary night, for though he recalled better than most that story first came with divine protagonists, he seemingly found it impossible -- as, in his telling, do they themselves -- to assign his gods and spirits much of the terrible transformative revelation that is story. Instead they get reflection and machination and obscuring transformation -- and it's perhaps productive to consider the first parts of the Ring a demonstration of this as inescapable divine role: on the first night, Alberich thinks he has rather a neat conquest story, but is foiled straightaway by Loge and Wotan's tricks and turns wholly to long plotting himself; Fasolt, too, perhaps senses the glimmer of some half- or misrealized story in his dealings with Freia, but that too is squashed by his murderous brother's claim of sole possession and long immovable brooding (to reappear much later as a speedbump in Siegfried's story). Meanwhile Wotan's adventures seem to happen only offstage and in reflective retelling after the fact; on stage, he is limited to his straight path at every turn.

Only with the human Wälsungs do we see a story proper take shape -- for themselves as well as for us. For while we see an extended reunion/recognition sequence play out between the siblings, they (and thereby we again as well) are called to remember that life is not a row of arbitrary and unbearable fortunes, misfortunes, and obligations but potentially -- that is, while a story goes -- the scene that shows us meaning, identity, and the great union of these that is love. And the lesson spreads, as Brünnhilde moves from the divine position of observation and manipulation to choosing/desiring story's fruits (love -- and though she doesn't yet realize it, transformation and new identity) in Act II before, in Act III, seducing Wotan with the promise of the great future tale of Siegfried's return as the only one who can reach her rock to claim her.

(And so it plays out in the next opera, but Brünnhilde's experience of the discouraging part of human life is only deferred. For after the glorious story of her and Siegfried's reunion and recognition closes, the pair continue to exist... and are sucked into the morass of misfortune, machination and entanglement from which the Wälsungs' desperate story emerged in the first place. Unfortunately that story-deficient concluding installment is blown up way beyond Rheingold to Meyerbeerian size.)

* * *
Though less starry than some previous performances, this second-cycle revival was in the fine Met tradition. Things started slowly, for of the first-act players only Martina Serafin -- debuting in the house with these Sieglindes -- carries much of the tragic story. Hans-Peter König sings well but hasn't much menace in either voice or person (the costume still makes him look like Santa) as Hunding, while Simon O'Neill -- healthy at last -- has a nice enough (though a touch monochromatic) bright sound but his phrasing's sort of stiff and in timbre and stage persona he seems too young and wide-eyed for Siegmund. But how much Serafin manages alone! Her voice is so firm and expressive through the middle and so well conveys the flux and import of the story: when she herself narrated "Der Männer Sippe" the drama at long last (Siegmund's earlier long shouts to his father notwithstanding) ignited for the evening's duration. Add to this her similarly expressive dramatic presence and Serafin is the most (only?) exciting new middle-weight soprano here since Anja Harteros vanished from these shores. Serafin's high notes don't quite like to be blasted over full Wagnerian orchestration, but I expect and hope that the more civilized top deployment of the Marschallin will show them happy under less duress.

Act II brought the other principals. I've praised Voigt in this because she knows what points to make as Brünnhilde and the voice still works well enough considering. But it's absurd that she continues to get twice the shows and (via broadcast) some gigantic multiple times the exposure of Katarina Dalayman, who has become really really good in this role with no considerations or allowances needed. This time it was the absolutely easy lyricism of her heart-to-hearts with Wotan that was stunning, and her almost-as-easy transition to the loud stuff. Even without a trill, Dalayman marries as well as anyone and better than most the youthfully impetuous lightness of Wotan's favorite daughter to her grand scale and situation.

Mark Delavan, neglected by the Met in favor of imported mediocrities even after some amazing shows across the plaza (he's actually reprising his biggest NYCO triumph -- Flying Dutchman, which he did there in 2001 -- in Princeton this summer), finally got some spotlight this season with two Ring cycles and a villain role in the Zandonai rarity. He's still, I believe, only a few Wotan cycles in career-wise, but the raw material and overall understanding are there and he can certainly hold his own playing with and off the female stars around him. His domestic byplay with Fricka and (in the happier act) Brünnhilde is funny and actually touching, and he traces a very particular and individual arc with Dalayman in the final scene, with Dalayman not relaxing at the beginning of the farewell, but only -- in ecstatic relief and excitement -- when he finally gets around to mentioning the bridal fire.

Fricka sits too high for Stephanie Blythe to really use her gooseflesh notes, but she does well in the part anyway. Fabio Luisi conducts with more fire than I recall from previous years, but it's a texturally and dramatically lighter account and I'd still rather have had Levine or Gatti at the helm. The Lepage production... well, it's a revival, so we don't have to think about it -- and idea-free as it was all along, the production is significantly more enjoyable as uncontemplated wallpaper.

Serafin, Dalayman, and Delavan carried the show, and though the first returns for one last round next Monday, I'm not sure I can recommend it without the other two. I'll be at Rosenkavalier though.

The week in NY opera (April 22-28)

2013-04-22T12:34:00.001-04:00

Somehow it's Sweden week...

Metropolitan Opera
Giulio Cesare (M/SM), Twilight (T), Rigoletto (W/SE), Rheingold (Th), Valkyrie (F)
Ring Cycle 1 closes Tuesday with its only non-matinee performance before Cycle 2 (the one with Katarina Dalayman) has its first two installments.

City Center
NYCO La Périchole (T/Th/SE)
City Opera-in-exile wraps its Offenbach run and its season.

Carnegie Hall
Nathan Gunn recital (M)
Oratorio Society of NY War Requiem (M)
Misoon Ghim recital (M)
NY Philharmonic concert (F)
Monday: Gunn's recital at Zankel, postponed from February, is all in English. Meanwhile Britten's big piece is performed on the big stage while the Korea Music Foundation presents mezzo Ghim (who's sung in Korea and with regional companies here) at Weill.
On Friday, Renee Fleming and the local band premiere (in between some warhorses) Swedish composer Anders Hillborg's song cycle to Mark Strand poems.

Alice Tully Hall
Swedish Chamber Orchestra concert (Th)
A Swedish dramatic soprano not in this season's Ring performances -- Nina Stemme -- sings a bunch of orchestral songs between some instrumental fare.

In darkest Vegas

2013-04-19T17:58:00.001-04:00

Rigoletto - Metropolitan Opera, 4/13/2013
Gagnidze, Oropesa, Grigolo, Iori, Herrera / Armiliato

Ever seen someone get lost on stage on the way to his curtain call? I hadn't, but tenor Vittorio Grigolo took a wrong turn Saturday evening and ended up trapped behind the car, house left. He backtracked and made it to the front, but then, after the bow, instead of going to his designated lineup spot house right he ran all the way right off the stage. This made for an amusing "wasn't he supposed to be there?" moment for soprano Lisette Oropesa after her bow...

Through this hilarity, Grigolo's strongest trait -- his basic eagerness -- was evident. In the moment, he's less the bizarrely overhyped Domingo protege and more a young man thrilled by the success of the day. And in fact he doesn't do badly in this show: he's gone from a revival-wrecking hyperactive squirrel (in his 2010 debut Boheme) to a reasonably enjoyable hyperactive puppy.

The Duke requires less ensemble spirit than Rodolfo, of course -- next season's Boheme moviecast lineup remains inexplicable. But after a nervous and rhythmically overeager "Questa o quella", Grigolo actually delivered his best work in the next scene's duet with Gilda, honestly ardent and working with his partner instead of always just reaching for quick effect. His subsequent solos and part in the great last-act quartet were enjoyable enough, but more for his healthy sound than any particular musical shaping or insight (he still lacks the feel for the underlying movement-in-time of Verdi's lines and phrases). He doesn't much illuminate the show, but he doesn't detract from it either.

