Opera Today

Le Figaro on Charpentier Festival

FESTIVAL Marc-Antoine Charpentier à Ambronay

Triomphe de la jeunesse

Gérard Corneloup
[30 septembre 2004]

En cette année du bicentenaire de la mort de Marc-Antoine Charpentier, occasion unique de le sortir de l'ombre que lui fait encore Lully, le festival d'Ambronay et son Académie baroque européenne ne pouvaient pas rester en dehors du mouvement. Ils y participent brillamment avec deux petits ouvrages pleins de charme - Actéon et Les Arts florissants - confiés aux 52 jeunes artistes, chanteurs, instrumentistes et danseurs recrutés pour moitié en France et dans la Communauté européenne, mais aussi en Russie, au Brésil et en Corée. Le maître d'oeuvre en est Christophe Rousset, grand spécialiste de la chose baroque, et le cadre idéal en a été le théâtre de Bourg-en-Bresse.

Le résultat dépasse encore les qualités qu'on avait remarquées lors des dix précédentes éditions, en particulier avec le superbe Cadmus et Hermione de Lully présenté il y a deux ans. Frappé au sceau de la jeunesse et de la justesse, le cru 2004 se révèle un modèle en la matière, à partir de deux composantes solidement bâties : osmose parfaite entre la partie musicale et la partie visuelle, d'une part, cohésion vivifiante entre le chant et la partie instrumentale, d'autre part.

Les Arts Florissants sont une allégorie plaisante chantant la place des Arts dans le monde... et accessoirement la gloire du Roi-Soleil. Actéon est un divertissement mythologique doux-amer puisé chez Ovide. Avec beaucoup d'à-propos, surtout pour le second ouvrage, le metteur en scène Ludovic Lagarde divise l'espace en deux zones, l'une, largement ouverte sur le proscenium, l'autre en fond de scène avec un grand cube clos, délimitant ainsi deux mondes, celui des dieux et celui des mortels.

Les costumes de Jean-Jacques et Virginie Weil, montrant une nudité feinte des nymphes de Diane plus vraie que nature, les éclairages bien maîtrisés de Sébastien Michaud et les sobres décors d'Antoine Vasseur, sans oublier une chorégraphie d'Odile Duboc très en situation, scellent un travail d'équipe particulièrement réussi.

La meme cohésion triomphe parmi les jeunes chanteurs possédant parfaitement le style baroque. Choristes ou solistes, tous seraient à citer tandis que la fosse résonne de sonorités riches et fluides sous la direction à la fois précise et lyrique de Christophe Rousset qui a l'oeil à tout. Avec une telle jeunesse, le baroque a encore de beaux jours devant lui !

Calendrier de la tournée : Chambéry le 30 septembre, Vichy le 2 octobre, Versailles le 5 octobre, Villefranche- sur-Saone le 9 octobre, Rennes les 12, 14 et 15 octobre, Besançon le 17 octobre, Reims le 19 octobre, Metz le 21 octobre, Roanne le 23 octobre.

Recommended recording:

FROSCH at Innsbruck

Die Frau ohne Schatten, Tiroler Landstheater, Innsbruck
By Larry L Lash
Published: September 29 2004 03:00 | Last updated: September 29 2004 03:00

It was a strange match: Richard Strauss's hugest, most difficult opera - with one of the largest orchestras in all opera and five insanely demanding lead roles - given in a provincial 830-seat house (approximately one orchestral player for every seven audience members). The result? An evening of miracles and revelations.

The conductor Dietfried Bernet achieved something I have never heard in 33 years' experience with this opera: the singers were never overwhelmed. Not once.

[Remainder of article here (subscription to FT Online required)]

Recommended recordings:

King's Music Reviews New Recordings of Works by Rameau

Rameau : Platée

Paul Agnew Platée, Mireille Delunsch La Folie & Thalie, Yann Beuron Thespis & Mercure, Vincent Le Texier Jupiter, Doris Lamprecht Junon, Laurent Naouri Cithéron & a Satyr, Valérie Gabail L'Amour & Clarine, Franck Leguerinel Momus, Orchestra and Chorus of Les Musiciens du Louvre - Grenoble, Marc Minkowski dir TDK DVD Video DV-OPPLT (2 discs)

I initially thought this was a DVD version of a Minkowski production of Platée that I already have on disc, so I knew I would enjoy the performance. Although I was wrong, and the cast is completely different, my enjoyment of the piece was even greater than I had expected, with some superb contributions, especially from Paul Agnew in the title role (revealing himself to be as much an excellent actor as he is a fantastic singer) and Mireille Delunsch (as Folly, in particular). At the outset, I thought Minkowski over-conducted, with flourishes of the baton for each of the notes of the demisemi

A Profile of Anna Netrebko

In the October 2004 issue of BBC Music magazine, Amanda Holloway writes:

The phrase most often used of Anna Netrebko is a 'package': stunning looks, acting ability and a gorgeous, effortless lyric soprano voice.

