Opera Today

Opera With Attitude, Guitars, and a Dose of Mayhem

By ALAN RIDING [NY Times, 27 June 2007]

PARIS, June 27 — It is no longer thought daring for moviemakers to direct opera. Roman Polanski and William Friedkin first did so some years ago. Anthony Minghella and Michael Haneke tried their hand more recently, and Woody Allen and David Cronenberg will soon have a go. Invariably the idea of opera house managers is to add some screen buzz (and, they hope, draw new audiences) to their standard repertory.

BRUCKNER: Symphony no. 8 (rev. version, Nowak ed.)

Released only recently, this DVD captures that performance of World Philharmonic, an orchestra comprised of principal and solo players from all five continents into a single ensemble and led by the late Carlo Maria Giulini. The work chosen for the program suited this assembly of superb professionals, Bruckner’s Eighth Symphony in its revised version and, specifically, following the Nowak edition, and this concert shows Giulini in his prime.

Impossible as it is with this kind of ensemble to ascribe it a specialty, the intricacies of ensemble and interpretation are sufficient to challenge the professional involved with this global group. Yet the focus of the recording truly is Giulini, who brings forward a masterful interpretation of the last symphony that Bruckner saw to completion. The discography of Bruckner’s Eighth Symphony includes some fine performances, notably a highly esteemed one with the Vienna Philharmonic led by Karajan. While that latter recording remains an impressive performance, it also represents Karajan’s approach to this works, which is highly dramatic and, as a result, deeply moving. In comparison, Giulini is, perhaps, more passionate than dramatic. In so doing, he draws out the various lines and motifs to shape the musical narrative. He pauses less than some conductors approach Bruckner, and so relies more on connecting the various musical lines than on defining smaller sections of phrase groups. The Scherzo of the Eighth almost requires this kind of approach in order to make sense of the various elements Bruckner introduced into it. While it is overtly a Scherzo, the movement includes gestures that the composer had previously used in some of his slow movements to contribute a level of intensity to some of the transitions. In approaching such aspects of Bruckner’s music, Giulini offers an interpretation that respects the score and simultaneously reflects his personal knowledge of the work.

For an event like the opening concert of the World Philharmonic Orchestra, the choice of Bruckner’s music may not be politically correct by the mores of that exist a generation later, when the idea of world music and native traditions is prominent. As laudable as such later awareness may be, in some situations it emphasizes the differences between cultures. It is also difficult to regard classical music as a lingua franca between global cultures. Yet perhaps the introspective nature of Bruckner’s music is a wise enough choice, especially in this late work by the composer, which is removed from his associations with Wagner or even the more tangible connections with Ländler that may be found in his earlier symphonic canvasses. In such a situation any work is, at best, a compromise. Yet this music has some abstract qualities that allow an international audience to appreciate its introspective character. If the extended applause at the end of this recording can be called into account, it demonstrates the success of the work in this context, masterfully interpreted by Giulini, one of the greatest conductors of the twentieth century. The sublime music at the conclusion of the slow movement transcends national and stylistic bounds in its profoundly human pathos that emerges from the pages of this late nineteenth-century score.

This DVD is a fine tribute to the World Philharmonic, which has continued to serve the international community in the two decades since its premiere concert. More information about the World Philharmonic Orchestra exists at its website (accessed 27 June 2007). It would have been useful to have more information about the WPO with this recording, but the introductory essay by Werner Pfister offers a bit more background on its inception and Giulini’s role with this concert. All in all, this recording is of interest as a unique sort of world premiere and fine contribution to Giulini’s discography. The sound is excellent, and the film itself is sensitive to the music, with lingering shots and slower pans fitting this work well. The close-ups of Giulini capture his expressive technique, while the views of the orchestra demonstrate their involvement with the music in this compelling performance of one of Bruckner’s masterpieces.

James L. Zychowicz

image=http://www.operatoday.com/2051368.png
image_description=Anton Bruckner: Symphony no. 8 (rev. version, Nowak ed.)

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ROSSINI: La Scala di Seta

As this production of Swiss television demonstrates, however, Scala is a sparkling comedy with its typical plot and familiar characters well depicted and a melodious froth that never pauses long enough to let us wonder if we haven’t seen these situations before: A girl has married to disoblige her guardian; her secret husband visits her each night by means of a “silken ladder” she lets down from her window. The guardian wishes her to marry a self-important nobleman; she fends him off by pretending to flirt with an egotistical servant; everyone misunderstands something overheard at the wrong door, and there is a happy ending with plenty of marriages to go around. At 97 minutes, it could easily play a double bill with some other short cheerful piece, such as Il Cambiale di Matrimonio or Il Signor Bruschino.

The cast here, unfamiliar to me aside from Ernesto Palacio’s suave Dorvil (Giulio’s secret husband), rampage winningly through a large, handsome wood-veneer set, something like a doll’s house, but I suspect it could all be boiled down to one room with several doors. Carmen Lavani’s rather stormy looks are tempered by a full-voiced but agile soprano for Giulia; Mario Chiappi’s woolly bass suits the bluster of her suitor, Blancas; and Roberto Coviello is especially energetic and absurd as the servant who readily misconstrues everything said to him, the better to keep the whirling plot from slowing down and falling over. Marc Andreae and the Orchestra della Svizzera Italiana also deserve credit for keeping the score fresh and appealing.

John Yohalem

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Mozilla + iTunes + Rhapsody = Songbird

By Andy Patrizio [Internetnews.com, 25 June 2007]

As Apple continues to extend its hegemony over the music industry, an alternative to iTunes from an MP3 veteran could be an alternative to the vendor lock between iTunes and the iPod player.

WEBER: Der Freischütz

Performed perhaps less often in North America than in Europe, such a solid presentation of this seminal German opera is welcome on DVD, since it allows audiences not just to hear the work as is possible on CD, but also to view the interaction of the characters on stage. This particular production includes some find singers who are well-known internationally, notably Hans Sotin, Franz Grundheber, and Edith Mathis, who have participated in classic recordings of Romantic repertoire. At the same time, the inclusion of the German actor Berhard Minetti in the speaking role of Samiel allows modern audiences to view one way this role has been effectively rendered on a European stage.

As a television production, the famous overture is not presented with shots from the opera house with images of the conductor, performers, and audience members, but rather, the production makes use of iconography associated with Der Freischütz. The transitions are typical of the time and lack the more nuanced shifts that have become expected of modern productions, yet they help to establish the context for this production. At the beginning of the first act, the details of the production offer a typical German production of the work, with peasant costumes, hunting garb and other accouterments that reinforce the connection of this opera with the vernacular, that is, with the German culture Weber’s day. At the same time, the acting conveys the suspenseful mood of this modern-day transformation of the story of Faust.

Since the source of this video is film and not derived from digital media, the images contain some flicker and, at least once, the dot on the upper right-hand side of the screen that preceded a break for commercials in American television. This is a relatively minor concern, but those accustomed to more recent opera DVDs may notice the character of the reproduction as different in this release, which is one of thirteen operas that Rolf Lieberman produced for television. The color of this film stands out, though, since it resembles the almost glossy tone that was used in commercial films of the 1960s. With the connotation of mainstream cinema for opera, an artform that is often film from the stage and not produced in the studio, the initial impression is somewhat jarring. As with other modes of visual display, it is possible to see past these details and into the fine production captured in this film.

Within this conventional production of Der Freischütz the performances are uniformly fine and even. Predictably, such familiar voices as Sotin, Grundheber, and Mathis give fine and articulate performances. Gottlob Frick offers a fine interpretation of Kaspar that is sinister enough without venturing toward caricature, and even though his pitches tend toward the flat side, his tone is nicely even. With the crucial role of Max, the German singer Ernst Kozub gives a fine performance that matches the lyricism with the inner struggle of his character. His performance at the end of the first act is introspective enough, and with the second act’s Wolf’s Glen scene, he sustains the mood. It releases only with this making the sign of the cross, a gesture that foreshadows the ultimate resolution of Max’s pursuit of the diabolical and his eventual redemption.

With the women, the roles of Agathe and Ännchen are executed well by Arlene Saunders and Edith Mathis. Both of the singers deliver equally fine performances that bring out the lyricism necessary for their roles. There is a hint a bel canto in their approaches to the music, and this stylistic choice is effective. Decades after this production was filmed, Mathis may be a more familiar voice, but Saunders gave a convincing performance as Max’s lover Agathe.

The choice of Hans Sotin as the Hermit is excellent in giving the final scene to such a fine singer. Sotin’s commanding presence is essential to the final scene, which must resolve the drama by meeting justice with mercy and eliminating any doubt about the disposition of the situation. This is an exemplary execution of the role that contributes to the overall success of this production.

Among the various DVDs of Der Freischütz that are currently available, this one conducted by Leopold Ludwig is an excellent one. Not only does this DVD release preserve a classic production, but it also brings to new audiences an outstanding interpretation of the work. Various details contribute to its quality, such as the options for subtitles in German, English, French, Italian, and Spanish. In addition, the accompanying booklet includes a summary of the libretto and a detailed listing of the tracks. Those who have seen a performance of this important nineteenth-century opera will find this to be a fine production of Weber’s Der Freischütz.

James L. Zychowicz

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San Francisco underscores complexity of “Rosenkavalier”

It’s in performing that task that he falls in love with Sophie and sets out to unmask Ochs and rescue her from the union with him. Thus it’s surprising to read that the working title of the opera was “Ochs von Lerchenau,” assigning to this elder in the cast a hegemony hard to find in the completed opera.

The answer, of course, is so simple that one hardly need ask the question at all. For the central figure in “Rosenkavalier” is the Marschallin — “Resi,” not only because all others in the drama are defined by their relation to her, but because of the immense weight that composer Richard Strauss and librettist Hugo von Hofmannsthal have woven into the complex character of this woman at a crossroads in life.

Any doubt about this assertion is removed by studying — not merely reading — the text of the Marshallin’s monologue that ends Act One of “Rosenkavalier.” And it was here that the shortcomings of the production on stage at the San Francisco Opera in June were most sharply felt. (At this point one recalls with amazement how relatively recent it was that in this country one listened to this essential section of the drama with only a summary of the plot in hand.)

This self-confrontation that begins with the Marschallin looking in a mirror and realizing that she — caught now between the contradictory faces of “love” as incarnate in Octavian and treasure-seeking Ochs — is at a turning point in her life. And it is the Marschallin of Soile Isokoski that makes this staging problematic. Just 50, the Finnish soprano sang intelligently and with refinement, yet her Marschallin was more country club than Kärntnerstrasse. Indeed, it was surprising to read that she has been a success in the role in both Dresden and Vienna, the two cities that are “home” to “Rosenkavalier.”

Isokoski has an essentially small voice, adequate perhaps in Europe’s smaller venues, but insufficient for the War Memorial Opera House, where the opera was seen on June 21. More disturbing, however, was the absence of warmth, of that climacteric, mid-life, near-valedictory radiance, that the role demands. Isokoski had clearly thought her way through the Act-One monologue, yet one missed the accents, the stress on crucial lines, that make the text meaningful — and moving. In it the Marschallin reflects on her own arranged and loveless marriage. (Although she has been wed for a considerable time, the question is nowhere asked whether she is a mother. One tends to think not, but it’s a further point to consider.) “Die Zeit, sie ist ein sonderbar Ding,” the Marschallin sings, “strange, this time business.” And it’s here that one must pause and praise Hofmannsthal, Strauss’ major librettist, for what is no doubt the finest text in all of opera. (One assumes too blithely, by the way, that “Rosenkavalier” is written in Viennese dialect. Hofmannsthal created rather an idiom all its own to tell the story of this opera — still strangely billed as “comic.”) Not to turn a review into a German lesson, but Hofmannsthal took advantage of long-established license to omit the adjective ending that in common practice would make time “ein sonderbares Ding.” It’s the absence of the ending that makes this poetry and complements the haunting meditative force of Strauss’ music at this point.

The monologue is a moment of major crisis in the life of the Marschallin, and it prepares the way for her re-entry into the drama late in Act Three. (She is completely absent in Act Two.) The Marschallin, although she here foresees her loss of Octavian from the outset of the drama, is nonetheless unable to rise above it when it happens. The role calls for renunciation — “Entsagung,” to use the word made commonplace in German by Goethe, that real-life Giovanni, when a late-life love fell short of fulfillment. She must transcend the limits of personal passion to offer an example of humility, dignity and strength. And this Isokoski did not do. Indeed, she approached the monologue as narrative rather than as the introspective interior monologue that it is.

It’s a hard thing to put into words, but the recollection of another Marschallin helps makes the point. At age 62, Italy’s Renata Scotto, the Butterfly of an era, performed the Marschallin — her first role in German — at the Spoleto Festival in Charleston, South Carolina. Before opening the final trio, in which the Marschallin recalls her vow to love Octavian so much that she would also love his love another, the Italian soprano left the young couple behind her and stepped close to the footlights. At that moment she conveyed a pain so intense and all-consuming that sitting in the audience one felt is physically. That’s the stuff that a great Marschallin is made of, and Isokoski was more involved in telling the woman’s story than in communicating the searing experience of it. “Rosenkavalier” is not the place for Brecht’s alienation technique.

A last comment on this Marschallin: In a mere two words Hofmanmsthal/Strauss gave the Marschallin one of the great exits in opera. She leaves the stage with Sophie’s upward-striving, nouveau riche father, who — with no idea of what has really gone on — remarks insipidly about the new match: “Well, that’s the way it is with young people.” “Ja, ja,” she says. The words, more spoken than sung, can be delivered in many ways. Bad losers say them with a “come-up-and-see-me-sometime” batting of the eye; others make “Tja, tja,” a resigned shrug of the shoulders that translates loosely: “Another day; another lay.” As with the great monologue Isokoski spoke them outside herself with no indication of feeling. She might have been operating in the third person.

Major interest in the SFO revival of the company’s 1993 production that has seen Felicity Lott and Renee Fleming as the Marschallin was the role debut of Joyce DiDonato as Octavian. The fast-rising American mezzo, already famous on both sides of the Atlantic as Cherubino, Rosina and the Cinderellas of both Rossini and Massenet, was a wondrously youthful, indeed, even adolescent Octavian who sang without effort in a many-colored. While she was a delight in her exuberance, the absence of an equal partner leaves DiDonato’s Octavian for the moment a work-in-progress that will grow through coming years. She is further a fine actress, ideally suited in appearance for this greatest of trouser roles. Strange that Isokoski, a largely removed Marschallin, was never swept into the wake of the erotic exuberance with which DiDonato opened the performance.

