Alfie Boe searches his soul in preparation for La Boheme
Neil Fisher [Times Online, 30 January 2009]
When Alfie Boe walks on stage as the penniless poet Rodolfo in English National Opera’s new production of La Bohème next week, he’ll be drawing on plenty of background material. Some will come from Jonathan Miller, making his return to the Coliseum for his first new production in years.
Lyric Opera's 'Tristan' a triumph for the shining Isolde of Deborah Voigt
By John von Rhein [Chicago Tribune, 29 January 2009]
It’s not over till the slim lady sings.
The big news about Deborah Voigt’s first hometown Isolde at Lyric Opera of Chicago is that, with her recently acquired svelter figure, the Illinois-born soprano looks, sounds and moves wonderfully.
Facing declining donations and a budget stretched by its upcoming production of Wagner’s “Ring” cycle, Los Angeles Opera has joined a long list of performing arts institutions cutting budgets and staff.
For shortly into their thoroughly entertaining mounting of this 17th Century rarity, our leading bass-baritone morphed from a Louis Quatorze persona into a quasi-cartoonish hero by strapping on muscled legs, arms and torso (think: comic Ninja Warrior padded outfits), stringy blond wig, and knee high black platform boots. Oh, yeah, and brandished a Flintstone style club.
Luca Pisaroni gave a consistently animated impersonation as Ercole (Hercules), narcissistically mugging, and grimacing orgasmically enough that he may have a future in porn should his skyrocketing international opera career stall. He clearly relished the goof on contemporary hero worship, and all the while sang most mellifluously and, when required, forcefully. Mr. Pisaroni may not have the booming low notes of some, but his is a fine, well-projected voice with a sound technique, and (sans padding) he has a lean, handsome stage presence.
His achievement was equaled by the elegant Giunone (Juno) of Anna Bonitatibusnoa, an audience favorite who appeared as a sleek, gliding “Woman in Black.” She deployed her rich-hued, earthy instrument to marvelous effect, forging an uncommonly affecting presentation of the opera’s go-to girl.
Jeremy Ovenden’s Illo (Illus), Herc’s son, is got up as a cross between Blue Boy and Buster Brown, and the lyric tenor indeed delivered on the visuals with a boyish, cleanly sung performance. Having admired his Orfeo last season, I still have the feeling that in spite of his eminently pleasing tone, stylistic command, and total commitment, he is not naturally a creature of the stage.
Not so the engaging Tim Mead, a real discovery to me, who did double duty as Paggio (Page) and Ombra di (Ghost of…) Bussiride. His personalized and characterful counter-tenor had the zing of a sassy mezzo, and his high energy portrayal (in a shiny metallic gold and black striped fitted tunic-‘n’-tights) stole many a scene. Topped off with anachronistic horn-rimmed glasses, the delectable Mr. Mead may have been slight of frame, but he dominated the stage whenever he appeared.
Anna Maria Panzarella made a fine impression as Deianira, aka Mrs. Hercules, sumptuously outfitted as she was in colorful period queenly attire. Ms. Panzarella gifted us with a richly detailed and sparkling vocal presence. Marlin Miller’s Licco (Lichas) featured a well-focused tenor in an energetic traversal of a less than interesting role. Veronica Cangemi made a nice contribution as Iole, who also motivates the plot even if she lacks splashy writing, especially scoring with a limpidly voiced prolonged duet with Illo.
Umberto Chiummo (Nettuno), Jeremy Ovenden (Illo)
Umberto Chiummo gave pleasure plying his bass in service of three roles: Nettuno (Neptune), Tevere (The Tiber, as in River), and Ombra di (Ghost of) Eutiro (Iole’s father).
While I have often enjoyed the lovely soprano Wilke te Brummelstroete, she was a bit off form on this date, her slightly diffuse tone (only) occasionally straying a bit from pitch in a dual assignment as La Bellezza (Beauty) and Venere (Venus). Johannette Zomer (Cynthia, Pasitea, Ghost of Queen Clerica) and Mark Tucker (Mercury, Ghost of King Laomedonte) made solid contributions in their small roles.
Musically, the redoubtable Ivor Bolton led another well-prepared, beautifully-paced, yet abundantly spontaneous reading, making the period band respond with well-judged results. I was struck by the variety of Cavalli’s writing, and the remarkably fresh percussive effects. The score may have two or three finale ultimo’s (ultimi?) too many, but this was for me a revelatory musical performance from first rate singers and the masterful Concerto Köln.
Johannette Zomer (Pasitea)
Director David Alden had enough clever ideas for four average productions, and his inspired lunacy (and sensitivity, too) found willing accomplices in scenic designer Paul Steinberg, lighting guru Adam Silverman, and costumer Constance Hoffman (her witty, whimsical, whacked out designs had to have been born in an Amsterdam “coffee” house!) This was a show where most every bit of wholesale “invention” landed.
The opening Chorus of Rivers was visually arresting, the large chorus (excellently schooled by Tim Brown and Martin Wright) in vibrant deep purple satin costumes, cavorting and “swimming” in the “sea” of shaken cloths, surrounding an “island” of a Cardinal (Tiber) in brilliant red.
The underworld scene at Eutiro’s monument is here brilliantly imagined as a riff on the Thriller video with skewed caskets popping open and mummified dancers as graveyard revelers, confronted eventually by the cockeyed red steps of Hades rising from the depths. The earlier similar trap door appearance of Neptune surrounded by fanciful statues of romping silver sea horses was yet more visual eye candy.
The three graces appear revealed as singing heads who pop through advent calendar-like doors in a huge reproduction of …the three graces. The gloriously ethereal music in the “sleep” trio, was visually enhanced by a stage composition built around a snoozing codger in a Once Upon a Mattress style bed. There was even a nod to Flash Gordon, making an appearance as an ersatz Atlas struggling mightily to carry the weighty globe, of which Herc Hogan divests him, carrying it easily and cockily. I am not sure what the huge dancing Betsy-Wetsy baby doll was doing there in the mix but it sure was fun!
Worthy of very special note: Jonathon Lunn’s Puckish choreographic style was sort of, well, Pina-Bausch-meets-Mark-Morris-as-imagined-by-Matthew-Bourne. Quirky, anachronistic and clever as hell. I loved every warped chassé and approximated be-bop hand jive twitch.
I know, gentle reader, that this sounds like it could easily be one of those let’s-throw-a-bunch-of-stuff-together-and-to-hell-with-the piece sort of eclectic grab bag approach that often passes for opera “direction.” It was often busy, yes, but the character relationships, the through-line of the plot, and the essence of the piece were extraordinarily clear.
Wilke te Brummelstroete (Venere), Luca Pisaroni (Ercole)
Still, there is a difference between inventive staging and over-staging and the opening of the second half, while entertaining, up-staged poor Illo pretty badly. I quite loved the jumbo tracked fish, swimming from one wing to the other; and the Page in a sailboat, like the Pussycat caught without the Owl, was a hoot as he was hilariously tossed about in a daffy storm effect.
But through all of this, poor Mr. Ovenden was perched upstage framed by a large hole (suggesting his looking into the lake), and well, although he was pouring his heart and soul into what seemed to be a difficult florid aria, he could have had a sparkler in his teeth and no one would have been paying any attention to him. Still, when he later “jumped” into the lake from on high, it was a wonderful effect to leave him hanging in the air by a wire, as if floating in the water’s current.
That major quibble aside, by opera’s end, when a dazzling electric neon yellow and blue backdrop displayed the rays of a sunburst; and the chorus promenaded in glowing golden yellow satin costumes; and the ebullient dance corps hurdled, bounced on, hopped over, and somersaulted into an over sized bed, I myself felt a celebratory cartwheel inside me just waiting to get out. (Only self-control and journalistic decorum held me in check in the lobby).
Once again, the adventurous Dutch National Opera and its artists made some bold and risky choices. With Ercole Armante, they paid off with dazzling results.
product=yes
producttitle=Francesco Cavalli (1602 1676): Ercole amante
productby=Ercole: Luca Pisaroni; Iole: Veronica Cangemi; Giunone: Anna Bonitatibus: Illo: Jeremy Ovenden: Deianira: Anna Maria Panzarella: Licco: Marlin Miller: Nettuno / Tevere / Ombra di Eutiro: Umberto Chiummo: La Bellezza / Venere: Wilke te Brummelstroete; Cinzia / Pasitea / Ombra di Clerica: Johannette Zomer; Mercurio / Ombra di Laomedonte: Mark Tucker; Paggio / Ombra di Bussiride: Tim Mead. Concerto Köln. Koor van De Nederlandse Opera. Ivor Bolton (cond.). David Alden (regie).
product_id=Above: Luca Pisaroni as Ercole
All photos by Ruth Walz courtesy of De Nederlandse Opera
And if the font were to be copied exactly, the words would be in all capitals, with “intimate” and “great soprano” twice as large as the other words. Make no mistake, Jessye Norman, as presented in this “film by André Heller,” is a larger-than-life figure, with no pun at all intended in regard to her physique. In filmed interviews, with the interviewer only briefly glimpsed at one point, Norman comes off as thoughtful, pretentious, down-to-earth, grandiose, sad, joyful, self-centered, insecure - the list could go on. In the end, your reviewer, after having his patience taxed, found his respect and endearment for the artist enhanced by this often silly but ultimately moving film.
The format is simple. Norman faces the camera, answering an unheard question. Every couple of minutes, the scene shifts to a studio where, in a bewildering array of hairstyles and gowns, Ms. Norman lip-syncs to some of her best recordings, with the sets around her designed by the director and others, including Brian Eno and the wonderfully named Mimmo Paladino. The focus in these filmed, MTV-style interludes remains Ms. Norman, with the studio design mostly consisting of lighting and background projection, usually an abstract pattern that hopefully doesn’t clash too much with whatever outlandish get-up Ms. Norman wears. Ms. Norman emotes energetically, and only for the briefest moments can a viewer notice that her lip movements don’t quite match the vocal production.
The booklet track listing bears titles for the interview segments such as “Childhood,” “Preparation,” and most poignantly, “Loneliness.” Although Ms. Norman does make a point of announcing her inability to understand why anyone should care what consenting adults do in the bedroom, she hasn’t much to say about her own personal life, other than that she has accepted that she will be - or needs to be - alone a great deal of the time. At a few points in the interviews, she grows quite passionate about her frequent disappointment in the professionalism of others, especially unprepared conductors. The fire in her eyes suggests that an unleashed expression of her frustration would be something to behold.
One quote from the director’s booklet essay should serve to establish his point of reference in regards to Ms. Norman: “In her mythical greatness, this prima donna can only be compared of Maria Callas.” Your reviewer assumes that the writer meant nothing ironic in using the word “mythical.”
Fans who wholeheartedly agree with Mr. Heller’s sentiment will cherish every moment of this DVD. But those who will chuckle in the first minutes as Ms. Norman ponders if there is singing on Jupiter should hold on. Listen as the “great soprano” (since so she wishes to be called) talks of her family, racism, and the cost of having a top-class classical singing career. Of course, most everyone can also relish the gorgeous vocalising heard in the musical interludes, not irreparably harmed if seldom enhanced by the studio settings. By the end of the film’s 90 minutes, the sticker’s proclamation of an “intimate” portrait proves accurate. Your reviewer, for one, would hate to have missed the moment when Ms. Norman speaks of her affection for Mr. Bean.
Brava Jessye. Mr. Heller, your mythical greatness can only be compared to Mr. Bean.
Chris Mullins
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Choking Princess Draws Cheers, Robber Gets Greedy: Paris Opera
By Jorg von Uthmann [Bloomberg, 27 January 2009]
Philippe Boesmans’s women lead perilous lives. The heroine of “Julie,” his penultimate opera, seduces her valet and then, disgusted by her faux pas, cuts her own throat. The composer’s new stage work, “Yvonne, Princess of Burgundy,” also ends badly: To the delight of the royal court, the prince’s wife chokes to death on a fishbone.
The San Francisco Opera’s 2009-10 season will inaugurate the tenure of Music Director Nicola Luisotti just at the moment when financial pressures have prompted General Director David Gockley to cut back on the scope and variety of the company’s offerings.
By David Patrick Stearns [Philadelphia Inquirer, 27 January 2009]
Retrenchment is in the air throughout the opera world. And though the Opera Company of Philadelphia’s 2009-10 season, announced yesterday, is no exception, the financial cutbacks it contains are more preemptive than reactive and show few, if any, signs of artistic backpedaling.
Yvonne, princesse de Bourgogne, Paris Opera (Garnier)
By Francis Carlin [Financial Times, 26 January 2009]
Philippe Boesmans’ new opera is a co-production with the Wiener Festwochen and La Monnaie in Brussels but the warm reception the world premiere received in Paris on Saturday suggests it will make it to many more theatres in coming years.