The sense of the action is left, as usual, to the father and daughter. As Gilda 2005 Met Council winner Lisette Oropesa gets her first romantic-era lead in the house, after earlier doses of Gluck and Mozart (as well as a bunch of Rhinemaiden appearances and the like). Her success has several parts, but the most important is probably the one where Diana Damrau totally whiffed: Oropesa offers the Gilda the story needs to make sense. Damrau gave another remix of her characteristic Gilda -- too clever by half, manipulative, and dismissive of Rigoletto's care. (This time we saw more frustration than wit, and a strange channeling of Mary Katherine Gallagher.) This is certainly one way Gilda might turn out, but it's the least interesting version of her: without love and virtue in the picture, only lusts and headlong impulses, why object to the Duke's court at all? Oropesa's Gilda is the necessary antithesis -- the "child of virtue", as Victor Hugo put it in explaining his original play -- and a very human one. Her Gilda is sympathetic and empathetic and inspires the best in her father and the Duke, but feels the pains of the world no less, whether moved by her father in their duet, or visibly shocked and traumatized (in an echo of her great Lucia) in the middle act, or just wholly deflated by disillusionment by the end of the quartet (thereby making unusual musical-dramatic sense of the choice to end without the standard interpolated climactic high note). But even in the extremity of these latter acts Oropesa's Gilda has that other, rarer quality of youth that Damrau's boundary-testing teenager omits: she still believes in virtue and goodness and -- even more rare -- continues to counsel and act on these qualities in the face of their opposites.

Oropesa also has, perhaps more noticably for some, a pure light lyric soprano that is as balanced and classically expressive as recent decades have seen. The sound still isn't big (not even at the top -- she's not a lyric coloratura with big top yelps), but it carries properly throughout without apparent limitations on color or dynamic variation. And the appeal is distinctive: yes, charming chirpers are always with us, but rarely married to Oropesa's expressive timbre and seriousness of characterization and purpose. Her "Caro nome", finished quietly with an apparently infinite trill a la Erna Berger, was the night's show-stopping highlight.

George Gagnidze, this run's Rigoletto, also lacks a bit of sheer sonic force -- his instrument is pointed for high climaxes, not full throughout in the classic "Verdi baritone" style of his predecessor Zeljko Lucic. Unfortunately, while Gilda's essential bits are done with a cooperative or silent orchestra, her father's big solo moments come quite deliberately over a greater roar from the pit, and his inability to master that with his own roar is a letdown. Still, he at least puts the character reasonably well forward, being less afraid than his predecessor to appear the schlub. However, I hope someone told him not to keep shifting his weight in the last scene (or better yet to sit/kneel on the ground), because bouncing the trunk of a car up and down while talking to his dying daughter therein looks ridiculous.

Enrico Giuseppe Iori, making his Met debut, played a more thuggish Sparafucile than has been the norm here of late; his sound was full enough though lacking the character of predecessor Stefan Kocan. Nancy Fabiola Herrera did her usual solid work as his sister. In the pit Marco Armiliato was lively and exciting as well as expectedly solid and sympathetic.

It's difficult to overstate how much the whole Met audience -- from longtime patrons to opera newbies -- seems to like this new production. (Now that the awful "Arab curse" nonsense has been scrubbed from the titles, there's not much reason not to.) Perhaps Gelb will learn the lesson that, his own characteristic production tastes aside, representational maximalism is what sells at the Met... but perhaps not.

Save yourself

2013-04-18T18:43:00.001-04:00

If you're considering going to Les Arts Florissants' current Brooklyn run of the Charpentier rarity David et Jonathas, don't. It's by far the worst show of theirs I've seen, a huge step down from recent efforts in Brooklyn and elsewhere. Andreas Homoki's production takes a piece of somewhat elusive appeal in the first place and infantilizes it into wholesale nonsense: even the part that should go hand-in-glove with the company's aesthetic -- the pastoral celebration that kicks off the action -- is muddled into ineffectiveness. As for loyalty, duty, envy, nation vs. individual attachment, or whatnot... Homoki has no eye for any of it, preferring to focus exclusively on his invented weepy-domestic backstory and his endlessly repeated Death Star trash compactor set effect. (It's less interesting than it sounds.)

The orchestra plays as well as usual for William Christie, but there's a lot less vocal interest than one expects from his company. Don't waste an evening with this flop.

The week in NY opera (April 15-21)

2013-04-15T15:27:00.001-04:00

Metropolitan Opera
Rigoletto (T/SE), Giulio Cesare (F), Siegfried (SM)
Literally only one show before the weekend, but it's good. Full post on Rigoletto today or tomorrow.

City Center
NYCO Moses in Egypt (T/Th/SE)
NYCO La Périchole (Sunday 1:30pm)
City Opera-in-exile finishes its run of the Rossini rarity and premieres its new Christopher Alden production of an Offenbach operetta.

Brooklyn Academy of Music
Les Arts Florissants David et Jonathas (W/Th/SE/SuM)
Bill Christie's company offers baroque opera again, this time by Charpentier.

OT: Carnegie Hall
Maurizio Pollini recital (Sunday 3pm)
Chopin and Debussy. Also, Thielemann and Dresden play two concerts during the week.

The week in NY opera (April 8-14)

2013-04-08T07:15:00.000-04:00

A nasty cold will keep me from tonight's OONY show, alas.

Metropolitan Opera
Giulio Cesare (T/F), Valkyrie (SM), Rigoletto (SE)
Cesare and the matinee Ring cycle continue, while Rigoletto returns with a wholly new cast (George Gagnidze, Lisette Oropesa, and Vittorio Grigolo).

Avery Fisher Hall
OONY I Lombardi (M)
Yet another 2007 Met Council Finals reunion, with Angela Meade and Michael Fabiano headlining this early Verdi opera-in-concert.

City Center
NYCO Moses in Egypt (SuM)
City Opera-in-exile opens its weeklong run of this Rossini rarity with a Sunday matinee in midtown.

Carnegie Hall
Isabel Leonard recital (T)
Spanish and American songs by the young American mezzo.

The week in NY opera (April 1-7)

2013-04-02T21:27:00.002-04:00

Metropolitan Opera
Faust (T/F), Traviata (W/SE), Giulio Cesare (Th), Rheingold (SM)
So, new production of Handel's Caesar&Cleopatra opera. On the one hand: David McVicar (Trovatore, Maria Stuarda). On the other hand: David Daniels is about the worst possible casting for the title part even among countertenors, with a voice way too high for all Senesino parts including this one even in better days. Also, no Stephanie Blythe.
The matinee Ring starts this week. Unlike the others, it's just regularly -- not embarrassingly -- undersold.

Carnegie Hall
Boston Symphony Wagner excerpts (F)
Paul Appleby recital (F)
Elina Garanca recital (SE)
The 2009 Met Council winner covers four languages at Weill the day before the studied mezzo star sticks to German Romantic in the big hall. Meanwhile, the BSO concert with Michelle DeYoung wouldn't be so notable if its conductor hadn't been substantially responsible for maybe the greatest Parsifal success, well, ever.

OT: Carnegie Hall
Boston Symphony Mahler #3 (Th)
Daniele Gatti tries his hand at Mahler's most expansive symphony the night before the aforementioned BSO Wagner concert.

UPDATE (4/4): HERE Arts Center
Smashed (T/F/SE)
Now fully funded, OOT's new opera premieres this week in Soho.

Smashed

2013-03-29T15:00:00.000-04:00

Back in the days when Brooklyn was still cool and Maury was still blogging about opera, a group of singers with more training than formal performance opportunity held a regular gig of arias-as-pop-standards in the back room of Freddy's Bar. Well, that Freddy's is now an empty space adjacent to the basketball arena (there's a replacement to the south), but Opera on Tap has since gone national and is raising funds for a new opera premiere next week.

The piece, as is appropriate, is about anti-alcohol crusader Carrie Nation, and the fundraiser is at indiegogo. Six days and about $5000 remain for the campaign as I write this.

The week in NY opera (March 25-31)

2013-03-25T16:04:00.000-04:00

Metropolitan Opera
Faust (M/Th), Traviata (T/SM), Otello (W/SE)
A commenter mentioned the prospect of a Traviata review. Unfortunately, dear readers, I'd do anything for you but I won't do that -- despite the positive reports I've heard about Damrau's vocal shape therein, I'm permanently avoiding this production. Otello, in its last week this season, on Wednesday has the unfamiliar Italian baritone Marco Vratogna in place of Thomas Hampson as Iago.

Avery Fisher Hall
LA Philharmonic The Gospel According to the Other Mary (T)
The latest John Adams/Peter Sellars show gets its local premiere, conducted by Gustavo Dudamel.

