Opera Today

Rolando Villazón — Handel

This, of course, is an understatement: the idea of teaming a rising young opera star, most comfortable in the world of verismo opera, with a baroque specialist and his period-instrument orchestra to perform Handel is audacious, and at first sight, wildly inappropriate. But what issues from this unusual union is something quite remarkable, and at times, stunning. In a year in which there will be many tributes commemorating the 250th anniversary of the composer’s death, this may be one of the most surprising, and satisfying.

This recording features selections from four Handel operas — Tamerlano (1724), Rodelinda (1725), Serse (1738), and Ariodante (1735) — as well as two arias from La Resurrezione (1709), an oratorio from the composer’s Roman period. A number of the arias were not written originally for tenor, and have been transposed in this performance to better fit the voice of Villazón. Although purists may be offended by these changes, one must remember that during the age of Handel it was not unusual for arias to be transposed, sung in a different language from the recitative, or modified in any number of ways. Indeed, Joseph Addison, who wrote the first reviews of Handel’s operas in the early eighteenth century, observed that opera was “a joining together of inconsistencies.” If Handel could accept a castrato in the role of a man or a woman, singing emperors who sailed in open boats on a sea of paste-board, or singing witches lowered onto stage by ropes while fireworks were lit in the theatre (with emergency equipment at the ready should fire break out), we should be able to deal with Rolando Villazón singing castrato arias in different keys.

The performances by Villazón and McCreesh bring together the best of both worlds — exacting period-performance standards with operatic intensity. Throughout much of the recording Villazón’s voice exhibits a brilliance which is perfectly matched with the drama Handel wished to express in his music. The melismas, rapid passage work, and unusual leaps found in such arias as “Ciel e terra” from Tamerlano, or the recitative accompagnato “Fatto inferno è il mio petto” from Rodelinda, were written for dramatic effect, effects not altogether different from those required of a soloist in La Traviata or La Bohème. In these arias Villazón brings all of his trademark intensity to bear, and by so doing reveals a deep respect and affection for the music. His singing is never overpowering, his attention to the text is impressive, and his uncanny ability to match the tone quality of a baroque orchestra by moving in and out of straight-tone and vibrato are so expressive that one might think he had studied this type of music all his life. This recording is a tribute not just to his musicality, but to his intelligence.

Although some of the most popular of Handel’s Italian arias (e.g., “Ombra mai fu” from Serse) are included in this collection, the highpoint is undoubtedly “Scherza, infida” from Ariodante. McCreesh’s masterful handling of the muted string accompaniment along with Villazon’s astonishing tone and sensitivity makes this performance a treat irresistible to any lover of Handel. Similarly haunting is “Pastorello d’un povero armento” from Rodelinda, although in this aria Villazón’s normally strong Italian diction sometimes deserts him. While not all listeners may enjoy Bajazet’s death scene from Tamerlano, the expressive treatment of the dying sultan’s final moments is exactly what audiences in Handel’s day would have enjoyed. Indeed, Villlazón and McCreesh probably come as close as anyone to recreating the magical world of baroque opera with their obsessive and over-the-top interpretation of the lines “per tormentar, per lacerar, quell mostro io sarò la maggior furia d’Averno.”

It is well-known that Villazón has been struggling vocally of late, and this CD represents one of his first serious efforts since his year-long hiatus in 2007. To those who enjoy the pure beauty of his remarkable tenor voice, this collection will provide much pleasure and the assurance that he is again singing beautifully. To those who wish to gain a better understanding and appreciation of Handel, particularly listeners who are familiar only with The Messiah or Royal Fireworks Music, this set of arias will be an excellent introduction into the complexity and sophistication found so abundantly in the composer’s Italian vocal works.

Donald R. Boomgaarden

Click here for behind the scenes interviews

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Deutsche Grammophon 00289 477 8056 (Int'l ed.) price=$21.99 product_url=http://www.arkivmusic.com/classical/album.jsp?album_id=212439

Bloch’s Macbeth by UC Opera, London

Originally the opera was composed to a French libretto by Edmond Fleg, but Bloch revisited the piece forty years later and adapted it to an English libretto, much of it Shakespeare’s own text. The French version of Bloch’s opera had its UK concert premiere in 1975 at the Royal Festival Hall, but it has never been performed here in the English version, nor in a fully staged production. Not, that is, until UC Opera — that champion of neglected masterpieces and justly forgotten flops alike — took it upon themselves to rectify the omission from the repertoire.

George von Bergen as Macbeth

This is an opera which concentrates on private moments, monologues and dialogues; the sleepwalking scene is a private nightmare, without the usual pair of onlookers. Far more of the play’s soliloquys survive than in the libretto Piave wrote for Verdi; even the Drunken Porter makes an appearance, with the opera’s one straightforward strophic song; a contrast in word-setting which reflects Shakespeare’s own switch from blank verse to prose.

The score is primarily reminiscent of Debussy in its often rather nebulous drift through the text, but has shades of Salome and Götterdämmerung as well. The student orchestra (UCL has no music department) was problematic: in a woodwind-dominated score, the wind and brass playing was at best weak and at worst excruciating. In his one-monologue cameo as Duncan, the distinguished veteran tenor Ryland Davies sang with a expertly-crafted lyrical arch to his phrasing which showed up the accompanying instrumentalists as being flat as a pancake beneath. The string playing was better, the basses making a particularly strong atmospheric impression with the darkly throbbing pizzicato in the scene immediately after Duncan’s murder. Charles Peebles, conducting, shaped the orchestration and choral singing as best he could; the final rhythmically-driven chorus in which all are united against Macbeth comes as a refreshing climax.

Bloch changes the order of the later scenes (Shakespeare’s Acts 4 and 5) giving an alternative slant to the plot: it’s not until after the (apparently motiveless) slaughter of Macduff’s family that Macbeth seeks the witches a second time, and they reveal to him only the parade of kings and the Birnam Wood prophecy. The other two prophecies are cut, so Macbeth’s only reason to fear Macduff is that he will be seeking to avenge his wife and children. It takes the tautness out of the structure: this is a play in which bad things definitely come in threes.

Scene from Act 3

And indeed, director John Ramster makes good use of the Witches (student soloists Mimi Kroll, Jessica Blackstone and Ella Jackson). They hover over the battle-slain like malign Valkyries, and travel as tree-spirits with the avenging army to see the final part of their prophecy played out. It’s a very strong staging all round, with space and lighting always used effectively; Bridget Kimak’s set is presided over by a blood-red moon, which moves into a total eclipse at the denouement — a strong visual evocation of the coming together of all the fateful prophecies which have governed Macbeth’s bloody reign.

The (hired) major principals were also strong — considerably stronger, in fact, than most of UC Opera’s casting in recent years. George von Bergen was especially good in the title role, dominating his every scene with a strong stage presence and full, finely-nuanced baritone. The young American mezzo Katherine Rohrer (Glyndebourne on Tour’s recent Carmen) has a lightish, agile voice with an excellent top; her Lady Macbeth was elegant and fiery, the progress of her self-destruction visible in her face. Richard Rowe sang Banquo in an even, well-produced tenor (his murder takes place offstage). The bass-baritone Carl Gombrich (National Opera Studio trained, now on the administrative staff at UCL) was a soft-grained Macduff, needing a little more heft and edge when urging the household to awake and hear the news of Duncan’s murder. Of the student soloists, tenor Hal Brindley’s Malcolm was the stand-out performance.

Ruth Elleson © 2009

image=http://www.operatoday.com/Lady_Macbeth.gif image_description=Katherine Rohrer as Lady Macbeth [Photo by Dan Swerdlow] product=yes product_title=Ernest Bloch: Macbeth product_by=Macbeth: George von Bergen; Lady Macbeth: Katherine Rohrer; Duncan: Ryland Davies; Banquo: Richard Rowe; Macduff: Carl Gombrich; Lady Macduff: Louise Kemeny; Son of Macduff: Laura Murphy; 1st Witch: Mimi Kroll; 2nd Witch: Jessica Blackstone; 3rd Witch: Ella Jackson; Lennox: Woon Kim; Porter: Ed Davison; Murderer: Rory Mulchrone; Servant: Simon Hall; Apparition: Alicia Bennett. University College Opera. Directed by: John Ramster, Conducted by: Charles Peebles. product_id=Above: Katherine Rohrer as Lady Macbeth

All photos by Dan Swerdlow

Magdalena Kožená shines in Martinů’s Juliette at the Barbican, London

A man arrives in a strange village where nothing seems quite right. The villagers have no memories to bind them to reality, so things unfold without sense or connection. But what is reality? The opera’s subtitle is “The Key to Dreams”, which implies a search for meaning, whether or not it can be unlocked.

From the orchestra emerges a lovely, haunting melody. The man thinks he’s heard it before, connected to a vague memory - a beautiful woman ? He’s determined to pursue the dream which seems to fade as fast as it unfolds. The woman is Juliette, shining bright and golden, “like a star in the firmament”.

Deeper the man goes, into a dark forest, where he meets a Seller of Memories, who sells photographs of exotic places. The man buys into the images, convinced that they show his past with the woman he’s searching for. Eventually the man finds himself in The Central Office of Dreams which people enter and leave when they sleep. On ferme! warns the nightwatchman (who was also the Seller of Dreams). Wake or you’re forever trapped! But Juliette is such a powerful, seductive dream that the man would rather remain in eternal limbo than lose her.

Bohuslav Martinů’s Juliette materialized at the Barbican, London, in a new edition of the urtext, using the French version the composer wrote on his deathbed in 1959. He lived most of his creative life in France, so it’s perhaps poignant that he should return to his masterpiece in this way.

Hardly any staging was needed, for the action unfolds like a dream, utterly adrift from rules of cause and logic. Indeed, what narrative there is lurks in the music. The orchestral writing is densely vivid but at critical moments the density clears and a solo instrument takes centre stage. At first, it’s an accordion, then horn, clarinet and oboe, then a particularly evocative melody on piano which surrounds Juliette’s entries. It’s like in dreams where a single image comes into focus, like symbolic portent. Each time Juliette’s music returns, impressions deepen and become frustratingly familiar. Have we heard it before ? And where ? In dreams, the mind fixes on details and follows their trail. Martinů uses allusions from music as tantalizing clues. There’s a snippet from L’Histoire du Soldat, just before the Fortune teller scatters cards. Then, a quotation from L’Après-midi d’un Faune, evoking a mood of frustrated love and longing. Similarly, Martinů uses off stage noises and singing. Even when asleep, the mind hears what’s happening “outside” so to speak. At any moment the dreamer might be woken, the dream shattered. It’s psychologically astute, building dramatic tension into the very fabric of the music.

Jiří Bělohlávek has a specially sensitive feel for this elusive, mysterious music, which will come as no surprise to anyone who has heard his Janaček or Dvořák. This performance was as good as the superlative Excursions of Mr Brouček last year, which he conducted with the same forces, the BBC Symphony Orchestra and Singers. This production was also directed by Kenneth Richardson, who made such magic with the concert staging of Mr Brouček. Richardson’s intelligent, subtle style achieves great things by simple means. The forest, for example, is created by light and shadow, yet feels impressively alive.

Kožená was outstanding. Visually and vocally she glowed. While all the cast was good, she was exceptional, for Juliette is in an altogether more exalted league than ordinary mortals. Kožená’s fees might normally exceed the other singers fees put together, but here she was utterly worth it, for her presence embodied all that Juliette stands for. The role is so important that the whole opera rests on how well it is realized. Kožená has long championed Martinů’s music, so this magnificent performance was a great tribute.

William Burden sings Michel, the protagonist. It’s a long, demanding role which he carries off with aplomb. Also familiar to those who loved Mr Brouček was Zdeněk Plech, who made the relatively small role of The Old Arab/Sailor so interesting that you wished the composer had developed it further. Roderick Williams sang no less than four roles, including the pivotal Seller of Memories. He acts as well as he sings, and is certainly one of the brightest young British stars of his generation. When will he get the profile he deserves ? Andreas Jäggi’s Clerk was suitably tense and manic.

There are only two available recordings of Julietta, and the classic version is nearly 50 years old. Let’s hope this performance, which was recorded by the BBC, will make it to CD/DVD. Bělohlávek’s recording of Mr Brouček won the Gramophone award for best Opera in 2008, so perhaps this new Juliette will do the same.

Anne Ozorio

image=http://www.operatoday.com/Belohlavek.gif Image_description=Jiri Belohlavek [Photo by Clive Barda] product=yes product_title=Bohuslav Martinů : Juliette product_by=William Burden (Michel), Magdalena Kožená (Juliette), Zdeněk Plech (Old Arab/old sailor), Anna Stéphany (Little Arab/1st man/bellhop) Rosalind Plowright (Bird seller/fortune teller), Frédéric Goncalvès (Man in chapska/Father Youth/convict), Roderick Williams (Man in hat/Seller of Memories/blind beggar/nightwatchman), Jean Rigby (Fish seller/grandmother/old lady), Andreas Jäggi (Police chief/postman/clerk), BBC Singers, Jiří Bělohlávek (conductor), BBC Symphony Orchestra product_id=Above: Jiri Belohlavek [Photo by Clive Barda]

Farinelli — Il Castrato

This is not, however, the typical film soundtrack of a sort of overture, perhaps a song or two, and various musical cues that don’t convey much out of the context of the film. Disc one consists of eleven complete performances of arias and overtures, from composers as famous as Handel and Pergolese (as the Naive booklet spells it) to the relatively obscure, such as Broschi and Idaspe (a particularly lovely piece, Ombra fedele anch’io).

A brief booklet note titled “Reinventing a castrato’s voice” details the unique feature of this soundtrack: the producers, in conjunction with the Institut de Recherches et Coordination Acoustique Musique, found a way in the studio to meld the voice of a counter-tenor (Derek Lee Ragin) with that of a soprano (Ewa Mallas-Godlewska). The intention was to capture something of what a true castrato sounded like, with an extraordinary range and a timbre that, at least supposedly, retained masculine authority while climbing stratospheric heights. Technically, IRCAM produced a seamless blend; it is not easily apparent when and where the two voices separate or shift primarily to one or the other singer. Nonetheless, there are many moments where Ragin’s counter-tenor, a somewhat reedy instrument, clearly predominates, and others where the feminine sound Mallas-Godlewska produces come to the fore. As an aural experience, then, your reviewer did not find the vocals suggesting any true sense of a castrato sound — with the big caveat that it is not entirely possible to know what that sound might have been, especially in the case of a superstar of his time, as Farinelli was.

The two tracks of arias from Handel’s Rinaldo exemplify the problem of the recording. In music as familiar as “Lascia ch’io pianga” or “Cara sposa,” listeners may well have heard superior versions by singers such as David Daniels or Maria Bayo. The innovation of a recording process that ostensibly captures a castrato sound can’t make up for the fact that the vocal performances captured here just aren’t all that special.

Rousset and his band play immaculately, and listeners who prefer the leaner, tauter sound of historically-informed performances will surely enjoy their efforts. While respecting the musicianship, your reviewer often longed for a richer string sound and more body overall. Somehow, the selections on the second disc, covering many other Rousset and Les Talens Lyrique recordings, didn’t produce the same dissatisfaction. Overtures and other brief instrumental pieces by Lully, Johann Sebastian Bach and his son Carl Philip Emanuel, Purcell, Salieri, and others receive joyous, exuberant performances. Naïve makes its reason for the inclusion of this disc along with the Farinelli soundtrack clear, with the last pages of the booklet dedicated to cover shots of the CDs from which the music was taken.

In your reviewer’s memory, Farinelli was a very entertaining film. If a high-quality DVD of the film were available, that should receive due consideration, as the performances work very well in conjunction with the visuals. But the set does offer handsome packaging and that enjoyable second disc of material.

Chris Mullins

image=http://www.operatoday.com/Farinellisoundtrack.gif imagedescription=Farinelli — Il Castrato

product=yes producttitle=Farinelli — Il Castrato productby=Ewa Malas-Godlewska, Derek Lee Ragin, Christophe Rousset, Sandrine Piau, Wieland Kuijken, Agnès Mellon, Carlo Lepore, Maria Bayo. Les Talens Lyriques, Christophe Rousset. productid=Naïve 5150 [2CDs] price=$29.99 producturl=http://www.arkivmusic.com/classical/album.jsp?album_id=205682

WAGNER: Die Walküre — Rome 1968

Music and libretto by Richard Wagner.

First Performance: 26 June 1870, Munich, Königliches Hof- und Nationaltheater (first performance as part of cycle: 14 August 1876, Bayreuth, Festspielhaus).

Principal Roles
Mortals
Siegmund	Tenor
Sieglinde	Soprano
Hunding	Bass
Gods
Wotan	Bass-Baritone
Fricka	Mezzo-Soprano
Valkyries
Brünnhilde	Soprano
Gerhilde	Soprano
Ortlinde	Soprano
Waltraute	Mezzo-Soprano
Schwertleite	Contralto
Helmwige	Soprano
Siegrune	Mezzo-Soprano
Grimgerde	Mezzo-Soprano
Rossweisse	Mezzo-Soprano

Synopsis:

Act I

The interior of Hunding's dwelling

A storm is raging. Siegmund stumbles in exhausted. Sieglinde, Hunding's wife, gives him a drink and he explains that he has had to run from his enemies because his weapons failed him. Hunding arrives and extends hospitality to Siegmund, noticing the resemblance between him and Sieglinde.

When asked his name he explains that a sad life qualifies him to be called Woeful. When he was young he and his father Wolf had returned home to find his mother murdered, the house burnt and his twin sister carried off. He and his father had lived homeless in the forest, until one day his father vanished. Seeking human company he had found only misfortune. His present predicament arose when he tried to rescue a girl who was being married against her will. He killed her brothers but was unable to save her from death before fleeing from overwhelming odds.

Hunding reveals that these were his kinsmen and declares his intention of avenging them on Siegmund in the morning, though he grants him hospitality for the night, retiring with Sieglinde.

The weaponless Siegmund remembers that his father had promised that he would find a sword when he most needed one. Sieglinde returns, telling him she has drugged Hunding and urging him to flee. She shows him a sword, embedded in the tree growing through the centre of the house, and tells him how it came to be there. When she was being married against her will to Hunding an old one-eyed man had appeared (the music identifies him as Wotan) and plunged the sword into the tree. No one has been able to move it but she is sure she knows who it is meant for.

Siegmund and Sieglinde embrace. The door flies open, revealing the spring night. Siegmund compares their love to the union of love and spring. They recognise the resemblance between them and Siegmund reveals that his father's real name was Wälse. Sieglinde greets him by his true name. He draws the sword and they embrace as brother and sister and as lovers.

Act II

A wild rocky pass

Wotan orders the valkyrie Brünnhilde, his favorite daughter, to give victory in the forthcoming fight to Siegmund.

As guardian of marriage Fricka demands vengeance against Siegmund. Wotan tries to answer that an enforced marriage is less sacred than the love felt by Siegmund and Sieglinde; but she objects also on the grounds that they are brother and sister, as well as the fruit of Wotan's adulterous union with a mortal woman.

He tries to explain that his purpose was to create a free hero able to carry out a task forbidden to the gods, but she points out the fallacies in his arguments: Siegmund is not free, being protected by Wotan; even the sword has been left for him. He agrees unwillingly to her demands and agrees not to protect Siegmund but she demands that he also order Brünnhilde not to protect him, sweeping aside his claim that Brünnhilde is free to act as she chooses. He agrees dejectedly.

Wotan explains to Brünnhilde how he had committed the wrong of paying for the building of Valhalla with Alberich's ring, instead of returning it to the Rhinemaidens. He sought further knowledge from Erda, after which she bore him the eight valkyries, their task being to assemble an army of heroes to help the gods in battle against Alberich, in case he should regain the ring, now guarded by the dragon (ex-giant) Fafner. Wotan is powerless to take the ring because of his treaty with Fafner, so he needs a free hero to perform the task, but he has been forced to admit that Siegmund is not free.