The following is a profile of Netrebko courtesy of the Mariinsky.

Born in Krasnodar. Graduated from the Rimsky-Korsakov Conservatoire, St Petersburg, in 1995 and trained with San Francisco Opera. Joined the Mariinsky Theatre in 1994. Took part in a concert dedicated to the opening of the Irina Arkhipova Foundation at the Bolshoi Theatre in Moscow (1993).

Awards include first prize at the Glinka Vocal Competition (Moscow, 1993), prize winner of the International Rimsky-Korsakov Vocal Competition (St Petersburg, 1996), laureate of the BALTIKA prize for Young Opera Singers (St Petersburg, 1997) and laureate of the St Petersburg Golden Sophit theatre prize (1999).

Repertoire includes:
Susanna (Le nozze di Figaro), Donna Anna (Don Giovanni), Lyudmila (Ruslan and Lyudmila), Ksenia (Boris Godunov), Rosina (Il barbiere di Siviglia), Pamina (Die Zauberflote), Luisa (Betrothal in a Monastery), Klingsor's Flower Maid (Parsifal), Natasha Rostova (War and Peace), Lucia (Lucia di Lammermoor), Antonia (Les Contes d'Hoffmann), Musetta (La boheme), Ilia (Idomeneo), Adina (L'elisir d'amore), Zerlina (Don Giovanni), Teresa (Benvenuto Cellini), Giulietta (I Capuleti e i Montecchi), Violetta (La traviata).

Recordings include Ruslan and Lyudmila (audio-video recording with Philips Classics and RM Arts), Betrothal in a Monastery (audio-video project with Philips Classics, NHK Tokyo and Euroarts).

Her BBC debut in 1996 with Valery Gergiev and the Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra was also broadcast on television. Has toured with the Mariinsky Theatre thoughout Europe, Israel, the USA, Japan and Great Britain.

In the summer of 1998, she made her debut at the Salzburg Summer Festival, singing in concert performances of Parsifal with the Vienna Philharmonic under the baton of Maestro Gergiev. Anna Netrebko performs at the world's major opera houses. Since her debut at the San Francisco Opera House in 1995, Anna Netrebko has become a frequent guest artist there. In the 1999-2000 season she took part in performances of Le nozze di Figaro, Betrothal in a Monastery, Idomeneo and La boheme. In the 1999-2000 season, she made her debut with Washington Opera as Gilda (Rigoletto).

Took part in a concert performance of Benvenuto Cellini with the Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra under the baton of Maestro Gergiev at the Concertgebouw (Amsterdam) and the Royal Festival Hall (London). Has participated in the Maggio Musicale Fiorentino (2000), where she performed works by Bach and Hendel.

In the 2000-2001 season at the San Francisco Opera and Washington Opera she sang Musetta (La boheme), Ilia (Idomeneo), Adina (L'elisir d'amore), Nanetta (Falstaff), Marfa (The Tsar's Bride) and Zerlina (Don Giovanni). The same year, Anna Netrebko made her debut at the Metropolitan Opera (Natasha Rostova in a Mariinsky Theatre production of War and Peace) and Philadelphia Opera (Giulietta in I Capuleti e i Montecchi).

Recommended Recordings:

CDs Still Preferable to Downloads

Silicon Still Rocks the House

By Cynthia L. Webb
washingtonpost.com Staff Writer
Tuesday, September 28, 2004; 9:38 AM

The Internet may have forever changed the music business, but online downloads will keep playing second fiddle to compact discs for at least the next five years.

That conclusion comes courtesy of a study of the European music market by Jupiter Research, but the findings could echo throughout the United States as companies like Apple, Napster and Microsoft play musical chairs in the pay-for-play download space. "Digital music distribution will be an important alternative revenue channel for the music industry, but it is not about to replace the CD," said Jupiter analyst Mark Mulligan as quoted by Reuters.