The voice emerges easily, and is
of exceptional beauty from top to bottom, at any size you like, Wagnerian
power in the very grandest houses, light and quick in coloratura filigree or
lieder delicacy as called for. She is also a highly intelligent woman and an
effective actress. Stout in a svelte age, she moves with assurance and
dignity on stage, and she can cut up deliciously in comedies like
Italiana in Algeri and Offenbach’s Grande Duchesse.
She is always conscious of differences of style between Handel and Donizetti
or Broadway and the avant-garde, and she suits her sound to the music on her
plate, light or heavy, intellectual or humorous, baroque or grand operatic or
modern. Sincerity and majesty — or, in comedy, irony — are her
long suits: she creates a sublime Fricka or Handel’s morbid Cornelia or
Poulenc’s Mère Marie or Puccini’s Zia Principessa and wicked Zita
. One longs to hear her Amneris and Dalila and Isabella — roles she has
won kudos for in other cities, but has never sung in New York — not to
mention daydreams of what an Alceste or Fidès or Ortrud she would be.
All of this being so, and the glory of the many times she has thrilled me
in the past, I am puzzled by her beautiful but superficial, unmoving
performance as Gluck’s Orfeo at the Met. Every note was
beautiful but none of it touched the heart, hers or mine — as David
Daniels so unerringly did two years ago. Somehow Daniels found the trembling,
uncertain, bewildered soul at the heart of this desperate lover, humanizing
him, but Blythe makes Orpheus too formal, too rigid — an actor
portraying grief because grief is expected of a widowed hero. Coupled with
James Levine’s rather quick, unvarying tempi — a bit of a
surprise considering his tendency to slow down in Wagner — this was an
unemotional, unfeeling Orfeo.
In startling contrast, Danielle de Niese, whose pretty, tireless soprano
sometimes leaves me cold, projected all the desperation and confusion of
Euridice’s plight without distorting any of its usual beauty. (Heidi
Grant Murphy, as Amor, was a cipher with bad technique.)
I should mention that, like many no doubt, I had been worried about
Blythe’s appearance and movement in some version of the man-in-black
(-with-pointless-guitar) costume worn by Daniels, but here she has been
well-served (and has served herself well): she looked massive in a dignified
and masculine way, like one of our turn-of-the-century presidents, she moves
with the proper gravity. For an opera to be telecast, this sort of thing is
important — but not all-important.
Stephanie Blythe as Orfeo and Heidi
Grant Murphy as Amor with chorus in background
The myth of Orpheus is not a theatrical story — boy meets girl, boy
loses girl, boy has a chance to get her back but blows it. There is very
little for the girl to do, and hardly anything for anyone else: it is
practically a monodrama, though it has never (to my knowledge) been set to
music that way. To the ancients, it was a tale of death and mystical rebirth,
and if you joined the cult of the Orphic Mysteries, you could enter the
Members Only section after death — but that won’t do today: we
need a more universal message, like “Love conquers all,” even
though it clearly doesn’t. (Has anyone you loved come back from the
dead? Was that because you didn’t love them enough? Does anyone dead
come back? Mythologically, Eurydice never did.)
But as Orpheus was the mythic type of the musician, whenever
opera remembers its classical roots (not that they have much to do with what
opera turned into), Orpheus gets updated and some theatrical sense must be
made of his quest. In Offenbach’s operetta (a send-up of Gluck), the
two lovers have irreconcilable differences over his old-fashioned taste in
music. In Sarah Ruhl’s recent play, Eurydice, the girl tricks
Orpheus into looking back because she doesn’t want to rejoin him: she
prefers cozy death to chancy life.
Danielle de Niese as Euridice
When Gluck and his librettist, Calzabigi, approached the subject, in a
self-consciously “reforming” mood, they started out by omitting
“boy meets girl, boy loses girl” — these events have
already occurred at curtain rise. They then expanded Orfeo’s quest to
the Underworld into several great solo, chorus and dance opportunities. Then
came their big alteration of the legend: instead of going so quietly that
Orfeo isn’t sure she’s there, begins to doubt the word of his
gods, and betrays his oath, this Euridice is a nag who never shuts up, and
Orfeo (who is barred, in this version, from telling her why he cannot turn to
look at her), is finally driven to violate his word. Euridice is lost and
Orfeo gets his most famous aria, “Che faro.” This is followed by
alteration two: The gods change their minds and give her back anyway. If you
have read the synopsis before you go in, this will undercut the tragic level
of what has gone before, but it does allow for extended dances of rejoicing
and a happy hymn to triumphant Love for us to hum going home.
I’ll admit I’ve never been entirely happy with any staging
I’ve seen of Gluck’s opera (six and counting) — though from
what I read, the current Viennese one sounds promising, austere and grand.
The opera is so tightly focused on Orfeo’s feelings that there should
be as little opportunity for wandering attention as possible, and I’ve
been most pleased when, for example, the chorus were out of sight, in the
orchestra pit, and dancers mimed their feelings. The Mark Morris staging at
the Met seems mostly to be about Isaac Mizrahi’s costumes (creating far
too much individuation precisely where it was not wanted), so that the
rhythmic gestures of the corps de ballet miming grief and sympathy (and, in
the finale, rejoicing), are distractingly individual, while the hundred
historic “witnesses” of the chorus who look on at this (and who
become without change of costume furies or whatever the libretto needs) seem
a pointless extravagance.
We always knew Blythe could sing the music; she can sing
anything. But the role does not play to her strengths, and I eagerly await
her appearance in something that does.
John Yohalem
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image_description=Stephanie Blythe [Photo by Ken Howard courtesy of The Metropolitan Opera]
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All photos by Ken Howard courtesy of The Metropolitan Opera
Anne Ozorio Interviews Ingo Metzmacher on Die tote Stadt
The production has been heard in Vienna, San Francisco, Barcelona and
Amsterdam. Interestingly, of all the conductors who have participated, Ingo
Metzmacher is most closely associated with modern, avant garde music. What
drew him to Korngold, who has a reputation for romantic lushness and glamor ?
“Because it is a modern opera”, he says, “written on the
edge of modernism”.
Die tote Stadt was a written in the aftermath of the First World
War, when Austria had lost its empire. Korngold’s father, Julius was a
prominent Viennese music critic, so the young composer grew up in circles of
privilege. “Die tote Stadt”, says Metzmacher, “looks back
one more time” on the glorious past, “but at the same time
it’s aware that this will be the last time for looking back”. The
plot is about a man who lives in the past but then makes a decision to go
forward. It is a brilliant evocation of the ‘good old times’ but
you can already feel that change is coming. It’s like an old
photograph. You like to keep it and look at it, but you know that reality is
different. I feel in this piece a kind of ambiguity I like very much. It is
on the step towards a new world, but before going ahead it looks back one
more time. Korngold looks back, excited by the beauty, grandeur and
brightness of the world he knew.”
There are differences between the opera and the novel on which it was
based, Georges Rodenbach’s Bruges la Morte. “In the
book”, Metzmacher adds, “the man really commits murder and goes
mad. But in the opera, it’s just a dream, he wakes up and walks away.
That’s what composers do, they adjust the plot for their needs. The
music is sombre at times, but basically it’s bright, shiny and
optimistic – brilliant, not depressing at all. So let’s be glad
he wrote an opera in this way”. It’s Korngold’s opera,
something new rather than a slavish imitation of the novel. Interestingly,
the novel is about a man dominated by the memory of his dead wife. The
libretto was credited to “Paul Schott”, but was in fact written
jointly by the composer and his father.
Metzmacher conducted this production of Die tote Stadt in
Amsterdam in 2005. “Sometimes,” he says, “I’m drawn
to a piece from the start, but it’s always a good sign when you come
back to something and find more interesting things in it. It’s
ambivalent, ambiguous. I like to think of it as a very beautiful object, very
shiny and precious, but it’s like there are cracks in it, it’s
not whole anymore. It’s something which is still beautiful, but
it’s from the past and there are fine cracks in it. When we look back
on the past, we prefer the good memories. In Germany we say things can be
“too beautiful to be true”. You can feel that in this music, and
I think Korngold used it deliberately for that purpose”. It’s a
striking insight. Luscious as this music is, it’s not a recreation of
past glories as such, but of their memory.
Like the hero Paul, the music moves on. “There are passages in this
piece that are really amazing, really modern in concept. Harmonies and
clashes of keys”. The plot itself is dissonant, for Paul, the hero,
comes to know that he cannot remain in the past, so in many ways Korngold is
taking his cure faithfully from the narrative. So why didn’t the
composer himself move forward to new things ? “It’s a difficult
question”, says Metzmacher. Korngold probably didn’t make up his
mind consciously not to “follow the open road”, as Metzmacher
puts it. “Schoenberg opened a door, but many others didn’t follow
him. So Korngold is in good company.” He was taken out of his
environment by the Nazis and went to Hollywood. “By the time he came
back in the 1950’s, time had moved on and he had lost contact with
developments”.
“You have also to remember that Korngold was a Wunderkind, a child
prodigy. He had an incredible ability to write music, it came so easily to
him. Listen to the piano sonata he wrote when he was 10 or 11 years old.
It’s just unbelievable! A good composer is one who has his own language
which is original and individual. Korngold had his own language, so how could
he have changed it ? It’s his music. I think we should just listen to
the music. It’s pointless to ask why he didn’t write anything
more modern or different. Schoenberg was a different kind of person, he had
to work for what he achieved, so his situation is completely
different”.
When Korngold left Vienna, he went on to a successful career as composer
of film music. Since films had been silent until the end of the 1920’s
music for film was a whole new genre. “Korngold was the vanguard, the
front line, in writing music for film. It’s interesting that so many
men from the Austro-German tradition went to Hollywood. They had to do to
make a living in exile but they made the style”.
Die tote Stadt is hardly “unknown” although
it’s not been fully staged in London before. It was extremely popular
in the 1920’s and 30’s. Some of the songs, like the famous
Glück, das mir verblieb and the Pierrot’s Lied have
been recorded by many singers, from Lotte Lehmann to Renée Fleming. Apart
from the arias, what is most interesting about the opera as music? “The
orchestra love playing it”, says Metzmacher, “even though
it’s quite difficult. I don’t know what’s not to like about
it. From the very first bars, one is won over. It sets the tone immediately.
There are very few pieces which start with this BANG. You hear right from the
beginning what Korngold likes to do.”
“A good opera”, says Metzmacher, “always comes to life
when the specific musical language of the composer meets the core of the
plot. In this case, this composer, who was so brilliant, recreates the music
of the past but makes it in his own language. The libretto is about a man who
lives in the past, in a city that also lives in the past. There are many
different layers of meaning. It’s a bit somber and there’s
struggle but it’s also about seeing the horizon, finding something to
look out for. It’s an existential problem we all face. How much of the
past do we hold on to? How do we overcome the past? How much to lose, how
much to carry on forwards? It’s very interesting, and makes this opera
so special”.
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image_description=Ingo Metzmacher [Photo by Mathias Bothor]
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By Jens F. Laurson, Playbill Arts, 23 January 2009
The composer Hans Pfitzner, born 140 years ago, remains a controversial figure even 60 years after his death. Not his music - an uncontroversially beautiful, high-romantic blend of Schumann and Wagner occasionally reminiscent of Humperdinck, Schoeck, Schreker, and Schmidt - but the political persona.
Somewhere between stubborn, naïve and ignorant, he uttered unambiguously racist phrases, was apologetic of Hitler and blamed everyone but Germany for World War II. He parroted anti-Semitic thoughts yet he went to great lengths to help and save “good Jews” (as he thought of them) like director Otto Ehrhardt, Felix Wolfes (a student of his) and his friend Paul Crossmann for whom he rang up Reinhard Heydrich to save (in vain).
Peter Rose, as Pope Pius IV with Christopher Ventris as Palestrina He tried to ingratiate himself with the Nazi regime but was inconsistent about it and offended more with his arrogance than he pleased with his favors. The composer ended up ignored, if not shunned, by the officialdom of the Third Reich. He dedicated works to Jewish artists like Bruno Walter, Arthur Eloesser and Alma Mahler, yet was capable of writing a cantata to Hans Frank, Governor-General of Occupied Poland.
Thomas Mann, who admired his opera Palestrina (which he attended at its Munich premiere in 1917), thought him an “anti-democratic nationalist,” Hitler spoke of him derisively as a “Jewish rabbi,” and friend Bruno Walter stopped communicating with him when Pfitzner showed himself unrepentant after the war.
We gather that he was difficult to like. Bruno Walter probably said it best when he wrote to his publisher, after Pfitzner’s death: “Have we not found in [Pfitzner’s] personality the strangest mix of true greatness and intolerance that has ever made the life of a musician of such a rank so problematic?”
But the music of Pfitzner is too good to ignore, and in this anniversary year, three German Opera companies staged Pfitzner. Chemnitz tackled the largely forgotten, largely forgettable Die Rose vom Liebesgarten in a very professional staging. The Frankfurt and Munich Operas work on a different scale, of course, and they tackle Pfitzner’s Magnum Opus, Palestrina.