Carnegie Hall
Dmitri Hvorostovsky recital (W)
Lawrence Brownlee recital (Th)
The Russian baritone sings Rachmaninoff and Sviridov in the big hall a day before the American tenor sings a mixed program at Zankel.

The Box (189 Christie Street)
Gotham Chamber Opera Eliogabalo (T/F)
Last days of the run.

The week in NY opera (March 18-24)

2013-03-19T14:44:00.000-04:00

Sorry, I'm slow sometimes when interesting stuff is later in the week.

Metropolitan Opera
Traviata (M/SM), Francesca da Rimini (T/F), Otello (W/SE), Faust (Th)
Faust starts, with yet another tenor (Piotr Beczala) appearing opposite the bizarrely miscast Marina Poplavskaya as Marguerite. I don't expect him to have any more success than his predecessors Jonas Kaufmann and Joseph Calleja, though. This is the last week for the Zandonai rarity.

Bargemusic
Sylvia (Th/F)
The waterside venue presents a new short psychodrama-opera by Julia Adolphe, who also conducts.

The Box (189 Christie Street)
Gotham Chamber Opera Eliogabalo (T/Th/SE)
The run continues from last week.

OT: Carnegie Hall
Jeremy Denk recital (F)
Denk is the most interesting late Beethoven player I've heard... here it's Bartok and Liszt as well as op. 111.
The SF Symphony musicians' union has successfully cancelled the orchestra's scheduled Carnegie shows this week.

The week in NY opera (March 11-17)

2013-03-11T10:00:00.000-04:00

Well, Parsifal is over. May be a while before the next really interesting offering.

Metropolitan Opera
Otello (M/F), Francesca da Rimini (T*/SM), Don Carlo (W/SE), Traviata (Th)
It's the battle of the bizarre Verdi casts this week, with Thomas Hampson as Iago with an all-new cast since the fall and Placido Domingo as Germont (!!!) opposite Damrau's Violetta in a revival of the Met's worst production. Perhaps Domingo might refuse to play Germont as the cartoonishly abusive caricature Willy Decker has installed? That would be nice, but even with Nezet-Seguin in the pit I doubt this show can be saved. Don Carlo closes its run with two final performances.

* Tuesday's (starred) Francesca is the one just before this Saturday's matinee moviecast, which means that the camera equipment and lights will be out in force. Do not sit in side orchestra, front orchestra, or side parterre -- the house is not interested in optimizing patron experience on these nights, but in making the eventual broadcast go well.

Carnegie Hall
Stephanie Blythe recital (M)
A Streetcar Named Desire (Th)
Force-of-nature Blythe sings an all-American program tonight in the big hall: more serious stuff in the first half, more pop on the latter. The semi-staged revival of Previn's opera is conducted by Patrick Summers and has a starry cast, including Renee Fleming, Susanna Phillips, Teddy Tahu Rhodes, and Anthony Dean Griffey.

The Box (189 Christie Street)
Gotham Chamber Opera Eliogabalo (F)
The fancy mini-company offers a piece from near the dawn of opera: Cavalli's long-obscure Eliogabalo, here given with decadent-court atmosphere at a downtown nightspot. Interestingly, Sunday's Met Council standout Brandon Cedel is listed as a performer (though likely in a bit part). The run continues through the end of the month.

OT: Avery Fisher Hall
NY Philharmonic B-minor Mass (W/Th/F/SE)
Alan Gilbert's solo lineup for this Bach piece is pretty impressive: Dorothea Röschmann, Anne Sofie von Otter, Steve Davislim, and Eric Owens.

Met Council Finals 2013

2013-03-10T22:00:00.000-04:00

As last year, the program details are above. Instead of discussing the singers in order of appearance, though, I want to comment this time by voice type.

Sopranos:
Sydney Mancasola (25, California)
Rebecca Pedersen (21, Utah)
Tracy Cox (27, Texas)
Though these three were the only women in the finals, they represented their sex well. Mancasola, who's at AVA, gave two of the afternoon's best performances, really lively and fluent and in the moment and of course vocally impressive. The instrument itself has more body than I expected from what she picked to sing -- her role in Hoffmann was Antonia/Stella, not Olympia -- and though she has a easy top extension it's the ringing-the-huge-house size of her high notes that most impresses. Trill was faked in the Fille, but better as Gilda. Attractive, too: huge star potential here.
Pedersen actually had the hosts Eric Owens and Sondra Radvanovsky effusive while waiting for the judges: as they observed, it's sort of ridiculous that she sounds like this at 21. While still a sophomore at BYU, Pedersen -- who, by the way, looks better on stage than her headshot might suggest -- has some affiliation with Dolora Zajick's Institute for Young Dramatic Voices, and it's clear why. Her covered, vibrato-borne sound hasn't fully grown up, but already has a balance and a charge to it that can turn to bursts of agility at one moment and cutting through orchestral mass at the next. And incidentally, it may have been inadvertent but I liked that she stayed onstage to milk the well-deserved applause a bit: done within reason, there's a graciousness and grandeur in this that American sopranos sometimes miss.
Cox did really well with the Ballo bit, which emphasized her natural affinity for Verdi's line and rich, expressive middle voice. Her top is less pretty, though, and the Barber selection that was her second aria unfortunately played to this weakness more than her strengths.

Tenor:
Michael Brandenburg (26, Indiana)
The lone tenor was an audience favorite, and it's not hard to see why: his unabashed veristic phrasing made quite an impression. Unfortunately there was something in his basic production that I couldn't stand -- my anatomy isn't good enough to tell you exactly what was going on, but his vowel sounds were abominable. Perhaps this was due to indisposition, but if not, no thanks.

Baritone:
Efrain Solis (23, California)
Sang well and the basic sound was pleasant, but -- at least in a house of this scale -- he seemed to have to go all out all the time, restricting his range of sonic color to near-monochrome. (Not strained but unvarying.) Merola-bound.

Bass-baritones:
Richard Ollarsaba (25, Arizona)
Musa Ngqungwana (28, South Africa)
Brandon Cedel (25, Pennsylvania)
Thomas Richards (24, Minnesota)
I can't remember any similar pile-up of voices in this category before. The first three offered a sort of direct comparison -- Ollarsaba and Ngqungwana each sang one of Cedel's selections himself -- with interesting differences. Ollarsaba (about to start at Lyric's YAP) had (along with facial hair he really should shave off) a nice big framework of a voice, but the textures and colors haven't really filled out. If this happens, he has serious potential, but for now this limitation plays poorly with his otherwise interesting natural patience in phrasing (if he's not in a hurry, it should be more variedly interesting as he goes along... though the mood-shifts in the Figaro provided contrast for him in that piece).
Ngqungwana (another AVAer) was another audience favorite that I found unenjoyably flawed. He has an impressive loud sound, but temperamentally he's the opposite of Ollarsaba and just presses too much. This was destructive both musically (no legato or long phrases) and in the sound per se (an unpleasant pressure-induced vibrato particularly noticeable in parts of the Massenet).
Cedel, who was a George London winner last year, was the most satisfying of the three. His voice is just beautiful: musical, polished, with a full range of colors -- clearly, I thought, the male star instrument of the afternoon. And he uses its full resources so thoroughly and with apparent ease; his work in the Rachmaninoff actually brought to mind Peter Mattei's magnificent recent sounds as Amfortas.
Not competing in the same ground was Richards (also going to Merola). His voice is a bit limited compared to these others, but if Cedel offered impressive examples of the art of singing, only Richards brought -- with his use and understanding of word, story, and character -- the art of opera to its fullest appearance. His Claggart aria was great and moving, even if he couldn't dominate the orchestra at all turns. I doubt he'll ever lack for work in opera -- though whether he'll be a star at the international level is another matter.

Bass:
Matthew Anchel (25, New York)
He very much is, I think, who he is: precise, musical, with a precise & musical but not dominating instrument and presence. Perhaps he'll develop more star stuff as time goes by (remember when Furlanetto was a modest-voiced Mozart singer?), but in a strong year like this one it wasn't a bet the judges were likely to make.