The one truly perfect member of this cast was Sweden’s Miah Persson, who — not surprisingly — has already sung Sophie at the Salzburg Festival. Persson had it all — the beauty, the convincing innocence and the healthy touch of rebellion with which she realizes that she is nothing more than the pawn in the self-advancement game that pairs her father with the lecherous Ochs.

The Ochs in this Scandinavian-heavy cast, a last legacy of Pamela Rosenberg’s unlamented tenure as SFO general director, was Iceland’s Kristinn Sigmundsson, a favorite here since his exemplary King Marke in last October’s “Tristan und Isolde.” Aware that despite his uncouth and bumptious behavior Ochs is an aristocrat and a gentleman, Sigmundsson eschewed the slapstick that often makes this figure a cartoon caricature played for laughs.

Robert McPherson sang the Act-One Italian aria someone too robustly.

Last but by no means least, the person who made this “Rosenkavalier” memorable in quality was conductor Donald Runnicles, who is approaching the end of his 15-year tenure as SFO music director. Remarkable perhaps that in his non-verbal role it was Runnicles who displayed the greatest appreciation of — and sensitivity to — Hofmannsthal’s poetry. Indeed, the nuances sometimes missing on stage were all there in his work with this late great masterpiece of opera. And although Runnicles gave full rein to the open sexuality of Strauss’ score, he never allowed it to descend to the level of sweat and steam. And thus it’s no wonder that Runnicles is today among the most respected conductors of Strauss and Wagner in Germany.

Adding a historic perspective to the staging was Thierry Bosquet’s recreation of Alfred Roller’s sets for the 1911 Dresden premiere of “Rosenkavalier,” an idea hit upon by then-SFO general director Lotfi Monsouri.

Sandra Bernhard, long a member of the SFO production staff, directed this revival. A person richer in Straussian smarts might have done more to bring coherence to the staging.

Joyce DiDonato recently received the second annual Beverly Sills Artist Award — at $50,000 the largest of its kind in the US — from an endowment in honor of Sills, who, along with Nathan Leventhal, selects the winners. The purpose of the award is to aid recipients in career enhancement, including funding for voice lessons, vocal coaching, language lessons, related travel costs, and other career assistance. The first winner of the award, given last year, was baritone Nathan Gunn. DiDonato is an alumna of the SFO Merola Program, the Houston Grand Opera Studio and the Santa Fe Opera Apprentice Program.

This production marked the SFO debuts of Isokoski and Persson.

Wes Blomster

image=http://www.operatoday.com/RK_ActOne293.png image_description=Joyce DiDonato (Octavian) and Soile Isokoski (The Marschallin) product=yes product_title=Above: Joyce DiDonato (Octavian) and Soile Isokoski (The Marschallin)
All photos by Terrence McCarthy courtesy of San Francisco Opera

ROSSINI: Il Viaggio a Reims

Having just arrived in Paris (lured from Naples by a huge stipend), he wanted to convince the powers that be, from King Charles to the opera-goer in the street, that he was an excellent investment. In fact, after Charles’s downfall in 1830, he had to sue the next regime to keep his income, and he stopped writing operas altogether.

Viaggio has no plot to speak of. An inn-full of aristocratic tourists heading for Reims for the coronation are stranded (no horses) and decide to celebrate the event right where they are. We follow a series of amorous intrigues combined with political in-jokes – the Russian count suspects his Polish marchesa, but the Austrian baron (a student of harmony) reconciles these lovers; the English milord conceals his passion for the Roman chanteuse (that is, the possibility that Britain might return to Catholicism), and the Parisian cares more about the safety of her wardrobe than a lover’s doubtful fidelity.

But the stock political one-liners become delicious when turned into Rossini arias and duets. (Why isn’t this guy writing for Saturday Night Live?) To everyone’s surprise (including, no doubt, Rossini’s, wherever he is), Viaggio has lately become an international hit – perhaps because it gives so many singers a chance to shine, however briefly. Its huge number of more or less equal soloists makes Viaggio ideal for conservatories with bel canto studies – Rossini does not damage immature voices, as Wagner or Verdi easily may. Too, any Viaggio gives costume designers opportunities to be as silly as they like, and Mireille Dessingy has gone for it here: purple stripes, leather dusters, crazy bustles and hats, plaid suits of outlandish hue. Behind the action, Maestro Gergiev conducts “under cover” in a slouch hat and trench coat.

Though these performances were given at the Châtelet in Paris, the singers hail from the Academy of Young Singers at St. Petersburg’s Mariinsky Theatre (aka Kirov), and since singers from Russia’s many nationalities are nowadays flooding west, we may glimpse here some of the stars of tomorrow. Gergiev clearly intends to train the next generation to a better feel for Italian style than Russian singers used to have, and the results are commendable if imperfect: while few of these youngsters screech or whine as older Russians often did, and their fioritura is often superb, many of them run out of breath before their melodies do, and bark rather than conclude the line musically. Most of them sing Italian clearly, though, all of them are agile comic actors, and the Parisian audience is appreciative.

The most attractive and able voices belong to Anna Kiknadze as the Polish marchesa, whose low mezzo, a ripe Rossini sound, resembles Borodina's, Irma Guigolachvili’s gracious lyric soprano as Corinna, Larissa Youdina’s flamboyant coloratura as the fashion-conscious Parisian, Anastasia Belyaeva’s pleasing light soprano as the chic innkeeper, Daniil Shtoda’s exciting but sometimes breathless tenor as the jealous Russian, and Alexei Safiouline’s castanetted “Spanish” bass.

John Yohalem

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Recorded live at Le Châtelet, Paris in December 2005 product_id=Opus Arte OA0967D [DVD] price=$29.98 product_url=http://www.arkivmusic.com/classical/Drilldown?name_id1=10388&name_role1=1&comp_id=247020&genre=33&bcorder=195&label_id=4585

STRAVINSKY: Histoire du soldat (Suite); Renard

While the cover suggests just two pieces, the instrumental suite derived from the theater piece Histoire du soldat and the single-act Burlesque, Renard, this recording includes a number of brief works that are otherwise difficult to find so conveniently. The other pieces that accompany those two larger ones are: Pastorale for violin and wind quartet; 3 Pieces for Solo Clarinet; Pour Picasso; Pribaoutki and Berceuses du chat (both with mezzo soprano Catherine Ciesinksi); 2 Balmont Songs and 3 Japanese Lyrics (both with soprano Susan Narucki); Scherzo a la russe (original Jazz band version, 1944); and the Song of the Volga Boatmen. As volume seven of Naxos’s collected edition of Stravinsky’s music, its focus addresses a need in making available these lesser known, but quite interesting smaller-scale works.

Just as Stravinsky’s style appears in bold strokes in the broad canvasses of such large-scale works as Le sacre du printemps, The Firebird, Petrouchka, the Symphony of Psalms, and other such pieces, the composer’s sonic fingerprints are evident within a few notes of chamber pieces like the Pastorale or the Three Pieces for Clarinet. The compression and telegraphic delivery that is associated with Stravinsky’s style is present in these smaller pieces, and they are equally compelling for the artful concision is part of the composer’s pointed and compressed style. Performances of these work require a familiarity with Stravinsky’s style so that they convey immediately the music, as occurs in all the pieces collected in this recording.

The attention to the two best-known pieces, the Suite from Histoire du soldat and Renard, is deserved. While it is not difficult to find any number of solid recordings of the full version of Histoire with narrator, the spoken part is often most effective when rendered in the vernacular. Yet with this instrumental suite from the Histoire, Stravinsky precluded such concerns. The version of Renard recorded here is based on the 1953 English-language translation of the 1916 piece which was, as indicated in the notes, revised by Robert Craft—in fact, he conducted this performance, which includes the tenor John Aler . Engagingly sung, Renard’s text is as important as its music, and it benefits from study, and it would be helpful if the libretto would have been included with this fine recording. As an alternate version of Renard, like the Suite derived from Histoire, this and other pieces preserve some alternate versions of music by Stravinsky, like the jazz-band version of the Scherzo à la Russe (1944).

As indicated on the CD, some of the performances found on this recording have been previously released on MusicMasters and Koch International Classics labels. This is by no means a deficit, since the recording brings together shorter works that are otherwise difficult to obtain. When considered together, these examples demonstrate Stravinsky’s efforts at writing more compressed works that are nonetheless effective. While it is a useful volume in the series of recordings of the composer’s music being issued by Naxos, this single release stands well on its own merits. The extensive notes by Robert Craft offer a useful guide to the contents and the significance of the individual pieces of this release.

James Zychowicz

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Countertenor David DQ Lee: Winning Hearts and Minds at Cardiff Singer of the World

If we take the bi-annual Cardiff Singer of the World competition as a litmus test, we can see that in the last 3 competitions, in 2003, 2005 and the recently completed 2007 there has been a small but steady increase in the voice-type’s presence on the finalist’s stage and an ever-better result. From Matthias Rexroth four years ago, to Sergejs Jegers in 2005, to this year’s winner of his Concert competition on the 12th June, David DQ Lee, a pattern of ever increasing success is emerging.

What the Korean-Canadian countertenor also demonstrated with verve and style last week was his ability to present repertoire not traditionally associated with the voice-type and make it his own. His mix of excellent technique, careful preparation with text, instinctive musicality and a strong stage presence that could inhabit any role or poetic ideal required, was a winning combination with both judges and the audience, and again demonstrated how far the music world has come in its perception of countertenors. If David DQ Lee has in large part others to thank for this growing acceptance of repertoire covering some 300 years, then he is the first to acknowledge that debt. It was this — and other debts — which he was happy to discuss when I caught up with him in Cardiff just days after his Concert win.

We met in a local café and he was obviously delighted with his success, even though he was not one of the five to reach the Grand Final. His reaction was both charming and good humoured: “It’s wonderful, I’m even getting recognised in the street here, which hasn’t happened to me before and people are saying “well done” and “I loved your performance, good luck!” Although of course I’m not difficult to spot here in Cardiff as I’m Korean, and have big streaked hair!” At just twenty nine years old, he is at that crucial stage in any opera singer’s career when he is both competing in competitions and learning fast by taking smaller roles in big houses, or bigger roles in small houses. All to play for, and a time to consolidate everything learnt so far and to push onto the next rung of the ladder. And David DQ Lee has a lot of musical experience in his past already which is a good foundation for that future.

He had a difficult childhood, with parents divorced when he was six, followed by having to leave even his mother and move at just thirteen from Korea to the west coast of Canada to live with a guardian and with no maternal guidance at all. This might have been too much for many young people, but it has been, he thinks, the very best thing that could have happened as it taught him self-reliance, adaptability and the importance of getting on with people no matter where he found himself. Just as important was his deep involvement in, and training by, the World Vision Korean Children’s Choir as a boy soprano and later the British Columbia Boys Choir where he led both the alto and bass sections, switching nonchalantly between octaves at a moment’s notice using both his countertenor and bass-baritone. This very high level of choral and voice training has been an essential element in his vocal development, he says, and also gave him an essential sense of family with his choral colleagues as they travelled the world together. “Yes, they were my family really and I made friends in the Choir, as a small boy, that I still have today….it was a wonderful time in my life and I’m so grateful for everything that it gave me”.

What his time with the Korean and Canadian choirs didn’t give him however, was any great knowledge of the great baroque operas of Handel or the role of the modern countertenor voice in them, and David himself admits that it was that memorable film of 1994 “Farinelli il Castrato” that actually booted him into a whole new world of singing and his present burgeoning career on the opera stage. It was only watching that film, when the famously-morphed voices of countertenor and mezzo soprano launched into the wonderful aria “Lascia ch'io pianga” from Handel’s Rinaldo that Lee realised that the song, which he had learned to sing as a boy soprano as just an isolated solo piece, actually had a history, a place, and a future in baroque opera. Suddenly he knew what, and how, he could realise his ambitions as an artist and musician and it was like being propelled out of a starting gate into a whole new race for artistic fulfilment. “I was in tears listening to that aria….this was it! Of course I later found out about that voice in the film being “manufactured”, but still I knew now where I was going and I went out and bought every CD I could find of the countertenor voice and baroque opera arias — Derek Lee Ragin, Drew Minter, James Bowman, Michael Chance…..David Daniels wasn’t recording then so I discovered him later. Those first four countertenors became my role models and inspiration early on and then one day I came across a copy of Opera News dedicated to baroque opera with a big piece on the rise of Daniels as an operatic countertenor after his success in Tamerlano — so everything began to fall into place in that last summer of High School for me and I decided to go on to the Vancouver Academy of Music.

Of course, I was the first countertenor they’d had! I had to audition, so because I was unsure of how they would view me I offered four songs — two alto baroque arias and two bass-baritone ones. It really freaked them out and I’m sure they didn’t know what to do with me. Anyway, after I was accepted, I suggested that they could assign anyone they wanted as my teacher, any voice type, and I’d accept it. I was really lucky as I was assigned to a mezzo soprano, Phyllis Mailing, who took me on and taught me just like any other singer with no concessions. That lady became just so important to me. She was not just my teacher; she was my mentor, my friend, and actually became my Canadian “mother”, a mother I’d longed for but not had from the age of 13 to when I was 18 and met her at the Academy. At that time she was the only person who could tell me off, tell me what to do - you know, she would never let me sing in that old choral “white” tone: she’d say “what are you doing? Use your vibrato, use your muscle, that’s how you get your support”. She taught me like any other mezzo, and I know that if it wasn’t for her, I would not be here now. She passed away in November 2004 and that was a terrible blow to me. I sang at her funeral, and I shall never forget her. I am sure she watches over me now”.