The subject is the 16th century composer Giovanni Pierluigi Palestrina who prevents music being banned from church service at the council of Trent through his ingenious mass, the Missa Papae Marcelli, written under distress, angelic influence and breaking his writer’s block. A sub-plot has his student Silla decide that the old master’s traditional ways are not suited to his creative endeavors and plans to move to that secular sin-city of free roaming artists: Florence.
Christopher Ventris as Palestrina
This would be a fine opportunity to stage the conflict of art and politics and the tension of traditional and modern art in times of renewal. That potential was undoubtedly what fascinated Thomas Mann and Bruno Walter at the premiere. And indeed, it could be terrific sujet, but Pfitzner wastes more opportunities than he takes, and Stückl’s superficial production misses those that are left.
For a theatre director being in charge, there is surprisingly little coordination of the singers’ acting. The monochromatic stage and costumes - black, white, hot pink, and absinthe green - by Stefan Hageneier, are visually appealing at first, but they simplify unduly and become gimmicky by the time the three-and-a-half hours of music conclude.
Stückl, who by his own admission doesn’t much like Palestrina and loathes the libretto in particular, treats the religious subject matter and the Council of Trent - a-historical as Pfitzner may have put it together - as a farce. That tends to compound, not solve, the opera’s inherent weaknesses.
One of the problems of Palestrina is that there is too much text for the music and too little action for the text. The first act, 100 minutes, is overlong and its drama moves tediously. The next act sounds and reads like a secular second coming of Die Meistersinger. Instead of zooming in on the conflict of arts and politics, it is 70 minutes of clerical Barnum & Bailey in robes… at least in this particular staging. The third act, with strong shades of Parsifal, is most satisfying musically and a refreshing thirty minutes long.
Musically, matters are in solid hands with Simone Young, decisively navigating the Bavarian State Orchestra through two acts before losing focus in the third. But one can not help but wonder what might have come had the company managed to make this truly a Munich affair and lure Christian Thielemann - to whom Pfitzner’s idiom speaks so well - into the pit. Troubled operas need all the help they can get and Pfitzner’s music needs great performances to appear great. Merely competent outings smother its potential.
Some singers are outstanding in the otherwise evenly-good Munich cast, most notably the Bernardo Novagerio of John Daszak, whose controlled and comfortable tenor rings with clarity throughout. Christiane Kart brings a much-needed high voice to this opera without female characters, and her Ighino, the son of Palestrina, is bright and strong, with a young and tightly-luscious vibrato anywhere above her weaker low register.
There are many better operas more severely neglected and many worse operas performed more often. It’s good to have Palestrina back in Munich, but Pfitzner ultimately needs a more sympathetic and concentrated treatment to convince those who don’t already believe in the work’s flawed greatness.
[This review originally appeared in Playbill Arts. It is reprinted with permission of the author and Playbill Arts.]
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All photos by Wilfried Hösl courtesy of Bavarian State Opera.
The image of the classical concert hall as a playground for the rich is planted deep in the cultural psyche. When Hollywood filmmakers set a scene at the symphony, twits in evening wear fill the frame, their jaws tight and their noses held high. The monocle returns to fashion for the first time since the death of Erich von Stroheim.
By Pierre Ruhe [The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, 26 January 2009]
In one of those exceptional weekends that are becoming more frequent, two performances showed the best of Atlanta’s classical scene while hinting at our standing in the wider world.
A recording on Columbia from the early 1950s, titled “Of Gods and Demons,” featured London in many of the same selections heard on Pape’s “Gods, Kings & Demons” (the unfortunate ampersand courtesy of Deutsche Grammophon’s graphics department). Sony later released a compilation of that particular London disc with tracks from later ones in their Masterworks series, which has some of the “kings”-related repertoire, though not King Marke’s aria from Tristan und Isolde or King Philip’s from Don Carlo, two of Pape’s great successes, which he includes.
Sooner or later any creditable bass would sing most of this music, but it surely reflects Pape’s confidence at this point of his career for him to welcome direct comparison with the career of an established singer such as London. And this disc supplies ample evidence that Pape’s confidence is well-placed. London possessed a darker instrument, but along with the power, that shading conveyed a heaviness at times. Pape has all the music within his voice, but his instrument moves with greater ease when necessary, with waves of warmth and beauty. The two arias from Anton Rubinstein’s The Demon may well inspire some major company to stage the seldom-seen opera for Pape, whose handsome tone caresses the melodies with remarkable tenderness.
Actually, after the demonic energy in the opening tracks of Gounod, Boito, and Berlioz’s music for Mephistopheles, the recital does tend to slow down into a mode of reflection and dejection. Perhaps in a future recital Pape can find some material that allows him to express even more of his emotional range. Certainly this voice has a sensuality deserving of exposure.
Sebastian Weigle and the Staatskapelle Dresden give first-class support, in an impeccable acoustic that for once doesn’t cede warmth to that of an earlier recording such as London’s.
So Pape’s first solo recital does everything it should: showcase the best qualities of his voice and yet make one eager to hear more, live as well as recorded. Strongly recommended.
By David Patrick Stearns [Philadelphia Inquirer, 26 January 2009]
Seldom do such sprawling operatic components fall together so well as in the Academy of Vocal Arts’ presentation of Ottorino Respighi’s 1934 opera, La Fiamma, which had a rare, gratifying airing Friday at the Kimmel Center.
By Marcus L. Overton [San Diego Union-Tribune, 26 January 2009]
San Diego Opera launched its 44th season Saturday at the Civic Theatre with Giacomo Puccini’s “Tosca,” a fitting salute to one of opera’s most popular composers, just a little more than four weeks after his 150th birthday anniversary on Dec. 22.
A strong non-traditional production should stay true to the spirit of the work, essentially a Mason-influenced entertainment, while refreshing the audience with new perspectives. Unfortunately, Martin Kušej’s 2007 staging for Zürich, with sets by Rolf Glittenberg, represents the worst excesses of so-called “regietheater” (director’s theater). The modern-dress updating and sterile sets (like the lobby of some corporate headquarters) begin to suggest fairly early in the recording that Kušej not only disrespects the work but wants the audience to dislike it as well. Only one character/performer manages to escape the cold and clinical approach of the director to connect to the audience, the irrepressible Papageno, in a star-making turn by Ruben Drole.
Of course, Kušej has pockets-full of ideas to throw around. Tamino and Pamina are a married couple, standing stock still before a white screen during the overture, and then suddenly snatched away and carried off separately as they are about to kiss. Not until the end of the opera does Kušej manage to return to this concept, with a filmed sequence of the couple in a Mercedes, possibly driving off to a honeymoon, when they realize they are submerged in water and have to fight to escape. A statement about the confinement of conventional marriage? Perhaps. But to be welcomed after their rescue by Sarastro, hardly the model for connubial bliss, makes no sense.
In between come various twists on a traditional production. Instead of one goofy looking giant snake chasing Tamino, both he and the chorus writhe on the ground, wrestling with a mass of slimy black reptiles. The gray-paneled walls slide back and forth, creating new spaces that always look the same as the previous one, with more door-slamming than in a bedroom farce. At one point the Queen of the Night enters from inside a refrigerator and leaves the same way. Papageno himself makes his first appearance inside an oversize birdcage. See? Get it? Why, you’re almost as clever as Kušej.
A decent cast gives themselves over to the director’s concept, but what that means for almost all of them is a repression of personality and individual style, which makes for dull singing. Christoph Strehl has sung many a Tamino in recent years. Heard here, his dry voice matches all too well the aridity of the concept. Julia Kleiter’s Pamina doesn’t seem to interest Kušej at all, and her scenes are flatly staged. For Monostatos, Kušej decided to go with the original libretto’s dictates of blackface, surely to make his own point about the work’s proclaimed spirituality. Rudolf Schasching is suitably grotesque in the role. The great Matti Salminen as Sarastro sends Monostatos into exile with a knee to the groin. Sarastro can be, possibly should be, a troubling character, hypocritically condemning “hypocrisy,” but the director’s underlining is not helpful. Elena Mosuc hits all the notes as the Queen of the Night, but she is never especially scary or intimidating. More imposing is the physique of the Speaker, Gabriel Bermúdez, whom Kušej presents shirtless, at a basin washing his underarms. For some reason your reviewer suspects Kušej spent a lot of time at rehearsal here, along with an extended scene of Tamino and Papageno in their underwear.
So lively and energetic is the Papageno of Ruben Drole that he seems to have popped in from another production. Perhaps all of Kušej’s sympathies go to the lower-classes - in one fairly interesting twist, it is a crowd of tired, filthy laborers who appear instead of wild animals in response to the flute. But Drole just seems to be an immensely appealing performer, with a charming manner and a most handsome voice. He is well-matched by the buxom Papagena of Eva Liebau.
In the pit Nikolaus Harnoncourt leads the Zürich Opera forces with his trademark enthusiasms for rhythmic angularity and string playing that decidedly stays away from smoothness or conventional tonal beauty. The result veers from fresh and invigorating to scratchy and irritating.
Deutsche Grammophon includes a 45-minute “Behind the Scenes” bonus feature, which pushes the set to two discs. This feature serves as evidence that Europe has also given itself over to TV hosts of creepy jocularity filmed by manic hand-held camera operators.
In the end, this may well be the Zauberflöte DVD for those who don’t really want a Zauberflöte DVD. Talk about precision marketing.
Chris Mullins
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According to the booklet note (by Warwick Thompson, in full diva-worship mode), Netrebko loved operetta before she came to opera - thus the pieces by Kálmán, Lehár, and Offenbach. In a more somber mode, Grieg’s “Solveigs Sang” turns out to be one of the first classical pieces she learned. Sometimes the concept gets stretched to pieces she simply has a fondness for singing, from some delightfully rare Rimsky-Korsakov to the less delightful and less rare “Pie Jesu” from Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Requiem. We even get a traditional Hebrew lullaby.
With this sort of recital, of lighter musical selections and a rather scatter-shot theme, charm can and probably should carry the day. Undoubtedly, on stage Netrebko would have all the requisite charm and more. As recorded, it comes and goes. Put this down partly to the growth of her voice, which at many times in the recital just seems too large and voluptuous for the music. She does taper it down with success for the Lloyd Webber number; that scaled-back approach would have helped elsewhere as well. The “Depuis le Jour” in particular comes across as too grand. She can get through faster selections, such as the lively “La Tarántula é un bicho mú malo” by Gimenez, but she sounds rushed, even breathy. She may be a mistress of languages; your reviewer wouldn’t dare to judge her Yiddish, for example. Yet the most affecting tracks are the two gorgeous pieces by Rimsky-Korsakov, and perhaps part of the appeal there comes from her natural feel for the words.
Joining her for a pleasant but not very special Les Contes d’Hoffman “Barcarolle” is mezzo Elīna Garanča, and the fine tenor Piotr Beczala steps up for the familiar tune, if not title, of Heuberger’s “Im chambre Separee.” Emmanuel Villaume keeps things tasteful and brightly paced as he leads the Prague Philharmonic. Having at least a couple of the orchestrated selections in their original solo piano arrangements might have given the disc some welcome variety in approach.
This is a star’s recital - she gets to sing what she wants to sing, how she wants to sing it. Truly, Souvenirs is more enjoyable than Netrebko’s first two DG recitals, with their overly familiar repertoire. But as her stardom has grown, so has her voice. Maybe it is time for Netrebko to really let it rip in some challenging pieces that will benefit from the sheer size of her beautiful voice.
Pinkas keeps the energetic sections moving, while finding streaks of drama and unease elsewhere, not unlike that found in the grim tone poems the composer would soon compose, such as “The Noon Witch.”
The tracking of the two sets, helpfully identical, tells at least part of the story, with Chalaba’s earlier performance several minutes shorter on each of the two discs. The only clear advantage one set has over the other is the clear, clean sound of the more modern recording. Pinkas’s darker shadings work well, especially in the second act, set in Hades. But Chalaba’s cast of charismatic singers and the bumptious atmosphere make the opera seem a lot more fun. The singers under Pinkas have fine voices, but without the tang of personality of those in the 1955 recording.
Neither set, unfortunately, can make a case for Kate and the Devil as a lost masterpiece. Dvořák could not really compose dull music. His melodic gift, though strangely better exhibited in his symphonies than his operas, continually contributes to a stream of well-designed and colorfully orchestrated music.
Reading - and probably of necessity re-reading - the plot synopsis suggests the opera’s problem. In essence we have a story of a shrewish woman who manages to trick her way out of hell by intimidating the Devil himself. Mixed in with this are a shepherd and a princess, prompting some slams at the ruling class. It might seem refreshing that there is no real love story, and that even in her third act victory, Kate comes off with a cottage but still no husband, as she had hoped. However, there is no character for an audience to truly sympathize or identify with. It’s rather a shaggy dog story, maybe one that has just come in from the rain…
Even Dvořák’s most successful opera, Rusalka, can’t truly be said to be part of the standard repertoire. But those of us who love the warm-hearted generosity of this composer’s music will want to explore any work of his maturity. Either of the two Supraphon sets of this opera probably belong in such a fan’s collection, but both? Doubtful. Go for modern sound with Pinkas or old-school charm with Chalaba.