He has learnt that Alberich has sired a son. In deep despair and revulsion he gives the unborn child his blessing, bequeathes to him the vain pomp of the gods and commands the reluctant Brünnhilde to award the victory to Hunding.

Brünnhilde watches as Sieglinde and Siegmund arrive in flight. Sieglinde is wild with terror and faints. Brünnhilde tells Siegmund he must die and follow her to Valhalla, where he will find the company of other fallen heroes, as well as Wotan and his own father (he does not know that they are one and the same) and be served by valkyries; but when he learns that Sieglinde may not follow him he refuses to go. When Brünnhilde tells him that he has no choice, that even his sword will fail him, he threatens to kill Sieglinde and the unborn child Brünnhilde tells him she is carrying. Moved by his love and distress she promises to protect him.

As he looks for Hunding. Sieglinde wakes up in terror. Brünnhilde shelters Siegmund with her shield, but Wotan thrusts his spear in front of Siegmund, whose sword breaks on it, leaving him to be killed by Hunding. Wotan strikes Hunding dead with a word and prepares to pursue Brünnhilde.

Act III

The summit of a rocky mountain

The valkyries gather on the mountain, bearing heroes on their horses to take to Valhalla. Brünnhilde appears with Sieglinde and begs their protection against Wotan. But first she must save Sieglinde, whose wish for death changes to joy when she learns that she is carrying Siegmund's child, who will grow up to be a mighty hero named Siegfried. She agrees to flee, taking the fragments of the sword entrusted to her by Brünnhilde.

As Wotan appears, Brünnhilde tries to hide among her sisters, but steps forward when he accuses her of cowardice. When he pronounces her banishment from Valhalla and her doom to be locked in sleep and forced to become the wife of the first man who finds her, the other valkyries are horrified; but when he threatens them with a similar fate they flee in terror.

Brünnhilde pleads with Wotan that she had really carried out his secret wish, knowing that he loved Siegmund, and tells how she had been moved by his pleading and his love for Sieglinde, but Wotan reproaches her for yielding to the claims of love while he has been forced to follow the stern path of duty. She begs that if she must become mortal she should not be left prey to the first comer but be given only to a hero - pointing out that Sieglinde will bear Siegmund's child and has the fragments of the sword.

Wotan is finally moved and agrees to surround her with a wall of fire which only a man who knows no fear can cross. He kisses her to sleep, bids her a sad farewell and summons Loge to create a blaze around the rock, declaring that no one who fears his spear will be able to cross the flames.

[Synopsis Source: Opera~Opera]

Click here for the complete libretto.

image=http://www.operatoday.com/Walkure_title_page.gif image_description=Schott's vocal score of Die Walkure, 1899 audio=yes first_audio_name=Richard Wagner: Die Walküre first_audio_link=http://www.operatoday.com/Walkure1.m3u product=yes product_title=Richard Wagner: Die Walküre product_by=Brünnhilde: Nadezda Kniplova; Fricka: Janis Martin; Gerhilde: Lieselotte Rebmann; Grimgerde: Cvetka Ahlin; Helmwige: Daniza Mastilovic; Hunding: Gerd Nienstedt; Orlinde: Elisabeth Schwarzenberg; Rossweisse: Raili Kostia; Schwertleite: Aili Puroner; Sieglinde: Hildegard Hillebrecht; Siegmund: Eberhard Katz; Siegrune: Jane Murray Dillard; Waltraute: Irene Dalis; Wotan: Theo Adam. Orchestra di Roma della RAI, Wolfgang Sawallish, conducting. Live performance, 1968.

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In Sarasota the composer is king

He moves Figaro into Trump Towers and has Giovanni — light headed after two centuries of champagne — shoot up on cocaine in the South Bronx. Caesar courts Cleopatra — or is it the other way around? — poolside at the Cairo Hilton. Elixir — cross bred with The Music Man — plays at the Iowa State fair. It’s fun now and then, but in the long run it’s opera that suffers from this mayhem and madness. And thus in the midst of all this it’s reassuring to know that there is an opera company where it’s still the composer who comes first: the Sarasota Opera that just wound up its 50th anniversary season on the Florida coast.

“Our mission is to produce outstanding opera true to the vision of the composer,” says Victor DeRenzi, SO artistic director for half its history. “Here each production is based on one approach: the view of the work that comes from the composer.” The result is opera as envisioned by those who created it; no one else gets in the way.

Suzel : Catherine Cangiano

Those who have never attended one of the 500 performances that DeRenzi has conducted in Sarasota might find this the conservative credo of a man who looks back in history. But those who know the perfection and excitement of every opera staged at the SO relish the authenticity — and respect — that DeRenzi brings to SO productions.

In Sarasota it’s Verdi’s Verdi and Puccini’s Puccini that is on stage — not a flight of the imagination imposed upon their work by the Wunderkinder of Regieoper — director’s opera, the European import that currently prevails elsewhere. The major triumph of the 2009 season that ran for eight late-winter weeks in the intimate SO house that was handsomely rebuilt a year ago was Verdi’s Don Carlo. With it DeRenzi as conductor again confirmed his stature as a leading interpreter of this composer.

Don Carlo isn’t merely Verdi at his best, it is also the best of his operas based on a drama by Germany’s Friedrich Schiller. Here the Italian patriot underscores the parallels between the struggle for freedom in Inquisition-ridden Spain and the Italy of his own day.

Eboli : Stella Zambalis; Don Carlos : Gustavo López Manzitti; Rodrigue : Marco Nisticò

Kevin Short was a deeply human Philippe II, unable to assert himself against the intolerance of a church chillingly represented by Jeffrey Tucker as the Grand Inquisitor. Panamanian Reyna Carguill was a full-blooded Elizabeth, beautifully balanced by the searing mezzo of Stella Zambalis as Eboli. And as Rodrigue Marco Nistico` was the very fiber from which revolutionaries are made.

Elisabeth : Reyna Carguill; Don Carlos : Gustavo López Manzitti; Philippe : Kevin Short; Grand Inquisitor : Jeffrey Tucker

It was only Argentina’s Gustavo López Manzitti who in the title role failed to reach the level of passion of his colleagues. Stephanie Sundine directed this first North-American production of the four-act French version of the opera. Sets were by David P. Gordon, and Howard Tsvi Kaplan was responsible for lavish costumes that enhanced the realism of Verdi’s 16th-century Spaniards. Indeed, Kaplan who created costumes for all four operas of the SO season is a major asset of the company.

Each season Sarasota revives a work that has disappeared from the repertory, and the reaction to the first act of L’Amico Fritz, the 2009 “masterpiece,” was that works residing in oblivion are perhaps right where they belong. By the second act Mascagni’s 1891 score dispelled such doubts as vintage verismo warmed the heart. Swiss tenor Benjamin Warschawski and American soprano Catherine Cangiano were a winning lovers, while Heather Johnson earned high marks in the trouser role of Beppe. And although a rabbi seemed somewhat out of place in late 19th-century Alsace baritone Michael Corvino made him a winning figure. David Neely conducted; Michael Unger was stage director. Sets were by Michael Schweikardt.

Suzel : Catherine Cangiano; Beppe : Heather Johnson; Fritz Kobus : Benjamin Warschawski; David : Michael Corvino

The popularity of Donizetti’s Elixir of Love easily leads to overplayed and exaggerated stagings. Happily, however, director Martha Collins kept everything under careful control to make the SO production unusually engaging. She was helped by an ideal cast led by youthful Mexico’s Edgar Ernesto Ramirez, a tenor who might well have the makings of a future Pavarotti.

Adina : Mara Bonde; Nemorino : Edgar Ernesto Ramirez; Giannetta : Jo Ellen Miller

Michael Redding obviously relished the lover-boy image of soldier Belcore, and Stephen Eisenhard was a delight as an understated snake-oil salesman Dulcamara. As Adina Mara Bonde was all sugar and spice. John Mario Di Constanza conducted. Roger Hanna signed for sets.

Floria Tosca : Kara Shay Thomson

One would search far today to find a better trio of singers than the three brought to Sarasota for Tosca, which opened the season on February 7. In her SO debut Kara Shay Thomson was a Floria Tosca even younger than the years of the established singer that Puccini’s heroine is. She sang the famous “Vissi d’arte” with tender and internalized emotion.

Rafael Dávila, a splendid Cavaradossi, is a native of Puerto Rico and yet another of the richly talented tenors now coming from Latin countries. Yet it was the Scarpia of Grant Youngblood that brought new dimensions to this staging. Long a signature role of the American baritone, Youngblood downplays the tyrant that Scarpia is to make the appeal of Tosca to him far more than a passing sexual fantasy. DeRenzi conducted; Sundine was the director.

Floria Tosca : Kara Shay Thomson; Mario Cavaradossi : Rafael Dávila

Of special interest was the March 20 performance of opera choruses by the Sarasota Youth Opera, an ensemble open to kids from the third grade up. The thoroughly professional conduct of these 75 singers was as amazing as it was impressive. Lance Inouye, their major mentor, conducted the full SO orchestra for the event. This is the only such opera program in the United States.

Wes Blomster

image=http://www.operatoday.com/Mara_Bonde_Adina.gif image_description=Mara Bonde as Adina [Photo by Richard Termine courtesy of Sarasota Opera] product=yes product_title=In Sarasota the composer is king product_by= product_id=Above: Mara Bonde as Adina

All photos by Richard Termine courtesy of Sarasota Opera

Philippe Jaroussky, Purcell Room, London

By Andrew Clark [Financial Times, 27 March 2009]

Countertenors may be two-a-penny these days, but there is still novelty value in hearing a countertenor in repertoire that until now has never been seen as natural territory: the late 19th-/early 20th-century French mélodie.

Kentridge's 'Return of Ulysses'

Joshua Kosman [San Francisco Chronicle, 26 March 2009]

The Wagnerian ideal of opera as a “total work of art” combining elements of various disciplines need not yield grandiose results. They can be as intimate and precise as director William Kentridge’s exquisite production of “The Return of Ulysses,” which opened an all-too-brief weeklong run at Project Artaud Theatre on Tuesday night.

Lessons lie in tragedy of 'Peter Grimes'

Tim Smith [Baltimore Sun, 26 March 2009]

Many an uncomfortable lesson about human nature lies within Benjamin Britten’s 1945 operatic masterpiece, Peter Grimes, a tale of small-mindedness, conclusion-jumping and rapid swells of populist outrage in a seaside village. Those multilayered messages seem even more relevant than usual in the Washington National Opera’s striking production at the Kennedy Center.

David Daniels fights to remove countertenor singing from the 'curiosity' category

John von Rhein [Chicago Tribune, 26 March 2009]

Selling the high male singing voice to your average classical music consumer will always be an uphill battle, argues David Daniels, perhaps the most widely admired super-salesman among today’s high-profile countertenors.

The Janácek affair

Michael Downes [Times Literary Supplement, 25 March 2009]

With an instinct for dramatic timing worthy of his subject, John Tyrrell lifts the curtain on the second volume of his biography of Leos Janácek, Tsar of the Forests, just as the central event of the composer’s career is about to take place. Jenufå, Janácek’s fourth opera, received its first Prague performance at the National Theatre on June 26, 1916, thirteen years after the company had rejected the work and twelve years after its successful premiere in Brno, the composer’s home town. The Prague unveiling began Janácek’s rapid transformation from respected provincial choirmaster and pedagogue to internationally renowned composer. But as Tyrrell brilliantly shows, the ripples spread still wider, setting processes in train that left no aspect of Janácek’s complex personal and professional life unaffected.

Cleveland Orchestra, Zurich Opera make a fine Marriage of Figaro'

Joshua Gunter [Cleveland Plain Dealer, 25 March 2009]

As opera returns to Severance Hall this week with a glorious, fully-staged version of Mozart’s “The Marriage of Figaro,” the Cleveland Orchestra’s old promotional slogan about the international treasure we possess takes on new significance.

Orlando Opera faces the music: Shortfall could bring down the curtains

Elizabeth Maupin [Orlando Sentinel, 24 March 2009]

Desperate for cash, Orlando Opera may not be able to produce operas after the current season if a new $500,000 fundraising campaign fails.

The 51-year-old group, one of the oldest major arts organizations in Orlando, is reeling from a huge deficit that has forced it to deplete the organization’s once-healthy endowment.

Moving performance

Jane Clifford [San Diego Union, 22 March 2009]

Martin Vargic is in the kitchen, making his specialty - tartar beef, while his wife, L’ubica Vargicová, makes sure guests have something to munch on - from salty nuts to sweet cream puffs. She alternates the role of gracious hostess with referee, monitoring typical sibling mischief between 6-year-old Jakob and 13-year-old Margareta.

Vivaldi's 'Motezuma,' lost, found, restored, re-imagined

By David Ng [LA Times, 22 March 2009]

Call it a musical homecoming more than 275 years in the making.

Antonio Vivaldi’s “Motezuma,” first performed in 1733 in Venice, was long considered a lost opera, its score having vanished, like so many other works of that era, into the void of history. But in 2002, a German musicologist discovered an incomplete copy in Berlin, and since then various reconstructed versions of “Motezuma” have been performed across Europe.

Genocidal Days

By Jeff Smith [San Diego Weekly Reader, 18 March 2009]

The Brecht police will probably snipe at the San Diego Rep’s Threepenny Opera: how it fails to achieve this or that aspect of his “Epic Theater.” And the production is open to potshots. But the Sam Woodhouse-directed show not only re-creates Brecht’s notion of a primitive opera that turns the grandiose into a “dirty joke,” it’s one of the Rep’s finest efforts in quite some time.

Jenůfa — English National Opera, London Coliseum

One of the awards on that occasion was for Amanda Roocroft’s assumption of the title role, and it was thus a luxury to have her back here for the revival, heading a cast which was otherwise largely new. Clad neatly in bright blue, this sunny golden-haired Jenůfa is, from the outset, a contrast both with Charles Edwards’s Act 1 set, dominated by an ugly grey workshop against a pale sky, and with the gaudy immodesty of Števa’s hangers-on. Such is the impression made by her initial good cheer that it is all too painful to follow the effect of the series of personal tragedies that befall her. One would never think at the outset that this was a girl who would end up getting married in a plain black dress (against which her dead child’s red knitted cap is thrown into particularly poignant relief).

Roocroft’s singing, too, is full of light at the outset, but by the final curtain has given way to a measured, introverted luminosity. And in between — well, after hearing of the death of baby Števuška her voice is as drained and forlorn as the drab wallpaper in the Kostelnička’s living-room. She had a strong partner in the Norwegian conductor Elvind Gullberg Jensen — in his ENO debut — who showed unfailing sensitivity in these moments of personal reflection, even if he had a tendency to lose the shape of the music in the bigger, public scenes.

Jenůfa’s initial sunniness presents just as sharp a contrast with the Kostelnička, sung by the American mezzo Michaela Martens; though her singing was powerful and at times gut-wrenchingly intense, barely a word of the English translation (by Otakar Kraus and Edward Downes) was decipherable, and her tone had a tendency to spread out at the height of the second-act monologue. This production makes her rather severe; it is a shame we didn’t see more of the internal struggle with her own human nature as the realisation dawns that only she has the means to dispose of Jenůfa’s ‘problem’.

Robert Brubaker’s Laca is quite outstanding, so alive with repressed anger and frustration that he seldom even stands still. There was a wildness to some of the louder moments which concerned me slightly at the time, but which in hindsight I’m convinced must have been an intentional part of his characterisation; in the final moments of Act 3, his passionate declaration of love for Jenůfa was delivered in a full-blooded, secure, radiant fortissimo — and with both feet firmly on the ground. Thomas Randle was equally ideal as the irresponsible Števa, looking every inch the alpha male, his bright, cocksure tenor making every note count.

Tom Randle as Steva Buryja and Mairead Buicke as Karolka

Iain Paterson (the only survivor other than Roocroft of the original 2006 run) was quite outstanding as the Foreman, every word delivered with precision and sensitivity — and Susan Gorton made much of Grandma Buryjovka, her wordless but telling reaction to the crass insensitivity of Karolka and family supplying a rare but welcome moment of comic relief in Act 3.

David Alden’s staging has a few incongruous details; neither the motorcycle on which Števa makes his first entrance, nor the colourfully-clad village girls who dance for Jenufa prior to her wedding, seem appropriate to the time and place. And the production bothered me more second time around than it did when new. In the dreary surroundings of a small industrial plant in the 1940s or thereabouts, the insistent staccato of the opening orchestral theme is accompanied by flashes of light from welding tools rather than the turning of a mill-wheel. The indoor setting of the second and third acts is no more attractive, with slabs of old cardboard keeping out the world in the place of closed shutters. Is the sadness, frustration and violence in these people’s lives an inevitable result of miserable surroundings, and not a product of their personal circumstances? It’s a valid interpretation, if not one that makes for visually striking stage pictures.

Ruth Elleson © 2009

image=http://www.operatoday.com/Jenufa_011.gif image_description=Amanda Roocroft as Jenufa and Tom Randle as Steva Buryja [Photo by Robert Workman courtesy of English National Opera] product=yes product_title=Leoš Janáček: Jenůfa product_by= Amanda Roocroft, Michaela Martens, Robert Brubaker, Tom Randle, Susan Gorton, Iain Paterson, Mairead Buicke. English National Opera. Eivind Gullberg Jensen, conductor. David Alden, director. product_id=Above: Amanda Roocroft as Jenufa and Tom Randle as Steva Buryja

All photos by Robert Workman courtesy of English National Opera

Paul Robeson: The Complete EMI Sessions 1928-1939

All recorded in the UK (mostly London), the selections cover musicals, gospel, and classical composers. Somehow, the totality of the listening experience conveys the sense of a talented vocalist trapped by the darker currents of American history in an artistic whirlpool, striving to present the best qualities of his voice but frequently swamped by racist expectations and a felt obligation to his people and their history.

The first of three versions of “Ol’ Man River” opens disc one, with Robeson’s voice coming in almost immediately. The tempo initially feels rushed, though that may well have been necessary to accommodate the 1928 recording process. The setting puts voices first (Robeson’s and those of the Drury Lane chorus), and Robeson projects the pathos of the song even within the oddly peppy arrangement. The 1931 version on disc two is even more discombobulating, with the almost cheerful band behind Robeson singing the version of the verse that employs the “n-word.” Startling at first, in context it makes sense, as the lyric goes on to plead “let me get away from the white man boss.” In fact, throughout the seven discs, the selections almost serve to offer a musical history of post-slavery African-American life, with the memory of the plantation fresh. Even the gospel songs focus on trials and tribulations, and the hope for a heavenly refuge. Somehow the innate dignity and security of Robeson’s vocals commands respect, even in titles such as “De li’l piccaninny’s gone to sleep.”

The third version of “Ol’ Man River” comes from the 1936 film soundtrack, where the recording strangely carries more surface noise than many of the earlier selections. In this lyric, “darkies” takes the place of the ostensibly more objectionable term, although the sheer frequency of “darkies” through these seven discs is disheartening, if not enraging. So it comes as a relief to hear Robeson take on great Duke Ellington songs such as “Solitude” and “Mood Indigo.” Even more interesting is to hear Robeson, who visited the Soviet Union, take on the “Song of the Volga Boatmen” and a Mussorgsky song translated as “After the Battle.” Disc seven is a surprising assortment of British songs and adaptations, including a setting of Blake’s “The little black boy” and Mendelssohn’s “Lord God of Abraham.” Robeson had apparently spent so much time in the UK by this point (1939) that his voice has accumulated some somewhat affected pronunciations, including rolled r’s.

It would have been out of order chronologically, but the end of disc five might have been a better way to leave this survey of Robeson’s 1930s’ career. Robeson offers an affecting, simple “Sometimes I feel like a motherless child,” and then reads the text of Langston Hughes’s “Minstrel man.” The side ends with a sentimental lament, “The Wanderer,” which captures in its essence the story of a great American artist who spent so much of the prime of his career outside the U.S.A.