Judging by reaction both there in Cardiff and around the globe, David DQ Lee’s natural talent was well guided indeed, and I asked him about his plans and hopes for the future. Did he think he would continue to offer a wide range of repertoire in recital as well as furthering his opera career? “Absolutely, I love to sing the French art song repertoire in particular and I do study many, many singers’ interpretations when I first approach a piece. I like to immerse myself in the text, and gradually come to a way to make it my own. That’s how I like to work. I’m so grateful to David Daniels for opening up this rep both on CD and in recital and showing it as perfectly acceptable for a countertenor to sing — and why not? It’s just outdated preconceptions of the voice type that hold people back. I’m a huge admirer of him for doing that, as well as of his amazing artistry and beautiful voice. And the other person I really admire is Rene Jacobs as a conductor: he’s so alive, so intense and makes beautiful music”. And more opera? “Oh yes, I do hope so. I’m singing the title role of Radamisto in Hamburg again in the autumn, and I’ve enjoyed doing Tolomeo in Cesare in Vancouver — I’d love to sing that role again soon, it’s such fun and really suits me I think. I’ve a concert in Madrid this September — excerpts from Pergolesi’s Stabat Mater at the Teatro Real and then I’m also going to sing the role of Prince Orlofsky in Die Fledermaus at Santiago Opera in Chile. Yes, quite a trek, but they asked me to do it after I won the Francisco Viñ International Singing Competition in Barcelona and it should be fun down there — I can pretend to get drunk on vodka and lurch around the stage! Something else which is important to me is to try to expand the knowledge of baroque repertoire in my home country of Korea and I’m going to sing my first Glück’s Orfeo ed Euridice there soon.”

Finally, where would he like to see himself in five years time? “I like to set myself goals, with deadlines, and I guess it would be to be singing at both Covent Garden and the Met — no point not being ambitious….I think it’s possible.”

© Sue Loder 2007

image=http://www.operatoday.com/daviddqlee.png image_description=David DQ Lee (Photo courtesy Atma Classique) product=yes product_title=Above: David DQ Lee
Photo courtesy Atma Classique

Sacred Music from Notre-Dame Cathedral

Their famous magnus liber organi—the great book of organum—preserves polyphonic settings of responsorial chants, works that define and establish Gothic sound much as the cathedral in which they were sung, Notre Dame in Paris, defines and establishes our notions of Gothic space.

Tonus Peregrinus offers three of the most substantial Notre Dame works—the two-voice Viderunt by Leoninus and the four-voice Viderunt and Sederunt by Perotinus. Pitts divides his ensemble into lower- and upper-ranged forces, and the opportunity to hear this repertory in both ranges is a welome one. In the main, these forces remain discrete and the polyphony is performed appropriately by soloists. In one instance, however—at the end of the two-voiced Viderunt—Pitts combines the registers. The octave doubling in itself is not problematic, but in that the doubling requires transforming a solo line into a choral one, there is a loss of responsiveness and flexibility in the process, and that is a loss, albeit only a momentary one.

The performances of these large-scaled organa are otherwise impressive. In the discantus sections—the sections where the notes of all the parts move together in rhythmic pattern—Pitts allows the music to unfold at a congenially leisurely pace. This contrast to many modern performances allows singer and listener alike to dwell in the time rather than to push the time ahead; the more contemplative turn is an attractive one. In the solo sections, Richard Eteson deserves special mention for his wonderfully contoured sense of both individual notes and phrase. Similarly, Rebecca Hickey’s monophonic conductus, Beata viscera, is rapturous, expressive, and exquisite, a memorable opening to the whole program.

The program is one that shows the signs of special care in its construction, for it is obvious that Pitts wants to demonstrate historical development here. For instance, the two-voiced organal setting of Viderunt is followed by substitute clausulae and a motet on part of its foundational chant. The clausulae are short sections of a minute or less, whose purpose in the program is surely instructive, rather than aesthetic. And these are followed in turn by the four-voice setting of the same chant. Thus, in large part, the program is showing a notable variety of ways of treating the same pre-existent melody, and this variety developed within the school of Notre Dame. In a similar vein, Pitts remains instructive with the inclusion of a psalm whose twenty verses are sung in different intervallic configurations to demonstrate the range of possibilities described in the ninth-century treatise, the Scholia enchiriadis, famous for being among the first theoretical sources to describe polyphony. It is an interesting pedagogical aside in the program, but one that does not distract from the splendid singing of the large-scale pieces.

The ensemble’s use of Roman Latin pronunciation is curious, and one might have welcomed their sonic palette being extended and enriched with period French pronunciation. This, however, is but a small quibble; the recording is impressive.

Steven Plank

image=http://www.operatoday.com/notre_dame.png image_description=Sacred Music from Notre-Dame Cathedral product=yes product_title=Sacred Music from Notre-Dame Cathedral product_by=Tonus Peregrinus; Antony Pitts, Director product_id=Naxos 8.557340 [CD] price=$7.99 product_url=http://www.arkivmusic.com/classical/album.jsp?album_id=103063

HAYDN: Die Schöpfung

First performance: 29 April 1798, Palace of Prince Schwartzenberg in the Mehlmarkt, Vienna

Characters:

Gabriel; Eva	Soprano
Uriel	Tenor
Raphael; Adam	Bass

Click here for program notes from the Cleveland Orchestra.

Click here for complete libretto.

Click here for complete libretto with English translation.

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image_description=The Creation of Adam by Lorenzo Ghiberti

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product_by=Lisa Milne, soprano; John Mark Ainsley, tenor; Thomas Quasthoff, baritone; Berliner Philharmoniker, Sir Simon Rattle, conductor.
Live performance, 3 February 2007, Berlin

Woody Allen "seduced" by Los Angeles Opera

By Gregg Goldstein [Reuters, 22 June 2007]

NEW YORK (Hollywood Reporter) - Woody Allen is having his night at the opera. The director will make his operatic stage debut in the fall with the Los Angeles Opera's production of Giacomo Puccini's "Gianni Schicchi."

Talks on Global Broadcast Treaty Fail

By FRANK JORDANS [AP, 22 June 2007]

GENEVA (AP) -- Talks on an international treaty updating broadcast rights to accommodate the Internet failed Friday because countries were unable to agree how much legal and technological protection to afford broadcasters, a U.S. official said.

Concilium musicum Wien on authentic instruments

Much of the music here is diverting and functional—admirably so, certainly—but held to the demands of “concert listening,” it does not always rise to a level of high interest.

Franz Anton Hoffmeister was a prolific composer and an important figure in the history of music publishing. (His publishing ventures brought forth editions of Beethoven, Haydn, and Mozart, among others, and form a link with the early history of C. F. Peters.) His hunt symphony is a congenial example of the working out of a style topic—horns and compound meter securely evoke the hunting scene—but in the end it rarely rises above diversion. Johann Michael Haydn’s D-major Serenade is also amicable company, but does not ask much of the listener. The “Andante con variazioni” is the most engaging of the nine movements with compelling contrasts of modality to keep things interesting, though at twelve minutes it seems long in a work that is longish without being particularly expansive or developmental.

Joseph Haydn is represented by three “insertion arias” to operas by Cimarosa, Anfossi, and Paisiello. Two of the three, as was the case with most of his insertion arias, were written for his mistress, Luigia Polzelli. Polzelli had her musical limitations apparently, but this did not impede Haydn giving her a notably beautiful tune in the Anfossi insertion.

The performances are generally stylish and accomplished. Soprano Ursula Fiedler has a brilliant and sparkling sound. Occasionally one might wish for a bit more lightness and ornamental character in the renditions, but these are fleeting instances. The ensemble of period instruments can be uneven—the horns have a tendency to be a bit sharp and “blatty,” for example, but the wind playing, especially solo passages for flute, oboe, and bassoon, remains very engaging and polished, indeed. Not all of the interpretative calls are convincing—the minuets in the serenade seem quite heavy of foot, I think—though in the main the performances are fluent and gratifying . . . and admirably diverting.

Steven Plank

image=http://www.operatoday.com/Hoffmeister.png image_description=Concilium musicum Wien on authentic instruments product=yes product_title=Concilium musicum Wien on authentic instruments
Franz Anton Hoffmeister, Sinfonie “La chasse’; Joseph Haydn, Opera Arias; Johann Michael Haydn, Serenata in D. product_by=Concilium musicum Wien; Ursula Fiedler, soprano; Paul Angerer, Director product_id=Cavalli Records CCD 449 [CD] price=$16.99 product_url=http://www.arkivmusic.com/classical/album.jsp?album_id=137096

Katya Kabanová

By Richard Fairman [Financial Times, 21 June 2007]

In the half century since Sir Charles Mackerras first introduced Katya Kabanová to the UK, the opera has become a regular fixture. Now in his 80s, Sir Charles must find it heartening to see how completely the battle for acceptance of Janácek as a great opera composer has been won.

Lully’s Psyché at Boston Early Music Festival

In a down-home way, Boston’s biennial Early Music Festival achieved this to a remarkable extent: instrumentalists and singers from the front ranks of antique performing practice led by BEMF’s longtime opera conductors, Paul O’Dette and Stephen Stubbs, the staging glamorous but basic, with elaborate dance interludes that were always a significant part of (often the principal excuse for) opera in France, costumes worthy of a costume ball at Versailles, and elaborate stage machinery — there’s a whole lot of flying going on, and entrances are made from above as often as from the wings.

Opera is not a word Lully or his collaborators used for such pieces, and indeed at that point no one in France was quite sure what “opera” meant. Tragédie lyrique, a sung and acted drama, was the thing. Lully’s dignified and magical creations soon circulated about Western Europe. Much of the singing is declamation of stately rather than lyrical melody, a grand manner passed on via Rameau to Gluck, Berlioz and Poulenc. (Wagner made effective use of it too.) This can be unsettling to the average operagoer, accustomed to the song-like manner of Italian opera; but the appreciative audience at the jewel-box Cutler Majestic Theater, accustomed to the stylistic vagaries of older music, ate it up. What gave more pause is another enduring eccentricity of French style: the equal rights accorded to ballet. There are dances throughout Psyché, and the piece concludes with a good half hour of it. This was very prettily achieved in the court manner, but the Boston audience wearied about halfway through the long finale. This is not to fault Lucy Graham, the choreographer, who found exceptional variety in the fixed gestures and poses of court dance, and introduced several whimsical interludes, including a ten-minute “commedia dell’ arte” mimed by the traditional Italian figures. (The enormous and obviously devoted production team included a “Vocal and Gesture Coach.”)

The story is the late classical myth of Psyche (“Soul”), the mortal so beautiful that a jealous Venus vows to destroy her. Venus’s son (L’Amour in the French version), charged with the girl’s destruction, falls for her himself and carries her off to a magical palace where, however, she is forbidden to see what he looks like. Of course, she cheats (cf. Lohengrin and Bluebeard) — in Psyché, it’s because Venus tricks her into doing so — and he leaves her. To get him back, Psyche must descend to the Underworld to fetch Venus a box of beauty from its queen, Proserpine. Of course, she peeks into the box and is lost — but this time the gods relent, Jupiter promotes her to goddess, and all ends happily with the Soul mated to Divine Love. (The subtext, as program essays made plan, concerned the love affair of Louis XIV and Madame de Montespan.)

Among the singers, as was only proper, the finest had the largest parts: Carolyn Sampson, the pretty Psyché, who sang and acted her long role with conviction and sweet, untiring tone, and Karina Gauvin, as Venus, the opera’s heavy, a role she acquitted with great verve. The episodic narrative included many charming episodes, wittily staged — for instance a marital spat between Gauvin and Colin Balzer, whose lyrical tenor seemed far too attractive for Vulcan, the hardworking smith-god: “You always side with lovers and against husbands,” he sang to her, and the joke was as good in 2007 as in 1678. Lully wrote the Furies — usually visualized as shrieking women — for three low male voices, and the production accordingly presented three men in black, seventeenth-century drag to berate the heroine for intruding upon the dead. L’Amour was acted and, for a line or two, sung, by a winged child actor in order to conform to Cupid’s traditional iconography, but for the wedding night the god magically adopted the form of a full-grown tenor the better to sing duets with. Of the mostly able singers in the many smaller roles, countertenor José Lemos as Silenus had a ravishing sound one would be eager to encounter again.

John Yohalem

image=http://www.operatoday.com/psyche.png image_description=Psyche Entering Cupid's Garden by John William Waterhouse product=yes product_title=Jean-Baptiste Lully: Psyché
Boston Early Music Festival, 15 June 2007 product_by=Above: Psyche Entering Cupid's Garden by John William Waterhouse

La Clemenza di Tito – English National Opera

Mozart’s late masterpiece is one of the most serious operas I have seen David McVicar direct, and although this production contains plenty of allusions to his distinctive directorial style, it is to his credit that he does not try his trademark trick of trying to turn the piece into a black comedy. His interpretation here is truthful and largely gimmick-free. The choreography (originally by Leah Hausmann, revived by Kai’a Lane) and sets (by Yannis Thavouris) are Japanese-inspired, and beautiful in their simplicity. The curved walls of the set move on and off in graceful arcs, creating light-and-shade effects, while the stage direction has a fluid, balletic quality. It helps that there are so few people on stage; the chorus sing from the pit, so the large stage is populated only by soloists and dancers.

Many of the cast returned from the original run. Paul Nilon repeated his impressively sung account of the title role, but there is still a feeling that he hasn’t found a great deal of complexity within the character. Emma Bell’s vocal performance as Vitellia was once again grippingly dramatic, though some of her characterisation verged on caricature (the most vengeful of her recitatives even raised a laugh from the audience).

New to the cast, Alice Coote was announced as suffering from a chest infection and although she showed a little vocal fatigue, she sang Sesto with remarkable breath control and sense of line. She also brought a refreshing sense of cohesion to the character development: ‘Parto, parto’ was no blazing showpiece but an impassioned piece of extended dialogue, all very much in context. In fact, all the scenes between Sesto and Vitellia.had an unusually palpable sense of dramatic harmony.

As Annio, Anne-Marie Gibbons gave an amiable and charming performance though her singing was a little monochromatic, and her voice was mismatched with Sarah-Jane Davies’s weightier Servilia.

In the pit, Edward Gardner kept the ensemble tight but the performance lacked energy and drive, especially in the more turbulent passages.

Ruth Elleson © 2007

image=http://www.operatoday.com/emma_bell_Tito.png image_description=Emma Bell as Vitellia product=yes product_title=W. A. Mozart: La Clemenza di Tito
English National Opera, London Coliseum, 8 June 2007 product_by=Above: Emma Bell as Vitellia
All images are copyright English National Opera and Robert Workman

Leipzig Bachfest explores early opera

True, in the St. Matthew Passion Bach composed one of the great music dramas of all time, but the opera house itself was an arena alien to him. In Bach’s Baroque age opera was largely a courtly concern, and the Saxon court was down the road in Dresden. Leipzig, mercantile, middle class and Lutheran laced had neither time nor taste for the excesses of entertainment staged in the Catholic capital.