Chris Mullins
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The American tenor Jon Villars walked off stage during a public dress rehearsal of the Beethoven opera “Fidelio” at the Canadian Opera Company in Toronto on Wednesday, The Globe and Mail reported.
By Francis Carlin [Financial Times, 25 January 2009]
Ever resourceful, Serge Dorny, the intendant in Lyons, has found another clever theme for his annual opera festival. This year, it’s “Lost Heroes” and features In the Penal Colony (Philip Glass), Le vin herbé (Frank Martin) and The Gambler, Prokofiev’s first complete opera.
By Richard Fairman [Financial Times, 22 January 2009]
If ever there was a time for the son of John Gay to arise, this is it. His successor would surely revel in the era of the credit crunch and turn out a 21st-century hit to match The Beggar’s Opera in its caricaturing of the prime minister of the day and lampooning of greed and corruption.
Music composed by Vincenzo Bellini. Libretto by Felice Romani after
Bertram, ou le Chateau de S.t Aldobrand (1821) by Charles Nodier and
Isidore Justin Severin Taylor, a French adaptation of Bertram; or The
Castle of St. Aldobrand (1816) by Charles Maturin.
First Performance: 27 October 1827, Teatro alla Scala,
Milan.
Principal Roles:
Ernesto, Duke of Caldora
Baritone
Imogene, his wife
Soprano
Gualtiero, former Count of Montalto
Tenor
Itulbo, Gualtiero’s lieutenant
Tenor
Goffredo, a hermit, once tutor to Gualtiero
Bass
Adele, Imogene’s companion
Mezzo-Soprano
Setting: Sicily, 13th Century.
Synopsis:
Act I
On a stormy sea-shore, fisherfolk watch a shipwreck. Among the survivors
is Gualtiero, who is recognised and offered refuge by Goffredo. Gualtiero
tells him that he drew strength from his continuing love for Imogene (“Nel
furor delle tempeste”), although she is now married to Ernesto. She arrives
to offer hospitality to the shipwrecked strangers, but Gualtiero does not
reveal himself, and Imogene assumes from what Itulbo tells her that he is
dead. She tells Adele that she dreamt that he had been killed by her husband
(“Lo sognai ferito, esangue”).
At night, Itulbo warns the strangers not to reveal that they are the
pirates who have been pursued by Ernesto. Meanwhile, Imogene is strangely
fascinated by Goffredo’s guest, who soon reveals to her who he really is.
Gualtiero learns that she had married Ernesto only because he had threatened
her father’s life, and when he sees that she has borne Ernesto’s child, he
starts to think of revenge (“Pietosa al padre”).
Ernesto and his men celebrate victory over the pirates (“Sì, vincemmo”),
but he is annoyed that Imogene is not celebrating, too. He questions Itulbo
(who pretends to be the pirates’ chief) about Gualtiero’s fate, and the act
ends with all the principals expressing their conflicting emotions, though
Goffredo manages to restrain Gualtiero from giving his identity away.
Act II
Adele tells Imogene that Gualtiero wishes to see her before he leaves.
Ernesto accuses Imogene of being unfaithful to him, but she defends herself
by saying that her continuing love for Gualtiero is based solely on her
remembrance of their past encounters. Ernesto is inclined to take her word
for it, but, when he is told that Gualtiero is being sheltered in his own
castle, he is consumed by rage.
Despite Itulbo’s pleas, Gualtiero meets Imogene again before he leaves.
Their acceptance of the situation alternates with passionate declarations of
love, and Ernesto, arriving, conceals himself and overhears the end of their
duet. He is discovered, and exits with Gualtiero, each determined to fight to
the death.
It is Ernesto who is killed. Gualtiero, to the amazement of Ernesto’s
retainers, gives himself up to justice, and, as he is taken away, he prays
that Imogene may forgive him (“Tu vedrai la sventurata”). She appears in a
state of anguish and sees visions of her dead husband and her son (“Col
sorriso d’innocenza ... Oh sole, ti vela di tenebre oscure”). Meanwhile, the
Council of Knights has condemned Gualtiero to death.
image=http://www.operatoday.com/callas_pirata.png
image_description=Il Pirata di Vincenzo Bellini. Nella parte di Imogene. Teatro la Scala, Milano, 19 maggio 1958. Erio Piccagliani fotografo alla Scala di Milano.
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product_by=Adele: Regina Sarfaty; Ernesto: Constantino Ego; Goffredo: Chester Watson; Gualtiero: Pier Miranda Ferraro; Imogene: Maria Callas; Itulbo: Glade Peterson. Orchestra and choir of the American Opera Society. Nicola Rescigno, conducting. Live performance, 27 January 1959, New York.
Is this a company for American singers or American composers? Or
bel canto and Handel rarities? Or neglected twentieth century
masterpieces? Or the urban extension of Glimmerglass? Or outrageous modern
staging experiments?
If this was the end (and we all hope it’s not), they went out with a
major league bang: spectacular singing of an unfamiliar and worthy American
work by an enormous cast, spectacular playing of an intricate and rewarding
score, a joy in performing on all sides, and in hearing it on our part. This
was grand opera excitement at a feverish pitch.
It was certainly an Antony to rank with any — not that
there has been much in the way of competition. (I believe you can count the
number of stagings the work has had on two hands.) Commissioned to open the
new Met in 1966 in the full unflattering light of worldwide publicity,
designed to display the acoustic and scenic glories of the new house,
Antony fell victim to confusion and overweening ambition on nearly
all sides. Zeffirelli’s excessively grandiose production called for
full operational capability of brand new machinery that, predictably,
malfunctioned in every possible way. Rudolf Bing had resolved to present four
new productions in that very first week. Barber’s idiom was troubling
to the conservative Met audience (which had heard Wozzeck and
Peter Grimes and Jenufa, but had not yet taken them to its
heart). The complex orchestration and the choral parts demanded more
rehearsal time than they could possibly get in the confusion of that autumn.
And Barber’s setting of Zeffirelli’s libretto, derived from one
of Shakespeare’s longest and most elaborate tragedies, was anything but
taut. It was a world-famous fiasco, and nearly everyone blamed the least
offending party: the opera itself.
But even shorn of an hour of music in the revision superintended by Barber
himself with Giancarlo Menotti, Antony and Cleopatra is still very
much what it was designed to be at its 1966 premiere: the grandest grand
opera ever composed by an American. Good as it often is, remarkable as it
always is, it cannot become a repertory item because it would fail to make
its point at less than gala pitch. (It would be ideal for summer festival
performance, such as are given by the opera companies of Seattle or San
Francisco.) Lovable and memorable tunes might give us something to hang on to
if the cast is less than top notch (as with, say, Verdi’s Don
Carlos), but this dramatic, declamatory score has few lovable tunes:
even at its grandest, the opera demands concentration of us. Still, with
familiarity, an audience cannot fail to grow for this work, and in fifty
years or so (following the Don Carlos precedent), I foresee
Antony will be so popular there will arise a demand for a return to
the original full-length work. (I want to hear it now.)
Our concentration was amply rewarded at the NYCO/Carnegie Hall
performances thrillingly led by NYCO’s music director, George Manahan.
Subtitles helped us when the chorus was obliged to sing “O Antony,
leave thy lascivious wassails” — as they do, repeatedly, but solo
lines were comprehensible by themselves. The orchestration, which might have
been muddled in a pit, was crystalline and full of intriguing effects. There
was first of all a distinction between scenes, primarily martial in
character, set in Rome or in Roman camps: Trumpets and other brasses sounded
a bit like a Hollywood toga epic. These were contrasted with wonderful
sinuous figures and tinkling percussion for scenes of Egypt and
Cleopatra’s corrupt, intrigue-ridden court. Barber’s Antony and
Cleopatra incarnate these two male and female manners of orchestration and
vocal melody, and their encounter leads inexorably to his destruction.
(Caesar, in contrast, encounters Cleopatra but never ceases to
“orate” with brass support: Love conquers almost all, but Rome
conquers love.)
Especially imaginative was Antony's death scene, when, deceived by a false
report of Cleopatra’s suicide, he orders his valet to kill him, and the
valet kills himself instead: Antony’s fatal resolve emerges over a drum
solo, then a keening melody for s solo flute enters for the interchange
between Antony and the valet (brightly sung by Kevin Massey), and as the
actual suicides approach, cellos and basses pluck the same rhythmic figure as
the drum ... ominous and magical and somehow very Roman in the heroic,
Plutarchian sense.
The enormous cast were strong to the last guardsman. Lauren Flanigan, a
major singing actress who has sometimes had difficulties (as Verdi’s
Lady Macbeth, Strauss’s Christine Storch,
Thomson’s Susan B. Anthony and Barber’s
Vanessa) penetrating a large orchestra in the unfriendly acoustic of
the New York State Theater, had no trouble filling Carnegie Hall in this
soaring, Strauss-like part, and seemed especially to enjoy her whimsical,
flirtatious exchanges with Antony, with the messenger who announces
Antony’s marriage to Octavia, with her ladies in waiting. I could have
used a more voluptuous, insinuating sound for her love music, such as the
young Leontyne Price surely brought to it, but Flanigan was assured and
effective. Her ladies were sung superbly by mezzos on the verge of major
careers: Linda Vlasek Nolan, forthrightly dramatic, and Sandra Piques Eddy,
luscious and dark-hued.
Teddy Tahu Rhodes, whose Met debut last winter as Ned Keene in Peter
Grimes was striking even when surrounded by a huge, excellent cast, was
just as impressive in this Shakespearean colossus of a leading role. If the
City Opera still has its glorious production of Mefistofele, this is
the man to renew it; if it hasn’t, some company should present one. He
has the presence and the range, the power and the legato for it. His Antony
was both leader of men and pensive, even depressed, as he considered the ruin
his passions have led him to in hollow, reflective phrases.
Simon O’Neill, another New Zealander, making his New York debut,
tossed off Caesar’s ungrateful lines as if they were vocalises. Caesar
is a Strauss-tenor sort of role, impossibly high, yet O’Neill sang it
with stylish ease. David Pittsinger, who has been doing accomplished work all
over town for years, and who takes on the Ezio Pinza role in South Pacific
this month, sang an admirable Enobarbus, Antony’s guilt-ridden
confidante. And so it went through role after role — surely many of
these parts would be doubled in an actual repertory performance, but the
company seemed eager to show us just how many terrific young singers they
had. And this was the revised edition of the score, with six roles
omitted!
These performances showed us a company in excellent potential health, and
a score ripe for rediscovery, ready to take its rightful place in the
American repertory.
John Yohalem
image=http://www.operatoday.com/A%26C013.png
image_description=Lauren Flanigan (Cleopatra) [Photo by Carol Rosegg courtesy of New York City Opera]
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product_id=Above: Lauren Flanigan (Cleopatra) [Photo by Carol Rosegg courtesy of New York City Opera]
The Royal Opera’s music director, Antonio Pappano, holds the same post with Italy’s leading symphonic band, the Orchestra dell’ Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia, in Rome.
The mezzo-soprano Vivica Genaux has a fondness for Baroque opera, and more important, a sense of the style and how it can be used. That isn’t just a matter of technique. Knowing how and where to ornament and what kind of sound works best for a Baroque piece is important, but lots of singers are schooled in those things now. Ms. Genaux’s strength is her combination of lively musicianship and the kind of personality that adapts easily and believably to the concerns of the character she is singing, even if she inhabits that character for the space of only a single aria.
Scottish Opera sell-out in St Petersburg hits the high notes
Helen Womack in Moscow, Charlene Sweeney
[Times Online, 16 January 2009]
The performance was a sell-out, the applause was thunderous and the reviews are ecstatic. Scottish Opera’s first production in Russia, with the soprano Anna Netrebko returning to the stage after maternity leave, has been hailed an outstanding success.
Music composed by Vincenzo Bellini (1801–1835). Libretto by Felice
Romani, from Norma ou L’infanticide (1831) by Alexandre Soumet.
First Performance: 26 December 1831, Teatro alla Scala, Milan.
Principal Characters:
Pollione, Proconsole di Roma nelle Gallie
Tenor
Oroveso, capo dei Druidi
Bass
Norma, Druidessa, figlia di Oroveso
Soprano
Adalgisa, giovine ministra del tempio d’Irminsul
Soprano
Clotilde, confidente di Norma
Mezzo-Soprano
Flavio, amico di Pollione
Tenor
Due fanciulli, figli di Norma e di Pollione
Silent roles
Time and Place: Ancient Gaul during the Roman
conquest.