EMI’s box set consists of the seven discs in individual slip cases (all with identical covers except the number of the disc) and a booklet containing detailed track information and a fairly brief but respectful note by Patrick O’Connor.

A disc or two of highlights from these years of recordings would do well for most anyone interested in this remarkable artist, but EMI earns thanks for making so much more available for anyone who wants the most complete portrait possible.

Chris Mullins

image=http://www.operatoday.com/RobesonEMISessions.gif image_description=Paul Robeson: The EMI Sessions 1928-1940

product=yes producttitle=Paul Robeson: The EMI Sessions 1928-1940 productby=Paul Robeson productid=EMI Classics 2 15586 2 [7CDs] price=$85.98
producturl=http://www.arkivmusic.com/classical/album.jsp?album_id=203552

Venice's Variable “War Requiem”

At last I had a chance to hear Benjamin Britten’s monumental War Requiem live, and experience up close and personal not only the splashy dramatic fire, but also the immediacy and subtlety of the chamber aspects of this infrequently performed masterpiece. And. . .to hear it all under acclaimed maestro Bruno Bartoletti leading the reliably excellent orchestra and chorus of Venice’s renowned Teatro La Fenice.

And really, so far so good. No. . .make that “great.” The amassed forces were impeccably prepared. Starting with the flawless chorus, this was music-making of highest order, characterized by clean diction, awesome ensemble, crackling dramatic outbursts, and heart-breaking melancholy as required. Director Claudio Marino Moretti wrung every bit of drama out of his choristers, and did it without sacrificing accuracy of line or smoothness of blend. First among equals, the alto section particularly sported the richest tone I believe I have ever heard in a choral group.

The Piccoli Cantori Veneziani youth chorus under Diana D’Alessio was also highly affecting with its spot-on, other-worldly, off-stage interjections.

The orchestra, too, had a memorable night. The virtuosic challenges of the colossal score held absolutely no terror for them. Signor Bartoletti shepherded the huge core group of musicians placed on the stage, while Marco Paladin ably led the chamber orchestra in the pit. The thoroughness of the musical preparation was on display at the score’s every page turn with the complementary maestri tag-teaming seamlessly and weaving their disparate bands into a satisfying unified whole.

The stage was outfitted with a big handsome wooden box complete with Le Fenice logo, which only enhanced the lively acoustics. The lower voices did not always have quite the same snarl as the upper voices, but they always had finesse and fullness. Indeed, the complete palette of instrumental solo work had personality, the tutti segments had passion, and the group numbers drawn from the standard Requiem Mass that provide the work’s solid framework, were cause for rejoicing.

However, the heart of the piece belongs to the soloists, especially the two men who present Britten’s pacifist philosophy in the form of musicalized (glorious) poems by Wilfrid Owen.

Soprano Kristin Lewis was quite a “discovery” to me. Her ample, slightly steely dramatic voice seemed a little large at first for the work required. This all-out approach resulted in a couple of unwieldy phrases in the angularity of the “Lachrymosa,” for example. But later, when fire power was truly called for, Ms. Lewis hurled thrilling, pointed, full-throated tone at us, ringing out over the orchestra and chorus in full Geschrei. Just recalling the effect gives me chills all over again. Thrilling. Extra-musical-observation: our soprano was decked out in a socko black and silver sequined gown that dazzled without upstaging.

Tenor Marlin Miller seems to have the goods for the demands of this work. His rather full, lyric tenor is well schooled, his musicianship is quite fine, and his enunciation of the all-important text was clear as a bell. So why was his presentation so unpersuasive? He seemed to be singing “correctly,” cautiously, as if indisposed (although no announcement was made). I would like to think this good singer is perhaps capable of a more committed, more abandoned performance than was on display this evening.

And what to say about the soft-grained gifts of baritone Stephan Genz? I had quite enjoyed his gentle performance in Die tote Stadt at this very theatre some weeks prior. But truth to tell, Mr. Genz had neither the heft of tone, the gravitas, nor the diction to serve the War Requiem. “Bugles Sang,” his first utterance, came out “Boo-Ghells-Seng.” And it repeated. “Booooo-ghells.” “Seng.” And repeated again. It was all “down hill” from there. Or more correctly, “duh-ooon. . heel. . .”

Would any singer who is a native English speaker be tolerated singing Italian or French or German phonetically with a fiercely incorrect accent? (That was rhetorical: No.) We needed an idiomatic vocalist with the burnished tone and communicative gifts of Simon Keenlyside or Nathan Gunn or Gerald Finley. What we got was a Guglielmo in need of Berlitz. For a foreign audience perhaps that was enough. (To his credit, Stephan was intelligent, well-prepared, and worked mighty hard to put his solos across, but he was sadly over-parted.)

For me, the excellence of the chorus and orchestra, beautifully shaped under a seasoned Maestro, almost, but not quite, compensated for the missing poetry of the chamber songs. The thrilling live War Requiem reading I sought seems to still be in my future.

James Sohre

image=http://www.operatoday.com/content/britten.gif image_description=Benjamin Britten product=yes product_title=Benjamin Britten: War Requiem product_by=Kristin Lewis, soprano; Marlin Miller, tenor; Stephan Genz, baritone. Bruno Bartoletti, conductor. Orchestra e Coro del Teatro La Fenice. Piccoli Cantori Veneziani.

La Sonnambula at the MET

La Sonnambula is a story of true love thwarted by jealousy then joyously restored, among peasants so unsophisticated they believe ghost stories but have never heard of sleepwalking. The urbane Milanese observed this with the proper degree of condescension – it was quaint, but it wasn’t fluff; the feelings are real; Bellini makes them so; the rest is up to the singers. Peasant society as a place of seething, primal passions was the trope of later generations. Of course, urban audiences enjoyed feeling superior to that, too.

Pastoral fantasy is long out of fashion, and it’s evidently something Peter Gelb at the Met and director Mary Zimmerman are ashamed of – sufficiently ashamed for Gelb to dismiss the opera’s plot publicly, and for Zimmerman to ignore it in her staging, which is not so much post-modern as a bunch of casual goofs on Sonnambula – there is no coherent story line in it, because the characters must change personality drastically from one moment to the next, alternately following Zimmerman’s “concept” or singing Bellini’s opera – the two have little in common, and no one onstage can be in just one or the other – Zimmerman has seen to that.

She has set the piece in a rehearsal hall in Manhattan during the run up to a performance of La Sonnambula – okay – starring a self-important diva who chatters on a cell phone during her sortita and is betrothed to the star tenor – okay – and the diva’s jealous rival has become the sulky stage manager. But then real feelings leap out of the music, and real words (Zimmerman knows no Italian, but there are titles on the seat backs), and these modern figures cannot be using these 1831 words. They don’t make sense in 2009. Try to imagine an opera chorus in contemporary New York who refuse to believe in sleepwalking – have they never heard of Macbeth? Or a visiting star baritone (as Bellini’s Count has become) who, instead of taking a luxury hotel room for the night (hey, even during a blizzard, it’s a short cab or subway to the Pierre), is forced to sack out on a cot in the rehearsal hall just so the diva can turn up in his bed. (Why else would this happen?) Or any celebrity tenor who, on finding his celebrity soprano untrue, marries his ex the very next day. Move out and shack up, yes; but marry? Church bells and all?

It’s not just that all this is trivial or perverse – it’s that puzzling over whether a singer (or the chorus) is sincere or playing the play within the play at every single moment gets in the way of being able to hear, and appreciate, the music-making.

Juan Diego Flórez as Elvino and Natalie Dessay as Amina

I do understand why the chorus, at the end of Act I, rhythmically tear up their scores and toss them about like confetti, while spinning the heroine around on her bed: Mary Zimmerman does not know, understand, accept that music has a place in opera; she does not believe it is important or interesting; she wants to distract us with some activity or other so we won’t be bothered by all that stuff being played and sung – you know – the music? The reason the rest of us go to the opera, and wanted to revive this delicate piece in the first place? Yes, the woman who slew the sextet in Lucia is at it again. She doesn’t like opera, and it sure don’t like her.

Now you can see how this all came about, in a brain-storming session with much laughter and, perhaps, alcohol: Amina sleepwalks across a mill-race? How about a Manhattan ledge in a snowstorm? (laughter) And theater people are all superstitious, right? So they believe there’s a rehearsal hall ghost. (laughter) And turn jealous Lisa into an irritable stage manager. Brilliant! And Elvino into a star tenor (like Florez) whose romance with the diva is the talk of the tabloids (like Gheorghiu or Netrebko). Genius! But it’s not; it just makes us uncertain who is singing any phrase at any particular time. It takes away much and adds nothing. This is not updating – it’s frat house or SNL skit. (I’m surprised the Count isn’t in drag.)

Jennifer Black as Lisa

The thing is, this cast could have put the piece over as written. Whenever Juan Diego lets loose with his soaring high notes, he is not merely a joy to hear, he is expressing real feeling – not the feeling of whoever, whatever, he is supposed to be playing in this “concept,” but the feeling Bellini bestowed on the character of Elvino. And when Natalie Dessay, alone in a spotlight on a plank over the orchestra pit, sings the dreamy, endlessly unreeling melody of Amina’s climactic sleepwalk (the melody Chopin asked to have played to him while he was dying), she holds the house silent and breathless on the thread of her voice. In short – they could have played this thing straight, and it would have been great theater, and we’d have been able to enjoy the rest of it, too.

Yes, Sonnambula, relic of a forgotten genre, the pathetic opera semiseria, is a problem to present nowadays. But there are ways to present Sonnambula that do not oblige you to disbelieve in the characters, to doubt the meaning of every word they sing. The problem is not their words or actions, but our attitude, and a great director would realize we are the ones who must be transformed, brought into the proper frame of mind. When Luchino Visconti directed Maria Callas in La Sonnambula, he staged the piece in the manner of a “peasant” ballet like Giselle, costumes, gestures, movements stylized to lure the viewer into the acceptance of convention we bring to romantic dance. It was a triumph, for Visconti, for Callas’s virtuosic singing and acting, and for Bellini – whose operas no longer had to blush on the modern stage.

If you ignored the stage antics, if you were lucky enough to be stuck at home, you could derive a great deal of pleasure from listening to this Sonnambula. Florez’s voice has expanded to handle the exquisite bel canto phrases, and though he can be a trifle nasal, he shows no sign of strain as he inhabits the too-trusting, too-bitter, repentant Elvino. His brilliant B-flat fills the huge house. His leap to head voice (perfectly acceptable in Bellini’s time, deplored nowadays) is not only well executed, he maneuvers it into an expression of dramatic despair. Michele Pertusi makes a suavely supercilious Count – pity he doesn’t get to reprise his cabaletta, one of my favorite tunes. Jennifer Black, the flirty Lisa, acts vividly and sings her little arias with charm if perhaps too dark a sound – I suspect and hope there is Verdi in her future. Evelino Pidò is eminently the first thing one wants in a bel canto conductor: supportive of the singers. Bellini is not a man to cover a voice – on the contrary, he notoriously exposes it, often with only the lightest film of orchestral accompaniment. There’s no place to hide if you are singing Bellini.

Natalie Dessay sings the long and arduous role of Amina very prettily, aside from a few squally high notes, and phrases the great “Ah, non credea” languorously, as if, well, asleep and dreaming – but holding the whole house breathless to her every tone. Her sleepwalk on a ledge does not quite come over – she can never just do something; she has to futz with it, as she did with Lucia’s mad scene. This is a sleep walk, not a sleep mambo. I liked her acting as Amina and I was amused by her acting as a diva, but it was a pity she did both in the same performance – it was impossible to believe they were the same woman. One of them was just a performance, but which?

On March 11, even she seemed unsure – she blew her cue for the final cabaletta twice, though she managed to “work it into” the performance so that those attending for the first time thought she’d done it on purpose. Perhaps she did. There’s no earthly way to tell which of her jokes were to be laughed at and which not, and it was frustrating to have to spend so much time working that out. The last Sonnambula I saw, Ruth Ann Swenson’s in an unstaged concert by Opera Orchestra of New York at Carnegie Hall, was not only more beautifully sung, it was far closer to the dramatic truth of the piece.

John Yohalem

image=http://www.operatoday.com/Dessay_Amina.gif image_description=Natalie Dessay as Amina [Photo by Ken Howard courtesy of The Metropolitan Opera] product=yes product_title=Vincenzo Bellini: La Sonnambula product_by=Amina: Natalie Dessay; Elvino: Juan Diego Flórez; Lisa: Jennifer Black; Count Rodolfo: Michele Pertusi. Conducted by Evelino Pidò. Metropolitan Opera. product_id=Above: Natalie Dessay as Amina

All photos by Ken Howard courtesy of The Metropolitan Opera

Il Trovatore at the MET

Not until Gounod’s Faust appeared, did Trovatore grudgingly yield first place, but it didn’t go quietly. (Quietly? Trovatore?) At the old Met at the turn of the century, before unions, Trovatore sometimes appeared on double bills — the millionaires in the boxes might depart for other entertainment, but the fans in the cheap seats hung on screaming till the wee hours. The Marx Brothers didn’t have to search for an opera to make fun of — they, and all their audiences, knew Trovatore’s glorious absurdities from the cradle: anvils, gypsies, long-lost kin, the stake! the poisoned ring! the block! There were literally thousands of productions, despite a story that tends to lurch around the war-torn Spanish landscape.

The conclusion one must draw is that it can’t be that difficult to stage the thing. Caruso famously said all you needed was the four greatest singers in the world, and that was when there were contenders for such title. But you don’t really need top-flight Verdi giants (a good thing; we no longer have them); you just need good singers who will hurl themselves into the drama as if ready to die to reach that high note. Listen to Emma Eames, a famously cold soprano, in her 1909 recording of the Act IV duet, “Mira d’acerbe lagrime,” with baritone Emilio de Gogorza: they seem to be aiming for a new speed record, but each grace note, each twirl of a vocal figure, is perfectly produced, perfectly in place, perfectly focused, and means what it should mean about passion and melodrama. That’s how you sing Verdi.

The Met has staged Trovatore four times since the new house opened in 1966, and the first three were variously atrocious, even when (to begin with) they had the right singers. In 1969, there was the grotesque Attilio Colonello production; in 1989, the Fabrizio Melano production, as handsome as the Colonello was ugly, but with an absurd grandiosity: set among imperial-sized columns on rollers, the gypsies encamped on a glossy ballroom floor; in 2000, the notorious Graham Vick production where, in only the evening’s most egregious folly, the tenor bursting through a four-story-high crucifix in a convent wall had the audience laughing so hard it stopped the show for ten minutes. The best Trovatore I’ve seen under Met auspices in recent years was a 1998 concert in Prospect Park under Marco Armiliato’s baton, with June Anderson and Larissa Diadkova singing like goddesses.

Dmitri Hvorostovsky as Count di Luna and Sondra Radvanovsky as Leonora

But we can’t have a grand opera house without a functional Trovatore — it has been truly called the most operatic of operas. So they had to try again, and fourth time is the charm — or have we all become less demanding?

Set designer Charles Edwards has given us a turntable with a wall on it and assorted dreary backdrops. The wall has a vertiginous staircase on one side, a mélange of Spanish architectural elements from various eras on the other, all cluttered together as, indeed, they often are in Spain. The costumes by Brigitte Reifenstuel seem more or less nineteenth century (the opera is set in 1412), but I wish she had picked just one year: Leonora wears an unfortunate Empire-waisted gown, Inez rather more Victorian garb, the Count di Luna a frilly eighteenth-century officer’s uniform and Manrico a Romanian Gypsy vest. There are various grilles for Manrico’s guerrillas to climb, most athletically, in the convent scene — which one expects of guerrillas — but how many Leonoras become crazed enough to climb them, too, on hearing Manrico’s song in the turret scene? That may be a feature of Sondra Radvanovsky’s view (expressed in an interview) of Leonora as a teenager.

David McVicar, a director famous for his “Bollywood” version of Handel’s Giulio Cesare, has made the old contraption work, and a full house on March 10 was very happy and reluctant to depart — and no one was giggling inappropriately, except perhaps Dolora Zajick as the crazed Azucena and Kwangchul Youn, a tipsy Ferrando — I’ve always thought of Ferrando as a grim retainer, telling ghost stories and nursing the family grudge. There were, it seemed to me, far too many far too noisy camp followers in Act III — they are nowadays inescapable in any soldiers’ camp scene, but when I listened to the broadcast, I could understand every syllable the soldiers were singing, and that’s very unusual (Met chorus master Donald Palumbo is my hero, as I’ve said before, at Peter Grimes and Satyagraha), but in the house one hardly noticed they were singing at all because the girls were carrying on so. The staging of the convent scene, the arrival of the guerrillas, the fight with the soldiers, the abduction of Leonora as she is about to take holy orders, was a bit choppy — it always is — but the opera’s end, confrontations, executions, revelations that follow each other with startling speed, I have never seen staged or acted more convincingly. This scene, if no other, should arouse shock and not laughter, and McVicar’s cast pulled it off. Also pulling it off were the bare-chested Gypsy blacksmiths, whose hammers mercifully hit the anvils on the beat. I cringe for lazier revivals.

Dolora Zajick as Azucena

Marcelo Álvarez sang the troubadour, a modern, lost, existential hero like Wagner’s Siegmund, who never learns the truth about his birth or anything else important, but whose passions drive the story. Álvarez has an impressive instrument, both graceful and sizable in mid-voice, but fading out in the upper range — like many a fine Manrico (Tucker, Domingo), he lacks the ringing top C that Verdi didn’t write anyway. He did not carry a harp or any other instrument, which was puzzling since his offstage airs are sung to a harp, and I found both these numbers a bit rushed and graceless, lacking romantic atmosphere. Manrico should have an air of mystery, the alluring voice in the darkness, the unknown knight who won that tournament, and fudging the serenade punctures this mystery. On the whole he made a stalwart, passionate, masculine figure, and it has been many years since any Met Manrico did such justice to “Ah si, ben mio,” with every little curlicue elegantly in place. This did not sound affected — it sounded seductive — a warrior in love. Naturally the girl fell all over him.

The girl was Sondra Radvanovsky, currently, by default, the Met’s leading Verdi soprano, a splendid Luisa Miller and an able Elena in Vespri Siciliani (the toughest of all Verdi soprano roles). She has all the technical devices necessary for Leonora, the floating pianissimo, acceptable trills, volume whenever called for, and she is, moreover, a passionate actress — but I would find her more convincing if she did less rolling about on the floor. Leonora may be in her teens, but she’s a Spanish noblewoman in her teens — she has dignity, she seriously considers becoming a nun; she shouldn’t remind us of Carol Burnett or Gilda Radner, and Radvanovsky’s jumping and climbing about often does. My real problem with her, though, is the quality of her voice, exciting but not beautiful — I miss the luster of Price, Arroyo, Caballé, Anderson, where the ethereal floating tone seemed to explain how this devout girl has allowed love to replace religious duty in her life. It is not a pretty or a sensuous voice; I do not love the sheer sound of it. (I’m told it sounds less acid upstairs.) But that she is a fine singing actress is beyond question.

Dmitri Hvorostovsky, for whom Verdi roles in a Met-sized house sometimes seem too much, sang “Il balen” with superb, flawless line, total control and long, flowing, high notes like chocolate ganache. If the Met permitted encores, we’d all still be there, applauding or listening. “Il balen” is one of Verdi’s great internal arias, a character exploring his soul, and Counts who can put it over make us love them despite the fact that they are contemplating rape and religious violation. It was a noble performance — and it took a lot out of him, for he was way off pitch during the agitated cabaletta that follows. The rest of the night he was stern and on his mettle.

Dolora Zajick held down Azucena powerfully, lacking nothing obvious of the mad Gypsy’s force of character, but she has never been a subtle actress and I found her manic giggles out of place, her trills mere tuneless buzzing. A little more active despair — especially in her great confrontation with the Count and his army — would be in order. Some viewers found her grotesque, but the character is grotesque, indeed half mad — the story makes no sense if she’s played any other way. Rational people don’t behave like characters in Il Trovatore. That’s why we love the opera.