More from the wire: "Technology consultancy Jupiter Research said in its annual report that in 2009 European music fans will buy 836 million euros ($1 billion) worth of music in the form of digital downloads and subscriptions to Internet radio services. At that level, digital music revenues will account for roughly 8 percent of Europe's estimated 10.2 billion euro music market." Also noted, courtesy of Reuters: "The study does not take into account the surprisingly successful market for mobile phone ring tones. The piracy-battered music industry is desperate to see industry-backed download services become a hit with consumers to derail the popularity of free file-sharing networks such as Kazaa and eDonkey."

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Die Walküre at the Met

Die Walküre, Metropolitan Opera, New York
By Martin Bernheimer
Published: September 28 2004 03:00 | Last updated: September 28 2004 03:00

For the past couple of decades at the Metropolitan Opera, Die Walküre was the exclusive property of James Levine, who invariably made the music spacious and the drama thoughtful. Now distracted with duties at the Boston Symphony, the boss has passed the baton to Valery Gergiev. Talk about Wagnerian vicissitudes.

Saturday night, in a house yawning with empty seats, Gergiev imposed unfamiliar accents on the complex challenge, figuratively and literally. He sacrificed grandeur for agitation, sped through much of the heroic rhetoric and scrambled a few orchestral devices in the inexact process. The impetuous results were exciting, to a degree; also disorienting.

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A synopsis of this opera is here.

More information on this production is here.

Recommended recordings:

FT Reviews La Rondine

La Rondine, New York City Opera
By Martin Bernheimer
Published: September 27 2004 03:00 | Last updated: September 27 2004 03:00

La Rondine certainly isn't Puccini's easiest or most successful opera. Completed in 1917, it flutters - sometimes elegantly, sometimes awkwardly, sometimes passionately - from verismo platitudes to hand-me-down diversions to kitsch indulgences.

Inspired by Viennese operetta, the intimate extravaganza plays in France yet sings unabashed Italian. It borrows a bit of Léhar sentiment here and recycles a lot of the Traviata plot there. There's even a fleeting hint of Fledermaus, with a saucy maid borrowing her mistress's gown for a party.

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A synopsis of this opera is here.

Recommended recording:

Pavarotti’s forgotten predecessor: Bruno Prevedi

By Jan Neckers

The line of Decca-tenors seems to run straight from Del Monaco to Bergonzi to Pavarotti. Granted there are some intrusions by Giuseppe Campora, Giuseppe Di Stefano and Franco Corelli but their names are not widely associated with this label. Granted too that Bergonzi never felt himself to be very welcome by Rosengarten, Decca's big boss who preferred the better-selling Del Monaco and who tried to supplant Bergonzi by Jussi Björling (who died after one failed recording) and Franco Corelli (who was too unreliable). So after his initial five-years exclusivity-contract lapsed, Bergonzi looked to other labels as well. Not until Luciano Pavarotti arrived did Decca once more have a tenor with Del Monaco-fidelity. That was initially more Pavarotti's clamping on than Decca's wish. Indeed the tenor from Modena had to start out with an insulting 45T-record in a time when no classical artist recorded on this format anymore. And the label had no problems in lending him out to EMI to record L'Amico Fritz. One of the reasons behind this policy was that Rosengarten thought the label had more than its fill of Italian tenors in the sixties. Anyway making sure that competition wouldn't pick up the best ones sometimes was an aim too, and then throwing them in the dustbin was a regular feature. Gino Penno only got an MP but retired before he could complain. Flaviano Labo was signed at the same time as Carlo Bergonzi; he got an LP (in the US) and a reduced version of that recording on MP in Europe. And that was it. And then came along a possible successor to Del Monaco and Bergonzi (still only 40 years of age): Bruno Prevedi and for a short time it looked as he would get to wear the robe of the elder tenors. But then his recording career didn't take flight and his theatre career slowed down and petered out.

[Remainder of article here]

Joseph Schmidt (1904-2004)

By Jan Neckers

This is not a biography of the Jewish tenor. Just some personal thoughts on a few interesting aspects. Those interested in a biographical article and an outstanding discography better purchase the June 2000 issue of The Record Collector where your servant and Hansfried Sieben devoted more than sixty small print pages to the tenor. Those able to read German can still buy Alfred Fasbind's biography published at the Schweizer Verlagshaus in Zürich 1992. It is still available in some German bookshops and maybe with the author himself (Rosenbergstrasse 16, 8630 Rüti, Switzerland).