* * *
I would have picked Mancasola, Pedersen, Cedel, and Richards as winners -- this year or any other year. All of them were in fact selected, but the judges -- four Met folks and the Pittsburgh Opera General Director -- also picked Brandenburg and Ngqungwana. (This left Mancasola twisting in the wind backstage for rather a long time, as she was called last in a competition where there aren't usually six winners -- and after the hosts had spent a while trying to pronounce Ngqungwana's name.) The Met absolutely loves loud and raw low-voice projects like Ngqungwana, whom I knew would be picked despite his issues... we'll see if they (or AVA) can, as they believe, refine his singing.

In other years, I think Ollarsaba or Cox or even Anchel might have had a shot. Anyway, I wouldn't be surprised if any of the finalists makes good. I'm definitely looking forward to hearing Mancasola and Cedel again... and seeing whom Pedersen becomes.

Last trip to Monsalvat

2013-03-07T19:00:00.002-05:00

I've already talked about Parsifal's tenor, other singers, its conductor, and some elements of the production. A few more thoughts.

If you wondered why Carolyn Choa's choreography got some particular praise on opening night, it's because all the reviewers sit on Orchestra level. While the overall arrangements/physical designs of Francois Girard and set designer Michael Levine seem to have been optimized for a tier or two up (you can't see the pool of blood at all from the floor, and the circle of knights is much more impressive seen in perspective of its full depth), Choa's Act II work is wholly coherent only from the two-dimensional view in Orchestra, which puts all the Flower Maidens and their patterns in one undulating line -- it's decent but a bit scattered from anywhere else. Perhaps the moviecast caught the good angles of all the production parts, because there's no single seat that does it.

As for meaning... Girard's production does add/amplify one thread of story that's not explicitly in Wagner: the differentiation (indeed, literal division) between men and women we see from the staged prelude to Parsifal's dissolution of it at the time of the final rite. I don't think this is exactly meant to be sinister -- it is revelation that first distinguishes them (via what we see to be a true religious experience), and if there is anything amiss in this first scene it's Parsifal's (befuddled) presence. For he if he's not a latecomer his youth and foolishness are inexplicable -- having his Act I incomprehension be an echo makes it less interesting, not more -- and if he was always already present in the scene his multiple arrivals at Monsalvat should not be so disruptive. In any case, Parsifal seems still to be acting within the framework of the initial differentiation in Act II: although his compassion/identification with Amfortas turns out to be the fated source of wisdom and power, compassion with Kundry and her sob story turns out to be temptation. Only when he returns as holy re-creator of the social & ritual order can he dissolve this distinction, too, as part of the dead-ended previous state. (Perhaps he had in mind that divine nourishment or not, the order would eventually literally dead-end without births.) And so it makes perfect sense that Kundry now is included in the rite, and that Parsifal's compassion now can encompass her long suffering and release as he releases Amfortas.

As you might expect from a show that depicts two distinct ritual orders being born, the religious signaling of this Parsifal never quite commits to being (or not being) wholly "about" anything more specific than religion per se. On first view one might take this as the least Christian version of the show possible, but of course there's still a spear, still a Grail, crosses being worn by Kundry, and nothing obscuring or disrupting the very Christian (or at least Christian-mythical) themes in Wagner's text. Other traditions are in fact similarly offered piecemeal rather than in whole, and what's amazing is that it doesn't seem like a lazy concatenation of tropes, even when (in Act III) Gurnemanz is offering his glorious and moving invocation of Good Friday noon as Parsifal sits in a yoga meditation pose while the dual superimposed moons behind him create the empty circle one might recognize from certain Buddhist variants... The meta-thread of creation and re-creation (above) and the unifying reverent seriousness of the acting carries things through.

* * *
I suspect I would have enjoyed Tuesday's performance more if I hadn't already absorbed previous iterations of the show. Asher Fisch was, as I'd predicted, more straightforward in his conducting than Daniele Gatti, and I suspect I'd have appreciated the truly beautiful tone and uncluttered shape Fisch drew from the players if I hadn't grown accustomed to the way his predecessor seemed to wait for the hurt -- or emptiness -- itself to speak (in still-coherent tones from the orchestra, generating the same tension between sound and sense exemplified on stage by Mattei's stunning Amfortas). This production, in particular, with its austere last act, seems to have been fit not only to Kaufmann's Parsifal but Gatti's version of the score.

Micaela Martens -- replacing the ill Katarina Dalayman -- had a spot of trouble near the end of her first Act II exchange with Parsifal, but her substantial rich mezzo did well through Kundry's part as a whole. She didn't quite have Dalayman's firm presence on stage and in the production's details, but it's hard to expect that sort of comfort from a cover. Again, not seeing it beforehand would probably have eliminated the unfair comparisons... If you haven't gone to this show yet, you certainly should -- tomorrow, if you can, or to Wednesday's moviecast rerun.

A look

2013-03-05T16:38:00.000-05:00

I listened to Saturday's Parsifal broadcast at home, so I don't know which details may have been highlighted or obscured or actually revealed to be something different (possible!) at movie theaters, but my favorite character bit of Francois Girard's staging is the look Parsifal gives Kundry in Act III -- actually, the whole sequence. Parsifal has staggered slowly on stage, been hailed as a stranger by Gurnemanz, and, having at last registered that he can -- for the first time in who knows how many years -- stop, put down the spear and prostrated himself to kiss (pray with his head to?) the ground. And he uncovers his head, and begins to rise -- and now it is Kundry who prostrates herself. But here Parsifal gives her a look: a look between those who'd been adversaries in a former existence. There's no enmity or rancor in it -- those, if they existed, were long burned off in his years of sorrow -- but an uncanny blend of acknowledgement and bond and far-off recognition and perhaps, already, the compassion that he'll take up later in the act as he comes fully to himself. Nor does he glance meaningfully in her direction when he speaks of the curse, though she remembers who pronounced it and (as Wagner, I believe, specifes) turns away.

In fact, almost everything about the outer acts' staging is successful. Like that other recent Wagner production, the set is dominated here by video projection, but unlike his French-Canadian colleague Girard keeps the show firmly fixed on the most important operatic special effect: people. So Act I focuses on the collective movements of the knights' circle, its formal breathing and gesturing and, at last, opening out into the Grail ritual before wholly dissolving. Their human presence sets the real scene of the place, while the slow transformation of the background images provides an analogue/relief/intensification of similarly slow-paced developments in the pit -- particularly in Gatti's interpretation. Similarly, the broken state of the circle in Act III opens the stage for the momentous meeting of three solitary individuals who -- as in the last act of Meistersinger -- expand their wondrous harmony to encompass the now-reforged community which, by the finish, is the world. Again the images translate the instrumental contribution, though astronomical images appear at action-highlighting points in each outer act.

Act II restricts the video even further -- there's some bubbling, but it's in a narrow strip up the middle -- and relies almost entirely on the chorus/dance group of Flower Maidens for background, but the basic concept here is off. The pool of blood, the spears, the bare stone walls: softness seems here to have been deliberately and thoroughly expunged. This is, obviously, rather against Wagner's written setting of the seductive garden with, you know, flowers... and doesn't, apart from that, add much besides simple contrast (which could have been arranged in countless other ways). Parsifal's temptations here are all of fellow-feeling -- simple lust, remorse/love/compassion for his mother/Kundry, and compassion for the unmasked Kundry -- and it's odd, to say the least, of Klingsor to have set a trap so unconducive to such a course. (And if, as some have suggested, the triangular bloody set is a giant genital bit, the forest of sharp spears makes it the least tempting version ever.)

One thing that perhaps troubled only me: by very cleverly transforming/widening the stream-bed into the canyon-path to Klingsor at Act I's end, Girard has actually closed the geography of the opera. Acts I and II take place in fairly definite spatial relationship to each other (one can see the walls of what seems to be that same canyon just outside Klingsor's lair), making the subsequent decades of wandering before Act III a bit obscure (yes, yes, a curse did it... but how?) -- though Parsifal does reappear this time walking overland from the far horizon, making it clear he took a different path. Is it not inexplicable magic/divine grace that Parsifal found his way to the Grail in the first place, much less returned to the not-straightforwardly-findable (even when uncursed) Act I space? I tend to this view, and it's one of the mysteries I used to like about the previous beautiful and literal production, but the sight of Parsifal following some thread (blood? the feeling of incompleteness? something else?) to his next fateful scene is also compelling.