Gianandrea Noseda, in the pit, erred a bit on the side of bel canto — Trovatore is not bel canto, it’s blood and thunder. He tempi lag now and then as if to give the singers a hand (Emma Eames a hundred years ago would not have needed it — but these are decadent times), but my only real objection to his Trovatore is the perfunctory rush-through he gave both of Manrico’s serenades. Manrico is the eponymous troubadour, and these are his calling cards — they require the stillness and romance of nights in the gardens of old Aragon.

But the Met has a solid Trovatore production — the first since they tore the old house down — and one that can be inhabited by any number of Verdi singers for years to come. I’m rather intrigued by the second cast, coming up in April, which will include Marco Berti (a fine Gabriele Adorno) as Manrico, Hasmik Papian (a noble Aida) as Leonora and Zeljko Lucic (a great Macbeth and Germont) as the Count.

John Yohalem

image=http://www.operatoday.com/Alvarez_as_Manrico.gif image_description=Marcelo Álvarez as Manrico [Photo by Ken Howard courtesy of The Metropolitan Opera] product=yes product_title=G. Verdi: Il Trovatore product_by=Leonora: Sondra Radvanovsky; Azucena: Dolora Zajick; Manrico: Marcelo Álvarez; Count di Luna: Dmitri Hvorostovsky; Ferrando: Kwangchul Youn. Conducted by Gianandrea Noseda. Metropolitan Opera. product_id=Above: Marcelo Álvarez as Manrico

All photos by Ken Howard courtesy of The Metropolitan Opera

Franz Schubert: The Conspirators (Die Verschworenen)

Given that each Schubert Lied is in many ways a ‘mini-opera’ — tightly dramatic, conveying character, situation and a gamut of emotions with immediacy and power, the ‘meaning’ expertly communicated through an intense interaction of words and music — one might have expected him to have been more successful. Unfortunately, while he understood perfectly the musico-dramatic conventions of Mozart and his contemporaries, he failed to find his Da Ponte … and repeatedly applied his musical talents to undeserving material.

However, with ‘The Conspirators’ — his sixth and final effort in Singspiel — Schubert found some posthumous success; written in 1823, it was only performed privately during his lifetime, but the public staging in 1861 was well-received and the work became a popular success. One can imagine that its wit and parody were instantly appealing to the admiring Arthur Sullivan who, in the autumn of 1867, travelled to Vienna, returning with a treasure-trove of rescued Schubert scores.

Modelled on Aristophanes’ Lysistrata, Schubert’s libretto, written by Ignaz Franz Castelli, presents a tale of domestic discord and sparring spouses. The original play is a comic account of one woman’s mission to end The Peloponnesian War: Lysistrata convinces the women of Athens and Sparta to withhold sexual privileges from their husbands as a means of forcing the men to forgo warmongering, a peace strategy that ironically inflames the battle between the sexes. Castelli updated the action - a band of Crusaders, commanded by Baron Herbert von Ludenstein, are dissuaded from continually waging war by their wives, led by the Baroness — and removed some of Aristophanes’ more explicit obscenities! This was not enough to prevent trouble with the censors, however; for somewhat obscure political reasons, they balked at the title and insisted on having the opera renamed Der Häusliche Krieg (The Domestic War). It seems Schubert’s was out of luck once again …

Sadly, in this domestic tussle, the women do not prevail; but, whatever their own feminist principles, this did not prevent the girls of Queen’s College London from presenting a delightfully entertaining, remarkably confident and outstandingly assured performance of this unjustly neglected opera.

Bampton Classical Opera has an admirable history of devising challenging educational projects which enable young singers to work with professional musicians, thereby encouraging them to aspire to, and attain, the highest standards. In this shrewdly cast production, the young soloists proved an equal match for the two professional singers, tenor Tom Raskin and baritone Edmund Connolly, who supported and encouraged the young performers sensitively throughout. Indeed, ‘The Conspirators’ seems ideally suited to young, light voices, with its sequence of lyrical solos and duets demanding not virtuosity but clarity and precision, interspersed with lively, inventive ensembles — many of which had been deftly arranged and reallocated to allow members of the chorus to step briefly into the limelight.

After the Singspiel style, the dramatic action is largely conveyed spoken dialogue. Rightly doubtful that the witticisms of the 1823 text would still pack a punch, Gilly French and Jeremy Gray also revised the text, providing a new English translation, brisk and uncluttered, which struck an effective balance between detail and dramatic momentum. Even the literal silencing, by a severe throat infection, of one of the leading ladies could not stall the show: Hannah Burns read the dialogue from the wings with fluency and naturalness, while Katya Farkas’ graceful gestures and eloquent movement aptly expressed Isella’s coyness and cunning. In the opening duet, Isella’s lines were performed by thirteen-year-old Ella Clayton who, having learned the part at extremely short notice, displayed a confidence and talent far beyond her years.

All soloists showed themselves capable of projecting a range of musical emotions. Alice Sharman, remarkably convincing as Isella’s lover, Udolin, relished the occasion and was inspired to reach the peak of her performance in her ensembles with the male professionals. Alexandra Soiza communicated both Helene’s misery and her resolution in her beautiful opening aria, in which she laments the prolongued absence of her husband, Astolf. And, as the bossy Baroness, Theodora Hand delivered a consummate musical and dramatic performance which suggested that her operatic ambitions may well be fulfilled in years to come.

Perhaps the highlight of this opera is Schubert’s ensemble writing: given the opera’s clear delineation of the sexes, he shows a genius for exchange, for phrases that call across a musical space and are answered in kind. This production made the most of such opportunities, exploiting the small stage effectively and utilising the whole performance venue to take advantage of the antiphonal and imitative writing. Indeed, the staging was extraordinarily inventive. The restricted space and budget were no hindrance to the imagination of director Jeremy Gray: a combination of neat motifs and swift gestures produced the deft visual and verbal wit which has come to characterise Bampton Classical Opera’s unfussy, sharp approach.

The chorus also included members of the College staff. And, throughout there was a sense, not just of ambition and aspiration, but of genuine enjoyment and fun — a joy which was shared and conveyed by the small accompanying ensemble under the assured baton of Gilly French. A delightful evening.

Claire Seymour

image=http://www.operatoday.com/Schubert.gif image_description=Franz Schubert

product=yes producttitle=Franz Schubert: The Conspirators (Die Verschworenen) productby=The Queen’s Opera, in association with Bampton Classical Opera

Katya Kabanova/The Magic Flute — English Touring Opera, Hackney Empire Theatre

Later this year the company will be dispensing with the usual two- or three-opera tour format, as well as their now-regular opening venue of the Hackney Empire, in favour of a five-opera Handel festival at the Britten Theatre in this 250th anniversary year of the composer’s death.

For the spring tour, though, the format is largely the familiar one: an opera from the borderline of the standard repertoire paired with a popular hit that will guarantee consistent ticket revenues. As this is a major birthday for the company, there are a few concert performances of Norma thrown in for good measure — about which more in late April.

James Conway’s production of Katya Kabanova, with a set design by Adam Wiltshire, looks a little like a miniature version of Trevor Nunn’s 1994 production for Covent Garden, all grey colours and sloping wooden walkways. My only real complaint here would be that neither ETO’s production nor the orchestra made much of an attempt to evoke the Volga, whose presence is so central to the opera that it is virtually a character in its own right. As a minimum, Katya’s death plunge (a cramped and unconvincing affair) really needs sorting out before the tour goes much further.

In a fairly small space and with a reduced orchestra, the full lyrical power of Janacek’s scoring was never really going to be a possibility, though one could hardly have asked for better playing from the forces available. Conductor Michael Rosewell ensured that the the musical line was tautly controlled and powerfully driven, and paid detailed attention to the expressiveness of the more transparent and intimate moments.

But here the vocal performances made the greatest impression. The title role was compellingly and radiantly sung by soprano Linda Richardson, who managed to convey the essence of the lively spirit and physical beauty trapped behind the dowdy façade Katya has been forced to adopt. Mezzo Fiona Kimm was a truly despicable Kabanicha — and I mean that in the most complimentary sense. Like her Jezibaba in last autumn’s Rusalka, there was a grandeur to her stage presence which defied her petite stature; the physical contrast between her and Dikoy — the immensely tall and broad Welsh bass Sion Goronwy — made the nature of their relationship all the more telling. Colin Judson’s Tichon was a perfect portrait of a man who wouldn’t know how to stand up to his mother even if he wanted to.

Jane Harrington was an ideal Varvara, her voice and manner warm, lively and straightforward; together with Michael Bracegirdle’s Kudryash and Richard Roberts’s Boris, they made a vivacious trio of youngsters who served to highlight only too plainly how Katya’s own life might have been.

Onto the next night, and there was predictably a full house for The Magic Flute. When the curtain went up, it at first seemed that the production might be quite unconventional: Tamino’s serpent is a writhing chain of contemporary(ish) whores and playboys, his wilderness a human one. A clean-cut youth dressed smartly in a pale jacket, the prince (Mark Wilde) is an obvious outsider to the black and silver lace of the figures which dominate his nightmare world. There’s even some suggestion that Papageno (complete with fluttering birds borne by scurrying members of the chorus) might be a drug-induced hallucination, and Tamino is rightly unsure where vision ends and reality begins. The Queen of the Night makes her first appearance from the rear centre stage with an immense royal-blue train which fills the entire set; as she sings, it has rolling waves like a nocturnal sea. But as she turns to make her exit, the train disappears through a trapdoor leaving her clad in black; from then on, reality stabilises somewhat, and Tamino’s quest of self-discovery continues along more conventional lines.

Scene from The Magic Flute [Photo by Robert Workman courtesy of English Touring Opera]

The production remains slightly surreal throughout, being set in an enclosed room with panelled walls painted a deep blue, several doors and trap-doors, and an aperture at the rear which is used for grand entrances and whenever a visual focal point is required. The guiding role of the three boys (here sung by women, as is practical for a touring production) is underlined by their surprising costumes, with skirts made of lit lamp-shades. There are a lot of lights and lamps in this dark-coloured staging, but these are often confusing to the adventurers rather than illuminating; at one point a forest of standard-lamps springs up around Papageno as he searches for his Papagena. The young American soprano Paula Sides was a passionate Pamina, her soprano richer and more complex than is often heard in this role. Other than a slight hardness under pressure at the top of her voice, she sounded truly glorious, with some beautifully controlled pianissimo singing towards the end of ‘Ach, ich fühl’s’. Also vocally impressive was Laure Meloy as the Queen of the Night, again with a fuller and more refulgent tone than many; however, although she cut an imposing and elegant figure, her body language conveyed little in the way of rage and fury. Andrew Slater’s Sarastro had physical presence aplenty, but vocally he lacked weight and authority. Daniel Grice’s Papageno had energy and good humour although his bright and forward baritone was rather monochrome and unvarying in volume.

A little more variety would have been welcome in other areas too. In the pit, Paul McGrath started the overture with such pointed deliberation that I feared it could be a long evening, but if anything he tended towards the other extreme; ‘In diesen heil’gen Hallen’ had a folk-tune feel to it, and if ‘Ach, ich fühl’s’ had been any faster it would have been one-in-a-bar. Generally his approach succeeded in maintaining momentum, but it sidelined the moments of grandeur, reflection and calm.

Singing in Jeremy Sams’s gently humorous English translation (well-known to London audiences from ENO’s popular production), the cast generally did an excellent job with the English text.

Ruth Elleson © 2009

image=http://www.operatoday.com/katya-180.gif image_description=Katya Kabanova - English Touring Opera [Photo by Robert Workman]

product=yes producttitle=Leoš Janáček: Katya Kabanova productby=Katya: Linda Richardson; Kabanicha: Fiona Kimm; Varvara: Jane Harrington; Boris: Richard Roberts; Tichon: Colin Judson; Kudryash: Mike Bracegirdle; Kuligin: Bob Davies; Dikoy: Sion Goronwy; Feklusha: Helen Johnson. English Touring Opera. Conductor: Michael Rosewell. Director: James Conway. Designer: Adam Wiltshire. product_id=Above: Linda Richardson as Katya [Photo by Robert Workman courtesy of English Touring Opera]

Songs by Samuel Barber

Among Barber’s contributions are a number of sets of songs from throughout his career, works that are heard periodically in performance and available in various recordings. This selection by Gerald Finley and Julius Drake offers a fine cross-section of Barber’s songs on a single CD and collects his set of Hermit Songs, Op. 29; Mélodies passagères, Op. 27; Three Songs, Op. 10; Dover Beach, Op. 3; and several individual songs. Lacking, of course, Knoxville 1915, Op. 24, since it was intended for soprano and orchestra (albeit performed by tenor), this recording of Barber’s song is a rich selection which captures the composer’s major efforts in the genre in interpretations by two of the finest performers of the day.

The spiritual aspects of the Hermit Songs implicit in the texts require the clear and fervent execution Finley and Drake offer. With texts from various sources, primarily translations of Medieval verse, the turns of phrases in modern English are nicely supported by Barber’s music. The plaintive quality of “The Crucifixion” reflects simultaneously the vocal idiom of an earlier time and yet the dissonant idiom that Barber used to punctuate the music contributes to the welcome complexity of the song. Julius Drake’s approach to the accompaniment of this song and the one that succeeds it in the recording, “Sea Snatch” by making the pianistic touches work well with Gerald Finley’s sensitive interpretations of the works. Such details emerge aptly in Finley’s delivery, not only in shorter settings, like “St. Ita’s Vision” (translated by Chester Kallman) but also in one of the more extended songs, “The Monk and His Cat” (translated by W. H. Auden). One of the particularly moving performances is that of “The Desire for Hermitage” (translated by Seán O’Faoláin), which, as the culmination of the cycle, serves as a kind of summary of the entire set.

The sometimes angular settings of English-language translations receipt apt settings by Barber, but his craft at composing the French artsong is apparent in the set of Mélodies passagères, which are based on verse by Rainer Maria Rilke. These sometimes enigmatic poems bear rehearing for the nuances of the texts, and Finley’s approach invites returns to the songs to capture some of the details he and Drake bring to the music. “Un cynge” (“A swan”) receives its appropriate delicacy, a quality implicit in the music and effectively rendered in this performance. The subtle accompaniment works well with Finley’s sinuous approach to the text. Yet the entire set merits attention for the well-placed details that beg for a repeated hearings not only of the music, but also this compelling performance.

In addition to these pieces, the performers include a selection of Barber’s earlier songs on this recording. Some of the music is quite familiar from vocal recitals of various performers, as is the case with “Sure on Thdsis Shining Night,” a work that receives fresh treatment from Finley and Drake. The pacing of the vocal line and accompaniment are key to the interpretation found here, with model phrasing between the strophes of the verse. Equally impressive is Barber’s early masterpiece, Dover Beach, which involves the Aronowitz Ensemble. Part of the select vocal repertoire which involves chamber music, like Schubert’s Der Hirt auf dem Felsen (“The Shepherd on the Rock”), Dover Beach retains a special place in vocal literature. The maturity that Finley brings to the work is clear from the start, and as the piece progresses, the performance demonstrates an incredible level of involvement.

In this piece and the others on the recording, Finley shows himself to be a major interpreter of Barber’s music. Just as he is impressive on stage in such a powerful role as Robert Oppenheimer in John Adams’ opera Doctor Atomic, Finley is also commanding in the more intimate solo vocal literature. This is a fine addition to recent recordings of twentieth-century song, and also an impressive contribution to the discography of Samuel Barber.

James L. Zychowicz

image=http://www.operatoday.com/Barbersongs.gif imagedescription=Songs by Samuel Barber

product=yes producttitle=Songs by Samuel Barber productby=Gerald Finley, baritone; Julius Drake, piano. productid=Hyperion CDA 67528 price=$17.99 producturl=http://www.arkivmusic.com/classical/Drilldown?nameid1=644&namerole1=1&compid=389&genre=136&bcorder=195&labelid=66

Historic Performances: Maria Callas

Her big break occurred in an appearance in Ponchielli’s La Gioconda in Verona.

This successful appearance (2 August 1947) under Serafin was the start of her real career and she was soon in demand in Italian theatres for such heavy roles as Aida, Turandot, Isolde, Kundry and Brünnhilde. A rare versatility was shown in Venice in 1949 when, only three days after singing a Walküre Brünnhilde, she deputized for an indisposed colleague in the florid bel canto role of Elvira in Bellini’s I puritani. Thereafter, under the guidance of Serafin, she gradually relinquished her heavier roles in order to concentrate on the earlier Italian operas. Besides adding to her repertory Bellini’s Amina, Donizetti’s Lucia and Verdi’s Leonora (Il trovatore), Violetta and Gilda, she was in constant demand whenever rare and vocally taxing operas of the older school were produced, such as Haydn’s L’anima del filosofo (in its world première, 1951, Florence), Gluck’s Alceste and Iphigénie en Tauride, Cherubini’s Médée, Spontini’s La vestale, Rossini’s Armida and Il turco in Italia, Donizetti’s Anna Bolena and Poliuto, and Bellini’s Il pirata. Her greatest triumphs were won as Norma, Medea, Anne Boleyn, Lucia, Verdi's Lady Macbeth and Violetta, and Tosca. Many of these roles she repeated in the major opera houses of the world, where her fame reached a level that recalled the careers of Caruso and Chaliapin.

[Desmond Shawe-Taylor, Callas [Kalogeropoulou], (Cecilia Sophia Anna) Maria, Grove Music Online]

Her career proved to be a succession of triumphs and controversies, perhaps the most famous incident being her so-called “firing” by Rudolph Bing in 1958 . Vocal difficulties and personal disappointments ultimately led to the end of her career. Her last public performance occurred in Sapporo, Japan, in 1974.

[Click here for Wikipedia's more detailed biography.]

Links:

1. DONIZETTI: Lucia di Lamermoor
2. BELLINI: Norma — Roma 1955
3. BELLINI: Il Pirata — New York 1959
4. VERDI: Un ballo in maschera — La Scala 1957
5. VERDI: La Traviata — Lisbon 1958
6. ROSSINI: Armida — Firenze 1952
7. PUCCINI: Tosca — Mexico City 1952
8. BELLINI: La sonnambula — La Scala 1957
9. CHERUBINI: Medea — La Scala 1961
10. ROSSINI: Il Barbiere di Siviglia — La Scala 1956

image=http://www.operatoday.com/Callas_1956.gif image_description=Maria Callas as Violetta (1956)

WAGNER: Das Rheingold — Rome 1968

Music and libretto by Richard Wagner (1813 - 1883)

First Performance: 22 September 1869, Königlich Hof- und Nationaltheater, München

Principal Roles:
Gods
Wotan	Bass-Baritone
Donner	Bass-Baritone
Froh	Tenor
Loge	Tenor
Fricka	Mezzo-Soprano
Freia	Soprano
Erda	Contralto
Nieblungs
Alberich	Bass-Baritone
Mime	Tenor
Giants
Fasolt	Bass-Baritone
Fafner	Bass
Rhinemaidens
Woglinde	Soprano
Wellgunde	Soprano
Flosshilde	Mezzo-Soprano

Prelude and Scene I

The Setting: At the bottom of the Rhine.

Introductory Stage Instructions:

Greenish twilight, lighter above, darker below. The upper part of the scene is filled with moving water, which restlessly streams from right to left. Towards the bottom the waters resolve themselves into a fine mist, so that the space, to a man’s height from the stage, seems free from the water which floats like a train of clouds over the gloomy depths. Every-where are steep points of rock jutting up from the depths and enclosing the whole stage; all the ground is broken up into a wild confusion of jagged pieces, so that there is no level place, while on all sides darkness indicates other deeper fissures.