Synopsis:
Act I
In a forest in Gaul, at the time of the Roman conquest, the head of the
Druids, Oroveso, announces to his people that the priestess Norma, his
daughter, is about to reveal the will of the god Irminsul: all are hoping
that the time has come to rebel against their oppressors. Meanwhile the Roman
proconsul Pollione confides to his friend Flavio that he no longer loves
Norma, in spite of the two children she has borne him and who live hidden in
Norma’s house, their existence a secret, but loves Adalgisa, a young
priestess in the temple of Irminsul. Pollione fears Norma’s anger, and
recounts a dream in which she slaughters their children. Rut the sound of the
sacred gong is heard announcing Norma’s arrival, and the two Romans disappear
into the forest. Now all the Druids are gathered, eager to be given the
signal to revolt; but Norma reveals that the time for war has not yet come,
and by the light of the moon she performs the sacred rite of cutting the
mistletoe, invoking peace — a peace that is necessary for her to
consolidate her secret liaison with Pollione. When Adalgisa is left alone she
anguishes over her illicit love; Pollione arrives and eventually persuades
her to follow him to Rome.
In her dwelling Norma looks anxiously at her children: she knows that
Pollione must leave, but she has received no message from him, and is afraid
that he no longer loves her as he once did. Adalgisa arrives, and cannot
conceal that she has betrayed her vocation as a priestess and yielded to
love. Norma understands her and reassures her, and releasing her from her
vows she encourages her to follow the man she loves. But what is his name?
Adalgisa indicates Pollione, who is approaching at that moment. At this
tragic revelation Norma threatens revenge, and Pollione vainly tries to
defend himself. Adalgisa, who knew nothing of Pollione’s former love for
Norma, is deeply distressed, and reassures Norma with generous words that she
will break off all relations with the faithless Roman.
Act II
In her despair, Norma wishes she could kill her children: she is afraid,
they will be turned into slaves in Rome, and also wishes to make Pollione
suffer terribly. But she cannot bring herself to carry out the mad deed. She
calls Adalgisa, and asks her to agree to marry Pollione and to keep the
children with her; but Adalgisa no longer loves the Roman, and undertakes
instead to rekindle his love for Norma. In the forest the warriors are ready
to attack the Romans and kill the proconsul, but Oroveso has to stop them:
Norma continues to remain silent about the decisions of Irminsul.
In the temple of Irminsul Norma learns from her friend Clotilde that
Adalgisa’s attempt has failed, and that Pollione is planning to abduct the
girl. Norma has an overwhelming desire for revenge, and calls all her people
together: it is the signal for war. Pollione is immediately taken prisoner,
guilty of having broken into the cloister of young priestesses. It, is Norma
who will have to sacrifice him, but first she must interrogate him and asks
to be left alone with the guilty man. Norma promises to save Pollione’s life
if he will give up Adalgisa, but Pollione refuses and invites Norma to kill
him, urging her to have, mercy on Adalgisa. Norma summons back her people and
announces that there is another culprit, a priestess who has broken her vows:
after a moment’s hesitation she does not say Adalgisa’s name, but her own.
Only now does Pollione understand the nobility of the woman he has betrayed,
and feels that he loves her again. Norma entrusts her children to her father
Oroveso, who tearfully forgives her, and she serenely mounts the pyre with
Pollione.
product=yes
producttitle=Vincenzo Bellini: Norma
productby=Adalgisa: Ebe Stignani; Clotilde: Rina Cavallari; Flavio: Athos Cesarini; Norma: Maria Callas; Oroveso: Giuseppe Modesti; Pollione: Mario del Monaco. Orchestra e Coro di Roma della RAI. Tullio Serafin, conducting. Live performance, 29 June 1955, Rome.
Ich sage nichts"- das ist vielleicht der entscheidende Satz für das Verständnis dieses Stücks. Der greise König Arkel spricht ihn aus, ziemlich früh im Verlauf der undurchschaubaren Handlung. Er sagt dann zwar noch recht viel, woraus freilich, um Robert Musil zu paraphrasieren, „bemerkenswerterweise nichts hervorgeht". Was sich in den Seelen der Akteure des symbolistischen Dramas „Pelléas und Mélisande“ ereignet, was die vielen Andeutungen und Verschweigungen bedeuten könnten, wir werden es nie erfahren. Und doch hat Maurice Maeterlinck das im Grunde ganz simple Eifersuchtsdrama um eine rätselhafte Frau, die zwischen zwei Halbbrüdern steht, in ein solch kunstvolles Geflecht von nur schemenhaft angedeuteten Beziehungen, Abhängigkeiten und Sehnsüchten eingesponnen, dass es die Zuschauer seit mehr als 100 Jahren auf unerklärliche Weise zu fesseln vermag.
New York City Opera Appoints George Steel As General Manager and Artistic Director
New York, NY, Jan. 14, 2009 - The Board of Directors of New York City Opera has announced the appointment of George Steel as the company’s new General Manager and Artistic Director. Mr. Steel is expected to assume his responsibilities as of February 1, 2009.
Perhaps casting the singers poses problems, or the libretto is weak, or the whole style outdated. The oddity, however, pops up out of nowhere and the general response is, “Why?”
Pietro Mascagni’s Zanetto falls somewhere in between. At only about 40 minutes, the neglect of this work is no mystery. Some of the music is quite attractive, but the story would need some filing in to be called a sketch.
In Florence Sylvia, a courtesan of some years, steps out onto her balcony to sing of her boredom with life and love. A young minstrel stops below and sings a paean to love. Intrigued and attracted, Sylvia descends to chat the youth up; he tells her that he has heard that the beautiful courtesan Sylvia lives nearby. She realizes she has one more chance at love, but the boy’s idealized vision of herself prompts her to tell him to look elsewhere for his Sylvia, and as he wanders off, minstrelling away, she sheds a few tears of amorous regret.
Peter Tiboris, conducting the Bohuslav Martinú Philharmonic, selected a choral version of the prelude Mascagni composed for the opera. Three minutes of wordless beauty, this music promises more riches than the rest of the opera actually provides. The orchestral version of the prelude Mascagni later arranged comes after the opera on the disc. In between, Sylvia, a soprano, and Zanetto, a mezzo pants-role, basically exchange arias for 30 minutes. All of this music is pleasant without being especially memorable. If Zanetto’s music comes off better, probably the credit goes to Jennifer Larmore’s handsome tone and restrained characterization. Unfortunately, soprano Eilana Lappalainen has one of those large, acidic voices that can be entertaining live but that record very poorly indeed. Sylvia’s music suffers as a result.
The disc reaches 50 minutes by including the luscious intermezzo from L’amico Fritz and the umpteenth run-through of that from Cavalleria rusticana.
Perhaps another recording with a more appealing soprano would push Zanetto firmly into the “rarity” column.
I doubt it, nor
should it. Oddly, Lewis’s name and history have surfaced lately due it
seems in some measure to the success of Renée Fleming in Thaïs at
the Metropolitan Opera. Not that Ms. Lewis ever sang that virtuoso role, but
in the 1920s she made recordings of a solo soprano version of the so-called
Meditation from the Massenet opera that was so successful it was recorded
twice by Lewis, 1923 and 1927, and people are still making reference to
it.
This has come about because the wizardly restorer of old recordings, Ward
Marston of Philadelphia, has gone to the trouble to revive and issue, quite
successfully, all known Lewis recordings, both acoustic and electric,
including two dozen songs transcribed in studios for radio broadcast —
these from around 1937, more or less the last moment in Lewis’s
troubled career, yet a time when she was still touring in Europe, even
singing song recitals at the Salle Gaveau in Paris.
Rose Publishing in Little Rock, Arkansas, the state of Lewis’s birth
in 1897, has issued Mary Lewis, the Golden Haired Beauty With the Golden
Voice, by Alice Fitch Zeman, a so-so, home-town-girl biographical
run-through. The author seemingly is not much conversant with the worlds of
classical singing or opera, and her book seems written to a somewhat lower
level of musical awareness than its subject might suggest. Zeman offers a
cogent chronology of Lewis and her turbulent life and brief singing career,
however, with fair documentation and notes. So, with a book, a record and
chat on the web — what more is needed for a career to be revived?
Perhaps an article in OperaToday?
Let’s give it a try. Lewis’s life is, sadly, that of a clichéd
B-grade movie, and I don’t mean that disrespectfully, for she made a
game try and it clearly was no easy path. She was born in poverty in
Arkansas, her parentage not clearly attested, and badly neglected as a child.
Matters improved when a Christian minister’s family took her in, and
later when older relatives took an interest in her. Mary managed to get some
high-school education, all that was expected for a girl of her station in
those times, but her life was haphazard and she ran away with a theatrical
troupe headed through Canada to California. By the early 1920s she was in New
York City, receiving some musical training and found herself a star of the
Ziegfeld Follies of 1921 and 1922. Lewis was unusually beautiful and
charming, in spite of all. She is constantly referred to as “golden
haired” in a time when that was a sure sign of favor, and the many
photographs in Zeman’s book often show her as a beauty. During two busy
seasons with Ziegfeld, Lewis was well paid and decided to try out for grand
opera, so undertook serious vocal training — with a modest measure of
success. I suspect that training managed to define her issues, without really
resolving them. Nevertheless, she auditioned forMet Opera director Giulio
Gatti-Casazza in 1923, and he sent her off to Europe for study and
experience, to pursue what she called “my operatic chimera.” She
auditioned at Paris and Vienna and soon was singing in those cities as well
as Bratislava and London. In 1924 she took part in and recorded Hugh the
Drover, in the premiere of Vaughan Williams’ opera. On the
continent she was singing big roles such as Gilda — in her
mid-twenties, on precious little vocal training and technique.
Mary Lewis
The 1920s was the decade when Gatti-Casazza and the Met were making an
effort to create American stars in the wake of the Great War and a short
supply of saleable names for the operatic stage to replace retiring Europeans
such as Caruso, Scotti and Destinn. At the same time, there was something of
a push for nationalization of operatic repertory on American subjects
(Merrymount of Deems Taylor is one of the more successful examples),
which would become American casts. Unfortunately, an important lot of fine
native vocalists, Nordica, Eames, Easton, Farrar, Mason and others had nearly
all gone.
The pioneering glamour girl and diva, Geraldine Farrar a true national
operatic, movie and concert superstar, by 1922 was hanging it up — so
it was time for a new generation of Americans. New York-born Rosa Ponselle,
far too young and under-seasoned for the big time, soon burst upon the
Metropolitan with historic success and joined major established figures
(Jeritza, Galli-Curci Gigli), and new Americans such as the young California
baritone, Lawrence Tibbett, in dominating the Met stage. In the same period,
in 1926, a young and unready soprano from Missouri, Marion Talley, zoomed
into the galaxy of Met stars, as did Grace Moore of Tennessee in 1928 (who
lasted longer as we shall see). Mary Lewis, the most beautiful and stage
worthy of them all, most observers agreed, also debuted in 1926, after a
whirlwind few years of training and singing in Europe, but was finished after
1930, leaving a record of only 25 performances, none distinguished. By 1929
Talley was gone, by 1933 Moore had left the Met to revisit show biz and
Hollywood. By contrast, in 1931 Lily Pons, the chic French coloratura assumed
stardom that lasted for three decades at the Met. What was going on here?
It was exactly what you expected: under-prepared young singers doing too
much too soon, a thrice-familiar story unto this day. After a few seasons,
Ponselle (who had by far the most beautiful and important voice of the lot),
began to encounter vocal limitations and loss of confidence. In little more
than a decade, she slowly cut back, her final Met appearances made in 1936.
Moore returned to opera in the mid-1930s, for sporadic performances until
1946. But her vocal history was spotty. “When everything went
right,” as she said, she could turn in a reasonable Mimi or Louise
— though her top voice was rarely in generous supply. Moore became a
glamorous movie figure and international socialite, limiting her operatic
performances to a few roles and only occasional concert appearances. She died
in an air crash in 1947.
Marian Talley simply burned out from over-exposure and inadequate
training, as did Lewis, who had to be taken off stage as Micaela in
Carmen as she was too inebriated to continue. Seemingly alcoholism
figured, off and on, in her troubled career. A couple of bad marriages did
not help Lewis, but in 1931 she married a Standard Oil shipping magnate and
ageing stage door johnny, Robert Hague, and took up posh living in the new
Ritz Tower on Manhattan’s East Side. Aside from some recital and
concert tours, and extended visits to Europe where she was popular,
Lewis’s career devolved into that of a radio singer, including a
successful nightclub appearance, while her status as a New York City society
hostess blossomed in her role as the fashionable Mrs. Robert Hague.
In a bizarre turn of events, as the 1930s rolled by Lewis began to suffer
increasing ill-health, never effectively diagnosed or treated. Later
speculation focused on her appearance in 1922 in the Ziegfeld Follies in a
radium decorated costume that literally glowed in the dark as theatre lights
were dimmed. While this was a neat theatrical trick, it probably cost Lewis
her life. Mary Lewis died of what is now seen as radiation sickness. She had
not sung opera for ten years.