[Remainder of article here]

THE RISE OF NEAPOLITAN COMIC OPERA

Goldberg
No. 27

By Brian Robins

During the eighteenth century Naples was one of the largest and most vibrant cities in Europe. Hot, dirty and overcrowded, it was a city of teeming life and colour that flowed from court and church to the streets. To the French traveller Charles de Brosses, writing in 1739, it was Naples, not Rome that had the aura of a capital:

To my mind, Naples is the only city in Italy that really feels like a capital. The traffic, the large population, the continuous noise and chaos of the very many carriages, a brilliant court, the magnificent bearing of the local nobility... everything conspires to give Naples the lively and animated aspect which is possessed by London and Paris but which is totally absent in Rome. (Lettres historiques et critiques sur l'Italie [1739-1740])

[Remainder of article here]

Andrew Patner Reviews Don Giovanni at the Lyric Opera

Don Giovanni, Lyric Opera, Chicago
By Andrew Patner
Published: September 21 2004 03:00 | Last updated: September 21 2004 03:00

A half century ago, a trio of twentysomething operaphiles offered Chicago what they dubbed a "calling card" production of Mozart's Don Giovanni to see if they might bring full operatic seasons back to the city.

These chance-takers were no slouches. In their first full season, they presented the American debut of one Maria Callas. Fifty years on, the Lyric Opera reigns as one of the world's leading companies.

To revisit Mozart's Don for their anniversary season, Lyric has pulled out all the casting stops - enticing Welsh superstar bass-baritone Bryn Terfel to give one more shot at the title role despite his oft-stated wish to stick with Leporello from now on.

[Remainder of article here (subcription to FT Online required)]

Overture — Act I

Faust in Hong Kong

Faust, Hong Kong Cultural Centre
By Ken Smith
Published: September 20 2004 13:25 | Last updated: September 20 2004 13:25

Hong Kong's opera lovers, lacking a full-time opera house and gaining a standing company only in the past year, have long rallied around their annual civic productions, where disparate local organisations and a few artists of international standing come together under the umbrella of the Leisure and Cultural Services Department.

This ad-hoc arrangement naturally leads to productions that are high on spectacle and rather less consistent in musicality, and on this count the current production of Gounod's Faust at the Cultural Centre's Grand Theatre runs true to form.

First, the high points. Rarely does Gounod's music encounter such a well-matched Faust and Marguerite as the Chinese-born tenor Jianyi Zhang and the New Zealand-born soprano Deborah Wai Kapohe.

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Kiri Te Kanawa in Philadelphia

Soprano still sings, and talks about it

By David Patrick Stearns
Inquirer Music Critic

The majestic voice of Metropolitan Opera radio announcer Milton Cross became painfully flummoxed at the name Kiri Te Kanawa. It was the soprano's 1974 debut at the house in Verdi's Otello - unscheduled since the scheduled singer fell ill - leaving Cross to barely stumble through the syllables, "KEE-REE... TAY... kah-nah-WAH."

Three decades later, Te Kanawa, now 60, is laughing at the memory, prompted by a bootleg disc of the event: "The whole thing was bizarre. He couldn't say my name at all! It was my so-called big break. If I'd known that, I'd have enjoyed it more."

The opera world has long been unimaginable without the name Kiri Te Kanawa. The New Zealand-born, part-Maori soprano made a series of sensational debuts in the 1970s, became a ubiquitous recording and stage artist in the 1980s, and began what were assumed to be farewell performances in the 1990s. However, when her marriage dissolved in 1997, singing loomed larger in her life. Never a quick study, Te Kanawa even learned a new opera, Samuel Barber's Vanessa, which she performs this season in Los Angeles.

Though her recital programs once included items as modest as parlor songs, Te Kanawa will open the Kimmel Center's classical season on Saturday with an ambitious array of Handel and Vivaldi arias plus songs by Debussy and Poulenc.

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Lyric Opera of Chicago's Jubilee

Jubilee of a profitable opera house
By Jeremy Grant
Published: September 17 2004 03:00 | Last updated: September 17 2004 03:00

The Lyric Opera of Chicago is marking its 50th anniversary and new season with Christoph Eschenbach conducting Peter Stein's new production of Mozart's Don Giovanni, with the baritone Bryn Terfel and mezzo-soprano Susan Graham.