Synopsis:

Woglinde, Wellgunde and Flosshilde-the three seductive Rhinedaughters charged with protecting the Rhine gold-are swimming in the Rhine River. As they frolic in the water, Alberich the Nibelung, an ugly dwarf from the centre of the earth, approaches the water. He begins to flirt with the maidens, who tease and taunt him. Alberich becomes more and more frustrated as one by one the maidens reject him. A beam of light illuminates the Rhine gold, stopping Alberich's pursuit and drawing his full attention. Woglinde tells him that only a man who renounces love can steal the gold. The Rhinedaughters allow Alberich to get between them and the gold. He tricks the maidens, steals the gold and scurries away.

Scene II

The Setting: An open space on a mountain height

Introductory Stage Instructions:

The dawning day lights up with growing brightness a castle with glittering pinnacles, which stands on the top of a cliff in the background. Between this cliff and the foreground a deep valley through which the Rhine flows is supposed.

Wotan and Fricka asleep.

Synopsis:

Wotan, chief of the gods, lays sleeping, and his wife Fricka, goddess of marriage and fidelity, wakes him. A magnificent castle has appeared across the valley: Valhalla, the new home of the gods. Wotan has promised to give Fricka's sister Freia, goddess of youth and love, to the giants Fafner and Fasolt as reward for building the castle. Wotan tells his wife nevertheless not to worry; he would never harm the goddess who gives them all their youth and immortality through her golden apples. Freia appears, and in an attempt to escape the giants, calls for protection from her brothers, Donner, god of thunder, and Froh, god of the rainbow. Wotan tells Fricka and Freia that his ally Loge, demigod of fire, has a plan. Loge arrives, and tells the assembled crowd that although he has found no solution to their troubles, he does have news: Alberich has stolen the Rhine gold and will use it to forge a Ring that will give him absolute power over the entire world - including the gods. Wotan sees the gold as a way to pay the giants. Fasolt and Fafner agree to give Wotan until nightfall to bring them the Rhine gold, but until then, they will hold the terrified Freia hostage. The gods begin to feel weak as soon as Freia and her golden apples are taken away. Loge and Wotan depart, planning to surprise Alberich at his home in Nibelheim and take the gold from him.

Scene III

The Setting: Nibelheim.

Introductory Stage Instructions:

Alberich drags the shrieking Mime from a side cleft.

Synopsis:

Alberich has created a Ring from the Rhine gold and has used it to enslave the Nibelung - including his brother Mime - in his gold mine. Mime has crafted a golden cap for Alberich, a Tarnhelm, that can make him invisible and able to change shape at will. Alberich wrests the Tarnhelm from Mime and puts it on, becoming invisible. He taunts Mime, then leaves to lord his power over others. Wotan and Loge arrive, speaking with the cowed Mime. Alberich appears, brandishing the Ring, and taunts Wotan and Loge with threats of domination. Loge plays along with his taunts, tricking him into becoming first a dragon, then a toad. While Alberich is in toad form, Wotan and Loge trap him.

Scene IV

The Setting: Open space on mountain heights.

Introductory Stage Instructions:

The prospect is shrouded in pale mist, as at the end of the second scene.

Synopsis:

Bringing Alberich back to Valhalla, Wotan and Loge force him to hand over all the treasures, including Tarnhelm and the Ring, as ransom for his release. When Wotan takes the Ring from Alberich's hand and places it on his own, Alberich curses the wearer of the Ring to death, and others to envy. As Alberich leaves, Fasolt and Fafner return, bearing Freia. As Donner, Froh and Fricka gather, Fasolt tells Wotan that the reward for returning Freia must be large enough to hide her from his view. Wotan agrees, and the gold, including the Tarnhelm, is placed in front of Freia. Fafner and Fasolt examine the pile of gold and notice a small hole near Freia's eye. The Ring will fit the hole perfectly, but Wotan refuses to give it up. Erda, the Goddess of the Earth, rises from the ground and warns Wotan to give up the Ring and the curse that accompanies it. She tells Wotan that the world as he knows it will soon end. Wotan agrees to give up the Ring and completes the bargain. As Fasolt and Fafner gather their treasure, they begin to fight over the Ring. Fafner slays his brother and departs, taking the gold as he leaves. As the gods prepare to enter Valhalla, demigod Loge remains on earth in the form of fire. As he watches their entry into Valhalla, he states that he is ashamed to be involved with a group that deems itself so powerful it cannot fail, and wonders what the future will hold for the gods. In the distance, the Rhinedaughters lament the loss of their gold.

Click here for complete libretto.

image=http://www.operatoday.com/Giants_and_Freia.gif image_description=The giants seize Freya by Arthur Rackham (1910) audio=yes first_audio_name=Richard Wagner: Das Rheingold first_audio_link=http://www.operatoday.com/Rheingold2.m3u product=yes product_title=Richard Wagner: Das Rheingold product_by=Alberich: Zoltán Kélémen; Donner: Thomas Tipton; Erda: Oralia Dominguez; Fafner: Karl Ridderbusch; Fasolt: Gerd Nienstedt; Flosshilde: Ilse Gramatzki; Freia: Leonore Kirschstein; Fricka: Janis Martin; Froh: Hermann Winkler; Loge: Herbert Schachtschneider; Mime: Erwin Wohlfahrt; Wellgunde: Ingrit Liljeberg; Woglinde: Lieselotte Hammes; Wotan: Theo Adam. Orchestra di Roma della RAI. Wolfgang Sawallisch, conducting. Live performance, 1968, Rome.

TELEMANN: Brockes-Passion

A so-called “passion oratorio,” Brockes’s text is a fully versified account of the Passion of Jesus, harmonized from the various Gospel accounts. The perhaps more familiar model from Bach’s two passions is that of the “oratorio passion,” where a single Biblical account is preserved verbatim, with modern poetry and chorales interposed in the form of arias and choral or congregational song. If less familiar in our day, nevertheless Brockes’s text in its own time achieved great visibility through its frequent publication as a devotional text and in musical settings by Keiser (1712), Telemann (1716), Handel (1716), Mattheson (1718), Stölzel (1725), and Fasch (1723). Portions of the poem also appear in Bach’s St. John Passion.

Brockes was a native of Hamburg and from 1720 an active member of the government. Telemann also had a long association with Hamburg as Kantor and Music Director, appointments that began in 1721 and likely reveal the influence of the poet. Several years ealier (1716), Telemann had given performances of his setting of the Brockes Passion in Frankfort, where he was then municipal music director and chapel master at the Barfüsserkirche; these performances were repeated in Hamburg from 1718-1720. Thus, in at least a professional capacity, Telemann and Brockes would have been well known to each other. In Hamburg the requirements for new Passion settings would see Telemann compose over forty liturgical passions, a prolific response to a common Kantorial need. But the setting of the Brockes Passion has gained a significance and prominence beyond its sibling works. Consequently, this excellent new recording by René Jacobs and his forces is an especially welcome one.

Jacobs has shaped his reading of Telemann’s colorful score with a compelling dramatic sense. Somewhat surprisingly, the absence of prose in the libretto does not impede the dynamism and forward motion of the narrative, and the arias themselves are frequently short and rarely da capo. Occasionally units cohere to create something akin to a “cantata-as-scene.” For instance, early in the oratorio, Jesus pleads for mercy in a lyric aria (“Mein Vater! Schau, wie ich mich quäle”), followed by his recounting of the torments he bears in an accompanied recitative; this is then followed by a return of the aria music to a second stanza of text, reminiscent of structural patterns found in cantatas. We may tarry a bit in the “cantata,” but more typical is a sense of dramatic impulsion, animated by strong, vivid, and quick contrasts. For instance, following Peter’s denial, the penitent disciple sings of his regret in lamentative tones, which turn menacing with the text’s turn to Satan’s laugh. Similarly strong contrasts are found throughout the oratorio, including in the unusual attention given to Judas’s tortured resolution to hang himself, immediately followed by the Daughter of Zion’s pastoral reflection on God’s grace.

Brockes’s text imagery is drawn with a bold pen. Here, in an aria sung by a Faithful Soul, you get both an example of the vivid nature of the language and the characteristic dynamic of contrast:

His [Jesus’s] bloodstained back resembles Heaven
Adorned with countless rainbows,
Like signs of pure grace,
Which, where the guilty flood of our sins runs dry,
Shows us the radiant sun of his dear love
In the streams of his blood.

The vividness of Brockes’s language is well served by Telemann’s colorful approach to the score. Obbligato instrumental lines for oboe, flutes, recorders, and various strings are frequent, often dramatically symbolic, and challenging. Moreover, the orchestra is also given special effects, such as the haunting piercing of Jesus’s flesh in the sound of ponticello string bowing. Certainly one of the more impressive aspects of the recording is the brilliant playing of the orchestral players of Akademie für Alte Musik Berlin, with oboist Xenia Löffler offering particularly expressive performances. For their part, the solo singers uniformly embrace dramatic flexibility and fluency of idiom, and do so with compelling expertise—qualities that remind, as well, of the distinctive singing career of Jacobs himself.

Our deep attachment to Bach’s Passions may blind us to the broader contexts in which these beloved works arose. Telemann’s setting of the Brockes Passion is a masterful example of the riches that await our moving beyond the seasonally familiar; Jacobs’s performance is a most gratifying way to begin that journey.

Steven Plank

image=http://www.operatoday.com/HMC902013.png image_description=Georg Philipp Telemann: Brockes-Passion product=yes product_title=Georg Philipp Telemann: Brockes-Passion product_by=Birgitte Christensen, Lydia Teuscher, sopranos; Marie-Claude Chappuis, mezzosoprano; Donát Havár, Daniel Behle, tenors; Johannes Weisser, baritone; RIAS Kammerchor; Akademie für Alte Musik Berlin; René Jacobs, director. product_id=Harmonia Mundi HMC 902013.14 price=$34.99 product_url=http://www.arkivmusic.com/classical/album.jsp?album_id=213646

Don Giovanni — Victorian Opera

Headed by the Melba protégée soprano Gertrude Johnson the company grew in stature and by the 1950s featured expatriate singers such as Marjorie Lawrence (whose centenary passed on 17 February this year) as Amneris in Aida and another Melba protégée John Brownlee as Don Giovanni. The company gave joint seasons in Sydney with the National Opera of New South Wales. The Sydney company recruited many of the singers from Johnson’s company and, in 1956 as part of the larger Australian Elizabethan Theatre Trust founded what is now Opera Australia. As a national company a requirement of Opera Australia’s funding is that it tour but performances outside of Sydney are almost exclusively to Melbourne for seasons between April and June and November and December each year.

Meanwhile companies established in other sates during the 1960s and in 1976 the Victoria State Opera formed and seasons by both companies continued until 1996 when financial difficulties caused the Victorian company to be absorbed by the national company and cease to exist. A decade later Victorian Opera was founded under the artistic direction of former Opera Australia staff conductor Richard Gill. Productions are modest to look at and use emerging singers but the musical preparation is scrupulous and the singers perform the roles rather than learn them as rarely-performing covers as trainees in a larger company would do.

French director Jean Pierre Mignon has long been resident in Australia where he established a theatre company that produced, among other things, Molière’s version of the Don Juan legend. Mignon’s production of the opera is reminiscent of Molière’s farce and the intimacy of the production allows for subtle comedy more than usual in the opera. The Don himself (Samuel Dundas), dressed in a gleaming white costume, the reverse of his true colours, is an arrogant and conceited young pup (that so young-looking a Don has notched up so many conquests beggars’ belief). Although his voice is still young and light toned, he uses it with great skill, projecting the text in very good Italian and giving it shape and nuance. He has a good grasp of the Don’s mercurial character too, physically handsome he also conveys the swaggering, aristocratic arrogance and, above all, the snake-eyed charm. With only two modest arias Don Giovanni’s persona lives through music involving other characters. Dundas savors these moments and is even more impressive in the recititative passages, making them carry the bulk of his characterization. An example is the brief scene with Zerlina (Michelle Buscemi) before their duet “La ci darem la mano” where he seems to taste the honey of his own words. Only the softest parts of the music, the opening phrase of “La ci darem” and the mandolin serenade need the elusive legato.

Samuel Dundas (Don Giovanni) and Andrew Collis (Leporello) [Photo by Jeff Busby/Victorian Opera]

Zerlina’s music suits Buscemi’s silvery voice and she conveys Zerlina's gentle eroticism, ecstatically sighing the words “toccami qua” in ‘Vedrai, carino’ with same understanding as Dundas conveying Giovanni’s lust. Tiffany Speight sings regularly with Opera Australia and has established herself in the lighter Mozart roles. A splendid Zerlina she steps up to the dominant female character Donna Elvira. Speights’s radiant soprano easily encompassed the music including the often-difficult lower passages in the epilogue and elsewhere. She is a very subtle comedienne too, doomed by her unshakable obsession with the faithless Don her Elvira flusters like a frustrated schoolmistress. The Prague version of the opera was performed (eliminating Don Ottavio’s “Dalla sua pace” and Elvira’s “Mi tradi”) which is a pity as Speight would have crowned a spectacular performance had she been allowed “Mi Tradi”. As Don Giovanni’s sidekick Andrew Collis is another more experienced singer who creates an oily Leporello, the director relating him back to the character, Sganarelle, in Molière’s play. His ‘catalogue’ aria bubbles with vulgarity and just a hint of admiration for his master’s virility. With no sign of stage nerves, Dundas is a natural clown too and with Speight and Collis made the serenading scene in act two hilarious without undermining the beauty of the music.

Donna Anna’s music presented a challenge to Caroline Wenborne but she managed the difficult fioritura without any compromises. The fearful drama in "Or sai chi l'onore" was less evident but again her performance was musically intelligent. James Egglestone was equally adept at Don Ottavio's 'Il mio tesoro'. Pity his “Dalla su pace” was omitted as it would have suited his well supported and focused tenor voice. The vocal preparation of all of the soloists was obviously thorough and the intimate scale allowed for some dramatic details that would never work in a larger theatre. The Don, for example, gives Zerlina a flower which drops suggestively from her hand at the end of “La ci darem la mano” and is retrieved and re-used, like the Don's come-on lines, until it ends up planted in Elvira's hopeful cleavage.

Richard Roberts’s set is a marvel of economy, transforming from back streets to a Moorish palace and sinister tomb. Steeply raked and angled it suggested the endless corners Don Giovanni backs into and escapes from. Performed in the old National Theatre (named after Johnson’s enterprise and where a portrait of her, knife raised, as the Queen of the Night fearlessly protects what remains of her legacy) which seats 500 has the intimacy to put Mozart’s masterpiece under a microscope. With a small chorus it was played and sung without perhaps the greatest refinement but with undoubted professionalism and a constant feeling for the excitement of the story and the music.

3, 5, 7, 10, 12 & 14 March, followed by a metropolitan and regional Victorian tour between 28 March and 25 April 2009

Michael Magnusson

image=http://www.operatoday.com/DonGiovanni_Melbourne.png image_description=W. A. Mozart: Don Giovanni [Victorian Opera] product=yes product_title=W. A. Mozart: Don Giovanni product_by=Michelle Buscemi: Zerlina; Andrew Collis: Leporello; Samuel Dundas: Don Giovanni; James Egglestone: Don Ottavio: Steven Gallop: The Commendatore; Anthony Mackey: Masetto; Tiffany Speight: Donna Elvira; Caroline Wenborne: Donna Anna. Victorian Opera. Richard Gill/Nicholas Carter: Conductors. Jean-Pierre Mignon: Director. product_id=

Posted by Gary at 7:29 PM

Baltimore Opera Pursuing Chapter 7, Dissolution

[All About Jazz, 15 March 2009]

The Baltimore Opera Company’s board of trustees has voted to seek Chapter 7 liquidation and sell off the 58-year-old company’s assets.

Opera Stars Revive a Neglected Work

By VIVIEN SCHWEITZER [NY Times, 14 March 2009]

Kurt Weill’s operetta “The Firebrand of Florence” was doomed by an inadequate cast and a lackluster staging when it opened on Broadway in March 1945. It closed a month later and (except for a few songs) was neglected until a decade or so ago. A lively semistaged performance at Alice Tully Hall on Thursday revealed both the intricacies of Weill’s vibrant score and the libretto’s comedic elements, aptly framed by Roger Rees’s narration and direction.

LA “Ring” up and running

Be that as it may, this first installment of the four-opera Ring slated for completion by the LAO in 2010, was an auspicious event, for not only is it the first production of the work in the 22-year history of the company, but the first “indigenous” Los Angeles Ring as well. Only stagings “imported” by the Met on tour and from San Francisco had been seen in the city previously. Thus excitement was high in the city, and it was heart warming to witness the acclaim brought to Rheingold.

The Ring, of course, has been “in” in America for several decades, so the LAO is merely falling in line. During the current year it will be seen in part in Washington and San Francisco and complete in Seattle. And the Met is about to retire its current production to make way for a new staging to begin next season. Nonetheless Rheingold remains a complex work made even more so by Achim Freyer, the director and designer of the entire LAO Ring.

It’s easy — if a bit tongue in cheek — to attribute the appeal of the Ring to the contemporary relevance of its plot: this god-guy Wotan builds a house that he cannot pay for and the whole world goes to Hell in a handbasket — or in the old-fashioned cartoonesque airplane, in which Freyer sends Wagner’s gods off to Walhalla at the end of Rheingold.

On the heels of so much on-stage color the rainbow bridge called for by Wagner, who wrote his own libretto, would have been at best a pale apparition. As the opera world moved away from the swords and shields traditional in Ring stagings obedient to Wagner, “concept” productions became de rigueur. Stagings that took cues from Marx and Freud were the center of controversy — especially in Germany, where French filmmaker Patrice Chéreau set new standards of adventure with the 1976 post-industrial Ring that marked the centennial of the work in Wagner’s own Bayreuth mecca.

In this country environmental Rings have decried Wotan’s destruction of the world oak to obtain wood for his spear. The troublesome military industrial complex even in Wagner! Thus the Ring is now open game, and the LAO promised “adventure” with its long-awaited staging.

Although Freyer may have given the company more than its audience bargained for in Rheingold, the enthusiastic opening-night reception has heightened the anticipation already awaiting completion of the cycle. But what has Feyer done to earn this reception? He has — as he sees it — offered not merely an interpretation of Rheingold. He has rather created a companion piece to the work — or even an anti-opera — designed both to realize Wagner’s own intentions and to place his audience at a critical distance from the Ring. To understand this, it helps to know a bit about the roots to which Feyer makes brief reference in a program-book essay.

Arnold Bezuyen (Loge)

At 74, the director is old enough to have cut his theatrical teeth in the Berlin Ensemble that was the laboratory of Bert Brecht, arguably the dramatic genius of the 20th century. Freyer makes reference to Brecht’s “alienation theory” that encourages the spectator “to decide creatively which truths are contained in the exemplary strange figures and worlds [of Wagner] for himself.” Although Brecht lived for some time just down the road from the Chandler in Santa Monica, that was long ago, and a modicum of information about his alienation theory is called for.

Brecht spoke of traditional theater as “culinary” — you enjoyed the show — and forgot about it. His “epic” theater — the term stresses the narrative drive of the concept — was didactic and open ended. Conclusions were left to the audience. “That’s not a good ending,” Brecht writes at the end of The Good Woman. There has to be a better one — there just has to be!” His audience left the theater with homework in hand.

So is that what enthralled the Los Angeles audience on February 21. Hardly — or, at best, only in part. Freyer — about that there is no doubt — is talented man with an impressive grasp of the theater, and an audience could not but be impressed by a scrim that ran red with blood following Fafner‘s murder of brother giant Fasolt.

It was a thrill a minute through the 2.45 intermission less minutes of Rheingold. The audience was kept busy watching, but did they have time for the requisite thinking? Moreover, there are many fine touches in this Rheingold, such as the huge eyeball that glows downstage, recalling that Wotan sacrificed an eye to win Fricka.