Ward Marston’s two-CD set of Lewis’s recordings probably does
more than Zeman’s book to tell the real Mary Lewis story. Listening to
her sing operatic arias it is clear she was inadequate as both technician and
musician for major classical singing. Her beautiful youth carried her for a
time, but as the voice never caught hold and personal difficulties
multiplied, her vocal career declined. While it was sad, her departure was not a great loss to the world of musical arts, as her records now show. At
best, the Lewis voice was a mildly pleasant if thin lyric soprano, of
adequate range, but not often well handled, and her lower register remarkably
ill-developed. The famous, twice-recorded Thaïs selection we hear so
much about is plain awful.
Lewis’s French diction is wanting, musicality is minimal, tonal
quality is inconsistent, there are mistakes in phrasing, errors in notes, and
climactic tones are driven, suggesting that by age-30 when the electrical
recording of the Thaïs finale was made, Lewis’s voice was already
troubled. A decade later, 1937, radio studio transcriptions of various
American and European art songs show her more favorably and suggest the
musical stage might have been her real home. But even that is in doubt. As in
her childhood, maybe Mary Lewis did not really have a home. In Zeman’s
book, there are the usual scenes of triumphant returns to Arkansas,
residencies in Europe singing in Paris and other capitals where her American
beauty and glamour were appreciated, if not so much her artistry. But
attempts at movie stardom failed. Marriage to the older Mr. Hague ended in
separation in 1937; he died the next year. A few years later Lewis’s
illness carried her away, at a New York hospital, December 31, 1941. A Joan
Crawford movie, anyone? Bless Mary’s sad memory, at least she had some
happy episodes — as many as her nature and times seemed to allow. Lewis
was always star-crossed, and was representative of her generation of aspiring
but flawed young American opera sopranos.
And so it went for the careers of these and other second generation
American divas — second to the rigorously trained bel canto singers
Eames, Nordica, Homer and such. By 1940 a new group of American opera singers
with names like Swarthout, Traubel, Steber, Crooks, Peerce, Warren, Kirsten,
J. C. Thomas, Kullmann and many more was taking hold, and they proved in
every way better prepared to endure and grace their art. Like so much of the
1920s the illusion of success proved fast fleeting.
image=http://www.operatoday.com/Mary_Lewis_Marston.png
image_description=Mary Lewis — The Golden Haired Soprano
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product_title=Mary Lewis — The Golden Haired Soprano
product_by=Mary Lewis, soprano.
product_id=Marston 52047 [2CDs]
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His legacy includes opera films, which have just been restored and
released as a set, which allows Felsenstein’s work to be seen
afresh. His personal touches, from broad concepts to subtle details, reveal a
sensitivity to opera as an art form, as well as the nature of specific
works.
Walter Felsenstein (1901-1975) was the founder and, for years, director or
the Komische Oper Berlin, one of the premiere ensembles of the former East
Berlin. In his long career he was responsible for almost 200 opera
productions and also left a legacy of seven opera films, which are now
available on DVD in a single set. From his first opera film, a feature
release of Beethoven’s Fidelio from 1956 to his last
effort in this genre, a film of a staged version of Mozart’s
Die Hochzeit des Figaro, the seven works serve as testimony of
Felsenstein’s craft and set him alongside such outstanding
directors of opera on film as Rolf Liebermann. (Liebermann’s tenure
with the Hamburg Opera, from 1959 to 1973, seem to parallel
Felsenstein’s years with the Komische Oper in Berlin.) With the
release of this set of all the operas, including other documentary footage,
the Estate of Walter Felsenstein makes the director’s efforts
available to a wide audience.
Felsenstein did not treat each opera the same way, but approached each one
individually. He used, for example, the medium of the feature film for
Fidelio and arrived at a visual and dramatic interpretation of the
work that differs from some of the recent DVDs of stage productions of the
opera. Using techniques reminiscent of Sergei Eisenstein in Alexander
Nevsky and, to a degree, that of his contemporary Vera Stroyeva whose
film of Boris Godunov was released around the same time, Felsenstein
freely used visual images and music to convey the sense of the text, as
occurs in Marzellina’s first-act aria. Such imagery is important to
connoting mood at the climax of the opera, where the forces of nature play a
role in Felsenstein’s conception of the work, with storm and
sunshine provide one level of interpretation. Moving away from the opposition
of darkness and light, Felsenstein used of nighttime scenery for the
celebration of Leonore’s reunion with Florestan, with candle-lit
crowd scenes and a bonfire going a bit beyond the sometimes simpler
depictions of the festivities that occur when the opera is presented on
stage. The medium of film also allowed Felsenstein to make the first-act
march of the prisoners into light a more important moment in the work, as he
almost loses the previously confined men the garden near the citadel to
reflect their longing for the light of day and the need to be in free air.
This staging makes Pizarro’s concern for reining in the prisoners
more understandable then when this scene receives a more prosaic treatment in
the foursquare space of a conventional opera stage.
Other touches are worth seeing, such as the moment Leonore (as Fidelio)
looks into a mirror and sees beyond her disguise to reveal her feminine
image, an element which is inferred in the text, but never reveal to theater
audiences until climactic scene in Florestan’s cell. This cinematic
trick is tantamount to a musical quotation, which can carry a great deal of
meaning within a relatively short time. These and other aspects of the
production demonstrate Felsenstein’s deep knowledge of opera, which
was part of his professional life since the 1930s. After all, Felsenstein had
been involved with productions at the Salzburg Festival and elsewhere in
Europe, which gave him the background to support his novel effort at making a
film of the opera Fidelio.
As to the musical content of the film, the nature of the singers involved
bears attention. The roles of Marzellina and Fidelio in this production
involve women with similar voice types, and this differs from the modern
preference for more distinctive voice types. The full-voiced Florestan of Richard Holm is a welcome sound, which works well in conveying the musical line. With
Pizzaro, the bass-baritone timbre of Heinz Rehfuß [acted by Hannes Schiel]
brings a sinister note to the role, which is underscored by his physical
presence - while menacing, it is by no means a caricature of the stage
villain. His voice is similar to that of Rocco, rather than the sometimes
darker voice type that has since come to be part of modern productions.
Some similar comparisons may be made with Felsenstein’s film of
Don Giovanni, which dates from 1966, a decade after
Fidelio. This is a filmed opera, rather than a feature film based on
the opera, and reflects a particular staging of Mozart’s opera.
Despite the colorful locations that are found in the libretto of this opera,
Felsenstein chose to use a more conventional stage production of Don
Giovanni for this film. Even within such an artistic self-restriction,
Felsenstein brought his own genius to the result in a film that is as strong
dramatically as it is musically. The acting itself stands apart from various
other stagings of the opera because of the director’s emphasis on
the interactions between characters that often suggest the intimacy of a
drama. Through his efforts in filming this opera, Felsenstein does not
minimize music in this film but rather intensifies it. The opening scene is
quite intense because it is suggests that work is opening in the middle of
action already set in motion, and as such the audience must determine what
has happened in order to understanding what is occurring on stage. With the
interaction between Don Giovanni and the Commendatore, the fight starts as
something in which the Don has engaged before, and he is noticeably surprised
when his parry wounds the older man fatally. The shots of Don
Giovanni’s facial expression are particularly effective and, at a
time when opera on film most often trained cameras toward a stage, reveal the
multiple cameras Felsenstein used to create his finely honed result.
Even though it involved the traditional stage, Felsenstein used the camera
to take the audience beyond the footlights through the angles and viewpoints
that move inside the work. In the mid- 1960s, when Felsenstein made this
film, televised opera usually involved long shots of the stage, and if the
close-ups occurred, they sometimes shows imperfections in the faces of the
singer. This is not the case in this effort, which resembles more a feature
film. In the title role, György Melis offers a convincing characterization
through his singing and acting, which has a parallel in the casting of Anny
Schlemm in the role of Donna Elvira. As with other successful productions of
this opera, those two principals work well together, but they are not alone,
as the ensembles help to shape Felsenstein’s conception of Don
Giovanni Through the lens, he made this work come alive to reveal the
various personal relationships at the core of the quintessential tragicomedy
by Mozart.
While these two films, among several others, are in black and white,
Felsenstein also used color for several operas. Verdi’s
Othello, which he released in 1969, just a few years after Don
Giovanni, is characterized by the bold colors that help to define the
work. Filmed on a studio stage, like Don Giovanni, Othello
benefits from multiple camera that allow for a variety of camera angles.
Felsenstein created a powerful effect in the opening scene of
Othello, which include some well-placed close-ups that bring out the
tension in the scene not only through their facial expressions, but because
they delay the entrance of the title character. In Felsenstein’s
hand, the interplay between Iago and Rodrigo is also more intense because the
audience is not viewing their exchange a distance from the stage. Rather, the
visual proximity underscores the drama and, as a result, intensifies the
music. This production is reminiscent of a quite intense presentation of
Verdi’s Macbeth a decade later at the Deutsche Oper
Berlin, which brought out the interplay between the principals in a similar
way. Yet Felsenstein’s film of Othello benefits from the
perspective of the camera that guides the viewer into the
director’s vision of the work.
In a similar way the latest opera in the set, the one of
Mozart’s Hochzeit des Figaro, shows Felsenstein making the
most of the stage in a production which benefits from a sensitive combination
of traditional and post-modern elements. As with other operas, like Don
Giovanni, Felsenstein shows the conductor and the orchestra in the pit
for Die Hochzeit des Figaro, and this reminds the viewer of the live
quality of the film. This lens takes the viewer closer into a nicely detailed
production that could not be appreciated as well from the distance of a seat
in the audience. Yet as the production moves along, the somewhat elaborate
sets open up to a more representational set. Where Susanna and
Figaro’s opening scene was set in an appointed room, the walls open
us in later scenes, to allow the actors to move more freely on the stage, as
occurs in the same act, when Cherubino hides in Susanna’s room. Yet
in the second act, Felsenstein used a single wall to suggest the larger
structure in which the performers interact, and this effect, while subtle,
also allows the score to emerge clearly and serve to propel the drama.
Such an effect is wholly in Felsenstein’s aesthetic. The
comments of Jens Neubert, quoted in the booklet that accompanies the DVD set,
are particularly apt: “In his opera films Walter Felsenstein aimed
to establish singing and the singing performer as a natural phenomenon who
should never appear strange in the eyes of the audience. . . . With his opera
films he intended to create a new popular genre by suing the experimental
tools of his time in his theatrical-interpretation.” In many ways
Felsenstein succeeded in ways that are still finding their way into modern
broadcasts of opera. The use of the camera on stage is an element that
Felsenstein used to bring the audience into the drama, and it introduces a
sense of intimacy that is not always possible on stage, even though it is
implicit in the score. The camera angles that Felsenstein used made the
exchanges between the characters realistic without introducing details not in
the score, which occur in some of the re-thought conceptions of opera that
have been produced in recent decades. In this sense Felsenstein deserves
attention for the way he enlivened as familiar a work as Don
Giovanni without resorting to artifice, and those unfamiliar with his
work might want to start with this opera.
One of the surprising films in this set is Felsenstein’s film of
Janácek’s Cunning Little Vixen, which dates from
1965. Through his use of oversized sets, including some impressively enormous
plants, he created images that fit the work aptly. More than that, the acting
conveys the animal world well, with the title character embodying the
characteristics of the fox, yet sometimes moving into the human world, as
found in the close-ups of her face and eyes. Possible only in film, the
images sometimes blur from the costumed animal characters to human ones, with
smooth visual transformations fitting the transitions in the score. A
difficult opera to find on DVD, this black-and-white production from the
mid-1960s is engaging and shows Felsenstein at one of his most imagination
moments.
In a similar way, the charming production of Offenbach’s
Contes d’Hoffmann in German as Die Erzählungen von
Hoffmann, which was released in 1970 is an inspired conception of the
opera. Within the framework that Felsenstein conceived for this production,
the work holds together well, not only through his characterization of
Niklaus, but through the vivid images that are part of each scene. The
meticulously decorated sets used in this opera well in this film, which is
restored well and reflects the details quite clearly. The tenor Hanns Nocker who plays Hoffmann stands out for the ease with which he has projected his character and the corresponding musical line.
Part of Felsenstein’s success also resides in his use of the
vernacular, with German as the language of each of the films. Those familiar
with Italian for Mozart’s Da-Ponte operas and Verdi’s
Othello and French for Offenbach, especially the well-known
Contes d’Hoffmann, may find this initially jarring, but
each cast delivers the text facilely. In some ways the sung translation of
The Cunning Little Vixen makes the work more accessible for those
who may be more familiar with German than Czech. Nevertheless, the DVDs
include subtitles for each work in English, French, Spanish, and, of course,
German.
In presenting these seven films in this convenient set, the Felsenstein
Archive also makes available background material and some historic footage.
The second disc of Othello includes a presentation of
Felsenstein’s working notes, as well as an interview with the
director. With Ritter Blaubart, the materials move logically from text to
graphics and, eventually, to footages of a rehearsal of the staged version of
that work. Materials like these are found throughout the set, and also
include some historic films from Pariser-Leben (1945); Die
Fledermaus (1947); Die Kluge (1948); Orpheus in der
Unterwelt (1948); and Carmen (1949). Such materials augment the
solid information found in the detailed booklets that are included with each
film.