The next few months hold out the prospect of some rich programming, from Wagner's Ring cycle - Placido Domingo and Britons Jean Eaglen and John Treleaven leading - and the Lyric's premiere of Janác{u}ek's The Cunning Little Vixen.

There will also be Franco Zeffirelli's Covent Garden production of Tosca and the world premiere of William Bolcum's The Wedding, based on the 1978 Robert Altman film A Wedding.

[Remainder of article here (subscription required)]

FT Reviews The Greek Passion

The Greek Passion, Royal Opera House, London
By Andrew Clark
Published: September 17 2004 03:00 | Last updated: September 17 2004 03:00

All human life is here: prayer and pageant, self-sacrifice and self-righteousness, humour and hypocrisy, feast and famine.

Opera often deals with extremes of human nature but it is not usually as close to the bone as The Greek Passion, nor does it make us feel so complicit or complacent.

In Martinu's richly musicked theatrical parable, we are initially invited to identify with Manolios, the Christ-figure in the village passion play, who inhabits his role to the point of giving up his life for refugees seeking food and shelter.

But by the end Martinu makes us realise we are more likely to be the cowards and hypocrites who reject the incomers.

When The Greek Passion was taken into the Royal Opera's repertoire in 2000, it emerged as a masterpiece of moral self-examination. Now, on its first revival, the effect is even more overwhelming.

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FT Reviews Tobias and the Angel

Tobias and the Angel, English Touring Opera, St John's Church, London
By David Murray
Published: September 16 2004 03:00 | Last updated: September 16 2004 03:00

The composer Jonathan Dove may have called his Tobias, now touring cathedrals and churches, a "church opera", like some of Britten's, to capitalise similarly on ecclesiastical appeal (trendy English churches love to host artistic events with pious airs); but the story - wittily filleted by David Lan from the Apocryphal Book of Tobit - comes from an ancient Hebraic past and is no sacred lesson for anybody now.

A saintly Stranger figures large, as do the demon Asmodeus and a sinister magic fish, as Tobit and his son Tobias run into problems ("when Tobias wakes, birds defecate in his eyes and he becomes blind") that take time to resolve. The scenario and the music further accommodate lusty bouts of "communal" involvement: all-singing, all-dancing, with a lot of keen, exuberant children - good, bracing fun for the whole interval-less 70 minutes. The conductor Tim Murray sounded enthusiastically committed.

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FT Reviews LA Opera's Ariadne auf Naxos

Ariadne auf Naxos Music Center, Los Angeles
By Allan Ulrich
Published: September 15 2004 03:00 | Last updated: September 15 2004 03:00

William Friedkin's mounting of the Strauss-von Hoffmannsthal comedy handsomely and wittily confirms the general director Plácido Domingo's belief that an enlightened opera aficionado or two lurks in the Hollywood film colony, ready to contribute to the Los Angeles Opera's burgeoning stockpile of original productions.

The Academy Award-winning director of The French Connection has proved to be a resourceful and musically sophisticated guide through this oddly constructed piece, in which the backstage shenanigans of the prologue yield to the simultaneous performances of a dour mythological opera seria and a commedia dell'arte diversion.

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[A gallery of press photos of this production is available here]

Le Figaro Reviews Pelléas et Mélisande at Palais Garnier

Debussy tout feu tout glace

La critique de Jacques Doucelin
[15 septembre 2004]

Une salle qui tousse à gorge déployée en été, hors de toute épidémie de grippe, au mieux manque d'attention, au pire s'ennuie. Voilà le résultat du transfert du Pelléas et Mélisande de Debussy du Palais Garnier à la Bastille. On connaît les mérites et les défauts de ce spectacle très "distancié", ultrachic et ultramode, du scénographe Robert Wilson inauguré en 1997. L'imagerie souvent sublime, les éclairages d'une virtuosité inouïaut;e et les quelques dessins de Bob Wilson projetés sur la toile de fond comme dans la scène de la grotte, éblouissent à juste titre le spectateur.

Servent-ils toujours le chef-d'oeuvre de Debussy ? C'est la question que pose la gestique sémaphorique des héros, parfois figés dans des postures aux limites du comique, inspirées d'un lointain Orient plus ou moins digéré et dont la signification demeure totalement absconse. Refuser tout réalisme dans un opéra aussi vibrant de passion charnelle et de désir moite est par trop réducteur. Le sommet du ridicule est atteint dans la scène de la tour ou l'abstraction géométrique extreme de Bob Wilson n'aide ni Debussy ni le public.