Bachfest 2007, which brought 50,000 Bach fans to Leipzig, corrected this oversimplification of music history.“From Monteverdi to Bach,” the theme of the season, brought a new view of the situation — and with it new music — to light. Indeed, Leipzig had — or had had — an opera, but it folded in 1720, three years before Johann Sebastian Bach arrived as Thomaskantor, the man responsible for music not only at historic St. Thomas Church, but at other churches in the city as well. That opera, nourished at its outset by talent “imported” from Dresden, was founded in 1693 and soon became a venue for young composers who had come to Leipzig to study.

Foremost among them was George Philipp Telemann (1681-1767), who, born four years before Bach, outlived him by another 17. And, as the world well knows, it was only because the then more popular Telemann turned down the job at St. Thomas that Bach was hired. Although Telemann made written reference to 20 operas in his catalogue, until recently only half a dozen arias documented his efforts in the field.

Now, however, an ambitious Michael Maul has proven that some 40 arias in a Frankfurt archive were from Telemann’s “Germanicus,” which was given its modern premiere at the Bachfest ‘07 on June 11 by Gotthold Schwarz and the Saxon Baroque Orchestra. Written in 1704 and revised six years later, “Germanicus” is a tale of love, lust and political intrigue based very loosely on events during the first-century occupation of Teutonic territory by the Romans. Since only arias survive, for recitatives Maul substituted a tongue-in-cheek narrative wittily delivered by actor Dieter Bellmann. Through facial expression and a minimum of gesture a youthful cast made a strong case for the quality of Telemann’s youthful opus. Unusual for that day, librettist for “Germanicus” was Christine Dorothea Lachs, a woman with close connections to musical circles.

Leipzig is the heart of a region rich in music history, and to take advantage of that the Bach Festival stages outings, several of which include recitals on organs from Bach’s day. The season’s focus on Monteverdi took visitors to the tiny 1803 theater in near-by Bad Lauchstädt, designed in part of Goethe and recently restored to his designs for its interior.

On June 12 it was the setting for Monteverdi’s 1640 “Return of Ulysses to his Fatherland” staged by Christophe Rousset, who conducted his early-music ensemble Les Talens Lyriques from the harpsichord. As Penelope and Ulysses Hilary Sommers and Jan Kobow headed a cast of almost 20 amazing singers, who left one wondering how after this highly dramatic achievement Handel could have abandoned himself so completely to routine da capo arias. Rousset founded Les Talens Lyriques in Paris in 1991.

June 16,the penultimate evening of Bachfest ‘07, brought the Yorkshire Bach Choir and Baroque Soloists to the Michaeliskirche for a performance of Henry Purcell’s “Dido and Aeneas” with veteran soprano Emma Kirkby as the tragic heroine. Kirkby, a major presence in early music since her debut in 1973, has a voice magically beyond the reach of time. Her Dido remains of adolescent tenderness and touching innocence. (And, by the way, it is now Dame Emma.)

Bass Stephen Varcoe was — even if a cad — a noble Aeneas, and Helen Neeves a devoted Belinda.

Conductor Peter Seymour, founder of the Yorkshire ensembles, included on the program Daniel Purcell’s “Again the welcome morn we sing” and “Mark how the Lark and Linnet sing” by John Blow, making this concert a generous sampling of English opera in Bach’s day. The above — concert performances all — were accompanied by period-instrument ensembles that documented both the quantity and quality of such players in Europe today.

Most unusual staging of the season was Steffan Schleiermacher’s updated version of “The Combat of Tancred and Clorinda,” Monteverdi’s setting for solo voice of a key scene from Tasso’s “Jerusalem Liberated.” Composer-pianist-conductor Schleiermacher, an outstanding figure on Germany’s crossover music scene, is a man well versed in early music, and his “Mackie Messer” approach to this dramatic confrontation, played on the second stage of the Leipzig Opera, was gripping.

While baritone narrator Christopher Jung told the story amid modern instruments — the accordion dominated — the ill-fated lovers were portrayed by dancers who appeared as if marionettes on strings. Schleiermacher paired the brief work with Peter Maxwell Davies’ single-soprano “Miss Donnithorne’s Maggott” under the title “Lost Battles of Love.”

To further underscore the dramatic impulse brought to the arts by the Baroque the Leipzig Opera staged the first-ever German performance of Jean Georges Noverre’s 1763 ballet “Jason and Medea.” Danced by the opera’s superb ballet ensemble and directed in Leipzig by Jean Paul Gravier and Claude Agrafeil, the production, which premiered on June 9, was a revival of a 1992 Strasbourg staging by Sweden’s grand old man of the dance, Ivo Cramer.

Jean Joseph Rodolphe’s original score was arranged by England’s Charles Farncombe. In the title roles Martin Chaix and Kiyoko Kimura stressed the grace of dance before ballet went on its toes, and in the fire and fury of Medea’s dance of revenge Kimura made this blood-curdling story the direct antecedent of Samuel Barber’s score on the subject written almost 300 years later.

All Leipzig Opera performances are distinguished by the playing of its pit band, the esteemed Gewandhaus Orchestra. For this performance on 9 July youthful Vincent de Cort conducted with vigor. “You are a Prometheus!” Voltaire once wrote to Noverre. “You form humans and breathe life into them.” In like manner this recreation was a truly Titanic achievement.

Increasingly aware of the importance of outreach programs, the Bachfest this year devoted an entire day to events for children and families. High point of the day was a one-hour reduction of Monteverdi’s “Orfeo” by Taschenoper Lübeck. The “pocket opera” production featured a mere six musicians, some of them doubling as vocalists and instrumentalists.

Founded in 2005 by students at the Lübeck Conservatory and dedicated to “big opera for little people,” the talented ensemble brought kids on stage as extras and stage hands, and the entire audience was rehearsed to appeal to Pluto for the release of Euridice. (Moved by their apprentice musicianship Pluto pulled out a handkerchief and wept openly in response.)

While the “this-isn’t-going-to-hurt” approach that often puts classical music on a par with a visit to the dentist at American kiddie concerts, there was here no talking down to the audience — six is the stated minimum age for admission — nor was there any slapstick. Yet the kids that packed the small Schille – Theaterhaus just minutes from St. Thomas Church were mesmerized by the simple staging that depended on the music — not on carnival-of-the-animals gimmicks — for its magic. Indeed, so fine are these young singers that adults in the audience would have welcomed a complete “Orfeo” by the troupe, whose enthusiasm held listeners in its spell.

The production marked the 400th anniversary of “Orfeo,” the oldest opera in the extant repertory. This impressive cross-section of early opera documented the spectrum of musical expression in the early Baroque, while other performances stressed Bach’s role in bringing the age to its fullest musical flower. And having suggested that the composer’s St. Matthew Passion qualifies as music theater, an “extra” of Bachfest ‘07 was a master class, in which Peter Schreier worked with four young tenors on the role of the Evangelist in the score. Schreier, now 72, was the world’s top performer in this role during the final decades of the 20th century.

Wes Blomster

image=http://www.operatoday.com/1638_Jason_et_Medee_2.HP_06.png image_description=Jason and Medea product=yes product_title=Above: Scene from Jason and Medea product_by=Photo of Emma Kirky copyright Bach-Archiv Leipzig/Gert Mothes.
All other photos copyright by Andreas Birkigt [Emilienstraße 11a 04107 Liepizg Tel. 0341 – 960 9625, Bayerische Vereinsbank Leipzig (BLZ 86020086 Kto.-Nr. 4500792)]

China student wins Cardiff Singer

A 23-year-old student from China has won the BBC Cardiff Singer of the World title.[BBC News, 18 June 2007]

Bass-baritone Shen Yang, from Shanghai Conservatory of Music, won the title at St David's Hall in Cardiff on Sunday.

Stark beauty in telling of a tragic love story

THOM DIBDIN [Scotsman, 18 June 2007]

SWEEPING all before it as it grows to its inevitable and tragic climax, Scottish Opera's new production of Lucia di Lammermoor is a beautifully woven and thoroughly satisfying piece.

Laugh Now, Stupid! Garsington's `Lady of the Lake' Is Bad Joke

By Warwick Thompson [Bloomberg.com, 18 June 2007]

June 18 (Bloomberg) -- The absurdities of Rossini's ``La Donna del Lago'' (The Lady of the Lake) have had audiences laughing affectionately for years.

Hey, Giovanni, Put a Shirt on. You’ll Catch Cold.

By ANTHONY TOMMASINI [NY Times, 18 June 2007]

LONDON, June 17 — The Royal Opera House in Covent Garden recently broadcast its production of Mozart’s “Don Giovanni” on outdoor screens around this city, part of the BP Summer Big Screens initiative. The revival of this grippingly spare and psychologically probing 2002 staging by the director Francesca Zambello, shown on Friday evening, was especially suited to big-screen close-ups thanks to an exceptionally attractive and involving cast.

Out Amid the Cold Night Air the Devil Dares to Tread

By VIVIEN SCHWEITZER [NY Times, 16 June 2007]

Wednesday evening was so unseasonably cold that it felt as if hell had frozen over Central Park during the Metropolitan Opera’s concert performance of Gounod’s “Faust,” which opened its annual free summer series.

Singing! Dancing! Tragedy! Comedy! Resurrecting a 1600s Operatic Spectacle

By ANNE MIDGETTE [NY Times, 16 June 2007]

BOSTON, June 14 — Baroque opera was the Busby Berkeley extravaganza of its day. It focused on spectacle and pageantry, and with composers like Jean-Baptiste Lully cranking out an opera a year, it was eminently disposable.

Opera's 'Iphigénie' cuts to the heart of myth in austere, intense production

(Photo: Katy Raddatz)
Joshua Kosman [SF Chronicle, 16 June 2007]

Gluck's 1779 opera "Iphigénie en Tauride" wastes little time or energy on anything extraneous. It plunges swiftly into the world of Greek tragedy, and the magnificent new production that opened Thursday night at the San Francisco Opera comes through with a short, sharp shock.

Der Rosenkavalier, War Memorial Opera House, San Francisco

By Allan Ulrich [Financial Times, 12 June 2007]

The mezzo-soprano du jour Joyce DiDonato has become the latest artist to don the breeches of Octavian von Rofrano and her eponymous stripling in this revival of the bittersweet Richard Strauss perennial, a tribute to the impresarial acumen of the former Intendant Pamela Rosenberg. In contrast to another Rosenberg project recently and controversially recast by her successor David Gockley, there has been no tampering with this revival, which includes a pair of belated company debuts. San Francisco’s reputation as a leading American Strauss-spielhaus remains undiminished.

BRITTEN: Death in Venice

Yet the latter easily eclipsed the former in terms of artistic merit. Death in Venice is Britten’s Faust and is inherently dramatic. Wisely, Yoshio Oida, the director, knows that the real focus of the plot lies within Aschenbach’s psyche. Nothing here was mere decoration, nothing merely for superficial effect. Everything revolved around the definition of the central character, even the basic imagery of Venice itself.

[Click here for remainder of review.]

[Click here for Anne Ozorio’s review of the ENO production of Death in Venice.]

image=http://www.operatoday.com/Death_venice.png
image_description=Death in Venice by Thomas Mann

product=yes
product_title=Benjamin Britten: Death in Venice
Aldeburgh Festival (1): Yoshi Oida (director), Tom Schenk (set designer), Paul Daniel (conductor), Britten-Pears Orchestra, The Maltings, Snape, Aldeburgh.
product_by=Gustav von Aschenbach : Alan Oke
The traveler and other roles : Peter Sidhom
Voice of Apollo : William Towers
Tadzio : Pavel Povraznik
product_id=By Anne Ozorio [Seen and Heard, 11 June 2007]

LASSUS: Psalmi Davidis pœnitentiales

Certainly a special aura surrounds them, in part a result of the lavish choirbooks in which they are preserved. The choirbooks are decorated with illuminations by Hans Mielich showing Lasso and his Bavarian court ensemble. In contemporary comment the humanist Samuel Quickelberg observed that Lasso

expressed the content so aptly with lamenting and plaintive melody, adapting where it was necessary the music to the subject and the words, expressing the power of the different emotions, presenting the subject as if acted before the eyes, that one cannot know whether the sweetness of the emotions more adorns the plaintive melodies or the plaintive melodies the sweetness of the emotions. This kind of music they call musica reservata, and in it Orlandus proved the excellence of his genius to posterity just as marvelously as in his other works, which are almost innumerable.

This wonderfully rich description alerts the listener to the affective quality of the settings and, through the reference to musica reservata, to their sensitive engagement of the text. (Musica reservata is a phrase that historically lacks clarity, though modern comment has frequently associated it with rhetorical settings.)

In Lasso’s settings of the penitential psalms the generally dark texts inspire music that is often austere, conveyed through his frequent recourse to syllabic writing, often in chordal homophony that is movingly set in low, dark tessitura. Lasso’s emphasis on rhetoric is manifest in his careful declamation of the text and his reflection of the words’ meaning. Both of these ideas are rooted in humanist thinking and show Lasso attuned to progressive ideas. Yet significantly, his gestures to clarify meaning here are not prone to overstatement, reflecting perhaps an additional acknowledgment of the nature of the texts themselves.

The performance of Phillipe Herreweghe and his Collegium Vocale Gent are richly satisfying. The ensemble sings with a sharp focus to the sound that nevertheless does not resist timbral richness and warmth. They possess an unflaggingly beautiful blend and a sensitive capacity to shape phrases with subtle dynamic inflection, and their declamatory passages show a natural fluency. Some may be surprised to find the psalms rendered without colla parte instruments, especially as one of the Mielich illuminations shows singers and an array of instruments performing together. However, the austerity of penance is well served by the sparer forces; certainly there is never a sense of anything lacking.

The penitential psalms are long. Given their length, Lasso seems especially concerned with variety: full and reduced textures alternate as do passages of chordal homophony, free counterpoint, and imitation. That said, the psalms ask an intense focus from the listener approaching them aesthetically. This is perhaps a good reminder of the distance between the devotional listening of the work’s original context and modern “concert” listening. In both cases, however, the rewards are abundant.