Central to Freyer’s entire staging is a raked disc that one might see as an act of homage to Wieland Wagner’s first post-war Bayreuth Ring, the production that liberated the work by cleansing it of the traditional trappings that had made Wagner the court composer of National Socialism.

But while Wieland brought to his grandfather’s works the “noble simplicity and calm grandeur” that Winckelmann in the 18th century saw as the essence of classicism, Freyer weighs Wagner down under a hopeless tons of clutter. The singers are for the most part encased in larger-than-life replicas of themselves, from which they occasional step forth. At one point Wotan sings from the belly of the enlarged figure as if he were a Tellatubby.

Freyer keeps his audience guessing, but does the quest for answers only obscure whatever message he is attempting to convey? Clearly, however, this is a Ring in progress, and much will happen to it before it is completed. It is a welcome Ring that will make its mark. But for the moment one can only say: “Stay tuned!”

Whatever one thinks of Freyer’s staging, there is little room for argument about the excellence of the cast that the LAO has assembled for the Ring. In his role debut young Ukrainian Vitalij Kowaljow is clearly a Wotan of tomorrow, and Michelle DeYoung, the world’s reigning Brangäne, was a wonderfully feminine Fricka, happily without the markings of the shrew that many expect from Wotan’s often-betrayed wife.

Gordon Hawkins was everything selfish and distasteful that Alberich must be while acquitting himself admirably as a vocalist. Singing, however, from within a huge mask — as did Graham Clark as his brother Mime — he left listeners missing the facial expression so important a part of singing.

Jill Grove delivered Era’s words of warning with motherly concern, and Holland’s Arnold Bezuyen, every inch a flaming god of fire, won the hearts of the audience with his portrayal of four-handed Loge as a trickster god.

Stacey Tappan, Lauren McNeese and Beth Clayton were unusually attractive Rhinemaidens as they sang from billowing expanses of the blue cloth that was their river home.

As brother giants Fasold and Fafner Morris Robinson and veteran Eric Halfvarson sang magnificently, although clumsily equipped with mirrors to exaggerate the size of their faces.

Beau Gibson and Wayne Tigges as brother gods Froh and Donner and Ellie Dehn as their bartered bride sister Freia completed the large and admirable cast.

LAO music director James Conlon, who mastered Wagner during his years in Cologne and Paris, drew superb playing from the LAO orchestra, concealed somewhat in Bayreuth style by a fabric cover over the pit.

---

The Los Angeles Opera Ring des Nibelungen continues with Die Walküre set to open on April 4. Siegfried and Die Götterdämmerung follow during the 2009-2010 season. The entire city will join in celebrating the completion of the project with three complete cycles on stage in June 2010.

With a total budget of $32 million, the production is a project of monumental dimensions in these troubled times. Washington National Opera recently announced that due to a lack of funds it will complete its current staging with a concert performance of Götterdämmerung.

Placido Domingo, who sings Siegmund in Los Angeles, is general director of both companies.

For information and tickets on the LAO Ring, call 213-972-8001 or visit www.laopera.com.

Wes Blomster

image=http://www.operatoday.com/rheingold088.png imagedescription=(Left to right) Beau Gibson (Froh), Vitalij Kowaljow (Wotan), Wayne Tigges (Donner), Michelle De Young (Frika), (rear) Ellie Dehn (Freia) [Photo by Monika Rittershaus]

product=yes producttitle=Richard Wagner: Das Rheingold productby=Wotan, Vitalij Kowaljow; Loge, Arnold Bezuyen; Alberich, Gordon Hawkins; Mime, Graham Clark; Fricka, Michelle Deyoung; Erda, Jill Grove; Fasolt, Morris Robinson; Fafner, Eric Halfvarson; Freia, Ellie Dehn; Donner, Wayne Tigges; Froh, Beau Gibson; Woglinde, Stacey Tappan; Wellgunde, Lauren McNeese; Flosshilde, Beth Clayton. Los Angeles Opera. James Conlon, conducting. product_id=Above: (Left to right) Beau Gibson (Froh), Vitalij Kowaljow (Wotan), Wayne Tigges (Donner), Michelle De Young (Frika), (rear) Ellie Dehn (Freia)

All photos by Monika Rittershaus courtesy of Los Angeles Opera

Haydn’s L’Isola Disabitata by Gotham Chamber Opera

Lovers, consider Gernando’s problem: He and his Costanza were visiting a desert island one day, thirteen years ago, when, without a word of warning, he vanished. Naturally she is peeved. When getting food and shelter (for herself and an infant sister, her only companion) have not distracted her, she has spent her spare time carving diatribes against the male sex in the rock. But he has a perfectly reasonable excuse — he was kidnapped by pirates! At last he has returned to the uninhabited island (“l’isola disabitata”) to see if she survives — she does! In sound health, good looks and a rather chic grass skirt! (Nothing like a healthy diet and lots of sleep to keep a diva limber.)

You can imagine what Mozart would have made of this absurd situation: He’d have gone wild, ten minutes at least of bitter reproaches, intricate descriptions (sung and orchestral) of his agonies, of her agonies, then joyous resolution as she gradually succumbs to his desperate pleas of enduring love…. Things would get completely out of hand, the duet would become a thing ungainly, unbalancing the brief exposition allowed by Metastasio’s libretto — but, by Thalia, it would be fun! It would be melodrama! In a Haydn opera, however, nothing is out of proportion and hardly anything is ever fun, or dramatic, or exciting. The singers are supposed to supply that, if they can, and the half-fledged cast of the Gotham Chamber Opera presentation are just not up to it, though they sound pleasant enough.

They probably trained on Mozart and Handel, and Mozart and Handel were men whose eyes lit up at the word “theatre” — they knew how to tell a story on the stage. It was in their blood somehow, and it passed right by Haydn. An opera to him might as well have been a string quartet with scenery. Hardly any of his operas were performed in urban centers in his lifetime — they were composed for the court theater at the country estate of Esterháza (a homey little 400-seat affair which today hosts a festival), and at Esterháza they remained. That meant they were not written for the great singers of the day, and also that the scores did not have to woo a popular audience — as Gluck did, or Mozart, or Paisiello, Martín y Soler, Salieri, Grétry. One learns things about opera construction if one’s listeners are paying customers, throwing tomatoes or simply not returning for more. Modern opera composers, mostly academics, suffer the same lack of apprenticeship that afflicted Haydn, with the same effect. Haydn knew it, too — when asked by a Prague producer for one of his opere buffe, he replied that none of his works for Esterháza was suitable for public presentation, and that he would be wary in any case of trying to compete on Mozart’s territory.

(Left to Right) Valerie Ogbonnaya, Tom Corbeil, Takesha Meshé Kizart and Vale Rideout

But back to L’Isola Disabitata, which has just been presented by Gotham Chamber Opera, with great fanfare, in a staging by Mark Morris. The piece was composed in 1779 (the year of Gluck’s Iphigénie en Tauride), shortly after a fire at Esterháza, and apparently the reconstruction budget permitted just one set, four characters, and no chorus. The opera is a succession of arias for four characters whose emotions are both predictable and shallow. There is one striking novelty, probably inspired by Gluck’s reforms: the singing is accompanied by orchestra throughout; there is no continuo to set off dialogue from arias. But Gluck knew how to build tension and how to bully his librettist into supplying the occasion for such tension. There is little tension in the score of L’Isola Disabitata. The opera concludes after a few predictable encounters with a vaudeville quartet in the French style: each character sings of what she or he has learned, to variants of a rondo melody, and they depart enlightened. The most famous such finale is that of Mozart’s Seraglio (1782), which states the moral clearly, but is enriched by the explosive intrusion (in an unsatisfied minor key) of the one character who has never changed and never will — to our thorough delight. Haydn would never have introduced something so tasteless, even in a farce. (He wrote several; none are performed very often.)

Takesha Meshé Kizart and Tom Corbeil

The GCO set was a revolving rock. One problem the cast may have had was in performing while maintaining balance on this thing, and the contortions involved in seeing or pretending not to see other characters, as called for by the script, surely did not help. The only obvious sign of Mark Morris influence came in hand-jive charades performed by each character in turn during the final quartet — this was charming, keeping our attention, heightening the individuality of Haydn’s generic characters, settling the plot happily.

The young, attractive performers may have left school a few years ago, but they all sounded like promising music students here. This is not a compliment: there was little that was “finished” about these performances and nothing that was deep. Perhaps, again, it is Haydn’s fault: Mozart gives you characters to play, with human quirks and expressions; so does Rossini; so does Paisiello. Haydn does not. It’s only play-acting, right? Why try to make these people real? (An apocryphal story has it that when Haydn attended the Vienna premiere of Don Giovanni, he realized how very out of his depth he was and gave up composing opera then and there. It may be true; Haydn had taste, judgment and good sense; he admired Mozart and would have grasped his achievement better than just about anyone else alive.)

For Takesha Meshé Kizart, the Costanza, company artistic director Neil Goren replaced the opening aria with one of Haydn’s many concert arias — that is, a piece written to suit the talents of an individual singer in the revival of a longer work written for someone else, a perfectly canonical practice. But the effect here was not good, as her performance was lackluster — only her second, rather more agitated aria seemed to wake her up, and her situation (thirteen years in solitary?) led us to expect rather more fireworks than she cared to offer. Her spousal unit, Vale Rideout, and his half-naked sidekick, Tom Corbeil, made pleasant, uninteresting sounds perhaps awkwardly placed due to their distance from the floor when singing. The only performer with much charm or distinction was the soubrette, Valerie Ogbonnaya, as Costanza’s naïve sister, a “Miranda” figure, whose innocence of the world (and of men) are intended to give us a thrill of contrast: she gave her character the light, fresh sound and airy coloratura proper to the dainty drama. The character is absurd, a sophisticated fantasy, but she sang and acted it as if it were something worth putting over.

I’m delighted at the notion of a chamber opera company in New York, and in the idea of exploring lesser-known crannies of the eighteenth century, but Haydn’s operas are not where his heart, or his genius, lay. With all possible good wishes for Gotham’s success in its downright heroic work in the current economic times, the company has made some weird repertory choices over the years; in the eighteenth century, for one thing, they would be better advised to examine composers like Paisiello and Grétry and Martín y Soler who knew how to write for the stage.

John Yohalem

image=http://www.operatoday.com/Valerie_Ogbonnaya.png image_description=Valerie Ogbonnaya (Silvia) [Photo by Richard Termine courtesy of Gotham Chamber Opera] product=yes product_title=F. J. Haydn: L’Isola Disabitata product_by=Costanza: Takesha Meshé Kizart; Silvia: Valerie Ogbonnaya; Gernando: Vale Rideout; Enrico: Tom Corbeil. Conducted by Neal Goren; staged by Mark Morris. Gotham Chamber Opera. product_id=Above: Valerie Ogbonnaya (Silvia)

All photos by Richard Termine courtesy of Gotham Chamber Opera

Elisabeth Schwarzkopf, Soprano

As the last section on this disc, from Brussels in 1969, only features two selections (two pleasant but negligible Menotti songs), making assumptions on the completeness of the others wouldn’t be advised.

The best part of the disc comes in the first half of its 90 minutes, with two television studio recitals filmed in London; the first from 1961 in black and white, the second from 1970, in color. With famed accompanist Gerald Moore (who throws in a sly bit of self-promotion at one point by asking, “Am I too loud?”), placing these two recitals back to back gives a point of reference for relating to Schwarzkopf’s late career. In 1961, the voice and manner combine seamlessly in a professional, disciplined performance. In place of spontaneity comes a poised, well-rehearsed artistry. The selections tend to the lighter side here, opening with a slight Mozart number (“Die kleine Spinnerin”), through Schubert’s “An die Musik,” and closing with two Hugo Wolf selections. Nine years later, Schwarzkopf opens up, braving some English spoken interludes, and moving about the studio, making sure to shift her chiffon-type dress with every change of stance. She begins again with Mozart, but initially the passing years can be heard in some slight intonation lapses and warbliness. As the recital proceeds, the voice settles. However, the affectations that non-admirers of Schwarzkopf complain about interfere at times, with too-knowing a wink here, too downcast a glance there. Taken together, both recitals still serve as a classic portrait of how to present and sing lieder, in a way that respects the tradition and manages to connect to an audience.

The next recital, from Paris in 1967, finds Schwarzkopf with the Orchestre National de l’ORTF, conducted by one Berislav Klobucar. If it weren’t for the date and grainy black and white footage, some viewers might suppose this recital came after the 1970 London one. Schwarzkopf is simply not in good voice. Whatever slips in intonation appeared in those London recitals are minor compared to some very painful notes here, and often the voice lacks support. Again, Mozart begins the recital, with two numbers also sung in the 1970 recital (“Männer suchen sets zu naschen” and “Ich möchte wohl der kaiser sein”). Schwarzkopf can manage these numbers well enough, relying on charm and the folksy simplicity of the melodies. She then moves to challenge of Verdi’s scene for Desdemona from Otello. Here Schwarzkopf over-emotes, as if to cover for the breathy line and attenuated top notes. Six Richard Strauss orchestral songs follow, but the glow and security of the voice does not return. Perhaps the effort required to project over the orchestral background exacerbates the compromised state of her voice, but Klobucar seems to be keeping the orchestra in balance (though the playing isn’t much to be admired, especially in the Verdi).

Medici Arts chose a portrait of the singer from her younger years for the cover of the DVD. Confusingly, the contents listing on the back cover is arranged by composer rather than in the order actually presented. Then the booklet track listing doesn’t link the selections to track numbers, to facilitate quick location. On the positive side, subtitles are provided.

Fans will want this, of course, but anyone who appreciates fine lieder singing will appreciate the 1961 recital, surely, as well as the chance to compare it to the 1970 one for an understanding of how an established artist can maintain control late into the career. Think of the regrettable Paris concert and two songs from Brussels as insubstantial addenda.

Chris Mullins

image=http://www.operatoday.com/3085268.png image_description=Elisabeth Schwarzkopf

product=yes producttitle=Elisabeth Schwarzkopf productby=Elisabeth Schwarzkopf, Gerald Moore productid=Medici Arts 3085268 [DVD] price=$19.99 producturl=http://www.arkivmusic.com/classical/Drilldown?labelid=5709&bcorder=6&nameid=15078&name_role=2

Henze: Der junge Lord

Like a hallucinogenic sugar cube, this Medici Arts DVD of Hans Werner Henze’s Der junge Lord, with libretto by Ingeborg Bachmann, will take viewers on a wild ride and really put it to the system. The opera premiered in 1965; this filmed version dates from 1968. Although the story takes place in a bourgeois German town in the 19th century, the cast might as well be in bell bottoms and paisley. Henze and Bachmann take over two hours to tell the story of the mysterious Sir Edgar, who excites a status-crazed German town when he visits. A party designed to present Sir Edgar’s son, the young lord of the title, sets the stage for the supposedly shocking climax. After the hypocritical elites of the town have excused the strange behavior of the young lord, they recoil in shock as the finely dressed young man goes, pardon the expression, ape-excrement crazy, at which point Sir Edgar steps in to reveal that this “son” is actually an ape who has been taught how to “ape” the manners of society. Wow! Crazy, man, far out.

Der junge Lord plays, then, like an over-extended Twilight Zone episode in one of Serling’s rare and not notably funny forays into humor. That isn’t necessarily dismissive criticism, however, and though this DVD can’t elicit a general recommendation from your reviewer, its merits shouldn’t be dismissed either.

Of primary value is Henze’s score, which skips and frolics with macabre glee, not unlike the ape-lord himself at the ball in his honor. Although far from sweet and lyrical, Henze’s music adopts tonality almost to mock the conservative, conventional society of the story. Through sharp, disruptive rhythms and kaleidoscopic orchestration, Henze manages to give the impression of edgier music than he has actually composed. No tunes may lodge in listeners’ memories, but Henze’s energetic imagination holds the attention. With Christoph von Dohnanyi’s expert leadership, the Deutsche Oper Berlin forces play like crazed apes themselves.

Gustav Rudolf Sellner staged and directed the production, and it manages the rare feat of retaining a theatrical perspective while making good use of the camera. The actors/singers perform to a recorded soundtrack, following Sellner’s precise direction, almost choreographic in its flow and ease. Bachmann’s libretto, basically didactic, doesn’t really care to properly characterize any of the roles, but the performers try their best. Somehow both at the center of the story and extraneous to it are a young couple in love, sung by Edith Mathis and Donald Grobe. Mathis in particular manages some very difficult music while maintaining beauty of tone. Sir Edgar is a silent role, with Barry McDaniel as his secretary serving as a properly unctuous spokesperson. In the title role, Loren Driscoll also must cope with some challenging vocal lines, especially in the off-camera scene where the lord/ape is being tortured during his German lesson. Driscoll’s contorted posture and manic dancing do make the final scene almost worth the long wait to reach it.

Almost. In the end, Der junge Lord probably qualifies more as a fascinating artifact of its time than a successful opera. Those who still tune into the occasional Twilight Zone marathon and wonder how many of the shows could have been the basis for an opera should check this curiosity out.

Chris Mullins

image=http://www.operatoday.com/JungeLordMedici.png image_description=H. W. Henze: Der junge Lord

product=yes producttitle=Hans Werner Henze: Der junge Lord productby=Luise: Edith Mathis; Wilhelm: Donald Grobe; Sekretär Sir Edgars: Barry McDaniel; Lord Barrat: Loren Driscoll; Begonia: Vera Little; Bürgermeister: Manfred Röhrl; Oberjustizrat Hasentreffer: Ivan Sardi; Ökonomierat Scharf: Ernst Krukowski; Professor von Mucker: Helmut Krebs; Sir Edgar: Otto Graf; Baronin Grünwiesel: Margarete Ast; Frau von Hufnagel: Gitta Mikes; Frau Oberjustizrat Hasentreffer: Lisa Otto; Ida: Bella Jasper. Schöneberger Sängerknaben. Chorus and Orchestra of Deutsche Oper Berlin. Christoph von Dohnányi, conductor. Gustav Rudolf Sellner, stage director. productid=Medici Arts 2072398 [DVD] price=$29.99 producturl=http://www.arkivmusic.com/classical/Drilldown?nameid1=5301&namerole1=1&bcorder=1&comp_id=123893

Domenico Sarro: Achille in Sciro

If Vivaldi’s operas haven’t quite made the comeback that many of Georg Handel’s have in opera houses around the world, some excellent recordings have appeared in recent years, in particular on the Opus 111 label. Leave it to the enterprising Dynamic label to look beyond Vivaldi and exhume Sarro’s Achille in Sciro, a work unlikely to have been performed anywhere for over two and a half centuries.

A live recording from the 2007 Festival della Valle D’Itria, this Dynamic set shares the virtues and defects of many of the company’s other ventures into rare repertory - it revives an opera worth hearing, with a less than ideal performance. Based on a libretto by Pietro Metastasio, Achille in Sciro weaves a handful of characters through three hours of misguided passion, jealousy, betrayal, and cross-dressing, as Achille dallies in love while his Greek compatriots try to get him to sail off to war with Troy. Sarro’s music maintains an energetic creativity through the extended arias and occasional small group numbers. As with Vivaldi, rhythmic complexity dominates over harmonic development; still, the best of the numbers have appealing tunes. The score deserved respectful attention, which it gets from conductor Federico Maria Sardelli and the Orchestra Internazionale D’Italia, experienced hands in rare repertory.

The singers, on the other hand, create more ambivalent reactions. In the role of Teagane, counter-tenor Massimiliano Arizzi makes some very unpleasant sounds, and his act three aria, which probably should be a highlight, becomes eight minutes of distressful intonation and hootiness. Not that the mezzos in pants roles fare much better. In the smaller role of Nearco, Eufemia Tufano is only slighter more endurable than Arizzi. Gabriella Martellacci has the title role, and the booklet photographs reveal that she is a very feminine, attractive woman - helpful for the scenes of Achille disguised as a woman, but otherwise quite baffling. Her mezzo voice can reasonably pass for that of a proud warrior, given the conventions, but a heaviness weighs down the faster runs. Tenor Francisco Ruben Brito, singing Ulisse, barely manages his aria in act two, but the piping high notes in his final aria sound as if the singer were being goosed. A second tenor role, Licomede, goes to Marcello Nardis, who sounds painfully stretched anywhere outside a short middle range.