More after tonight's show.

Micaela Martens

2013-03-05T13:58:00.001-05:00

The aforementioned American mezzo is substituting for Katarina Dalayman as Kundry tonight. I'll be there to report.

I do hope the orchestra has had some rehearsal with the new conductor Asher Fisch, who after all has a rather different basic style than Gatti.

The week in NY opera (March 4-10)

2013-03-04T10:30:00.000-05:00

Everyone enjoy the weekend trip to Monsalvat, I trust?

Metropolitan Opera
Francesca da Rimini (M/SE), Parsifal (T/F), Don Carlo (W/SM)
Met Council Finals (Sunday 3pm)
Maestro Gatti has left the building, but Parsifal runs two more nights with Asher Fisch in the pit. Meanwhile Francesca da Rimini (Zandonai's, not Rachmaninoff's or Tchaikovsky's) plays here for the first time in a generation.
The house is dark Thursday, but there is a Jonas Kaufmann signing event at 4pm in the store. Sunday is the annual Council Finals concert, this time hosted by 1995 winner Sondra Radvanovsky.

Carnegie Hall
Ensemble Matheus baroque concert (W)
Alek Shrader recital (F)
The French group includes Handel and Vivaldi arias in its baroque show at Zankel, while the 2007 Met Council winner presents a mixed recital at Weill.

Alice Tully Hall
CMS recital (F)
The local Chamber Music Society offers a program of romantic songs culminating with Brahms' (four-singer, two-pianist) Love-Song Waltzes.

The petty zoo

2013-03-02T17:31:00.001-05:00

Powder Her Face - New York City Opera, 2/17/2013
Cook, Riemer, Ferguson, Boehler / Stockhammer

Perhaps it was chosen because it could be done with a small contingent of musicians -- four singers and chamber orchestra (assisted by two actors, and a gaggle of naked extras) -- and because it fed off the publicity from the Met's Thomas Ades production, this NYCO production of Ades' first opera was certainly interested and well-executed enough. If only the show had more to it...

Not to say it's poorly composed or constructed. In fact, the biggest take-away is how little Ades evolved from this opera's 1995 debut to the premiere of The Tempest almost a decade later. Yes, he of course became more fluent in his virtuosic school-of-Berg handling of texture, color, and ever-more-complex forces, but aesthetically he's remained who he fully was in 1995: a modernist out of time, with a great musical palette for absurdity and compulsion and force but little facility for the humane side of existence. Only his librettists' aims changed.

Philip Henscher, whether by choice or happy coincidence, seems to have tailored his libretto for Powder Her Face to the composer's strengths. So we get -- well, basically, Lulu's human zoo: lust, greed, envy, jealousy, moral posturing... But even in '95 it was many decades too late to take these modernist tropes wholly seriously the way Berg did, and so instead of tragedy we're left with literal emptiness: the Duchess is evicted, and though there's a space here where Ades might have written an emotional climax to sum or contrast or enlarge the parade of petty-compulsive humanity that's passed, no such thing comes. It's perfect, in its way, but nihilistically so.

Meredith Oakes, librettist for the Tempest asked for more -- for deep love and wrath and repentance and forgiveness -- but it was precisely in these human elements that Ades could not deliver proper sonic expression. It's the inhuman island in the background and its spirits that have his full attention: the human stuff is dutifully turned to as it comes, but carries little of the charge the Shakespearean situations demand.

So more praise to Oakes for writing the more satisfying libretto, or to Henscher for writing the one more fit for Ades? I'm not sure. But neither opera satisfies.

A ramble through Inquisition Spain

2013-03-01T21:54:00.000-05:00

Don Carlo - Metropolitan Opera, 2/28/2013
Vargas, Frittoli, Smirnova, Hvorostovsky, Furlanetto, Halfvarson / Maazel

If the current Parsifal is an uncompromising & uncompromised excavation of Wagner's score, his libretto, and their themes of guilt, blood, sexuality, compassion, error, their hard-won overcoming, ritual, etc., the contemporaneously-running Don Carlo is more like a safe motor tour through similar territory. For as much blood and sorrow as there is in Verdi's creation after Schiller, it's expressed this time in more muted terms.

The singers (many reassembled from the scheduled 2011 Boccanegra group) are the revival's strength: equal to the original bunch, they share a characteristic sorrow that sends Verdi's lines to the heart. The characteristic expression of Ramon Vargas is as usual a joy to hear and see: his Carlo is neither idiot (Botha's) nor trainwreck waiting to happen (Alagna's) nor loose cannon (Lee's), but a dreamer in a high-stakes harsh reality (sort of a male equivalent to Tosca), allowed just that moment of unaccustomed joy at Fontainebleau before he is crushed by the blow of fate...

...and a bizarre stage interruption. For just as Carlo and Elisabetta had learned of the new marriage plan and were about to launch into how awful everything was, a fat stagehand in a t-shirt strolled onto the stage, blasted the fire the couple had been chatting by with an extinguisher, and walked back off. Despite stunned laughter from the audience, the leads successfully resisted the urge to crack up themselves and carried on through the finale.

In any case, Vargas gives a lovely and heartfelt lyric interpretation, though those seeking the huge arcing force Yonghoon Lee delivered will obviously be dissatisfied. Barbara Frittoli stands in a similar relation to her immediate predecessor Marina Poplavskaya: less forceful and sonically penetrating (the Italian soprano's high notes come, but aren't exactly clarion), more human and sensitive, with that strong common current of sorrow in this cast's approach. I worry every time she's cast in a lead, but Frittoli is now on something of a hot streak -- that Boccanegra, the fall Clemenza, this... Her acted portrayal is similar, less fighting her fate than struggling to stay upright among its hazards -- her physical failure at this, when she faints at Phillip's accusation, has a moral force here that it often lacks. Her chemistry with Vargas was terrific throughout, their first encounter perhaps the most persuasive and moving I've seen.

This change in the character of the leads actually brings them more in line with Ferrucio Furlanetto's 2010 version of Phillip -- carried over to this revival -- who in his private lament is more intimately devastated than thunderous, though he still has the full volume for the latter. (Every new run one fears it's finally the year the 63-year-old bass finally crosses over into wooliness... but that hasn't happened yet.) The Russians offer a bit of contrasting flamboyance: in Dmitri Hvorostovsky it's mixed with his characteristic enigmatic composure, in Anna Smirnova it's -- well, she doesn't make a huge character impression, but being able to blow through both of Eboli's arias is still pretty amazing (as we've seen over the years, the heavyweights can't do the first, the middleweights the second, though it's too bad Borodina didn't sing the part here before her top started to go), and if she gets a bit shouty this time in the first I still shouldn't complain. Eric Halfvarson is still his amazing scary self.

* * *
A satisfying cast, and who knows what human depths a drama-oriented conductor like Nezet-Seguin might have gotten from them all. But Lorin Maazel was in the pit, to rather odd effect. Five years ago, in Valkyrie, he did well, but the overall dramatic thrust that materialized over that course of that evening never did show up here. In fact his conducting sounded rather old and bored: the sound appeared, as did all the phrases, but small details of phrase were continuously rendered with such apparent self-satisfaction that one wondered (especially at the end) if Maazel realized there was an opera going on. Dramatic forward movement he left to the singers, which with this cast was fine in their turns, but quite eroded any cumulative effect. And so we got all of the tunes of Don Carlo, a generous amount of its sorrow and melancholy, and only a light sprinkling of its drama.

That's not nothing, and it's worth hearing, but don't expect that full cry of tragic despair.

Another day, another Parsifal post

2013-02-28T14:30:00.002-05:00

Another quick word about conductor Daniele Gatti.

Whether or not you're sympathetic to his shaping of the piece, it's clear that the Met Orchestra is with him closely throughout. The sound he gets from the strings has a depth and sheen not often heard from non-Levine conductors here, and though Gatti is happy to discard/reset continuity of motion to build that patina of spontaneity, the orchestra maintains the continuity of sound for him unabated. Perhaps the players are in fact encouraged by the extraordinary efforts required to hold this contrast: after almost six hours of long slow concentration in the pit, they actually stayed therein for curtain call, returning to Gatti some of the applause he of course was giving them. (This rarely happens after the first night of a run, and with no moviecast cameras present it wasn't for that either.)