Steven Plank

image=http://www.operatoday.com/Lassus_Psalmi.png image_description=Roland de Lassus. Psalmi Davidis pœnitentiales product=yes product_title=Roland de Lassus. Psalmi Davidis pœnitentiales. product_by=Collegium Vocale Gent; Philippe Herreweghe, Director product_id=Harmonia Mundi HMC 901831.32 [2CDs] price=$29.99 product_url=http://www.arkivmusic.com/classical/Drilldown?name_id1=106612&name_role1=1&comp_id=173185&bcorder=15&label_id=1076

New Frocks for Old – Cardiff Singer of the World, 2007

When one looks back at early videos of the first competition in 1983 and compares with today’s slick production several things become evident. In 2007 there is a far larger geographical spread of contestants and there is now remarkable vocal quality-in-depth. On a more frivolous front, and perhaps indicative of current obsessions with image in the world of opera, the frocks on display have also become extremely sexy and chic compared to their distinctly dowdy predecessors. The men’s tailoring has changed rather less, it must be said, although it is obvious that they, too, are now more aware of their presentation on stage – one Finalist this year, countertenor David DQ Lee, looking particularly stylish.

Since that first competition (which, incidentally, Karita Mattila won) there have been many exciting, memorable performances and vocal trials of strength. Who can forget the 1989 “battle of the baritones” between Bryn Terrell and Dmitri Hvorostovsky? This bi-annual contest has grown steadily in size and stature over the years, and it is now regarded as one of the premier singing competitions in the world. Certainly recent Winners and Finalists of both the Main Prize and the Lieder Prize read like a contemporary hall of fame: Nicole Cabell, Ailish Tynan, Katarina Karnéus, Lisa Gasteen, Marius Brenciu, Christopher Maltman and Andrew Kennedy, to name just a few.

This year’s competition will have been hard-fought and exhausting for both juries and contestants – over 1000 people applied to take part, 677 from 64 countries took part in auditions held in 44 locations around the globe, and the final 25 singers who have survived the selection process so far arrived in Cardiff this week. Although the two Prizes are valuable in monetary terms - £15,000 and £5,000 for Singer of the World and the Rosenblatt Recital Song Prize respectively with £2,500 for each of this year’s other four finalists – it is the world media exposure that is often the key to future success for these young performers. Cardiff is a shop window, par excellence.

One very famous face who is there to welcome them is the competition’s Patron, Dame Joan Sutherland who said “the competition is always a wonderful experience for not only the St. David’s Hall audience and multimedia audiences across the world, but is also a delight for every competitor taking part.” Today, Cardiff Singer of the World is very much a global entertainment, with a TV, radio and online audience of eight million able to watch, listen and download information on the wealth of young vocal talent on display, not forgetting, of course, those frocks.

The competition is now under way with the two Finals being decided on Friday and Sunday nights. Details of timings, tickets, master classes and contestants are available online at www.bbc.co.uk/cardiffsinger

Sue Loder © 2007

image=http://www.operatoday.com/CSOW05FA-152.png image_description=Nicole Cabell, last Winner 2005 product=yes product_title=Above: Nicole Cabell, last Winner 2005 product_by=All photos courtesy of BBC TV

WAXMAN: Joshua

For reasons the booklet essay of this DG release does not explain, he decided to compose a dramatic oratorio, based on the Book of Joshua, in honor of his spouse. Work on the opera was suspended, and Forsyth adapted the texts. At its premiere in 1959, the work received some strongly favorable reviews. yet the oratorio Joshua slipped into neglect, until the Aaron Copland Fund for Music, Inc., supplied the funding for this recording.

An oratorio on a biblical subject, as late as 1959, suggests a musically conservative work. While the music is indeed strongly tonal, with dissonant elements utilized only for pointed dramatic effect, Joshua contains inspired music. Film composers usually get the rap that their serious efforts still sound like background scoring. There are moments like that in the score, but for the most part, Waxman’s inspiration has a greater cohesiveness and subtler effects than even his finest work in films. The striking opening, with a memorable oboe solo, sets a mood itself, rather than simply illustrating a cinematic scene. Perhaps the music veers a little bit too close to “biblical epic” scoring in the section about “the house of a harlot,” but the problem there may be more with the English texts unintentionally prompting snickers.

Part one, through the siege of Jericho, grips the listener throughout, but as part two ensues, Waxman’s invention wanes a bit and the piece begins to wear out its welcome. Ultimately, Joshua can’t overcome a sense that Waxman took on an artistic challenge few if any had any interest in accomplishing anymore. However, the score’s strongest sections could make for a suite that would please concert hall audiences much more than any number of serial/atonal pieces written around the same time.

DG has not provided separate tracks for Maximilian Schell’s narration, and as the actor gets a bit hammy form time to time, that’s unfortunate. One can skip ahead to the next track when Schell begins his spiel, as invariably he comes in at the end a section. In brief solo sections, Rod Gilfry sings both Joshua and Moses with masculine authority. James Sedares and the Prague Philharmonia perform as professionally as any Hollywood studio orchestra Waxman ever worked with, and in excellent sound.

No, not a lost masterpiece, but an enjoyable work, which is more than can be said for a lot of “serious” music from 1959.

Chris Mullins

image=http://www.operatoday.com/Joshua.png image_description=Franz Waxman: Joshua product=yes product_title=Franz Waxman: Joshua product_by=Ann Hallenberg, Peter Buchi, Maxmilian Schell, Rodney Gilfry, Prague Philharmonic Chorus, Prague Philharmonic Orchestra, James Sedares (cond.) product_id=DG 00289 477 5724 [CD] price=$13.99 product_url=http://www.arkivmusic.com/classical/Drilldown?name_id1=12833&name_role1=1&bcorder=1&comp_id=214224

MAHLER: Urlicht

The liner notes indicate that this is the first recording made in the Menuhin Hall at Stoke D’Aberdon in the UK, which took place between 10 and 13 April 2006. While Eveline Nikkels’ comments about the Lieder are prominent in the booklet, it is unfortunate that it lacks information about the criteria for the selection and, more importantly, any background on the talented performers involved. Stotijn has much to recommend, and audience are just learning her fine talent as she takes on increasingly more roles in opera and continues to perform Lieder recitals that include the kind of repertoire found in this CD.

In “Zu Strassburg auf der Schanz” Stotijn has some moments of dramatic intensity that set Stotijn apart from others. Her approach is reminiscent of Ferrier’s effective declamation in some passages of “Von der Schőnheit” in Das Lied von der Erde. In other pieces, though, Stotijn reveals a rich contralto, as in “Der Schildwache Nachtlied,” with the full voice effectively moving in the lower register. That song also contains some remarkably lighter sounds, as Stotijn captures the drama and lyricism of that well-known song in ways that certainly exceed some conventional interpretations of the song. Yet the apparently closely placed microphone overemphasizes the vibrato that Stotijn used in this song. It begs the question of how differently the voice and performance would appear with another recording configuration.

“Nicht Wiedershen” is another song in which the expressive palette of Stotijn’s voice becomes apparent, with some of the iterations of “Ade” rendered in a fully supported half voice. With “Urlicht,” the song used as the title of this collection, Stotijn is equally effective, and the upper part of her voice is as solid in softer dynamic levels as it can be in the more boisterous passages of some of the other songs recorded here. Her fervent interpretation of “Urlicht” has a parallel in “Um Mitternacht,” which is appropriately intense. “Um Mitternacht” fits Stotijn’s voice well, and gives a fine sense of the capacity of this young singer.

Julius Drake is a fine accompanist, who gives Stotijn excellent support in “Um Mitternacht” and all the songs in this collection. The attention that characterizes some of his earlier recordings with such singers as Sophie Daneman is present in this set of Mahler’s Lieder. His pauses and careful placement of sonorities suggests a performer who knows not only the literature but the singer with whom he is working. His chamber-music approach to “Ich bin der Welt abhanden gekommen,” with its interplay between voice and piano is highly effective. In these and other pieces, Drake does not only set the tone, but helps the singer to achieve it as he subtly brings out various nuances in the piano part.

This recording of Mahler’s Lieder should introduce Stotijn to an international audience. With a solidly conceived program of songs that fit her voice, the selection has much to recommend. She clearly has an affinity for Mahler’s music that bears hearing in additional performances of the composer’s Second Symphony, something she has done to good effect already in her career. While the literature performed on this recording is known, the freshness of interpretation that Stotijn and Drake offer here bears rehearing.

James Zychowicz

image=http://www.operatoday.com/Mahler_Urlicht.png image_description=Mahler: Urlicht product=yes product_title=Mahler: Urlicht. product_by=Christianne Stotijn, mezzo soprano, Julius Drake, piano. product_id=Onyx 4014 [CD] price=$18.49 product_url=http://www.arkivmusic.com/classical/Drilldown?name_id1=121694&name_role1=2&label_id=4423&bcorder=26&name_id=7537&name_role=1

HANDEL: Theodora

Music composed by G. F. Handel. Libretto by Thomas Morrell after Robert Boyle’s The Matyrdom of Theodora and Didymus (1687).

First Performance: 16 March 1750, Covent Garden Theatre, London

Principal Characters:
Theodora	Soprano
Irene	Mezzo-Soprano
Didymus	Alto
Septimius	Tenor
Valens	Bass

Synopsis

Act I is made of two great, contrasting scenes. The sense of Roman authority and festivity is set by Valens’ two arias, each followed by a chorus. Especially remarkable is the second chorus, “For ever thus stands fixed the doom,” for Handel deliberately ignores the violence suggested by the words, and writes a tenderly beautiful “siciliana” reminiscent of the Messiah “Pastoral Symphony.” This leads to airs by Didymus and Septimius whose lively rhythms (Didymus is not yet revealed as a Christian) keep up the Roman character of the scene. In strong contrast is the second scene, which presents the Christians with music of serenity, rapture and faith. Beginning with a recitative and beautiful aria by Theodora and continuing through a gentle chorus, the mood is not broken by the Messenger announcing the Roman threats, but is renewed by Irene’s great aria, “As with rosy steps the morn.” Here Handel sensitively weaves the “steps” into the rhythm, and evokes a splendid “sunrise”. The livelier chorus continues the mood of exalted faith, which is not disrupted by Septimius’ entrance to take Theodora to prison. The mood is carried to still a new level by Theodora’s famous “Angels, ever bright and fair.” When Didymus enters to find Theodora gone, his aria, “Kind Heaven,” continues the Christian spirit, and this is grandly rounded out by the chorus, “Go, gen’rous, pious youth.”

Act II is more intensely dramatic, proceeding through six contrasting scenes. Winton Dean writes that it “claims to rank as the finest single act in any of the oratorios.” The pagan festival in the first scene, worshiping not only Jove but also “Fair Flora and Venus,” has a lovely sensuous lightness, climaxed in the sparkling “laughing” chorus. All the more profoundly moving then, is the tragic feeling of the following scene. Theodora’s inexpressibly poignant F sharp minor air, “With darkness deep,” is framed by a somber “tone poem,” for violins and deliberately shrill flutes, at first in G minor and then returning, extended, in E minor. Theodora’s self-questioning is resolved in het next air, with Handel beautifully illustrating “Oh that I on wings could rise.” Notable in the following scene, as Didymus wins the sympathy of Septimius, is the way the latter’s air, explaining that Venus would not approve such punishment, adroitly recalls in style the earlier “Venus laughing” chorus. The character of Irene broadens in the next scene with her moving recitative and Larghetto e piano air, “Defend her, Heaven.” Starting with Didymus’ “Sweet rose and lily,” sung over the sleeping Theodora, and culminating in the great extended duet and following chorus, inspiration follows on inspiration. The act ends with Irene and the Christians, and the great resurrection chorus, “He saw the lovely youth” (alluded to above as Handel’s favorite). Lang calls this chorus, “perhaps the absolute summit of Handel’s choral art.” As a remarkable example of the unity Handel achieves, this act ends with its beginning, in a manner of speaking. The Largo opening of this chorus recalls the Sinfonia with which the act had opened. It moves from minor to major, and then breaks into a grand “resurrection” fugue. The text reference is from the Gospel of St. Luke, when Christ resurrects the son of the widow of Nain.

Act III proceeds from a sense of hope and relief. It seems to the Christians that Didymus’ plan worked. But the mood changes through Theodora’s dramatic determination to give herself up and through the court scene, where Valens rejects both Septimius’ gentle plea “From virtue springs each generous deed, and the martyrs’ hope that each can save the other. The culmination is the gentle, beautiful air of Didymus, “Streams of pleasure ever flowing,” which becomes a duet with Theodora. This tender peacefulness, an embrace and conquest of tragedy, reaches its apotheosis in the final chorus of Christians, “O love divine.” Dean calls it “a prayer of the living that they may be worthy of the dead.”

[Synopsis adapted from notes by S.W. Bennett]

Click here for the complete libretto.

image=http://www.operatoday.com/Le_Martyre_de_sainte_Irene.png image_description=Le Martyre de sainte Irène by Carlo Francesco Nuvolone (1640-1650) [Musée du Louvre] audio=yes first_audio_name=G. F. Handel: Theodora
WinAMP, VLC or iTunes first_audio_link=http://www.operatoday.com/Theodora1.m3u product=yes product_title=G. F. Handel: Theodora product_by=Geraldine McGreevy: Theodora
Anne Sofie von Otter: Irene
Stephen Wallace: Dydimus
Paul Agnew: Septimius
Matthew Rose: Valens
Orchestre et choeur du Concert d'Astrée, Emmanuelle Haïm (dir.)
Live performance, 19 October 2006, Théâtre des Champs-Elysées, Paris

VIVALDI: Arie per basso

A number of the volumes feature the remarkable Concerto Italiano under the direction of Rinaldo Alessandrini, an ensemble whose rhythmic vitality and stylized energy make “Vivaldi” a language that they speak with compelling fluency. In this present recording they are joined by bass Lorenzo Regazzo in a program of opera arias from Armida al campo d’Egitto, Tito Manilo, Orlando furioso, Semiramide, Il Farnace, La Silvia, L’Adelaide, and L’Olimpiade. Regazzo has a wonderfully rich sound, large and powerful, timbrally rewarding, and he wields this sound with an agile articulation and flexibility admirably suited to early eighteenth-century style. His musical, expressive, and emotional ranges are well developed, and given the demands of the program, exercised to full extent.