[Remainder of article here]

[Summary: The reviewer describes a production where the staging and vocal performers present an icy imagery that confronts the orchestra's rendering of fiery music. Hence the title, All Fire All Ice.]

FT: Ariadne auf Naxos, Welsh National Opera, Cardiff

Ariadne auf Naxos, Welsh National Opera, Cardiff
By Richard Fairman
Published: September 14 2004 03:00 | Last updated: September 14 2004 03:00

The Prologue to Ariadne auf Naxos is all about the backstage shenanigans before a performance - a bit near the knuckle for Welsh National Opera, which has been having some behind-the-scenes bother of its own. With the peremptory departure of its new music director the company is suddenly having to rustle up conductors for much of the coming season or two.

This could not have come at a worse time for WNO, just before it is due to move into its new home at the much-heralded Wales Millennium Centre in Cardiff Bay. With no time to be lost Carlo Rizzi, WNO's previous music director, has been re-appointed to the job for a two-year period, and - fingers crossed - the curtain is about to go up on a historic season.

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NYT: Anne Midgette Reviews Katya Kabanova

CRITIC'S PICK | ANNE MIDGETTE
A Star to Shed Light on Janacek's Bleak Operatic Landscape

OPINIONS may differ as to what constitutes a highlight at the Metropolitan Opera these days, but few disagreed last season about Karita Mattila's performance as Strauss's Salome, a tour de force of singing and acting.

Though not offering Ms. Mattila a new production this season, the Met is giving her something just as good: the title role in a revival of "Katya Kabanova," by Leos Janacek (opening Dec. 17 and closing on New Year's Day). While Janacek's operas are becoming more widely performed and acknowledged as the masterpieces they are (not least because titles enable audiences to understand them), they are still not done as often as they deserve to be. The Met had never presented "Katya Kabanova" before it introduced the current staging, by Jonathan Miller, in 1991.

[Remainder of article here]

Chicago Tribune on Bolcom's Wedding

William Bolcom: The `Wedding' planner

By John von Rhein
Tribune music critic

September 12, 2004

Elden is William Bolcom's middle name, but it might just as well be Eclectic. He's perhaps the most versatile "serious" composer now at work in America and he's spread himself over more musical genres than even he is aware of. Whether he's writing cabaret songs for his wife, mezzo-soprano Joan Morris, or a cello sonata for Yo-Yo Ma, his varied output blithely defies the often artificial distinctions between serious and popular music.

His two large-scale operas, "McTeague" (1992) and "A View From the Bridge" (1999), commissioned and premiered by Lyric Opera, attracted international attention and were taken up by other companies. Lyric's advocacy has put Bolcom squarely at the center of the recent flowering of opera by Americans.

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FT: Martin Bernheimer reviews Daphne

Daphne New York City Opera
By Martin Bernheimer
Published: September 10 2004 03:00 | Last updated: September 10 2004 03:00

It took 66 years for Richard Strauss'sDaphne to reach a stage in New York. We must be grateful for belated favours. Unfortunately, the version that opened the City Opera season on Wednesday compounded frustrations.

This fragile "bucolic tragedy" contains some of the composer's most ravishing, most rapturous music. But Joseph Gregor's libretto, a mixture of lofty mythology and lowly symbolism, remains stubbornly stilted. The vocal demands border on the unreasonable and the narrative convolutions reach a daunting climax when the heroine turns into a laurel tree. For all its serious intentions, the mildly modern production directed by Stephen Lawless and designed by Ashley Martin-Davis created more problems than it solved.

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WSJ: The Comeback Composer

The Comeback Composer
Opera World Taps Handel
To Woo New Audiences;
Cleopatra in Gold Lamé

By HEIDI WALESON

The last time Michael Goodman had season tickets to the Metropolitan Opera in New York City, Gerald Ford was president and pet rocks were in vogue. This year, he couldn't wait to shell out $1,700 for two subscriptions.

The big draw: Opening night of Handel's "Rodelinda," an opera about an imprisoned queen. "I love Handel operas," says the 62-year-old real-estate investor. " 'Xerxes' at New York City Opera knocked my socks off."