This set not only preserves the groundbreaking work of Walter Felsenstein
in filming opera, but also makes it available dynamically through the medium
of DVD. The restoration involved with the creation of this set, an element
documented in the accompanying materials, contributes to the overall effect.
With the availability of this set, those interested in opera film have a
resource that is essential to understand the technical and artistic
accomplishments of one of its more creative artists. Arthaus has done a fine
service to opera by making these films available a such of such fine quality
and thoughtful presentation.
Beethoven: Fidelio (1956) Janáček: The Cunning Little Vixen (1965) Mozart: Don Giovanni (1966) Verdi: Otello (1969) Offenbach: Les contes d'Hoffmann (The Tales of Hoffmann) (1970) Offenbach: Barbe-bleu (Bluebeard) (1973) Mozart: Le Nozze di Figaro (The Marriage of Figaro) (1975-76)
product_by=Performers: Magda László, Kurt Equiluz, Richard Holm, Heinz Rehfuß, Sonja Schöner, Georg Wieter, Ruth Schob-Lipka, Irmgard Arnold, Christel Oelhmann, Werner Enders, Rudolf Asmus, Herbert Rossler, Anny Schlemm, Eva Maria Baum, Klara Barlow, Fritz Hübner, György Melis, Hanna Schmoock, Peter Seufert, Hans-Otto Rogge, Hans Günther Nöcker, Vladimir Bauer, Erich Blasberg, Uwe Kreyssig, Alfred Wroblewski, Melitta Muszely, Sylvia Kuziemski, Horst-Dieter Kaschel, Heinz Kogel, Ingrid Czerny, Helmut Polze, Ute Trekel-Burckhardt, Barbara Sternberger, József Dene, Helmut Volker, Magdalena Falewicz, Ursula Reinhardt-Kiss.
Conductors: Fritz Lehmann, Václav Neumann, Zdeněk Košler, Kurt Masur, Karl-Fritz Voigtmann, and Géza Oberfrank.
Orchestras: Vienna Symphony Orchestra, Berlin Comic Opera Orchestra.
product_id=Arthaus Musik 101305 [12 DVDs]
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Bernarda Fink, known for fine work in recordings of Händel’s operas conducted by René Jacobs, has also recorded some of Schubert’s Lieder with Gerold Huber, piano. Yet Fink’s recording of Lieder by Dvorák addresses a longstanding need in the Romantic repertoire in literature that seems suited well to her voice.
This recording spans Lieder from the entirety of Dvorák’s career, including the Pisně, Op. 2, Pisně z rukopisu Královédvorského, Op. 7, Cigánské melodie, Op. 55, V národnim tónu, Op. 73, Pisně, Op. 82, Pisně Milostné, Op. 83, and Pisně na slova Elišky Krásnohorské (without Opus number). This selection makes available approximately a third of the 93 Lieder that Dvorák composed, Of these works, the mature set of love songs, Pisně Milostné, Op. 83, offer a fine introduction to Dvorák’s Lieder. The third song, “Kol domu se ted’ potácim” (“I wander past the nearby house”) captures some of the lyricism associated with the composer and, at the same time, has an accompaniment that reflects the motion found in Dvorák’s popular Slavonic Dances and other popular works, and Fink delivers the vocal line sensitively, and Vignoles provides a solid accompaniment. Almost familiar sounding, this song is typical of Dvorák’s style and brings to mind the echoes of folksong that are part of some of Brahms’s contributions to the genre.
Such resemblances occur throughout Dvorák’s songs, which also reflect the modal inflections characteristic of his style. While not overtly imitating folksong, as occurs more often with Mahler, Dvorák makes use of such a stylistic element to underscore his text, which is presented here in Czech, with translations in German, French, and English in parallel columns in the neat booklet bound with the recording. In those works designated as related to folk music, such as V národnim tónu, Op. 73, Dvorák evokes the idiom subtly with conventional gestures like the triadic vocal line of the second song in the set “Žalo dievča” or the third with its inventive accompaniment. In his hands, though, such elements are not mere artifice, but woven into the structure of the music and not merely treated as an additive. Fink’s performance brings out the integrity implicit in this and other songs by Dvorák.
Such elements are more pronounced in his Cigánské melodie, Op. 55, which nominally evoke the Gypsy style. The first of the latter set (“Má piseň zas mi láskou zni,” a hymn of love, has all the intensity of an aria from one of Dvorák’s operas and demonstrate’s his fine sense of reinforcing the mood with the accompaniment. This set also includes familiar music by Dvorák, with the fourth piece being the well-known “Songs my mother taught me” (“Když mne stará marka zpivat učívala”), which Fink delivers earnestly. The other songs exhibit the exoticism of the Gypsy style through the rhythmically inventive accompaniments that suggest a dance-like response to the sung text.
In this recording Bernarda Fink makes an audible case for these excellent Lieder through her sensitive interpretation of them. The pieces she selected fit her voice well, and her sometimes understated performances allow Fink to turn phrases neatly. At the same time, her enunciation of Czech is clear and idiomatic, with accents fitting nicely into the music and phrases aptly stated. Beyond her technical finesse in these pieces, Fink’s intensity contributes to the overall quality of the recording, which deserves attention by anyone interested in Dvorák’s music.
Roger Vignoles brings to the recording his mastery of the accompaniments to create with Fink a seamless ensemble. Prominent when he needs to be and reticent where appropriate, Vignoles brings a consistent support to the musical content of the songs that transcends the technical divisions between voice and piano. Together, Fink and Vignoles achieve a balance to which some aspire and few achieve so well.
Music composed by Gaetano Donizetti. Libretto by Salvadore Cammarano after
Walter Scott’s novel The Bride of Lammermoor (1819).
First Performance: 26 September 1835, Teatro di San
Carlo, Naples.
Principal Roles:
Lucia
Soprano
Enrico Ashton, Laird of Lammermoor, Lucia’s brother
Baritone
Edgardo, Laird of Ravenswood
Tenor
Lord Arturo Bucklaw, Lucia’s bridegroom
Tenor
Raimondo Bidebent, a Calvinist chaplain
Bass
Alisa, Lucia’s companion
Mezzo-Soprano
Normanno, huntsman, a retainer of Enrico
Tenor
Setting: Ravenswood Castle, Scotland, during the reign of
Queen Anne (1702-1714).
Synopsis:
Act I
Scene 1. The entrance hall of Ravenswood Castle
Normanno urges the servants to scour the grounds for an intruder. Enrico
is worried because his sister Lucia refuses to marry Arturo, an alliance
which would save Enrico from the consequences of having been on the losing
side in a recent uprising.
Raimondo reminds him that Lucia has not recovered from the grief of her
mother’s death and is not yet ready for love, but Normanno claims that Lucia
is in love - with a man who had saved her from a wild bull, none other than
Enrico’s mortal enemy, Edgardo. Enrico’s rage is exacerbated by the failure
of the retainers to capture the intruder, Edgardo.
Scene 2. The castle grounds
As Lucia and Alisa wait for Edgardo by a ruined fountain, Lucia says that
she has seen the ghost of the fountain, a lady killed by her jealous lover,
an earlier Ravenswood.
Edgardo announces that he is leaving at once for France on State business.
Lucia refuses his request to tell Enrico of their love, rightly fearing his
bitter hatred of Edgardo; and Edgardo reminds her that although he has
neglected for her sake his oath to avenge his father’s death on her brother,
the oath still stands. She calms him and they swear eternal fidelity and
exchange rings.
Act II
Scene 1. A room in the castle
Normanno tells Enrico of the success of his scheme to intercept all
letters between Lucia and Edgardo, now some months absent in France. Even
though the wedding guests are already assembling, Enrico has yet to obtain
Lucia’s consent to the marriage, but he has a forged letter which he hopes
will convince her that Edgardo plans to marry another. When she tells him
that her faith is pledged to Edgardo, he overwhelms her with the letter and
reminds her that only Arturo can save him from ruin. Raimondo, who has sent
letters to Edgardo on Lucia’s behalf, tells her that there has been no answer
and advises her to sacrifice herself for her brother.
Scene 2. The great hall of the castle
The wedding is about to be solemnised. Enrico explains Lucia’s pallor and
listlessness to Arturo as symptoms of her mourning for her mother. No sooner
has Lucia signed the contract than Edgardo bursts in. He claims Lucia, but
Raimondo shows him the contract. He throws the ring she has given him at her
and demands his in return and leaves, cursing her faithlessness.
Act III
Scene 1. The tower of Wolf’s Crag
In a raging storm Enrico comes to Edgardo’s home to challenge him to a
duel, taunting him with the reminder that Lucia now belongs to another. They
agree to fight at dawn near the tombs of the Ravenswoods.
Scene 2. The great hall of Ravenswood Castle
The rejoicing of the wedding guests is interrupted by Raimondo, bearing
the news that Lucia has gone mad and killed Arturo. Covered in blood, she
enters, imagining that she is about to be married to Edgardo. Enrico’s
reproaches turn to remorse when he realises her state. Her wandering mind
becomes more disturbed as she remembers Edgardo’s anger, and she
collapses.
Scene 3. By the tombs of the Ravenswoods
Waiting for dawn by the tombs of his ancestors, Edgardo thinks bitterly of
Lucia’s apparent faithlessness. Tidings of her imminent death are followed by
the death knell. He realises that he has misjudged her and stabs himself,
hoping to join her in death.
image=http://www.operatoday.com/lucia_di_lammermoor%28Olbinsk.png
image_description=Lucia di Lammermoor by Rafal Olbinski
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product_by=Alisa: Elvira Galassi; Arturo Buklaw: Dino Formichini; Edgardo: Eugenio Fernandi; Enrico Ashton: Rolando Panerai; Lucia: Maria Callas; Normanno: Valiano Natali; Raimondo Bidebent: Giuseppe Modesti. Orchestra e Coro di Roma della RAI. Tullio Serafin, conducting. Live performance, 26 June 1957, Rome.
Mark Padmore, Julius Drake and friends, Wigmore Hall, London
By Andrew Clark [Financial Times, 7 January 2009]
The Handel, Haydn and Mendelssohn anniversaries are upon us, but the echo of the Vaughan Williams year - 2008 marked the 50th anniversary of his death - continues to reverberate. Tuesday’s recital demonstrated what rich seams lie beneath the popular surface of Vaughan Williams’s art: this is what musical anniversaries should be about. It was the latest in a series devised by the pianist Julius Drake, whose programme-making skills and wide-ranging friendships have made him a pivotal figure in London’s busy recital scene.
Blythe Sings Gluck's Orfeo ed Euridice 'Orfeo' at MET
[Broadway World.com, 7 January 2009]
Director-choreographer Mark Morris’s much-lauded 2007 production of Gluck’s Orfeo ed Euridice returns to the repertoire, with Stephanie Blythe taking on one of the pinnacles of the mezzo-soprano repertory, the role of Orfeo, for the first time in her career. Soprano Danielle De Niese, an acclaimed singer of eighteenth-century music and a graduate of the Met’s Lindemann Young Artist Development Program, sings Euridice for the first time at the Met. Heidi Grant Murphy returns as Amor, which she performed at the production’s premiere in 2007.
Plumbing the Exquisite Psychic Depths of Robert Ashley
By Ross Simonini [Village Voice, 7 January 2009]
In the mid-’70s, Michigan-born composer Robert Ashley discovered a rare commodity in the art world: a niche. Lamenting that his homeland lacked the rich operatic tradition of Europe, he sought to invent a distinctly American art form, mixing dense sound environments and amorphous narration to create something he called “opera-for-television” (with the “television” part mostly referring to the works’ division into 30-minute “episodes”). He clearly wasn’t courting a mass-media audience, though: In early efforts like Music With Roots in the Aether and Perfect Lives, the black humor of the avant-garde is on full display, with chants about “geriatric love” and recipes for Pear Jello Salad flashing across the screen.
Soprano Deborah Voigt’s Tuesday-evening Schubert Club recital, a master class on communicating with an audience, explored several seldom-visited pockets of the art-song repertory. There were songs in Italian by Giuseppe Verdi (which, alas, lent credence to the view that great opera composers are never great song composers) and by Ottorino Respighi (who, too long represented by his noisy orchestral music, is ripe for rediscovery).
German conductor Debus named music director of Canadian Opera Company
[The Canadian Press, 7 January 2009]
TORONTO — Coming to Toronto for the first time this past fall, Germany’s Johannes Debus found himself conducting “War and Peace” for the Canadian Opera Company - a piece he had never done in a language he didn’t speak.
His CD sets of the Mozart/Da Ponte operas earned widespread admiration on their release, and the fresh, energetic approach on those recordings can be heard here as well. Furthermore, his booklet essay is a model combination of fascinating detail about his conducting choices and stylish writing.