Some of the arias present Vivaldi in a familiar allegro garb, with rollicking sequences and melismatic acrobatics, such as the reconstructed “ Terribile è lo scempio” from the pastoral drama, La Silvia. The aria “Fiume che torbido” from the same work adds programmatic evocations of a turbulent river, reminding that the composer’s pictorial abilities are found beyond the bounds of the well-known Four Seasons, as well. And while the battle aria “Se il cor guerriero” from Tito Manilo is conventional in its martial rhythms, its harmonic deployment of dissonance makes it a strikingly “modern” stile concitato.

Less conventional and familiar are the mad scene from Orlando furioso and the chilling aria of paternal regret from Il Farnace, “Gelido in ogni vena.” In the former, Vivaldi moves his delusional Orlando between astonishment, rage, and bitter regret in a landscape whose fragmentation bespeaks knightly irrationality. And in “Gelido,” throbbing dissonance and lachrymal descents combine to render the reflections of the filiocidal Farnace haunting and eerie. In both instances we get more than a glimpse of Vivaldi’s dramatic flair—a flair going beyond convention--and a flair to which Regazzo proves engagingly responsive.

Arie per basso is a splendid performance of music that gives due attention both to the toe-tapping familiar Vivaldi and the less well-known, darker and dramatic side of the composer. If the complete series can be maintained at this high level, it will be an impressive achievement, indeed.

Steven Plank

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Janáček , From the House of the Dead

Anne Ozorio [Seen and Heard, 11 June 2007]
Boulez and Chéreau of course, created a now-legendary centenary Ring cycle at Bayreuth, which revolutionised Wagner performance, illuminating the music and ideas and vindicating Wieland Wagner’s vision of what the work could mean.

Italiana restored: Rossini’s afterthougts staged in Vicenza

For the cognoscenti, a much anticipated experience, since the production was about the alternative version staged, under Rossini’s direct control, in the local Teatro Eretenio just three months after the world premiere in nearby Venice on May 22, 1813. Various period observers, including the French novelist Stendhal, witness to the craze sparked by Rossini’s oriental fantasy, resulting in many revivals during the mid-late 1810s. Extramusical circumstances may have played a role, too.

“Between 1530 and 1780 there were almost certainly a million and quite possibly as many as a million and a quarter white, European Christians enslaved by the Muslims of the Barbary Coast” [which extends from Morocco through modern Libya], reckons Prof. Robert C. Davis. Only in Algiers there were six “bagnos” (baths) hosting the human prey caught by Barbary pirates during their raids in the Mediterranean, and even as late in 1830, when the French took over Algiers, there were still 120 white slaves in the bagno.

Such historical background may qualify L’Italiana in Algeri, loosely based on a real-life incident involving a lady from Milan, as a conspicuous act of escapism from all-too-present horrors, while to modern audiences the shadow of the impalement stake, repeatedly waved in front (well, somewhere else) of poor Taddeo, only amounts to a bawdy phallic gimmick. Stage directors rarely miss the chance, and Damiano Michieletto was no exception this time. Besides red tables and modular cubic frames — variously recombined to conjure up Mustafa’s palace, gardens, a ship etc. — black wooden poles sprouted everywhere. (True, the imposing presence of Palladio’s three-dimensional sets is a hindrance to any stage designer, thus making minimalism an unavoidable choice at the Olimpico).

On the other hand, the acid lighting, the ghoul-like makeup of the eunuchs’ choir, Haly’s fiendish looks and Mustafa’s rabid behavior conveyed a disquieting atmosphere far from the stock reading of Rossini’s buffo masterpiece. Only in the finale, with the fugitive Italian slaves disguised as pizza cooks and green-white-red colors flying around in a reassuring happy end, some tribute to commonplace was paid. If mildly modernistic and apparently low-budget, the stage department thus contributed to boost the remarkable musical performance led by Giovanni Battista Rigon with relentless pulse and unfailing tempo choices. The Orchestra Filarmonia Veneta “G. F. Malipiero” sounded historically informed in its string section; so did the crisp woodwinds led by virtuoso oboist and deputy conductor Stefano Romani. Brasses and percussions (including a rarely-heard chapeau chinois or jingling-Johnny for Janissary local color) added a brazen touch in the tutti passages, particularly in the finales.

In the singing company, the up-and-coming Albanian mezzo Enkelejda Shkosa (Isabella) displayed buffo stamina alongside impressive coloratura, though her recent weight gain hardly contributed to the seductive requirements stipulated by her role. Despite a cold start, Lorenzo Regazzo was a mercurial and domineering Mustafà throughout. If only he could restrain from cheap effects in the style of third-rate German Kabarett, leading him to unnecessarily tampering with the pitch. Both Andrea Zaupa, a young and debonair Taddeo, and Chiara Fracasso as Zulma deserved unconditional praise for their beautiful instruments, mature vocal technique and acting skills. The same would apply to Luca dell’Amico’s Haly, were it not for a few campish poses imposed on him by costume designer Manuel Pedretti. Anna Laura Martorana (Elvira) and Nicola Amodio (Lindoro) took perhaps too many risks with belcanto passagework, but — given their young age — they may have the potential for further growth.

The main variants in the score involved Isabella’s role. Her substitute cavatina “Cimentando i venti e l’onde” is studded with exciting virtuoso intricacies right from the start, yet sounds less effective if compared to the soaring profile of the usual “Cruda sorte”, where the coloratura batteries are being gradually uncovered after a row of fiery quasi-spoken ejaculations. Interestingly, both alternative versions were written for the same singer: the Florentine alto (and Rossini’s mistress) Marietta Marcolini, then in her early thirties. In the aria “Per lui che adoro”, the core difference was about the accompanying solo instrument — a cello instead of a flute, the latter being introduced only after 1815. Actually, the lower texture seems to work better: it’s as much warm, pensive and sexually teasing as the plot requires.

Carlo Vitali

image=http://www.operatoday.com/Shkosa-as-Isabella_Amodio-a.png image_description=Shkosa as Isabella_Amodio as Lindoro product=yes product_title=Above: Enkelejda Shkosa (Isabella) and Nicola Amodio (Lindoro) product_by=All photos by Guido Turus

HANDEL: Solomon

Music composed by G. F. Handel. Librettist unknown (see below).

First Performance: 17 March 1749, Covent Garden Theatre, London

Principal Characters:
Solomon	Alto
Solomons’s Queen	Soprano
Nicaule, Queen of Sheba	Soprano
First Harlot	Soprano
Second Harlot	Mezzo-Soprano
Zadok, the High Priest	Tenor
A Levite	Bass
Attendant	Tenor

Setting: Ancient Israel

Background and Summary:

The author of the libretto is unknown. Some writers have ascribed it to Thomas Morell, but this seems doubtful when the rest of his work for Handel is compared with it. The language and outline of Solomon are quite different in concept and realization from Morrell’s usual work. The Bible tells of Solomon’s golden reign in Kings I and Chronicles II. The librettist seems to have drawn on both these sources because the famous story of Solomon’s judgment between the two harlots (the false and true mother of the baby) occurs only in Kings; but both books describe the building and dedication of the temple and the visit of the Queen of Sheba.

All three acts of the oratorio deal with a different side of Solomon. Act I emphasizes his piety and marital bliss - the librettist tactfully making no mention of the Biblical 700 wives and 300 concubines. Rather Solomon is portrayed in love scenes with his one beloved wife and queen, who has no name except that she is Pharaoh’s daughter. The first scene of the act shows the opening of the temple with songs of praise to Solomon’s greatness by Zadok, the priest, and the people. In the second scene, Solomon promises his queen a palace as they retire to the cedar grove. They pledge their love amid flowers, sweet breezes, and singing nightingales.

Act II portrays the wisdom of Solomon. After the king has shown proper humility before his God for what he has achieved, two women are brought in. The first claims that the baby the other is carrying belongs rightfully to her. Both have shared a house and each has borne a child. The first harlot says that the second woman’s child died, and during the night the latter came in and took her baby away, leaving the dead child instead. The second harlot replies that the situation is just the opposite, and the child is really hers. Solomon offers to divide the child in two with a sword, so that each will have half. This frightening proposal quickly uncovers the true mother — the first harlot. She tells the king she would rather relinquish the child to spare its life. The second woman readily agrees to the proposition, exposing her lack of any real maternal concern. Solomon tells the woman he had no intention of slaying the infant but took this way of learning the truth. The chorus and the first harlot pay tribute to Solomon’s wise judgment.

Act III is very similar to Dryden’s Alexander’s Feast in that Solomon presents a musical masque for the visiting Queen of Sheba. The passions of fury, tortured soul, and calm are so vividly portrayed by the chorus and Solomon that the Queen is overwhelmed by the power of the representation. The view of the newly finished temple completes her awe, and she presents her treasure to the great Solomon. Both end by pledging peace and glory to their respective realms.

[Adapted from program notes by J. Merrill Knapp]

Click here for the complete libretto.

image=http://www.operatoday.com/solomon.png image_description=King Solomon and the Queen of Sheba by Konrad Witz, c. 1435 audio=yes first_audio_name=G. F. Handel: Solomon
WinAMP or VLC first_audio_link=http://www.operatoday.com/Solomon1.m3u product=yes product_title=G. F. Handel: Solomon product_by=Jean Rigby, Susan Bickley, Marie Arnet, Robert Murray.Andrew Foster-Williams, Chorus of the Norddeutscher Rundfunk, Concert Köln, Marcus Creed (cond.)
Live performance, 25 January 2007, Hamburg

Wiener Staatsoper: Dominique Meyer wird Direktor ab 2010

[Die Presse, 6 June 2007]

Die Nachfolge für Ioan Holender steht fest: Dominique Meyer wird ab 2010/11 neuer Direktor der Wiener Staatsoper, Franz Welser-Möst wird Generalmusikdirektor.

Dominique Meyer (51), Generalintendant des Pariser Theatre des Champs-Elysees, wird ab der Saison 2010/11 neuer Direktor der Wiener Staatsoper. Ihm zur Seite wird der österreichische Dirigent Franz Welser-Möst (46) als Generalmusikdirektor stehen. Dies gab heute, Mittwoch, das Kulturministerium bekannt. Der Vertrag von beiden läuft fünf Jahre.

Pasatieri’s return to opera impressive

And the work has all the markings of a masterpiece; indeed, it gives rise to the hope that he has another opera up his sleeve.

The composer of a spate of operas, Pasatieri is best known for “The Seagull,” premiered at the Houston Grand Opera in 1984. A few years later he put opera aside and moved to Hollywood. (If you’ve seen “American Beauty,” “Fried Green Tomatoes” or “Magnolia” you’ve heard him — probably without realizing it.)

“Frau Margot” is a collective endeavor that involved the talents of many people over a long period of time. “Nest egg” was a report brought to librettist and director Frank Corsaro from Vienna by Leonard Bernstein. The then young conductor/composer had visited Helene Berg, widow of composer Alban Berg, whose opera “Lulu” was left incomplete when he died in 1935. Bernstein - like many others - sought permission to finish the score from Berg’s sketches for a third act. (Performances of the completed two acts had become common.)

Frau Berg refused after consulting with her late husband through a sèance, the Internet of that age of rampant spiritualism. (A good bit of laudanum helped her make the connection.) The widow refused permission — as she continued to do until her death in 1978.

Corsaro made a play of Bernstein’s story and called it “Lyric Suite,” the title of Berg’s most performed chamber work. However, given the near-universal aversion to dissonant music, he was unable to find a producer. On a visit to New York in 2003 Pasatieri told Corsaro, the director of the Houston “Seagull” and several other works by the composer, that he wanted to return to opera. Corsaro gave him his play. Then FWO general director Darren Woods ran into Corsaro and Pasatieri at a party. Woods was seeking a project for “down the road,” and “Frau Margot” was commissioned.

Corsaro then turned his drama into a detective story, a Gothic tale of a widow’s murder of a former mistress of her husband. (It was long suspected that Frau Berg kept the “Lulu” fragment under wraps because it documented her husband’s extra-marital activity.) Corsaro gave the characters fictional names and began the new version with an investigation of the murder, followed by a flashback to the Bernstein story. The young composer shared the beds of both the widow and of Kara Sondstrom, who had been the mistress of the deceased master. He set the story in Amsterdam, which, however, is clearly a facade for Freud’s Vienna with its seething, all-pervasive sexuality. In that l’art pour l’art age “reality” had become an elusive concept that allows us — as Hugo von Hofmannsthal, the greatest poet of the age, said — “to play theater — play the characters in our own dramas.”

At first glance it might seem that the librettist muddied the waters needlessly with his additions to music history. Things were complex enough in the Berg household without emendations. Yet even the shadow of lesbianism that darkens the co-dependency that bind Margot to Kara is no more than a reflection of the obsession of fin-de-siècle Vienna with matters of the flesh. About the city at that time Viennese author Stefan Zweig wrote that “the air felt perfumed and unhealthy; a dishonest morality hung over us like a nightmare.” And man-about-town Karl Kraus commented that Vienna was “spiritually bankrupt.” And it was in spite — or perhaps precisely because — of that it was also the scene of a golden age in the arts.

With amazing success Pasatieri has captured all this in a score of a voluptuous splendor that suggests Klimt’s gilded paintings set to music. And this is what makes “Frau Margot” a masterpiece, for the composer has not only laid bare the nervous mental machinations of his characters; he has rendered turn-of-the-century Vienna with its undertow of threatening darkness audible. A muted sadness speaks from the libretto’s reference to “the hope for that love that sustains the fragile heart and makes life durable.” This melancholy sounds again from the final confession of the major male characters in the opera: “I have not lived the life I meant to live.” “Life and death,” Corsaro writes, “are one and the same.” Small wonder that Pasatieri’s gorgeous music speaks with heavy eyelids.

The score — three hours with two intermissions — pulses with an uninterrupted rapture that draws listeners into the music, putting them — as it were — on stage in the middle of the action. Two changes, however, must be made. The “barber-shop” quartet of waiters in Act One breaks with the style of the work and should be excised. And the spoof of ageing divas was especially tasteless when such senior sopranos as Catherine Malfitano and Evelyn Lear — both with long-standing connections to the FWO — were in the audience for the premiere in Fort Worth’s handsome Bass Performance Center.