The best singing comes from Maria Laura Martorana as Deidamia, a soprano with a secure high range and ample agility. She appears a somewhat drab figure in the production photos of the booklet, but that may be the director’s concept of the character. The photos evidence some sort of updated concept, but the booklet note is sparse on details of this performance, focusing instead on the singers in the 1737 premiere and a lengthy description of the arias, which includes mystifying analysis such as this: “Nearco alternates emotion and sighs “Tace il labbro e parla il volto” … with fury…” Your reviewer listened closely, but could not identify any furious sighing.

With no likely competitors on the horizon, anyone interested in the contemporaries of Vivaldi and Handel should search out this recording of Achille in Sciro. With more attractive singing, the set would surely deserve a broader recommendation.

Chris Mullins

image=http://www.operatoday.com/SarroAchille.png imagedescription=Domenico Sarro: Achille in Sciro

product=yes producttitle=Domenico Sarro: Achille in Sciro productby=Achilles: Gabriella Martellacci; Lycomedes: Marcello Nardis; Teagene: Massimiliano Arizzi; Deidamia: Maria Laura Martorana; Ulysses: Francisco Ruben Brito; Nearco: Eufemia Tufano; Arcade: Dolores Carlucci. Orchestra Internazionale d’Italia. Bratislava Chamber Choir. Conductor: Federico Maria Sardelli. Director: Davide Livermore. productid=Dynamic CDS 571/1-3 [3CDs] price=$57.49 producturl=http://www.arkivmusic.com/classical/Drilldown?nameid1=151615&namerole1=1&bcorder=1&comp_id=281876

Mayr Rediscovered

Two complete recordings followed: Medea in Corinto and Ginerva di Scozia. Now comes this single disc set, “Mayr Rediscovered,” which compiles the Mayr music from the “Hundred Years” series with a single selection each from the two complete sets. If Opera Rara finds some more Mayr in their catalog, the next release should be called “Mayr Re-Redisovered.”

Born in Germany as Johann Simon Mayr, the composer came to Italy in his early twenties to study and through hard work established himself as an opera composer and teacher; Donizetti studied under Mayr for some time. Jeremy Commons’s brief but informative booklet notes relates that Rossini “eclipsed” Mayr. Of course, Rossini could not eclipse Mozart. If Mayr’s operas truly had the qualities that make for a standard repertory piece, they could have found an accommodating orbit without Rossini’s work throwing them into darkness.

The above is not meant to say that Mayr’s music is poor. Indeed, the orchestral settings have taste and charm, with a touch of Haydn’s wit from time to time. Opera Rara does not supply texts, but the music always seems to be set to the mood of the piece, with a sensitivity to word and expression. Most of the tracks are between 5 and 10 minutes, which suggests that Mayr excelled in extended scenes while adhering to the formalized patterns of so-called “numbers” operas.

Commons quotes Louis Spohr as admitting that Mayr, as compared to Rossini, lacked “imagination” but had “more knowledge and aesthetic feeling.” What too much of the music on this disc reveals then is that imagination trumps knowledge and aesthetic feeling. As pleasant and refined as much of this music is, the melodic lines tend to wander unmemorably, and the climaxes feel manipulated rather than organic.

Opera Rara snags some very good singers, including Daniella Barcellona, Antonio Siragusa, and on some of the earlier recordings, Bruce Ford, Della Jones and Yvonne Kenny. However, at least two tracks here suffer from the pinched, acidic tones of tenor Russell Smythe, who has one of those voices chosen for its ability to manage high-lying and florid music. It might be preferable to find a singer who would have to compromise a bit on the challenges of the piece but who can provide a more appealing tone. David Parry provides professional support as conductor for all the tracks except the Ginerva di Scozia one, where Tiziano Severini holds the baton.

Finding the earlier Opera Rara sets from which the company drew these selections might not be easy, or even possible, so this disc will be most welcome to lovers of unusual repertory. For others, the highlight might be the same as it was for your reviewer: discovering a picture of Bruce Ford in the booklet where the singer looks like a dead ringer for Philip Seymour Hoffman.

Chris Mullins

image=http://www.operatoday.com/MayrRediscovered.png imagedescription=Mayr Rediscovered

product=yes producttitle=Mayr Rediscovered productby=Antonino Siragusa, Daniela Barcellona, Marilyn Hill Smith, Della Jones, Eiddwen Harrhy, Nan Christie, Sandra Dugdale, Russell Smythe, Philip Doghan, Yvonne Kenny, Kevin John, Robin Leggate, Diana Montague, Myrna Moreno, Penelope Walker, Bruce Ford. Philharmonia Orchestra, Orchestra of the Teatro Liricio ’Giuseppe Verdi’ Triest. Conductors - David Parry (tracks 1, 3-10) and Tiziano Severini (2). productid=Opera Rara CD ORR244 price=$24.99 producturl=http://www.arkivmusic.com/classical/album.jsp?album_id=200087

Tippett: A Child of Our Time

The immediate inspiration was Kristallnacht, the violent Nazi outburst motivated by the assassination of a German official by a desperate Polish Jew. Tippett struggled with a text to encompass this terrible subject, and after T. S. Eliott declined the opportunity to create one, the composer followed the poet’s advice and devised his own, a blend of his own words and those of several spirituals, such as “Deep River.”

Although the composition’s title derives from a novel by a German author (Ein Kind unserer Zeit), Tippett avoids conventional narrative, referring only briefly to the relevant historical event: “He shoots the official - but he shoots only his dark brother.” Most of the text adopts a Kahlil Gibran-type profundity.

Healing springs from the womb of time
The simple-hearted shall exult in the end

In other words, time heals all wounds, and the meek shall inherit the earth. The clarity and direct expression of the words to the spirituals comes as a welcome contrast, even as sung out by the over-enunciated, rich voices of the four soloists and chorus.

What carries the work past any perceived limitations of its text is the power of its music. Tippett sets the spirituals with exquisite taste, and he never chooses the easy route of producing ugly sounds to suggest the pain and horror of the subject. The great model seems to have been Bach’s Matthew Passion, with its urgency and somber beauty.

This live recording from December 2007 at the Barbican in London captures Colin Davis and the London Symphony Orchestra and chorus in crisp sound; the disc is a Hybrid-SACD. Davis conducts with precision, which is most welcome in the faster, fugal passages. However, he can’t find a way to bring the hour-long work to a more forceful conclusion; it’s one of those works that simply seems to stop. Soprano Indra Thomas tends to shrillness at the top; the body of her voice is attractive. Mohoko Fujimara’s alto sound works better for the spirituals. Tenor Steve Daislim and bass Matthew Rose blend well as they join the women in the final number, “Deep River.” Elsewhere they have no choice but to sound a bit fussy when vocalizing Tippett’s text.

Criticizing Tippett’s oratorio almost places one in the painfully uncomfortable position of defending the Nazis or denigrating the artistic value of spirituals when placed alongside art music. Perhaps thankfully, much of the time Tippett’s own awkward text is incomprehensible as sung, particularly by the chorus. LSO Live does provide the text in English, with brief but informative notes by Meiron Bowen and Paul Griffith. Opportunities to hear A Child of Our Time, especially in the U.S., probably will remain rare, which is reason enough to be glad for a recording of this quality.

Chris Mullins

image=http://www.operatoday.com/TippettLSO.png imagedescription=Michael Tippett: A Child of our Time

product=yes producttitle=Michael Tippett: A Child of our Time productby=Indra Thomas, Soprano; Mihoko Fujimura, Alto; Steve Davislim, Tenor; Matthew Rose, Bass. London Symphony Chorus. London Symphony Orchestra. Sir Colin Davis, conductor. productid=LSO Live LS00670 [SACD] price=$19.99 producturl=http://www.arkivmusic.com/classical/Drilldown?nameid1=12115&namerole1=1&compid=23888&bcorder=15&labelid=39

ROSSINI: Il Barbiere di Siviglia — La Scala 1956

Music composed by Gioachino Rossini to a libretto by Cesare Sterbini after Pierre-Augustin Beaumarchais’ Le barbier de Séville and the libretto often attributed to Giuseppe Petrosellini for Giovanni Paisiello’s Il barbiere di Siviglia (1782)

First Performance: 20 February 1816, Teatro Argentina, Rome.

Principal Roles:
Count Almaviva	Tenor
Bartolo, a doctor in Seville	Baritone
Rosina, well-to-do ward of Dr Bartolo	Contralto
Figaro, a barber	Baritone
Don Basilio, music teacher, hypocrite	Bass
Fiorello, Count Almaviva’s servant	Bass
Ambrogio, Bartolo’s servant	Bass
Berta, Bartolo’s old housekeeper	Mezzo-Soprano
Officer	Baritone
Notary	Silent Role

Setting: Seville, in the 18th century

Synopsis:

Act I

Scene 1. A small square in Seville before dawn

Disguised as a student, Count Almaviva serenades Rosina. He learns from Figaro, a former servant, now the city barber and general factotum, that she is Dr Bartolo's ward, and that he has access to the house. Rosina contrives to drop a note for Almaviva, sending her guardian on a wild-goose chase to pick it up and causing him to resolve to keep her under even closer guard. The letter asks for information about her unknown suitor's name, rank and intentions; and when Bartolo has set off in search of his crony Don Basilio, the music teacher, to arrange his marriage to Rosina, Almaviva sings another serenade, telling her that he is a poor student called Lindoro.

Inspired by the Count's munificence, Figaro declares that he can get him into the house, disguised as a drunken soldier seeking a billet.

Scene 2. Inside Dr Bartolo's house

Rosina is determined to marry her unknown suitor, while Bartolo is set on marrying her himself. He tries to interrogate his servants about what has been going on in his house, but they can only yawn or sneeze, because they have been dosed by Figaro. Basilio tells him that Couant Almaviva has been seen in Seville and advises getting rid of him by slander. They retire to work on the marriage contract. Figaro, who has overheard their plans, tells Rosina and urges her to write to his "poor cousin." The letter is already written and she gives it to him. Bartolo, suspecting that she has been writing, confronts her with the evidence. She has an answer to all his accusations, but he is not convinced and says he will lock her in her room when he goes out. Almaviva bursts in, disguised as a drunken soldier. In the confusion he slips Rosina a note, which is seen by Bartolo, but Rosina smartly substitutes the laundry list. The watch arrive to quell the riot, but are awed by a document produced by Almaviva.

Act II

Inside Bartolo's house

Bartolo is voicing his suspicions about this soldier when Almaviva appears again, this time disguised as "Don Alonso," a supposed pupil of Don Basilio, who, he says, is indisposed and has sent him to take Rosina's music lesson. To allay Bartolo's suspicions he produces Rosina's note, pretending it has fallen into his hands by accident and suggesting that Bartolo tell her it was given to him by a mistress of the Count, to prove that he is trifling with her affections. Rosina sings an aria to the Count's accompaniment and as Bartolo dozes off, the Count explains his plan for eloping with Rosina later that night.

Figaro appears to shave Bartolo and manages to get hold of the key to the balcony. Basilio arrives, but is told to go home because he looks so ill, advice he accepts the more readily because Almaviva slips him a bribe. Figaro begins to shave Bartolo, while Almaviva and Rosina continue to arrange the elopement. Bartolo realises what is going on and the Count and Figaro make their escape.

Basilio comes back with the unwelcome news that the unknown suitor is probably Almaviva himself, a conclusion he has reached because of the size of the bribe. Bartolo sends Basilio to bring the notary to perform the marriage with Rosina and, producing her letter to the Count, convinces her that her affections are being trifled with, so she tells him of the planned elopement and agrees to marry him. He goes to get the law to arrest Figaro and Almaviva.

During the storm Figaro and Almaviva climb a ladder to the balcony, only to be confronted by an angry Rosina, but the Count calms her fears by revealing his identity. Figaro urges haste, but the ladder has been taken. Basilio arrives with the notary and they get him to solemnise Almaviva's marriage to Rosina. Bartolo and the law arrive too late.

[Synopsis Source: Opera~Opera]

Click here for the complete libretto.

image=http://www.operatoday.com/Callas_Gobbi_Barbiere.png image_description=Maria Callas (Rosina) and Tito Gobbi (Figaro) audio=yes first_audio_name=Gioacchino Rossini: Il Barbiere di Siviglia first_audio_link=http://www.operatoday.com/Barbiere1.m3u product=yes product_title=Gioacchino Rossini: Il Barbiere di Siviglia product_by=Almaviva: Luigi Alva; Bartolo: Melchiorre Luise; Basilio: Nicola Rossi-Lemeni; Berta: Anna Maria Canali; Figaro: Tito Gobbi; Fiorello: Pier Luigi Latinucci; Rosina: Maria Callas; Notary: Giuseppe Nessi. Orchestra e Coro del Teatro alla Scala di Milano. Carlo Maria Giulini, conducting. Live performance, 16 February 1956, Milan.

Luciano Pavarotti: The EMI Recordings

This 9-disc set (seven audio CDs and two DVDs), sad to say, comes across less as a tribute to the late tenor and more as a way for EMI to move some product. The contents of the 9 discs can be conveyed quickly. Pavarotti’s recording of Mascagni’s L’amico Fritz, with Mirella Freni, last appeared for EMI in the company’s Great Recordings of the Century series. The 1992 LA Scala Don Carlo appears both on two DVD discs and as an audio-only version, spread over three discs. Muti conducts, as he does the 1987 Requiem, where Pavarotti is joined by Cheryl Studer, Dolora Zajick and Samuel Ramey. All told, if EMI had limited the package to the audio tracks where only Pavarotti sings, the set might barely require two discs.

Each disc comes in its own sleeve, with artwork identical to the set’s cover, making identification of any particular item difficult. The relatively skimpy booklet has an honest but otherwise routine essay by Michael Scott Rohan, and then track by track synopsis of the operas’ storylines in place of librettos. The only color photograph mislabels the Don Carlo’s Paolo Coni as Samuel Ramey’s Filippo II.

As a portrait of Pavarotti’s artistry, the set does offer the advantage of capturing him at different points in his career. The Mascagni comes from 1968, relatively early in his international stardom. Both he and Freni are in thrilling form, and along with the idiomatic conducting of Gianandrea Gavazzeni, they make L’amico Fritz entertaining enough. However, the music never blooms; as is so often the case with the opera world’s rarities, there is a reason this Mascagni opera inhabits the far outer reaches of the standard repertory. Don Carlo comes from 1992, and it is much more satisfying in its DVD incarnation. At the time, the almost requisite La Scala scandal originated in some reported booing of Pavarotti cracking. Needless to say, such an occurrence does not appear in the performance as presented here, and in fact, Pavarotti gives by far the set’s most satisfying performance. The juicy warmth of his youthful voice mellowed into a more substantial richness. His peerless enunciation allows him to be a musical actor, although his oversized physique limits his movement. Pavarotti’s face always told the story of the music, and even in 1992 he makes for a creditable, handsome prince. A young Andrea Silvestrelli sings a sonorous, imposing Monk, somewhat overshadowing the professionalism of Samuel Ramey’s unimaginative king. The middle of Daniella Dessi’s voice sounds fine, with just a hint of a vibrato that grows larger as the line rises. Her big fourth act scene starts unpromisingly, and even when she has steadied her voice it lacks beauty. Luciano d’Intino as Eboli and Paolo Coni’s Rodrigo, while adequate, give the kind of generic performances that unbalance the opera in favor of the more illustrious lead.

Franco Zeffirelli’s dark production does honor to the seriousness of the story, with only a final misstep at the very end, where an incomprehensible religious tableaux takes the place of the Monk’s ostensible rescue of the title character. Ricardo Muti glowers as expected, and also as expected leads a tightly-wound performance, exciting at times, relentless at others.

Thankfully, he relaxes - relatively speaking - for the Requiem. The music of repose comes across beautifully, with fine contributions from the La Scala chorus. Oddly, the “Dies irae,” taken at a fairly fast pace, comes across as more irritated that wrathful. This may not be the most famous of recorded Requiem’s, but all of the singers excel. Studer perhaps never sounded better, entirely feminine and secure. Zajick and Ramey can unleash their formidable instruments when needed, and also sing with subtlety. And Pavarotti sounds fine for 1987, his instantly recognizable timbre blending well with the other soloists’ voices.

EMI’s “special limited edition” might just be a marketing gambit, but any fans of the tenor who do not have these recordings should be glad to find them conveniently boxed, if they can hunt down the texts elsewhere.

Chris Mullins

image=http://www.operatoday.com/PavarottiEMI.png imagedescription=Pavarotti: The EMI Recordings

product=yes producttitle=Pavarotti: The EMI Recordings productby=Luciano Pavarotti, Tenor; et al. productid=EMI Classics 5099951393724 [7CDs, 2DVDs] price=$46.98 producturl=http://www.arkivmusic.com/classical/album.jsp?album_id=185121

Wagner’s Das Rheingold at Los Angeles Opera

Placido Domingo’s east coast company, Washington National Opera, has postponed the Ring cycle it had already begun. On the west coast, Domingo’s Los Angeles Opera forges ahead, although next season will see the shortest season of subscription productions ever for the company — just 6. Three full rounds of the Ring cycle will end that season.

Seen on Sunday, March 8th, the Das Rheingold designed and directed by Achim Freyer reinforces the boldness of the company’s venture. Freyer’s style is much more about design and “performance art” than conventional narrative, which even a non-traditional staging such as Cherau’s at Bayreuth keeps as a foundation. When Freyer brought his staging of Bach’s Mass in b minor to the Dorothy Chandler some years ago, the audience strongly disapproved of the stylized pantomime of mummy-like figures, played out behind a scrim. However, a couple of seasons later Freyer came back to present Berlioz’s La Damnation du Faust, in a colorful, energized production that could fairly be called a hit.

The best sections of Freyer’s Rheingold shared some of the positive characteristics of that Berlioz, but there were worrying passages that recalled the distancing, overly clever worst of the Bach affair. Freyer seems most inspired by the outsiders to Valhalla. Loge is the only character who doesn’t either wear a mask or spend most of the performance hiding behind a fabrication of some sort. In fact, throughout most of the performance Wotan appears suspended in a box-like representation of his royal self seated on a throne, with only Vitalij Kowaljow’s face visible (and occasionally his hands). Alberich and Mime wear oversized face masks, which appear much more substantial than they are revealed to be when the singers doffed them at curtain. The design manages to brilliantly capture the troll-like nature of the Nibelungen and still allow the singers to project as if unencumbered. Freyer cleverly suggests the height disadvantage of these characters with an effect of huge platform shoes. The giants Fasolt and Fafner, on the other hand, appear both in the form of the singers, who sometimes raise huge magnifying glasses to their faces, and as oversized doubles — but only doubles of their construction helmets and their huge hands, when they reach out for Freia. Doubles fascinate Freyer; even the Rhine maidens have mirror-image doubles, waving their arms like synchronized swimmers, perhaps as water reflections would.

On Sunday the opening scene never quite pulled together, as Freyer doesn’t permit Alberich to interact with the Rhinemaidens who are, after all, trapped upstage in a huge billowing cloth. When we meet the future Valhallans, they are spread around the circumference of a center platform, and they hardly move from those initial positions. Freyer’s design here strongly suggests he sees Wotan and family as stiff, flat characters, who imagine themselves masters of their destiny but who are actually acted upon. The result was dry and uninvolving, prompting some worries about the later installments of the Ring, which focus on these characters and Wotan’s offspring.