In the end, however, a DVD has to be judged in its entirety, and when the dull set (there's only one, really) and mostly routine singing are taken into account, only the most devoted fans of conductor Jacobs would find this particular Nozze of much appeal.
Stage director Jean-Louis Martinoty claims to be working (according to an occasionally incomprehensible booklet note translated by John Tittensor) "in an «artificially» realistic world." Working with the sets of Hans Schavernoch and costumes of Sylvie De Segonzac, Martinoty presents a Nozze in familiar dress and typical stage movement, staged before a bewildering series of art reproductions, framed and tilted this way and that. The result has neither the familiar tug of realism nor the insightful edge of artifice. Instead, it simply seems as if funds for a real set could not be found.
Jacobs' cast has one familiar assumption, that of Angelika Kirchschlager's Cherubino. Your reviewer dislikes to be ungentlemanly, but Ms. Kirchschlager no longer has the advantage of youth in adopting an adolescent male persona. Thankfully, her voice retains its appeal. Pietro Spagnoli's Count remains a cold, arrogant lout even in his plea for forgiveness, making one wonder why Annete Dasch's Countess fights so hard to win back his love. Spagnoli's voice at least has an appropriately self-satisfied fullness. Dasch's intonation slackens a bit too often to make her Countess a success. She and Rosemary Joshua's Susanna offer a muted letter duet, but maybe Jacob's relatively swift tempo also takes some of the beauty from the music. Luca Pisaroni's Figaro comes off best; a big, handsome voice and an easy-going natural manner make him an attractive stage figure. The minor characters are adequately performed in this full version of the opera (which makes for a very long act four). If only director Martinoty hadn't asked Don Curzio (Serge Goubiboud) to affect an exaggerated stutter, to little comic effect.
To hear Jacobs' take on Mozart's great score, the CD, better sung, earns a stronger recommendation than this visually and vocally bland DVD.
Chris Mullins
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Someone spent
money on this thing, which originated at Covent Garden. Gustav Klimt at his
grandest has evidently muraled Magda’s intimate salon (probably while
seducing Magda and her maid, if I know Gustav), the casual student
café of Act II is suitable to some grand hotel on the Place Vendôme, and the
Riviera inn where Ruggero and Magda hole up in Act III has become an art
nouveau orangerie of stained glass grape arbor three stories high.
Overproduction adds undeniable pleasure to the Met experience, however it may
undercut the small-scale work at hand by raising expectations that will not
be fulfilled.
La Rondine is often called Puccini’s Viennese operetta. The
inspiration was, indeed, a Viennese libretto, set in sophisticated France,
dealing with sophisticated emotions — none of its lovers would think of
picking up a dagger or making a public scene; they’re not into
“drama” — which is pretty funny for characters in a Puccini
opera. A rich man’s elegant mistress feels restless, takes up with a
young lover, realizes settling down with him to a bourgeois life is not her
style, and returns — like the swallow of the title — to her nest.
True love won’t keep you in Klimts or emeralds, honey. Regrets. The
road not taken. No call for the undertaker or the priest.
The scale is intimate, the emotions internal, and the musical setting is
intimate too, lilting and sensuous and utterly beguiling. (This is
opera in the twentieth century?) It works sublimely on the small screen
— my first experience of La Rondine was a television movie
starring Teresa Stratas. Angela Gheorghiu compares well to Stratas as a
beauty and as an actress (high compliments, these). I suspect her intimate
looks and sighs will play even better in HDTV, and that her detailed acting
was designed for Covent Garden, which is half the size of the Met. She had
not warmed up properly to possess “Che il bel sogno di Doretta,”
the opera’s one big aria, but that’s Puccini’s fault for
putting it two minutes after curtain rise so he can go on recollecting it all
evening. For the quartet in Act II and the love duet in Act III, Gheorghiu
was more than prepared. It is not a voice of Tebaldi or Price size, but she
has her own polished way with a Puccini phrase, and his bloom suits hers much
better than, say, Donizetti, where (with fewer instruments to conceal her?)
she can sound arch and stretched.
Angela Gheorghiu as Magda and Roberto Alagna as Ruggero
Her partner is Roberto Alagna, of course, and they certainly play
and sing lovers convincingly together. But Ruggero offers the tenor so little
that you wonder why Gigli bothered with it — the standout tenor part is
the secondo uomo, the poet Prunier, and here Marius Brenciu, in his
first Met appearances, was light and suave with a very pleasing run up to
head voice when called for. His amie of the night was Lisette
Oropesa, a Met Young Artist alumna, who played Magda’s chirpy maid,
having an affair with the poet, going for a big break in cabaret and,
failing, returning to her old nest — no Adele audition for
this gal. Oropesa has personality but her voice, on this brief exposure, did
not. The quartet for the paired and (as we do not yet know) ill-fated lovers
was delicious, and their story has that fragrant pessimism that afflicts late
Lehar (whose librettists drafted this story too). Love excuses everything in
Act I, but let’s be real — it always dissipates before the final
curtain.
Marius Brenciu as Prunier
What the world wants now is a new Puccini opera. La Rondine is
not new, of course, but the brand is right, and it’s never
been popular, so it’s ripe for discovery. Singers of Magda and Ruggero
need fear no comparison with the interpretations of Callas and Pavarotti,
because they never sang it, and hardly anyone alive remembers Bori or Gigli.
The opera contains little familiar music — though, in a sense, all of
it is familiar — aside from “Il sogno di Doretta,” which no
lyric soprano worth her salt can resist. (When Gheorghiu sings it, it is
difficult not to sigh for Leontyne Price, but she had time to warm
up, as she never sang the entire opera.)
No one living is going to write two hours of new Puccini (though heaven
knows Andrew Lloyd-Webber and several movie composers would if they could),
and that is really what the new audience discovering opera (and eagerly
courted by Peter Gelb) wants: a Puccini opera to discover for themselves.
There have even been productions of Edgar, which hasn’t even
got a great showpiece tune to commend itself. My advice to opera companies
courting this crowd is the great number of neglected but lovely works by
Puccini’s contemporaries and rivals, just waiting for the right singers
and a production like this one. Okay, there are howlers like Francesca da
Rimini or Sly or Cyrano, which even a Scotto or a
Domingo couldn’t save, but there are also fascinating scores like
Cristoforo Colombo (Franchetti), Cassandra (Gnecchi),
La Fiamma (Respighi), L’Oracolo (Leoni), Il
Piccolo Marat (Mascagni), L’Amore dei Tre Re
(Montemezzi). Take a chance. (It would help if there were a proper verismo
soprano around to sing them, I grant you — no, I can’t think of
one either.)
Lisette Oropesa as Lisette (foreground) in a scene from Act I
But I never leave La Rondine, even a performance as glamorous and
charming as this one, without feeling unsatisfied, shortchanged — as if
there has not been enough feeling, enough melodious anguish, as if the
company should complete the evening somehow, with Il
Tabarro, say, or scenes from Tosca or Manon Lescaut
— something to fulfill the expectations raised by Puccinian melody from
the very first chord.
La Rondine is an appetizer, or tapas perhaps —
it’s not a full entrée, never mind dessert.
John Yohalem
image=http://www.operatoday.com/RONDINE_Gheorghiu_as_Magda_.png
image_description=Angela Gheorghiu as Magda [Photo by Ken Howard courtesy of The Metropolitan Opera]
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All photos by Ken Howard courtesy of The Metropolitan Opera.
It may seem perilous for an ensemble to build its repertory mostly on rarities and forgotten works, particularly if the group at least implicitly promises that its discoveries are worth a listener’s attention. Often music sinks into oblivion for a reason. Can there really be enough obscure high-quality work to fill out a program just about every other week?
Bayreuth: Sieben-Jahres-Verträge für Wagner-Schwestern
[DiePresse.com, 5 January 2009]
Die Verträge der neuen Leiterinnen der Bayreuther Festspiele, Eva Wagner-Pasquier und Katharina Wagner, sollen auf sieben Jahre befristet werden. Dies erfuhr die Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa am Montag aus Kreisen des Verwaltungsrats. Die Vertragsentwürfe sind demnach bereits mit den Halbschwestern abgestimmt worden und werden derzeit von den Gesellschaftern der Bayreuther Festspiele GmbH geprüft.
By Martin Bernheimer [Financial Times, 2 January 2009]
La Rondine, back at the Met after a 72-year absence, is Puccini’s most eclectic sort-of-masterpiece. Completed in 1917, it makes knowing references - some musical, some dramatic - to Lehár’s Lustige Witwe, Verdi’s Traviata, Johann Strauss’s Fledermaus and, yes, Puccini’s Bohème. For a fleeting in-joke, it quotes Richard Strauss’s Salome. The commedia lirica vacillates shamelessly yet elegantly between artificially sweetened verismo and sentimental kitsch. Yet, if performed with taste and style, it can be engrossing.
This was the Christmas that Handel stole. The year my Advent candle became “the Handel candle”, burning down the days of an epic musical challenge: to listen to all of George Frideric Handel’s 42 operas. In three weeks. Was it humanly possible? Or would it be the nightmare before, during and after Christmas?
Music composed by Giacomo Puccini (1858–1924). Libretto by Giuseppe Adami and Renato Simoni based on Turandot, Prinzessin von China (1802), Johann Christoph Friedrich von Schiller's adaptation of Turandotte (1762) by Carlo Gozzi.
First Performance: 25 April 1926, Teatro alla Scala,
Milan.
Principal Characters:
Princess Turandot
Soprano
The Emperor Altoum, her father
Tenor
Timur, the dispossessed King of Tartary
Bass
Calaf, the son of Timur
Tenor
Liù, a young slave-girl
Soprano
Ping, Grand Chancellor
Baritone
Pang, General Purveyor
Tenor
Pong, Chief Cook
Tenor
A Mandarin
Baritone
The Prince of Persia
Silent role
The Executioner (Pu-Tin-Pao)
Silent role
Setting: Peking in the distant past.
Synopsis:
A Mandarin announces that any prince seeking to marry the Princess
Turandot must first answer three riddles. If he fails, he must die. The
latest suitor, the Prince of Persia, is to be executed at the moon's rising.
In the crowd is Timur, banished King of Tartary, who is reunited with his
son, Calaf, who he thought died in a battle. The Prince of Persia passes on
his way to the scaffold and the crowd calls upon the Princess to spare him.
Turandot bids that the execution proceed. As the death cry is heard, Calaf,
transfixed by the beauty of the Princess, strides towards the gong that
announces a new suitor. Turandot's ministers, Ping, Pang and Pong, try to
discourage Calaf. Timur and Liù (who is in love with Calaf) also beg him to
reconsider, but he strikes the gong and calls Turandot's name.
Ping, Pang and Pong lament Turandot's bloody reign, hoping that love will
conquer her icy heart and peace will return. They think longingly of their
distant country homes, but the noise of the populace gathering to hear
Turandot question the new challenger brings them back to reality.
The people, eager for another execution, have gathered in the square. The
Emperor asks Calaf to reconsider, but he refuses. Turandot describes how her
ancestor was dishonoured and killed by a conquering prince; the cruel trial
her suitors have to undergo is revenge for that crime. Turandot asks Calaf
three riddles, which he answers correctly. Turandot begs her father not to
give her to the stranger, but to no avail. Calaf, hoping to win her love,
offers Turandot a challenge: if she can learn his name by dawn, he will
forfeit his life.
Calaf hears a proclamation: on pain of death, no one in Peking shall sleep
until Turandot learns the stranger's name. Ping, Pang and Pong try
unsuccessfully to bribe him to learn his secret. As the mob threatens him,
soldiers drag in Liù and Timur. Calaf tries to convince the mob that neither
knows his secret. Liù declares that she alone knows but will never tell. She
is tortured, but remains silent. Impressed by such endurance, Turandot asks
Liù's secret: "Love" replies Liù. Fearing that she will weaken under torture
Liù seizes a dagger and kills herself. The crowd, fearful of her dead spirit,
forms a funeral procession. Left alone with Turandot, Calaf first reproaches
her for her coldness and cruelty, then kisses her. Feeling emotion for the
first time, Turandot weeps. Now sure of his victory, Calaf reveals his
identity. Before the assembled crowd, Turandot announces the stranger's name:
it is Love. As Calaf embraces her, the court hails the power of love and
life.
Umberto Chiummo (Nettuno), Jeremy Ovenden (Illo)
Johannette Zomer (Pasitea)
Wilke te Brummelstroete (Venere), Luca Pisaroni (Ercole)
Stephanie Blythe as Orfeo and Heidi
Grant Murphy as Amor with chorus in background
Danielle de Niese as Euridice
Peter Rose, as Pope Pius IV with Christopher Ventris as Palestrina
Christopher Ventris as Palestrina
Neither set, unfortunately, can make a case for Kate and the Devil as a lost masterpiece. Dvořák could not really compose dull music. His melodic gift, though strangely better exhibited in his symphonies than his operas, continually contributes to a stream of well-designed and colorfully orchestrated music. 