“Frau Margot” was written for Lauren Flanigan, who in the title role could easily be taken for one of Klimt’s well-born models. And her fundamentally lyric soprano has just the dramatic heft that the part demands. “Stumbling along in her loneliness,” as the libretto says, she was here a stunning incarnation of the uneasy splendor of the age.

As Kara Sondstrom, the friend who betrayed Margot, Patricia Risley provided exactly the contrast between the two women required by the score. And baritone Morgan Smith as Ted Steiner, the composer who had set out to complete the unfinished opera in question, is young, handsome and innocent enough to get caught in this spider web of erotic desire without full awareness of what stood before him.

The “who-done-it?” frame within which the story is told was nicely provided by Canadian bass-baritone Daniel Okulitch, and Alan Glassman had the required maturity to make his unrequited love for Margot touching.

The single set by Alison Nalder was entirely in black and white with scene changes achieved through enlarged background projections of buildings and people. Costumes true to the period were by Steven Bryant.

FWO music director Joseph Illick, involved in early workshops on the score, demonstrated a refined understanding of the work, and members of the Fort Worth Symphony outdid themselves in recreating the lush “feel” of the story’s era.

“Frau Margot” has been the centerpiece of Fort Worth Opera’s 60^th anniversary celebration, which has witnessed a total reshaping of the company’s season. In recent years FWO has spaced three productions during the fall/winter season. Now it has consolidated them in a three-week early summer festival that focuses special attention on both the FWO and its home city.

“Frau Margot” has alternated on stage with “Madama Butterfly” and “Falstaff,” and in a joint enterprise with the city’s Cliburn Concerts the festival included a gala performance Rossini’s Petite Messe Solennelle. (Fort Worth is home to pianist Van Cliburn and the international competition that honors him.) In 1981 FWO commissioned a children’s opera from Thomas Pasatieri and that adds yet another layer of meaning to his “return” to opera — and Fort Worth — with “Frau Margot.”

Pasatieri, born in 1945, was a prodigy both as pianist and composer. He studied in France with Nadja Boulanger and earned the first doctorate given by the Juilliard School.

Footnote: It was an open secret in imperial Vienna that Helene Berg was the child of Kaiser Franz Joseph I, whose mistress her mother had been. A singer of note, she was cut from the same cloth as femme fatale Alma Mahler. Indeed, it seems that Corsaro and Pasatieri have given Frau Margot something of the allure of the legendary Alma.

Wes Blomster

image=http://www.operatoday.com/Lauren_Flanigan.png image_description=Lauren Flanigan in the title role of "Frau Margot." (Photo credit: Ellen Appel) product=yes product_title=Thomas Pasitieri: Frau Margot
Fort Worth Opera product_by=Above: Lauren Flanigan in the title role of “Frau Margot”
All photos by Ellen Appel courtesy of Fort Worth Opera

BUSONI : Songs

He was a virtuoso concert pianist, and knew most of the top musicians of his time. Yet he was also an extremely learned polymath, with a formidable knowledge of art and literature. His cosmopolitan background made him one of the first “true Europeans” who transcended national boundaries. Indeed, his whole life seems a quest to think “outside the box”. He believed that “music was born free and to win freedom is its destiny”, and that it was just in its infancy as an art form. Ultimately, his legacy may yet prove to be his visionary, liberating theories on art and music. Traditional as Busoni’s own music may seem, no less than the arch modernist Edgard Varèse was to describe him as “a figure out of the Renaissance…….. who crystallised my half formed ideas, stimulated my imagination, and determined, I believe, the future development of my music”.

Busoni left only 40 songs, most of them written in his youth. The earliest piece on this recording, Der Sängers Fluch, was written when the composer was only 12. It’s an ambitious piece indeed, lasting nearly 18 minutes without a break. It sets a long, melodramatic ballad by Ludwig Uhland. To Busoni’s credit he doesn’t set it strophically, but uses the piano line to explore piano techniques, remembering to insert decorative effects every now and then to progress the dramatic line. The young composer naturally engages more with the possibilities for piano, leaving the vocal line straightforward and unadorned, which is perhaps a relief as the text is florid in the overheated tastes of the time. This song, like the others written in the 1880’s, are juvenilia, if reasonably competent juvenilia. He seems to have realised that there was nothing for him in this genre and ceased writing song for another 30 years.

In 1918, after the upheaval of war, he returns to song with a completely fresh approach. The Goethe-Lieder are completely different, their choppy staccato rhythms quite unique. It’s as if Busoni were experimenting with a completely different type of modernism, bypassing Schoenberg altogether, much more attuned to Stravinsky. Busoni, in fact, had pioneered the study of Native American music, and to some extent this music reflects the early 20th century fascination with “primitivism” that led to the work of Picasso, among others. Yet musically, this is still mainstream western, a synthesis of many influences. The manic pace reminds me even of the Flight of the Bumblebee ! Interestingly, Busoni sets the same text of Mephistopheles and the Flea as did Mussorgsky, though in German translation. His version is more wickedly manic, with wonderfully demented circular figures on piano. It’s hardly surprising that this is one of Busoni’s most famous songs.

For Busoni, Goethe’s words had personal resonance. He, too, knew only too well about people who couldn’t tell “Mausedreck von Koriandern” (mouse droppings from coriander) yet are “those who find it most difficult when others are successful”. This perhaps inspires the sharp edge of satire in his setting of Lied des Unmuts, where he shapes the piano part with savage glee. The same wild pace infuses Zigeunerlied, ostensibly an imitation of Gypsy dancing, only much madder, swirling like the dance of a whirling dervish, getting higher and higher on its own andrenalin. Then there’s the tale of seven female werewolves, whom the singer recognises as women from the village. The nonsense chorus, “Wille wau wau wau, Willewo wo wo, Wito hu”

sends up, at the same time, both the bourgeoisie and the gothic genre itself. This is exhilarating, subversive stuff ! Similarly, Busoni understood Goethe’s sardonic wit very well. In Schlecter Trost, ghosts appear to a weeping man, who tells them he used to be someone important, but they couldn’t care less. Not only has his love left him, so too have the ghosts ! Lesser hands might have turned this poem into sentimental mush.

Then, Busoni sends up himself. Reminicenza Rossiniana, from 1924, is based on his own writings on art, music and opera. The result is a glorious pastiche of fake Rossini, and quotes from best selling potboilers like Wilkie Collins novels. It is elegant and stylish, even though it bursts with good humour. It’s a piece which should be performed more often, as the ideas on popular taste still apply.

Sadly, though, the performances on this recording don’t quite match the sparkle of the writing. The quirky impact of the later songs in particular is blunted : these really would benefit from freer, more spirited delivery. The earlier songs don’t present any technical challenges to either Bruns or to Eisenlohr in the same way, but their very ordinariness means that too straightforward an approach doesn’t help. A far better choice would be the recording by Elio Battaglia and Erik Werba, which is still available and infinitely livelier.

Anne Ozorio

image=http://www.operatoday.com/Busoni_songs.png image_description=Ferruccio Busoni: Songs product=yes product_title=Ferruccio Busoni: Songs product_by=Martin Bruns (baritone), Ulrich Eisenlohr (piano) product_id=Naxos 8.557245 [CD] price=$7.99 product_url=http://www.arkivmusic.com/classical/Drilldown?name_id1=1730&name_role1=1&comp_id=84834&bcorder=15&name_id=43502&name_role=2

The Gambler

Richard Morrison at Grange Park, Hampshire [Times Online, 4 June 2007]

It’s hard to warm to an opera in which there isn’t one likeable character and the music’s not very pretty either. So the odds are stacked against The Gambler, the Dostoevsky adaptation that Prokofiev wrote in his wild enfant-terrible days, before Stalin clamped his avant-garde tendencies and forced him to write tunes.

Something to sing about

By Warwick Thompson [This is London, 4 June 2007]

Wobbly sets and even wobblier singers meant Opera Holland Park's early efforts, when it was first established in 1996, were somewhat hit-and-miss.

Splendor of 'Giovanni' too short

(Photo: John Lee)
Kwiecien, Runnicles are masterful but Mozart opera yearns for focus

Joshua Kosman [SF Chronicle, 4 June 2007]

Toward the end of Act 1 of Mozart's "Don Giovanni," the licentious title character describes the party -- orgy might be a better word for it -- that he's about to throw at his villa as part of an elaborate plot to seduce an innocent country lass. The wine will flow, there will be plenty of dancing and loose women, and pleasure, in Don Giovanni's darkly obsessive conception of the term, will be unbridled.

Wexford Opera Festival, Der Silbersee, Pulcinella/Arlecchino, Johnstown Castle, Wexford

By George Hall [Financial Times, 4 June 2007]

For a second season, Wexford Festival Opera is on the move, pending the completion of the new opera house on the site of the former Theatre Royal. This year, the event has moved in time as well as space, taking up a summer residency in a well-appointed temporary venue constructed in the grounds of Johnstown Castle, a few miles outside Wexford itself.

The Jussi Björling Series: rare opera recordings from Stockholm

You can read this line in bold letters on the Björling-Yahoo-Groupssite. In great detail every Björling-recording, scrap of recording — whatever the source — is discussed and rediscussed with infinite love and care (though Dan Shea, the able chairman of the American Björling-Society takes care that other singers, and not only tenors, get their due as well in the many interesting discussions). There is something moving in the fact that almost half a century after his death, a singer can still evoke such love and loyalty; especially when those who heard him in the flesh are rapidly dwindling.

I’m sure each member of the Society thinks it his duty to acquire this double CD in the Jussi Björling Series even though parts appeared earlier on LP or CD. But what about the rest of us ? Those who normally won’t buy a CD where Faust’s ‘Salut, demeure chaste et pure’ is cut off before the climax. Well, it may be still worthwhile as there are some real gems to be discovered. The Aida first act is previously unreleased and gives us young Björling in 1940 when, with historical hindsight, he was probably the best tenor of that particular moment. The somewhat tentative days of his youth, witness his Eric Odde recordings, were over and the 29-year old tenor was now extremely sure of his voice and technique. The voice shines with health and the rich overtones give an impression of pure but strong silver. Though he always was looked upon as a paragon of style, this Aida sung in his own language, in a not overly big house where he felt completely at ease, prove that in those halcyon days words like “a shameless top note hunter” wouldn’t be amiss. He clearly takes an extra breath so as to deliver a magnificent and long held B at the end of ‘Celeste Aida’.

The best reason to purchase the set however lies in the very rare highlights of Traviata (once issued on LP). I don’t know why he stopped singing the role and never recorded it commercially, but he is brilliant in it. He has the plangent tone for ‘Un di felice’, the rage for the party scene and the morbidezza for ‘Parigi, o cara’. Not unless Carlo Bergonzi, in one of his very best commercial recordings, would there be an Alfredo who could compete with the Swede. His Roméo is better known and this Swedish version of 1943 is at least on a par with the recording of the famous Met-performance with Sayao.

Interesting, but too short, is the 5-minute piece from one of the few modern opera’s he ever sang: Atterberg’s Fanal. The arias from radio concerts have sometimes been issued on other CD’s and LP’s and are well-known. The few new releases still cover the same territory as Björling’s concert repertory was seemingly not over big in those days. Still these are brilliant versions of Tosca, Turandot and Bohème. Some of the same arias come back in the unreleased radio concert of 1951 and even the fervent Björling fan will have to admit that some of the youthful sheen and brilliance has gone. All in all, a fine issue that will give joy to all lovers of good singing and should not be reserved for Björling admirers alone.

Jan Neckers

image=http://www.operatoday.com/bjorling_ABCD103.png image_description=The Jussi Björling Series product=yes product_title=The Jussi Björling Series: rare opera recordings from Stockholm.
Aida-Act1 – Traviata (highlights) – Roméo et Juliette act II – Faust act III beginning – Fanal act III finale – Arias from Tosca, Turandot, Bohème, Cavalleria, Requiem, Aida. product_by=Jussi Björling, tenor, et al. product_id=Bluebell ABCD 103 [2CDs] price=$35.00 (w/ Jussi Björling Society membership) product_url=http://www.jussibjorlingsociety.org/ABCD103.htm

RUBINSTEIN: Il Demone

The music always sounded a bit too eclectic to me; too much a mixture of Western European romantic sounds peppered with some Russian influence, while at the same time clearly lacking in original melodic ideas. Therefore I hoped this Italian language performance would remedy some of the weaker parts of the score. And, as this version was specially prepared for the St.Petersburg Italian Theatre just after the world premiere in 1871, it clearly has Rubinstein’s approval. This came about three years after the famous Mefistofele première at La Scala and more than once I was reminded in the Demon’s arias of that other devil’s monologues. It may be a coincidence as Mefistofele was a famous fiasco and Boito withdrew the score after the premiere, reworked it and offered it again to the public seven years later. And I have no idea if Rubinstein was at that first performance.

His demon here is sung by a famous Mefistofele. By 1971 Nicola Rossi’s career at the top was only a memory. The voice was often throaty and had some holes in it. Roughness had replaced the necessary smoothness for roles he had sung with success in the fifties like Faust or Mosé. And yet, Rossi succeeds in making hay from his vocal failures. He was always more of a singing actor than an acting singer but the snarling, the rough spots, the hollowness that wouldn’t do in Italian roles suit the demon’s despair to a tee. With his vocal weaknesses, Rossi creates a fully credible portrait of a lonely being.

His wife Virginia Zeani was not exactly a fresh newcomer either at the time. She had been singing for 23 years at the time of the radio performance and her bel canto days were long gone as from the sixties on she specialized more and more in verismo or even modern roles (a fine Magda Sorel). Her vocal aging doesn’t work out so well as with her husband. She doesn’t sound at all like a young and innocent princess. The voice is too mature, quivers with emotion from the first note and has a small wobble in the first act. Zeani fans won’t mind but I think her Tamara overripe and not very convincing.

Agostino Lazzari as the prince does the listener a pleasure by dying in the first act so that we don’t have to suffer his whining sounds for too long. And Mario Rinaudo as Gudal (Tamara’s father) only has to offer a big but very vile sound. Maurizio Arena, maybe influenced by Rossi and Zeani, makes the score more noisy than it really is. He prefers big orchestral outbursts and treats it more like a verismo drama than a romantic opera.