And no coordination issues this time. As much as I've previously admired the more straightforward work of Asher Fisch, I wonder if next week's performances can match these first weeks of the run.

More on the production, perhaps, in the next post.

Another Parsifal post

2013-02-27T15:06:00.000-05:00

... before seeing tonight's performance.

More remarkable even than the tenor lead is, I think, Peter Mattei. Amfortas has not been neglected by the Met: it was just 2006 when Thomas Hampson stole the show in this same part opposite Heppner, Meier, and Pape. But Hampson, like most of his predecessors, used the grit in his voice -- and, for Hampson, the contrast of that with his younger unblemished sound -- to convey the full scope of the wounded leader's torment. Mattei remains commandingly mellifluous throughout, and it's testament to his intensity of phrase and physical acting that Amfortas and his struggle are nevertheless so vivid.

Rene Pape is on a similar level: gone are the days when he seemed stretched too thin over a part that was just too long for him. With the maturation of his voice, Pape is now just as strong over the course of a long sing like Gurnemanz as he is in the one/two-showoff-aria parts with which he exploded onto the scene in the 90s. Unfortunately on opening night some coordination difficulties with the pit got in the way of his Act I work... we'll see how it comes out tonight.

And in fact Daniele Gatti's conducting has been the performance element that has not drawn near-universal praise. But as much as I like to complain that a Wagner show would have been better with Levine in the pit, Gatti's idiosyncratic approach is really interesting in this. His aesthetic aim seems to be to allow every development to unfold as if spontaneously improvised, and though this involves drawing some of the passages out more than is common and may cause coordination issues of the sort we saw opening night, the cumulative effect over the course of, e.g., Act III is pretty uncanny. And if Gatti's way may trip up singers in monologues, it nudges singers in the really, really long-form dialogues of Act II to their own sort of spontaneity, putting focus on the unfolding dramatic crux rather than the set-piece structural form.

Katarina Dalayman, a dramatic soprano in manner as well as sound, took huge advantage of this emphasis at the opener. As well and as strongly as Jonas Kaufmann sang in that second Act, that was basically him (or, as the director successfully drew forth, the divine emptiness within him) responding to and keeping up with Dalayman/Kundry's surges of vocal and (im)moral force.

The 2013-14 Met season announcement, annotated

2013-02-27T14:00:00.000-05:00

There are a lot of really strange choices throughout (the solo recital -- not listed -- is probably the strangest), but any season with three Strauss shows including a revival of Wernicke's FroSch is one to look forward to. And, oh yes, James Levine returns. We hope.

Shows are listed, as ever, in order of first appearance. Single-show casts are omitted, though some are mentioned in the text. Moviecast casts are highlighted in bold.

Eugene Onegin (new Deborah Warner production)
Kwiecien, Netrebko, Volkova, Beczala, Kwiecien, Tanovitsky / Gergiev (September-October)
Kwiecien, Netrebko, Volkova, Beczala, Tanovitsky / Smelkov (October)
Mattei, Poplavskaya, Maximova, Villazón, Kocán / Vedernikov (November)
This opening night, a real director! Though Robert Carsen's great production will be missed, it did sort of reach its apex in its last incarnations. I'm not sure who in the administration keeps erroneously headlining Mariusz Kwiecien instead of Peter Mattei, but the former is perhaps a more plausible cold fish. I find it hard to believe that the patchwork voice I heard in October is going to sing much of a Lensky this November, but I'm sure there's some sort of backup plan.

Cosi fan Tutte
Phillips, Leonard, de Niese, Polenzani, Pogossov, Muraro / Levine (September-October, April)
Yu, Leonard, de Niese, Polenzani, Pogossov, Muraro / Levine (May)
No pressure, folks, but the last Levine run (with Polenzani!) of this may have been his best performances at the Met -- ever. Excellent youthful cast: Leonard and de Neise impressed even in the less intensely sincere revival a few seasons back.

The Nose
Szot, Popov, Lewis / Gergiev (September-October)
Szot, Popov, Lewis / Smelkov (October)
What a great show this was. Szot, Popov, and the conductors return from the first time.

Norma
Radvanovsky, Aldrich, Antonenko, Morris / Frizza (September-November)
Meade, Barton, Antonenko, Orlov/Morris (October 24/28)
No, seriously, when's the last season that opened with four really promising shows? Sondra Radvanovsky finally scales Mt. Norma -- with a pretty good supporting cast, though a new production would have been good for her on the dramatic stuff. In the alternate cast, Angela Meade goes for it as well... with a rather shorter career run-up. Meade's Adalgisa is fellow 2007 Met Council Finals winner (and "The Audition" co-star) Jamie Barton. I was really unimpressed by Barton on the day, but she seems to have turned into a heck of a no-holds-barred mezzo honker in the classic American style. This is, unfortunately, exactly the wrong casting for the lyric-soprano ingenue role of Adalgisa, but given that Dolora Zajick is the only Adalgisa this production has seen, it's also the exact mistake the Met loves making.

A Midsummer Night's Dream
Kim, Wall, DeShong, Davies, Kaiser, Simpson, Rose / Conlon (October)
Nice cast, though as far as this story goes I prefer the brevity of Ashton's dance version...

Two Boys (new Nico Muhly opera)
Zetlan, Lynch, Coote, Eddy, Forst, Appleby, Bolduc, Miller / Robertson (October-November)
After an apparently-succesful out-of-town tryout at ENO two seasons ago, Muhly and librettist Craig Lucas' opera hits the Met stage. Bart Sher and his usual crew are doing the production... for better or worse. I assume conductor David Robertson will be in the good form he showed in 2012's Billy Budd, not the very, very bad form he demonstrated in (on) Figaro.

Tosca
Racette, Alagna, Gagnidze / Frizza (October-November)
Radvanovsky, Giordani, Gagnidze / Armiliato (December)
Would you believe a second moviecast of this originally-reviled show? Alagna and Gagnidze aren't quite Kaufmann and Terfel, but they're good in this, as is Racette the natural Puccinian. I'm not sure I'm ready to go see Marcelo Giordani again, but it's a nice regular run for Radvanovsky after Norma. Three one-off casts: TBA as Tosca November 16, Ricardo Tamura making his Met debut as Cavaradossi December 17 and Elisabete Matos as Tosca December 20.

Die Frau ohne Schatten
Schwanewilms, Goerke, Komlósi, Kerl, Reuter / Jurowski (November)
Meagan Miller (who sang Danae pretty well at Bard) has one performance as the Empress (November 16). The cast isn't really one to conjure with, but frankly, who cares? Vladimir Jurowski has a magnificent score in a magnificently sincere production and oh, that orchestra and its soloists (which his characteristic lyrical approach has, in the past, empowered)... The opportunity for huge success is all in his hands -- good decision not to entrust Luisi with this.
The bad news, for the public: no moviecast. The good news, for the public at the house: none of the moviecast-accomodating lighting changes that damaged Carsen's Onegin (in that show they were never reverted after the moviecast season). And yes, beg borrow or steal to be at the house for one or more of these -- especially if you haven't seen Herbert Wernicke's production masterpiece yet (though a lot of the striking stuff has since been cribbed by lesser shows).

Rigoletto
Hvorostovsky, Kurzak, Polenzani, Volkova, Kocan / Heras-Casado (November-December)
The Met debut of young Spanish conductor Pablo Heras-Casado, who already has a NYC connection as principal conductor of the Orchestra of St. Luke's. The title part is a bit of a stretch for Hvoro... especially with the ugly sweater he'll have to wear in this production. Between Aleksandra Kurzak and Polenzani, this revival will also feature probably the nicest Gilda and Duke combo ever.

Der Rosenkavalier
Serafin, Garanca, Erdmann, Cutler, Ketelsen, Rose / Gardner (November)
Serafin, Sindram, Erdmann, Cutler, Ketelsen, Rose / Gardner (December)
Two one-off casts: Erin Morley as Sophie and Mario Chang as the Italian Singer on December 3, and TBA as Octavian on December 13. But more to the point... are Martina Serafin and Daniela Sindram going to carry off the show? (Serafin being Viennese is nice but hardly sufficient.) I suppose we'll get some hint when the former debuts as Sieglinde in this spring's Ring. Mojca Erdmann was good as Zerlina and not good as Susanna, but finally gets more of a high chirper's part to chew on (though yes, Sophie doesn't actually go that high).