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FT: Orion/Saariaho, Bluebeard/Bártok BBC Proms, Royal Albert Hall, London

By David Murray
Published: September 9 2004 05:00 | Last updated: September 9 2004 05:00

Jukka-Pekka Saraste conducted the UK premiere of Kaija Saariaho's grand new Orion followed by Bártok's Duke Bluebeard's Castle. Though the works have nothing in common, they made a stirring programme.

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Simon Heighes Reviews L'Amfiparnaso

In the September 2004 issue of International Record Review, Simon Heighes reviews Orazio Vecchi's L'Amfiparnaso, a new DVD under the Chandos Chaconne label. Composed in 1597, L'Amfiparnaso is a realization of commedia dell'arte consisting of a prologue and three acts. Heighes' writes:

There's absolutely nothing else like this on the market. The main feature may run for just under an hour, but in terms of sheer quality this is still one of the best-value, most enterprising and worthwhile music DVDs I've come across. In fact the meticulous attention to detail throughout sets new standards which others in the industry would do well to note.

For additional details on this DVD, go here.

For additional information on Vecchi and the birth of opera, go to Chapter 9 of Grout's A History of Western Music.

Fanfare Reviews Die Loreley

PACIUS Die Loreley * Osmo Vänskä, cond; Cornelius Hauptmann (Hubert); Soile Isokoski (Lenore); Riikka Rantanen (Bertha); Raimo Sirkiä (Otto); Topi Lehtipuu (Reinald); Arttu Kataja (Leupold); Lahti SO; Dominante Ch * BIS-CD-1393/1394 (2 CDs: 125:02 &) Live: Lahti, Finland 9/2003

Fredrik Pacius was born Friedrich Pacius in Hamburg (1809), where he studied under Spohr and Hauptmann, but he is more closely aligned with Finland, where he died in 1891. After a stint as a violinist in Sweden, Pacius moved to Finland where he taught at the University of Helsinki; he wrote the Finnish national anthem and the first Finnish opera, Kung Karls jakt in 1852.

[Remainder of article is here]

Le Figaro: Charpentier en majesté

Charpentier en majesté

Jacques Doucelin
[08 septembre 2004]

Bien avant d'imposer la victoire définitive de la vague baroque avec Atys, de Lully, William Christie s'était attelé à la redécouverte de Marc-Antoine Charpentier, son rival à la cour, dont le public ne connaissait guère alors que les premières mesures d'un Te Deum servant d'indicatif à l'Eurovision. Christie commença par graver sa première Médée de Charpentier, puis la musique religieuse voilà un quart de siècle (1). Preuve supplémentaire de son attachement à Charpentier : il a baptisé son ensemble Les Arts florissants, d'après le titre d'une de ses idylles en musique.

Le Centre de musique baroque de Versailles a donc visé juste en confiant à Christie le soin d'inaugurer ses Journées Charpentier, organisées pour le tricentenaire de sa mort (2). C'est ainsi que la Chapelle royale accueillit lundi soir David et Jonathas, tragédie biblique composée pour l'édification des élèves du collège Louis-le-Grand en 1688. Pédagogue né, le chef a enrolé la douzaine de pages du Centre de musique baroque qui depuis quinze ans a redonné sa voix au palais du Roi-Soleil. Deux d'entre eux avaient meme appris les roles-titres : las, Dame Nature en décida autrement en les faisant muer à la barbe de Charpentier !

[Remainder of article here]

Andante: Santa Fe Opera Aims High

Santa Fe Opera Aims High
By David Patrick Stearns

Three of the 2004 season's productions -- Don Giovanni, Agrippina and La sonnambula (starring Natalie Dessay) -- prove very worthwhile, even if not all of their ideas succeed.

[Remainder of article here]

The Independent: The Sydney Opera House: a father and son enterprise

In 1966 Jørn Utzon was forced to quit as architect of the Sydney Opera House before it was complete. Next week, the first new interiors he and his son have designed will be revealed. Louis Jebb reports

07 September 2004

It is a story of rare poetic justice: Jørn Utzon, architect of the Sydney Opera House, one of the most famous buildings in the world, is being invited to finish his masterpiece more than 30 years after political opposition and press antagonism drove him to resign with only its exterior complete.

When Mr Utzon left Australia in 1966 to return to his native Denmark, the commission had already been handed over to an Australian practice. Working to a revised brief, the new firm took seven years to fit out interiors which have never lived up to the sculptural promise of the opera house's exterior - that otherworldly sequence of giant white sails that seem to roll and fold, one out of each other, providing an unforgettable landmark in the heart of Sydney harbour.