Jan Neckers

image=http://www.operatoday.com/Il_Demone.png image_description=Anton Rubinstein: Il Demone product=yes product_title=Anton Rubinstein: Il Demone product_by=Virginia Zeani (Tamara), Nicola Rossi Lemeni (Il Demone), Mario Rinaudo (Gudal), Agostino Lazzari (Principe di Sinodal). Orchestra Sinfonica di Milano della RAI conducted by Maurizio Arena. Radio performance of December the 12th 1971. product_id=Myto Records 065335 [2CDs] price=$34.49 product_url=http://www.arkivmusic.com/classical/Drilldown?name_id1=10439&name_role1=1&comp_id=47163&bcorder=15&label_id=433

HANDEL: Israel in Egypt

Music composed by G. F. Handel. Libretto attributed to Charles Jennens, adapted primarily from The Book of Exodus 15 and The Book of Psalms.

First Performance: 4 April 1739, King’s Theatre, Haymarket, London

Setting: The Exodus from Egypt and “Moses Song” after the destruction of Pharaoh’s army

Click here for program notes.

Click here for the complete libretto.

image=http://www.operatoday.com/Crossing_the_Red_Sea.png image_description=Crossing the Red Sea by Julius Schnoor von Carolsfeld audio=yes first_audio_name=G. F. Handel: Israel in Egypt
WinAMP or VLC first_audio_link=http://www.operatoday.com/Israel1.m3u product=yes product_title=G. F. Handel: Israel in Egypt product_by=Claudine Ansermet, Laura Antonaz, Mya Fracassini, Enrico Onofri, Richard Collier, Alfredo Grandini, Coro della RTSI, I Barocchisti Lugano, Diego Fasolis (cond.)
Live performance, 2 August 2003, Festival Musica Antiqua Brugge

“La Traviata” from the Volksoper Wien

Before attending the Volksoper’s season première of La Traviata, I had only days before visited the tomb of the great man in Milan. As I stood at the foot of Verdi’s grave, it became a vibrant reality that here lay one of the greatest musical dramatists in history and what’s more, he was human; made of flesh like the rest of us and left us with a legacy of operas that have withstood the test of time and continued to influence and instruct us on human behaviour and emotion. The Traviata presented at the Volksoper was not at all what Signor Verdi would have had in mind for his beloved Violetta.

The stage was pre-set with soprano, Roxana Briban, lying on a white bed in full view of the audience for at least half-an-hour prior to the Prelude. The stage was minimalist, and at first it seemed acceptable to use a minimalistic set since this opera is really about characters and the depths of their emotions, not visual displays and spectacular props. Maestro Leopold Hager and the Orchester der Volksoper Wien opened the opera with a precise tempo and inflection in the Prelude, but it perhaps lacked the dramatic intensity that Verdi’s “high strings” should produce. Meanwhile, Violetta stretched her hand out toward a little girl standing behind a scrim, tossing a large plastic ball up and down. It was evident that Violetta was hallucinating and seeing herself as a child during the Prelude, a concept that may have worked well, but ended up failing in the end.

The dramatic opening was immediately interrupted by a masquerade complete with “masks” and clown-like costumes; obviously, a different perspective from the typical ballroom party with flowing gowns and tuxedos. The orchestra here began its slow and painful detachment from the vocal component of the opera and unfortunately Maestro Hager never fully regained a sense of unity. The “Brindisi” was rather boring in this masquerade-like conception; with young tenor, Ismael Jordi trying his best to produce a sense of gaiety and excitement. A very handsome and sincere performer, his tenor was very light for a role of this intensity and often imprecise; especially taking Verdi’s orchestral support into consideration. Verdi differs from Puccini in that he often leaves the tenor exposed at the ends of passages and in the higher tessitura with little orchestral foundation. Mr. Jordi would have made a better Almaviva in Il Barbiere di Siviglia than an Alfredo at this point in his career.

Most disturbing was the stage direction for the party-scene, with Violetta changing, on-stage, into a clown outfit. Verdi’s intention was to have the audience witness her at her most exquisite: beautiful, full-of-life, and healthy (or so we believe…or maybe want to believe); but here, the direction casts her in a pantomime outfit and in the same pale white in which she would later die. Her entrances in Un dì felice were detached from the orchestral fabric and she lacked any sense of legato singing whatsoever. The orchestra was almost in another realm from Alfredo and Violetta here, and the duet was spastic and unfocused rather than the intended display of profound passion. The pair did not once look at each other throughout the duet and the necessary spark that audiences crave between Alfredo and Violetta would never be ignited in this production.

The first exhilarating moment…or what should have been, comes in Violetta’s Ah, fors’è lui che l’anima, however it was not Violetta’s persona that became apparent here; rather, it was Ms. Briban’s vocal and technical instability. It became clear that Maestro Hager and she were not in sync and this aria became a fight for control. She stood in the center of the stage with the rotating set moving around her. Her Italian enunciation was less than acceptable and she was often out-of-tune on her pianissimi. It was as if Ms. Briban sang with three different voices rather than the type of unified voice most vocal pedagogues and technicians impress upon the young singers of today. Her low tessitura was extremely heavy for a Violetta, the middle was pushed and strident. Her well-publicized pianissimi were so fabricated that one could hardly hear them because she was, in fact, closing off the throat and air supply rather than using proper breath support and an open throat to float them in a resonant place alla Leontyne Price or, more recently, Renée Fleming. The bell-like quality of Violetta’s singing was missing. The Sempre Libera was painful, and Ms. Briban was exuding huge waves of voice and then it would cut out without transition from one part of the voice to another. Her missed entrance of Violetta’s “Follie! Follie!” was enough to make any aficionado cringe and an embarrassment to the Volksoper as a whole.

Once this disaster was over, the drama ceased to one ignited scream of “Brava!” and immediately the entire audience mimicked the audience member. WHAT HAS THE OPERA WORLD COME TO? Have we all succumbed to the glamour of beautiful faces and forgotten what this art is really about? In my opinion, we have conformed to mediocrity and this performance of Traviata would have had Signor Verdi rolling around in his grave. Who are we if we do not stand up and protect the wishes and aesthetics of the composer who creates with such diligence and precision? This production seemed more of a parody of Traviata than an actual presentation of it. Is it acceptable to stage anything as long as we stage it in half-inflected Italian, with loud and uneven voices and lots of clown outfits?! I stand in defense of Verdi’s honour and am appalled that a Viennese opera house would stage something of this mediocre caliber. Had this staging been performed somewhere where Verdi is seen as a national hero, like La Scala let’s say, there would have surely been a scandal in the streets.

Mr. Jordi entered to try and save what had been a disastrous competition between conductor and soprano and unfortunately made it sound even more like an undergraduate performance by students. The only glimmer of light in this production was Baritone, Morten Frank Larsen, who was at least in character and dramatic. His Italian was better than his colleagues, although not where it should have been. His Pura siccome un angelo was somewhat strictly sung with a stagnant orchestral accompaniment. There was not much room for rubato or any shading and Maestro Hager kept it as strict as possible. Unfortunately, because of Mr. Larsen’s acting capabilities and his colleagues lack thereof, it seemed that he was more in love with Violetta than Alfredo was.

The chorus of Gypsies was the icing on the cake for this production imbued with clown-costumes and more of a Pagliacci-like atmosphere than anything. All at once the chorus from Carmen entered the stage!!!…well, they weren’t singing Bizet’s music but the chorus was decked out in red and black Spanish outfits and the men were bullfighters flirting nonsensically with the women. The chorus, although representative of Matadors, was very much detached from the music and the actions seemed to have nothing to do with the text that was being sung. Again, the audience seemed to accept this mish-mash of ideas that was incoherently held together by a struggling orchestra and conductor.

Act III of Traviata should be a display of what Verdi does best. He pulls at our heartstrings and in a moment of luscious melodrama he allows Violetta to read her letter to the sounds of the orchestra. Briban spoke in a harsh and violent chest voice and let out a yelp that resembled something that an Elektra would scream, rather than a Violetta. Her Addio del passato, the highest point of Violetta’s dramatic personae was spastic and her actions seemed more like a Lucia (mad) than a consumptive Violetta. I felt no sympathy for her character as the uneven and imprecise singing was enhanced by Ms. Briban’s throwing herself violently on the stage with such a thud that I wondered if she had hurt herself. There was no saving Violetta by this point, or the production for that matter.

The end had Violetta, who had remained in her white negligee throughout, lying back on her bed with her outstretched hand motioning to the little girl tossing the big plastic ball up in the air.

In the end, she threw the ball and it went high into the rafters, representative of Violetta’s soul leaving her body. How Violetta’s soul can possibly be represented by a ball is beyond me. In all, this production could have been saved had the singing been at least precise and had Ms. Briban and Maestro Hager agreed on “one” way to perform this opera. It was an example of how two conflicting opinions can create havoc on-stage. What’s more, audiences of today seem to accept anything as long as it’s presented in an “opera house.” Just because something is performed on a stage does not necessarily mean that it deserves a scream of “Bravo.” At one time, the term “Bravo,” or “Brava” was used for fantastic and outstanding performances; the type that one remembers for years and years afterwards because of the immense talents of the performers, musicians, and directors. This performance of La Traviata did not deserve such accolades.

Mary-Lou Vetere-Borghoff
PhD (ABD), M.A., Mus.B

image=http://www.operatoday.com/Traviata-Pic-2.png image_description=Roxana Briban and Ismael Jordi (La Traviata, Volksoper, 16 May 2007) product=yes product_title=“La Traviata” from the Volksoper Wien
16 May 2007 product_by=Above: Roxana Briban and Ismael Jordi

Arizona Opera's Susannah — A Naive Story Dilutes an Impressive Production

The work is based on the Biblical account of Susannah and her Elders from the Book of Daniel, as it appears in certain Bibles. From that account we learn the Elders, who steadfastly lust after Susannah, spy on her while she is bathing and soon realize that the young beauty will never give in to their lascivious advances, so they accuse her of fornicating with a young man. This charge is eventually proven false, and Susannah is saved from death. Floyd, using a librettist's poetic license, simplified the storyline by relocating the bathing Susannah to an isolated community called New Hope Valley in the Appalachian Mountains of Tennessee. There, she is observed by her own church Elders who are repelled by her audacity to bath in a small stream which is supposed to be used for baptism.

Obviously Floyd felt very comfortable with this regional setting which is reminiscent of his own upbringing as a minister's son and uses what he thought was a natural reaction by folks who live in such a stark rural setting to Susannah's spontaneous and frivolous behavior. Even in the 1950s, in the United States, with the McCarthy witchhunters combing the country looking for those with perhaps the slightest connection to the Communist Party, Floyd's characters might have appeared a tad too quick to condemn what was perceived as Susannah's immoral conduct and now, over 50 years later, with all the dramatic and diverse social changes that have occurred in American life, the pivotal situation of the plot does seem too pat.

Any opera company that wants to mount Floyd's opera has to get beyond this flaw so that it can present the work's many dramatic and musical moments in a coherent and forceful light. And Arizona Opera did just that.

Perhaps the outstanding contribution to the production was Paula Williams's direction. The director used Peter Dean Beck's spacious and accurate setting of rural life in Tennessee to great advantage. She moved the chorus about the stage with ease, whether they represented the townspeople at an evening gathering of song and square dancing or had them as church goers pleading to the Lord to save them from the wages of sin. She gave the audience the feeling that it was watching the entire New Hope Valley community acting as one against the sinner Susannah. The director also helped to transmit the same dramatic intent to the featured and principal players, allowing them to build their portrayals with vocal stamina and security.

Starting with the smaller roles, the mezzo, Korby Myrick gave her Mrs. McLean the appropriate disapproval of Susannah's public bathing. Glenn Alamilla's tenor rang out as Susannah's ambivalent suitor, never failing to express his fear of the unknown. Moving up to Robert Breault as Sam Polk, Susannah's brother, he filled his character with the right amounts of love and affection mixed with his anxiety for Susannah's future. He resolved his conflict by shooting the Reverend Olin Blitch, Susannah's seducer in the last scene. And most times, Gustav Andreassen as the Reverend Blitch forcefully conveyed his staunch alliance with the Lord. The bass was most impressive in his sorrowful and guilt-ridden monologue on having violated Susannah.

The role of Susannah was the only part that was double cast. Fortunately for Arizona Opera, it found two sopranos who could provide this difficult and challenging part with the right emotional impact when needed. Rhoslyn Jones, a physically stronger Susannah than Diane Alexander was a tad uneven vocally, but her forceful sound portrayed her commitment to the role. Alexander projected a softer emotional approach, but was more consistent in showing how Susannah's misery unfolded. It was a credit to both singers and to Williams how well the rest of the cast never missed a dramatic beat no matter what Susannah was on stage.

Conductor Joel Revzen kept his orchestra committed to Floyd's overriding musical idiom: that of using many parlando melodies underscored by Appalachian ballads, gospel tunes and square dance music. At times, he drove the orchestra too hard, allowing the musical climaxes that expressed Susannah's rage or Blitch's stabs at redemption-to take two examples- to eclipse the singers' vocal prowess that gave unerring testimony to their talents. This tendency, which made it difficult to catch all the nuances in the colloquial text the composer reveled in, kept the audience's eyes glued to the titles, causing it to graze by some of the opera's most intense dramatic moments. But overall, it didn't detract from the performance which was one of the company's most fruitful and fulfilling productions in recent memory.

Nick del Vecchio
[Reprinted from Living at the Opera with permission of the author.]

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image_description=Rhoslyn Jones as Susannah

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All photos by Scott Humbert

Opera's Dynamic Duo

BY JAY NORDLINGER [NY Sun, 1 June 2007]

In the days leading up to the big event, several people asked me, "So, are you going to the Anna Netrebko concert?" They could be forgiven: Wednesday night's concert at Carnegie Hall was a joint showcase for Anna Netrebko and Dmitri Hvorostovsky. She is the starry, glamorous Russian soprano; he is the starry, glamorous Russian baritone. But Ms. Netrebko is the hottest thing in opera right now: So the concert, in many minds, was "the Anna Netrebko concert." Plus, the lady was making her Carnegie Hall debut.