Falstaff (new Robert Carsen production)
Maestri, Oropesa, Meade, Blythe, Johnson Cano, Fanale, Vassallo / Levine (December-January)
Alaimo, Oropesa, Meade, Blythe, Johnson Cano, Fanale, Vassallo / Levine (December)
One Carsen show (Onegin) departs, another appears... this time replacing an old Zef show. (Will there be protest booing? How about we just skip that this time...) This is pretty significant given how underappreciated that Onegin was to start.
The musical story is, if things go well (knock on wood), another re-visit by Levine to his 2005 glory. Of course, he had Bryn Terfel then, and neither Ambrogio Maestri nor Nicola Alaimo are likely to provide that scale of presence in the title role. Still, the female side of the cast is quite strong, and it's Levine... we hope.

The Magic Flute (holiday version)
Stober, Shagimuratova, Shrader, Gunn, Shenyang, Owens / Glover (December)
Stober, Lewek, Shrader, Gunn, Shenyang, Owens / Glover (December-January)
Jane Glover in the pit for this holiday kids' version in English.

Die Fledermaus (new Jeremy Sams production)
Phillips, Schäfer, Maltman, Fabiano, Szot, Costanzo / Fischer (New Year's Eve-January)
Phillips, Archibald, Maltman, Lewis, Szot, Costanzo / Fischer (February)
Phillips, Archibald, Maltman, Fabiano, Szot, Costanzo / Fischer (February)
The long, leaden, wit-free, barely-literate hash of politically correct tropes that was "The Enchanted Island" should have ended the Met careers of every person involved on its production (note: I don't mean the singers, who did what they could). Jeremy Sams -- the writer and principal offender in that wreck -- unfortunately managed to fail upward into directing this new Fledermaus. (Well, at least it isn't Shakespeare.) The cast -- featuring, for the second show of this season, Susanna Phillips -- is pretty good, though I fear Christine Schäfer plans to play Adele as bizarrely glumly as she did Cherubino, in which case she should be run out of town during rehearsals. I'm sure her alternate, Canadian soprano Jane Archibald, can do chirpy maid.

L'Elisir d'Amore
Netrebko, Vargas, Alaimo, Schrott / Benini (January-February 1)
One would have hoped that Netrebko's season-opening Tatyana could signal the end of the pretense that she's a bel canto soprano these days. Unfortunately not. Though if she must... this is pretty good company to do it in.

La Boheme
Kovalevska, Lungu, Calleja, Markov, Hopkins, Van Horn, Maxwell / Ranzani (January)
Hartig, Rowley, Grigolo, Cavalletti, Carfizzi, Testé, Cokorinos / Ranzani (March)
Hartig, Phillips, Grigolo, Cavalletti, Carfizzi, Testé, Cokorinos / Ranzani (April)
Frittoli, Rowley, Grigolo, Cavalletti, Carfizzi, Gradus, Maxwell / Ranzani (April)
So on the one hand you have the greatest lyric tenor in the world. On the other you have a former pop singer who fizzled badly in his first go at this long-perfected show. Which one do you put on the air?
Yeah, that's what I'd have thought too. Perhaps debuting soprano Anita Hartig is as great a Mimi as Maija Kovalevska was in 2008... perhaps Grigolo has even learned to phrase and engage with his peers. I'm certainly curious about Hartig, but -- especially since these are the only Joseph Calleja appearances of the season -- it's the first cast that holds the most interest. Conductor Stefano Ranzani has done pretty well here with Puccini, so he at least shouldn't wreck the show.

Madama Butterfly
Echalaz, DeShong, Hymel, Hendricks / Auguin (January-February)
Opolais, Zifchak, Valenti, Croft / Armiliato (April)
He, Zifchak, Hughes Jones, Croft / Luisi (May)
I don't suggest seeing Butterfly for the Pinkerton, but look, a Bryan Hymel sighting! Gwyn Hughes Jones, too. This is the debut of South-African-by-way-of-England soprano Amanda Echalaz. Also, not that it matters as much as, say, FroSch (in the first revival of which, incidentally, Philippe Auguin didn't impress), but the conducting lineup for this is really sort of bizarre.

Rusalka
Fleming, Zajick, Beczala, Relyea, Magee / Nézet-Séguin (January-February)
Yup, "Yannick"'s Met show this season is the Dvorak masterpiece. Renee Fleming showed some vocal decline in the 2009 revival, though the standard of her 2004 shows was ridiculously high. Love the production, and of course hearing Nézet-Séguin's pit work should be a treat.

Prince Igor (new Dmitri Tcherniakov production)
Abdrazakov, Rachvelishvili, Dyka, Semishkur, Petrenko, Kocán / Noseda (February-March)
The Met again taps its east-European cornucopia to cast the Borodin opera that hasn't been done by the company in nearly a hundred years. It has been done in the house, though, by the visiting Kirov/Mariinsky in 1998 (back when Anna Netrebko was a great young bel canto singer -- read the Betrothal in a Monastery and Ruslan & Lyudmila notices from then). That show, in a rather odd production of what was presumably the cutting-edge in musicological restoration then, was supposed to feature Ildar Abdrazakov's now-wife (Olga Borodina) as Konchakovna (she withdrew, but Larissa Diadkova impressed) and did feature his elder brother (Askar) as Konchak. This time the younger Abdrazakov has the title part, Met Carmen-for-life Anita Rachvelishvili gets the big mezzo aria, and the edition is yet a new recutting/restoration by the hands of the director Tcherniakov and the conductors (both Gergiev proteges) Gianandrea Noseda and Pavel Smelkov (who's in the pit February 21).

Werther (new Richard Eyre production)
Kaufmann, Garanca, Oropesa, Bizic, Summers / Altinoglu (February-March)
Eyre, the director of one of the current administration's rare unequivocal successes, returns with a rather different French piece. I have my doubts that Garanca will be a convincing object of domestic desire, but after Parsifal I'm certain a good director can shape Kaufmann's fragmentary seeking into a heck of a wounded tenor hero.

The Enchanted Island
de Niese, Chuchman, Graham, Daniels, Costanzo, Domingo, Pisaroni / Summers (February-March)
I'll repeat what I wrote above:

The long, leaden, wit-free, barely-literate hash of politically correct tropes that was "The Enchanted Island" should have ended the Met careers of every person involved on its production (note: I don't mean the singers, who did what they could).

DiDonato couldn't save the show the first time, and Graham isn't going to do it now. Avoid like crazy, especially if you like Shakespeare.

Wozzeck
Hampson, Voigt, O'Neill, Hoare / Levine (March)
The third of Levine's planned return engagements. Thomas Hampson as Wozzeck!? The strange thing is that it's not a completely mind-boggling idea now. (But it mostly still is.)

La Sonnambula
Damrau, Camarena, Pertusi / Armiliato (March-April)
Too much to hope for a major recut of the offensive up-yours finale? Though the whole show is, thanks perhaps to Dessay's veto of a traditional setting, half-baked. In any case, what's missing in Diana Damrau's Gilda is also a fatal absence for an Amina: goodness.

Andrea Chenier
Álvarez, Racette, Lucic / Noseda (March-April)
Marcelo Alvarez -- despite good singing -- was rather too clever/committed for his own good this season in making his Gustavo so thoroughly unkingly, but this show and production should present no such off-the-rails temptations.

Arabella
Byström, Kühmeier, Saccà, Volle, Del Carlo / Auguin (April)
The third Strauss revival of the season features Swedish sort-of-a-soprano Malin Byström and Austrian really-a-soprano Genia Kühmeier as the lead sisters, with debuting tenor Roberto Saccà as Matteo and debuting baritone Michael Volle as Waldner. I have the least faith in this Strauss offering: it takes more from the conductor than one might think, and Auguin has never at the Met shown himself able/willing to carry things along. But if Byström and Volle get the moral side of it, that should be something.