[Remainder of article here]

ÓPERA ACTUAL: Angela Gheorghiu

Angela Gheorghiu

"Sé lo que quiero en la vida"

Todavía resuenan los ecos de su renuncia a esa Traviata que inauguraba la pasada temporada del Teatro Real. Después de su paso fugaz por el Liceu y por el reciente Festival Internacional de Santander, la soprano rumana Angela Gheorghiu, sin pelos en la lengua, comenta con óPERA ACTUAL su particular visión del circuito operístico internacional. Durante esta temporada realizará su debut en ópera en Barcelona, en ese mismo Elisir d'amore que significará la presentación liceísta en el Festival finlandés de Savonlinna.

[remainder of article here]

NYT: Enough to Make Handel Reach for His Walkman

Enough to Make Handel Reach for His Walkman

By ANTHONY TOMMASINI

During the late 1720's Handel had two rival prima donnas in the London opera company he ran: Francesca Cuzzoni and Faustina Bordoni. From all reports both were superb sopranos and powerful artists with big personalities. Like the savvy showman he was, Handel stoked the rivalry by including tailor-made roles for each of them in several of his operas. The public loved it. Warring Cuzzoni and Bordoni fans routinely interrupted performances with competing ovations and catcalls.

Whether by intention or not, two leading vocal artists of today, the mezzo-soprano Lorraine Hunt Lieberson and the soprano Renée Fleming, have new individual recordings of Handel arias. Ms. Hunt Lieberson's program was recently released on the Avie label (part of G&H Music); Ms. Fleming's Decca CD will officially be released next week. Given that both singers are joined by the same team of collaborators - the British conductor and expert Handelian Harry Bicket and the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, a dynamic period-instrument ensemble - voice aficionados may well view these new recordings as being in direct competition.

[remainder of article here.]

SFCV.org Previews SF Opera Fall Season

By Robert Commanday

The opening of the season in San Francisco has always turned first thoughts to opera. The success of the San Francisco Symphony, its greater subscribership through Fall, Winter and Spring notwithstanding, opera has ruled here as an attention-getter for 150 years.

[Remainder of article here]

NYT: Why the Dying Richard Strauss Couldn't Get Enough of 'Daphne'

Why the Dying Richard Strauss Couldn't Get Enough of 'Daphne'

By BRYAN GILLIAM

ON June 11, 1949, his 85th birthday, Richard Strauss performed at his piano for the last time. A camera crew was filming a short documentary on him ("A Life for Music"), and the director asked him to play an excerpt from a long life's work. One's head spins at the possibilities -- more than 200 songs, many tone poems, 15 operas. Would he choose something from "Don Juan" or "Der Rosenkavalier"?

Strauss's selection puzzled everyone in the room except his family. It was a portion of the transformation scene from the opera "Daphne" (1937), which he played repeatedly at home in the months before his death that September.

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Opera Japonica: Maria Nockin's Letter from America

Summer in Santa Fe

The most difficult tickets to obtain at Santa Fe this summer were for Vincenzo Bellini's seldom performed opera, La sonnambula. It was a great pleasure to hear the sumptuous long melodies of this lyrical work, which was written in the same year as the composer's more famous Norma, even if it does not have the latter's forceful rhythmic intensity.

[remainder of article here]

Pro Ópera: Deborah Voigt, en México

Deborah Voigt, en México

Una de las más importantes sopranos de Estados Unidos visitó nuestro país a finales del pasado mes de mayo para dar dos recitales con la Orquesta Sinfónica Nacional.

[remainder of article here]

Classical Singer Interviews Plácido Domingo

Plácido Domingo

by Cristina Necula

The term "force of nature" often applies to those human beings who encompass at once faith, passion, inexhaustible energy, and complete dedication to their mission in life. Their impact on the world is lasting, carrying with it the capacity to change people's lives and create history.

To say that Plácido Domingo is simply a force of nature, however, is to present an inadequate description of the celebrated tenor. From singer to conductor to artistic director, this veritable Renaissance man has devoted his entire life to creating unforgettable artistic moments, to popularizing opera, and ensuring its future by serving in all aspects of the business. His generosity and caring has guided the footsteps of countless singers in their quest of an operatic career.

[Remainder of article here]