I Puritani
Peretyatko, Brownlee, Kwiecien, Pertusi / Mariotti (April-May)
I'm irrationally thrilled at the prospect of this revival. I have no idea whether debuting Russian soprano Olga Peretyatko will be any good (she's married to Mariotti, who of course is conducting) and the production will remain as bland as ever, but I somehow suspect that an actual bel canto soprano (which she may be) and a barnstorming tenor (which I'm pretty sure Brownlee is) can make much of this show in a way their predecessors certainly did not.

La Cenerentola
DiDonato, Flórez, Spagnoli, Corbelli, Pisaroni / Luisi
An all-star group is brought together for another moviecast. Only appearances for DiDonato and Florez this season.

The week in NY opera (February 25-March 3)

2013-02-25T15:00:00.000-05:00

Parsifal is on the air, rumors are in the air... we'll see about both.

Metropolitan Opera
Don Carlo (M/Th), Carmen (T/F), Parsifal (W*/SM)
No Saturday night performance as the Parsifal moviecast consumes the whole day's resources. Carmen wraps its run this Friday. Official season announcement is tomorrow.

* Wednesday's (starred) Parsifal is the one just before this Saturday's matinee moviecast, which means that the camera equipment and lights will be out in force. Do not sit in side orchestra, front orchestra, or side parterre -- the house is not interested in optimizing patron experience on these nights, but in making the eventual broadcast go well.

Brooklyn Academy of Music
New York City Opera The Turn of the Screw (Th/SE)
Second and final week of the run.

Morgan Library
George London Foundation competition finals (Friday 4pm)
The event is currently sold out, but significant. The Met's competition finals is nine days later.

OT
New York Philharmonic Carousel (W/Th/F/SM/SE)
I'm not much for musicals-as-opera, but opposite Broadway's Kelli O'Hara in this are Nathan Gunn and Stephanie Blythe (!!!).

The hero

2013-02-24T23:19:00.001-05:00

Les Troyens - Metropolitan Opera, 12/13/2012 & 1/5/2013
Giordani/Hymel, Voigt, Graham, Bernstein, Croft, Boulianne, Cargill, Cutler, Appleby, Youn / Luisi

Everyone who ended up seeing this show with Marcelo Giordani as Enee (Aeneas) instead of Bryan Hymel deserves a refund. From the former one expected solid if not particularly fluid vocalism and a decent enough stock presence... unfortunately neither delivered here. The singing, on opening night, ranged from strained to -- in, unfortunately, the final climactic scene -- dire, but the real damage was done phrase by phrase. All the curves and turns of Berlioz's music were turned into dead straight lines, with particularly devastating effect in the climactic Act IV love duet. Here Aeneas has finally been seduced into accord with Dido's endless dilation of the moment: Giordani's inability, even at this height of his character's rapture, to trace the satisfied full course of his line made their relationship, Dido's love, and indeed the audience's engagement in the above sadly implausible. There must be some piece of Aeneas that shares Dido's desire to ignore (or at least put off) fate... not only does the libretto say as much, it's the echo of Virgil's own contribution to epic -- that inner hesitation and doubt of a melancholic pastoral poet put in harness as apologist for fate's (probably, for the time) least-worst but nevertheless hard & bloody outcome (the triumph of Rome over the world and Augustus over Rome). Stock Italian tenor-heroisms (Giordani's physical presentation was basically the same as for his Calaf in November) encompass none of this.

In truth, of course, the dramatic tenor with true poetic sensibility, lurking or overt, is very much the exception -- for which Ben Heppner got too little credit in the premiere run of this production. And in fact Bryan Hymel isn't Heppner or Klaus Florian Vogt or anyone in that vein.

In fact there's really nothing easy about Hymel's singing: the irreducible baseline effort one notices is, I suspect, why he wasn't the first choice Enee to begin with. But as the part moves from conversation to declamation and passion, Hymel's singing follows easily, the effortful part of it becoming both insignificant and (in any case) in accord with the moment. The huge long cries of "Italie" that capped off both his final solo and, perhaps even more impressively, the ensemble finale thereafter (for which he could well have receded into the massed sound) were thrills perhaps unmatched in the Met's history of the opera. And if his stage presence wasn't a poet's, it was complementary to his full-dynamic presentation, energetic and responsive to all the bewildering things around him.

This alone improved the effect of Susan Graham's performance. Where Giordani was basically a wall, Hymel provided a real partner in their arc of stolen time and doomed love, and so the personal arc was well and movingly carried off. As a queen, though... Graham's Dido seemed to make no distinction from the start between public and private, appearing in her personal free self at the ceremonies kicking off Part II as naturally as in her grief-wracked incarnation at the end. It's a legitimate interpretation, and certainly her singing was beautiful and moving, but Graham's downplaying of Dido's regal side and role -- her burden, parallel to Aeneas' -- left something important out. This part was, as many will remember, the first and last great triumph of Lorraine Hunt-Lieberson's Met career -- the opening night of this production a validation that few singers experience in such concentrated form -- and so perhaps it's unfair to invoke the comparison (not least because the subsequent performances in the run were very good but not at the same level)... but it's irresistible nonetheless. LHL as Dido contrasted stillness with motion, outer firmness (composed for her people and position) with inner pure feeling, and when the latter of each broke the former, at first tenderly in the love sequence and then in the violence of her footlight soliliquy the effect was overpowering. For Graham there was no such contrasting compulsion to measure and highlight her Dido's flow of feeling.

But Graham didn't architect the entire evening. In a rather strange turn, Francesca Zambello's revival stage direction of her own production actually seemed to have sabotaged what had in its original incarnation been a brilliantly-directed whole. Perhaps it was Giordani's presence through these new rehearsals, perhaps simply the passage of time, but for some reason the deft and well-proportioned bits of direction then became, at every turn -- the overwrought Andromache, the bizarre apparent consummation of the romance before the Royal Hunt, the jarringly violent anger of Narbal in Act IV -- overdirected cliche now. So it's hard to blame even Karen Cargill's overly earthy wink-wink-nudge-nudge panderer of an Anna on the debuting mezzo herself... but she didn't help things either.

* * *
The other principal reprise -- Deborah Voigt, Cassandra again as in 2003 -- and conductor Fabio Luisi had, I thought, surprisingly analogous flaws and virtues. For Voigt it was a huge reversal: 2003's Troyens was one of the last appearances of that original "fat Voigt", full and luxuriant of sound but similarly un-angular in character, the stimmdiva par excellence. Her Cassandra then was all wrong in its basics -- alienation, hysteria and desperation come out full blast in the score, but found no outlets in Voigt's fate-favored, well-grounded person or voice. Now, she can almost no longer sing the part -- the tone isn't great, and bottom notes are particularly lacking -- but is nevertheless a much better Cassandra. Harassed in her way by fate, having ended the long original cooperation with her body's size and glorious strength, and having run headlong and repeatedly into the limitations of her new form and voice, 2013's Voigt can show desperate, can look ruin in the face, lose patience with her fiancee, and generally get the basic moment-to-moment expression of Cassandra's dramatic position right... but the sonic limitations kick in and limit the force of what should be climactic expression.

Luisi's orchestra sounds good -- which I'd thought would always be the case, but Aida showed otherwise. And his constant characteristic attention to texture and detail and shape in the moment is basically just what the essential time-defying expansiveness of Berlioz in this opera demands. But, even if this achieved and thematized neo-classical courtly patience is the unique feature of the piece, it's not the exclusive one: in the end, Troy burns, Carthage sees its doom, and the lovers' idyll is broken. None of these climactic outcomes quite get their due from Luisi, who as we'll recall found ways to be coolly classical even in Forza, Elektra, and Lulu... It's not (unlike for Voigt) physical limitation that hampers these climaxes, but Luisi's choice.

Still, the basic fit between these roles and their players counted for much, and with Hymel's fire the whole show worked.

* * *
The supporting cast was, as usual for the Met, strong. Grossly under-appreciated American bass-baritone Richard Bernstein was probably the most impressive (as Panthus), though Julie Boulianne (Ascanius) and Paul Appleby (Hylas) also made for a strong Trojan contingent. Among the Cartheginians Youn (Narbal), despite the jarring character direction/portrayal, was the strongest vocally, though it's probably unfair to tenor Eric Cutler that his predecessor Matthew Polenzani was a perfect Iopas. For what's a court without an official dreamer?