However, it is not unusual for Das Rheingold to be dominated by its Loge, and such is the case here. Arnold Bezuyen actually got to move, in fact, to hop and gambol and even, with the help of some more doubling (and tripling), glide across the stage. Bezuyen has a great voice for Loge, lean yet muscular, and from the time he hit the stage the production came to life. Then Freyer’s magic started to work, as the lower half of the circular platform rose to reveal Alberich’s mines, and Graham Clark appeared as Mime. Such is Clark’s irrepressible stage presence that even behind a huge mask he created a character within seconds. For once, the cartoonish stage effects as Alberich turns himself into a snake and then a frog conveyed a sense of the ring’s power, and the imaginative stroke of having the magical helmet be a golden top hat really paid off when a tiny version appeared on Alberich transformed as a toad.

Freyer’s lighting effects (designed with Brian Gale) did allow for a suggestion of a rainbow bridge, but Valhalla never appeared as more than a sort of floating castle turret. The Rhine reappeared as a blood-red stream at the end, a probable foreshadowing of the carnage to come.

The Rhinemaidens were sung with liquid (forgive me) purity by Stacy Tappan, Lauren McNeese and Beth Clayton. Gordon Hawkins seemed a bit stifled by the staging of the first scene, but he was very impressive once he’d acquired the Rhinegold. Judgment will have to be reserved on the Wotan of Vitalij Kowaljow — the voice is sonorous enough, but it would take a singer of rare charisma to create a character when he spends most of the opera as a face sticking out of a hole in a cardboard facade. Michelle de Young interacts with her consort from across the stage, her movement restricted to a few waves of her oversized arms. Jill Grove’s Erda also sported an extra set — or two — of lengthy limbs. If the staging restricted the creation of characters, it seemed to concentrate both Grove and de Young’s vocal energy, and they both sounded great. Morris Robinson and Eric Halfvarson, as Fasolt and Fafner respectively, almost matched Bezuyen’s Loge for strong singing matched with memorable characterization. In their brief moments, Beau Gibson’s Froh, Wayne Tiggs’s Donner and Ellie Dehn’s Freia all made impressive contributions.

Los Angeles Opera covered the pit for this performance, and of course without the appearance of James Conlon at the dimming of the lights, many in the audience had to be shushed into silence as the low rumble of the first chord seeped out. The sound was surprisingly warm and detailed under the circumstances. Conlon supported the singers, while allowing the orchestra to ramp it up for the descent to the realm of the Nibelungen and the approach to Valhalla. At curtain most of the cast ran on and off stage fairly quickly, but Conlon took a diva-like bow, bathing in the adulation of the besotted LAO audience. Wonderfully, a camera then panned over the LAO orchestra, projected onto the scrim. That’s an innovation worth adopting on a routine basis.

Freyer’s artistry is dynamic and thought-provoking. However, much of the Ring is good old-fashioned story-telling. To what extent Freyer’s style and Wagner’s creation actually work together will perhaps be revealed in the upcoming Das Walküre.

Chris Mullins

image=http://www.operatoday.com/rheingold156press.png image_description=Gordon Hawkins (Alberich) [Photo by Monika Rittershaus courtesy of Los Angeles Opera]<

product=yes producttitle=Richard Wagner: Das Rheingold productby=Wotan, Vitalij Kowaljow; Loge, Arnold Bezuyen; Alberich, Gordon Hawkins; Mime, Graham Clark; Fricka, Michelle Deyoung; Erda, Jill Grove; Fasolt, Morris Robinson; Fafner, Eric Halfvarson; Freia, Ellie Dehn; Donner, Wayne Tigges; Froh, Beau Gibson; Woglinde, Stacey Tappan; Wellgunde, Lauren McNeese; Flosshilde, Beth Clayton. Los Angeles Opera. James Conlon, conducting. product_id=Above: Gordon Hawkins (Alberich) [Photo by Monika Rittershaus courtesy of Los Angeles Opera]

Charles Workman — the American dying to sing “Acis” for the Royal Opera

Yet when the curtain rises on 31st March at Covent Garden on their innovative double-bill of Handel’s Acis & Galatea and Purcell’s Dido & Aeneas, there will be many in the audience who will be unfamiliar with the name, so I took advantage of an offer to speak with the Arkansas tenor recently, whilst he took a break from rehearsals in London.

“Well, it was a family decision to move over originally, as my then-wife was British. It’s funny but you know there’s a strange sort of law that says no matter where you decide to settle as a singer, the work seems to come from somewhere else! I’ve been very lucky with my career in mainland Europe singing Rossini, Mozart, the French repertoire and modern opera — and of course four Handel roles as well — but you know I was also attracted by the sheer quality of the work going on this side of the Atlantic, compared to the sometimes rushed production schedules and lack of new productions in the States. I also felt that it was important to feel comfortable with the languages I was singing in — and I think I’ve got a fairly good grasp of the main ones now — and it helps a lot.”

I wondered if he had ever regretted his decision to move over here? “No, not at all, and the way the States has been going over the past eight years or so, the whole zeitgeist there was unattractive to me, although now with Obama maybe things will change.” Did he consider himself an American or European singer then? “I think neither strongly, but I guess more European than American and it’s interesting that many Europeans I meet who hear me for the first time assume that I’m British — they seem to think my musicality, the way I sing, is more of that ilk, you know, a less pushy, a more reticent style? But I don’t think I am pigeon-holed in any way, either in style or repertoire as I’ve never wanted people to think of me as only a Rossini tenor, or Mozart singer or whatever.”

Does that very flexibility cause any problems in adjustment for him? “Happily no, I can sing Hindemith and then Handel within days without any great shift in the brain — I just try to listen to what the conductor has to say and sing accordingly. I’m not, for instance, trying suddenly to become an early-music singer overnight!”

This anniversary year double bill of Handel and Purcell at Covent Garden is innovative in that the well-known choreographer Wayne McGregor (who also directs the operas) has now added ballet sequences to Acis, to complement his previously-created work for Dido (first shown at La Scala, Milan). That latter work received mainly good notices in 2006 for the way that the dance integrated with the music, the choreography seeming to “visualise” the instrumental sections whilst merging with the soloists and chorus. Charles Workman, two weeks before curtain up, had only just met the dancers on stage for the first time, as McGregor, he says, prefers to put the works together in two separate parts in the early stages. How had the collaboration gone so far? “Very well, Wayne is good to work with, he knows what he’s doing and even if he makes changes, they’re for a good reason which makes sense, he doesn’t dither, he works with a purpose — it should be a great show.”

On the musical side, the operas will be under the baton of Christopher Hogwood, one of Britain’s great period music directors, working with the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment. Did Workman prefer the period band approach to music-making? “Absolutely. Not only the different colours you get, and the lower pitch is helpful, particularly for this role, but there’s something about the period musicians that I like. Maybe it’s because they had to make a choice early on in their careers to commit to this music, and therefore have a particular sort of focus? They seem really devoted to what they are doing, really committed, and that’s great to work with.”

In view of his relative lack of presence on UK stages up to now (compared to his regular stints in Paris, Munich, Barcelona, Milan etc) I asked Charles Workman if he’d be happy for this role to re-invigorate his career closer to home, to heighten his profile here a bit. “Of course, and hopefully it will — it would make life a bit simpler!”

So, is the American in London looking forward to his first Acis? “Oh yes, and it’ll be nice to die, for a change, at the end!”

Sue Loder © 2009

Dido & Aeneas/Acis & Galatea
Royal Opera, Covent Garden, London.
Six performances commencing 31st March 2009.
http://www.roh.org.uk

image=http://www.operatoday.com/workman.gif image_description=Charles Workman [Photo copyright and courtesy of Artists Management Zurich] product=yes product_title=Charles Workman — the American dying to sing “Acis” for the Royal Opera product_by=Above: Charles Workman [Photo copyright and courtesy of Artists Management Zurich]

Bel canto, an escape into beauty

Igor Toronyi-Lalic [Times Online, 9 March 2009]

The sets are moth-eaten, the staging is fusty, the opera itself dramatically awkward. But when the Royal Opera House presents its current revival of Pier Luigi Pizzi’s decades-old production of Bellini’s I Capuleti e i Montecchi, no one concentrates on any of that. The opera glasses are all pointed at Anna Netrebko, the starrily glamorous Russian diva who has made the role of Giulietta one of her favourite party pieces. And it is she who has won the critical plaudits.

Tristan und Isolde in Chicago

As the principals in this production Deborah Voigt and Clifton Forbis give, at once, convincing and moving performances, their interpretations each pitting an inner struggle of boundless love against the conventions of the medieval court and its surroundings. Ms. Voigt succeeds admirably in creating a vocal and dramatic transformation from the offended, captive bride to the eager lover in a forbidden relationship. Petra Lang’s Brangäne is vocally resplendent, while her dramatic approach suggests a unified personality throughout the work. The Kurwenal of Jason Stearns gains in intensity as the character moves from serving to caring for his injured lord. The impression given by Stephan Milling as King Marke, appearing on stage just moments before the final chords of Act I, establishes a commanding presence whose authority will be enforced in the following scenes of the opera.

During the prelude to the opera a soft light shines upon a blue scrim bearing the names of the lovers. This attention to the beauty of the ill-fated tragic love is matched by dissonances subtley woven into the lush orchestral playing under the direction of Sir Andrew Davis. As the scrim rises on the opening scene aboard Marke’s ship anticipation is immediately evident in the interaction of characters expecting to approach Cornwall by the end of the day. Isolde is awakened from her sleep by the song of a young sailor , which she interprets as mocking her with the words “irische Maid.” Ms. Voigt uses this opening as a touchstone to launch into her expressive irritation, during which her voice carries a restrained yet evident harshness because of her current position as a bride en route to Marke. Brangäne is sent several times to summon Tristan for a verbal reckoning with her lady, yet he refuses to leave his position at the helm. Here the gestures and dignified control used by Mr. Forbis underline the formality that Tristan chooses to emphasize in service to King Marke.

As the character both moving between and hoping to establish communication among the principals Brangäne’s tone is, at this point in the scene, especially variable. Ms. Lang modulates her voice here effectively in order to indicate these significant shifts. She relays, at once, the demands of Isolde to Curwenal and to Tristan as well as her frustrations because the men refuse a direct interview with Marke’s future queen. It is noteworthy that tensions growing during the course of the act are justly framed by the combination of sets and costumes originally designed in 1987 by David Hockney for the Los Angeles Opera. The stylization of the stage sets contrasts with the quasi-medieval realism of the costumes, in effect lending a mythical yet believable tone to the drama. At this point, the nuanced vocal performance by Ms. Lang illustrates especially the effect of this synthesis in Hockney’s scenic and costume designs. Whereas Lang’s monochromatic facial expression matches the costume fitting into a pictorial frame, her Brangäne demonstrates a vast spectrum of vocal expression, from her pleading with Tristan “Höre wohl: deine Dienste will die Frau,” [“Listen well: the lady desires your attentions”] to the impassioned high notes of “Weh, ach wehe! dies zu dulden!”[“O, woe! To have to endure this!”], as she delivers her answer to Isolde. In her memorable characterization Lang affirms the position of Brangäne not only as companion but also as a voice of encouragement and advice.

In response to the fruitless efforts for an interview as rebuffed by Tristan, Isolde elaborates now to Brangäne the background of her frustration. As one of the dramatic highlights of Act I, Ms. Voigt unleashes a searing account of her earlier humiliation (“Schmach,” as repeatedly intoned) by Tristan. Although he had killed her betrothed Morolt in a duel, Tristan’s wounds forced him to return to Ireland to be healed by the skills of the princess. When she recognized the patient whom she was tending, Isolde relates how she could not bring herself to wield Tristan’s sword and kill him in vengeance. In Voigt’s interpretation, the bitter resignation of recalling her “Schmach” increases during the monologue and reaches a crescendo as she declares with great emotion “Nun dien ich dem Vasallen!” [“Now I remain in service to the vasall!”]. Voigt’s curses leveled soon after in this scene are an especially powerful evocation of Isolde’s anger and her emotional excitedness while traveling under Tristan’s protection to Cornwall. At Brangäne’s suggestion that a love potion, provided by Isolde’s mother, be used to foster an emotional relationship between Marke and his bride, Isolde’s response shows her attempt to settle the past. Her words, are marked to be sung “düster,” with ominous notes, as she clearly chooses the flask with poison — which she proposes to share with Tristan — rather than a filtre for love. Voigt projects a noticeable tone of foreboding, as she intones the words “Den Schrein dort bring mir her!” [“That chest you must bring to me!”]. Soon afterward Tristan answers the repeated request that he approach Isolde: their heated exchange culminates in Tristan’s offer that she slay him with that very sword which she refused to use once before. At Isolde’s suggestion that they share a draught of reconciliation, Brangäne prepares the potion. Voigt’s gestures of impatience to her companion propel the dialogue with Tristan to a climactic assent of “Sühne” [“reconciliation”]. During this scene Mr. Forbis invests the persona of Tristan with a controlled sense of dignity while allowing for as broad a range of respect as possible in countering Isolde’s demands. Both characters display a credible transformation after they drink from the potion of love substituted by Brangäne. As Voigt and Forbis at first avoid each other’s glance, then reach hesitatingly to clutch the partner’s hand, their voices soften to express the love that will henceforth affect their worldly existence. Their incorrigible embraces can be separated now, and in the following act, only by the approach of King Marke.

It is in the second act that the full implications of the lovers’ transformation is explored. The emotional peak of this love is placed as the middle of three scenes, in which the dramatic and emotional action is neatly distributed among a varying constellation of participants. In the first of these scenes Isolde and Brangäne await Tristan in a tree-lined garden; Isolde dismisses the warnings of Brangäne that Melot, an alleged friend of Tristan, will betray the secret love to King Marke. Here Isolde emphasizes the power of love personified as she yearns for the cover of night. Voigt’s commands to ignore any danger and to extinguish the torch, while ordering Brangäne to a position of watch, elicit thrilling dramatic notes which effectively pierce the summer night’s air. In the middle scene, soon after Isolde hurls the illuminating torch to the ground, Tristan enters and the lovers are enveloped in repeated physical as well as vocal embraces. Voigt and Forbis share and echo phrases, while modulating the poetic lines, so that their extended love duet enhances their emotional unity from the standpoint of both their words and the lyrical projection of their feelings. During this duet Ms. Lang’s extended warnings of “Habet Acht” show exquisite control of phrasing as her voice is heard above the orchestra. Yet these warnings, and those of Kurwenal, remain unheeded as King Marke enters together with Melot at the start of the third scene. Marke’s disbelief now shifts to a recitation of Tristan’s betrayal, as he finds his queen and his friendship for Tristan thus compromised. Stephen Milling’s Marke is a wonder of vocal delivery. His expressive bass emits a depth of feeling which causes all those accused to look away in shame. The dignity of meaning projected by Milling into the monologue of Marke is emphasized by his diction and the arching structure given to individual lines. Yet the love of Tristan and Isolde transcends the censure of the court, and Isolde agrees to follow Tristan into exile. Only an attack by Melot, and his wounding of Tristan at the close of the act, prevent the ecstatic love from continuing its uninterrupted path.

In the final act sadness and longing pervade the two major parts. In the first of these Tristan, sickened by his wounds, reflects on the course of events, on his shattered loyalties to Marke, and his unending desire to be reunited with Isolde. Mr. Forbis invests his Tristan with a credible pathos, giving vent to the character’s delirium while retaining the hope that Isolde will yet appear to share his exile. When the ship from Cornwall does arrive, and Isolde is allowed to embrace him in love, Tristan dies within moments. Marke’s presence, the King having journeyed separately with his entourage, can do nothing to remedy the inevitable path of emotions. Isolde’s final “Liebestod,” sung by Voigt as one transfigured through love and prepared for a union only in death, brings full circle the love so movingly sustained from its earlier narrative start and its foreshadowing in the overture.

Salvatore Calomino

image=http://www.operatoday.com/Tristan_Chicago_01.png image_description=Deborah Voigt and Clifton Forbis sing the title roles in Tristan und Isolde [Photo by Dan Rest/Lyric Opera of Chicago] product=yes product_title=Richard Wagner: Tristan und Isolde product_by=Isolde: Deborah Voigt; Tristan: Clifton Forbis; Brangäne: Petra Lang; Kurwenal: Jason Stearns (Jan. 27-Feb. 8), Greer Grimsley (Feb. 12-28); Marke: Stephen Milling. Lyric Opera of Chicago. Conductor: Sir Andrew Davis. Director: José María Condemi. product_id=Above: Deborah Voigt and Clifton Forbis sing the title roles in Tristan und Isolde [Photo by Dan Rest/Lyric Opera of Chicago]

CHERUBINI: Medea — La Scala 1961

Music composed by Luigi Cherubini. Libretto by Franoçois-Benoît Hoffman. Italian version by Carlo Zangarini.

First Performance: 13 March 1797, Théâtre Feydeau, Paris.

Principal Characters:
Jason [Giasone], leader of the Argonauts	Tenor
Medea [Médée], his wife	Soprano
Neris [Néris], her confidante	Mezzo-Soprano
Creon [Créon, Creonte], King of Corinth	Bass
Dirce [Dircé, Glauce], his daughter	Soprano
First attendant	Soprano
Second attendant	Mezzo-Soprano

Setting: The palace of Creon.

Synopsis:

Act I

The wedding of Jason and Dircé, daughter of Creonte, is approaching. In a gallery in Creonte’s royal palace the bride-to-be is tormented by anxiety fearing the possible return of the sorceress Medea, who refuses to accept that Jason, to whom she has given two children, has abandoned her. The chorus and the confidantes of Dircé attempt to comfort her, as do both Jason and Creonte.

The sudden appearance of Medea comes as a terrible shock to Dircé and Jason has to lead the sorceress away. Medea tries to bend to Jason’s will, hoping to dissuade him from his decision to be married again. But the contrast between the two leads to the bitter hatred of Medea who summons Colchos and his darkest horrors to prevent the wedding taking place and to avenge Jason’s refusal to hear her pleas.

Act II

In a wing of the palace near the temple of Juno, Medea, the abandoned and furious wife, calls upon the terrible Eumenides to shed blood and bring terror to Creonte and his daughter Dircé. Accompanied by her hand-maiden Neris, Medea obtains Creonte’s permission to spend one more day in Corinth. The king begs her to calm her wrath, whereas she, with the help of Neris, is seeking vengeance to match the offence and suffering she has known.

Medea’s next encounter with Jason sees her in remissive attitude, as she asks her former husband to let her have her two children back. So upset is she that she is prepared to try to win the pity of Jason, but Jason will not be moved. Medea is hurt and insulted. Events confirm her desire to seek the vengeance that she had planned. She confides in Neris, telling her that she intends to give the bride-to-be Dircé her gown, crown and her personal effects all poisoned. During the wedding procession Medea pronounces cruel wishes for the couple.

Act III

A storm which obscures the scene is the ideal backdrop to the appearance of Medea who steps forward dressed in a black veil. She is awaiting the children of her marriage with Jason to complete her criminal plans. Neris pushes the children into their mother’s arms. Medea is touched when she sees them but will not be distracted from her plan to kill them. They are her children but what matters most is that Jason is their father and through the children he must pay for the offence he has committed.

Cries from the palace inform us that Dircé is dead. Jason, moved to pity and fearful for his children, begs Medea to bring them to him: it is too late, they have already been killed. Jason is crushed by his sorrow. Medea calls to him that she will be waiting for him on the banks of the Styx and then sets fire to the temple.

As the crowd runs from the blaze, the flames spread and engulf both the temple and the palace; thunderbolts heighten the terror; the mountain and the temple collapse. The destruction and flames destroy the scene. Medea disappears among the burning remains.

[Synopsis Source: Opera Italiana]

Click here for the complete libretto.

image=http://www.operatoday.com/Medea-Sandys.png image_description= Medea (1868) by Anthony Frederick Augustus Sandys

audio=yes firstaudioname=Luigi Cherubini: Medea firstaudiolink=http://www.operatoday.com/Medea2.m3u

product=yes producttitle=Luigi Cherubini: Medea productby=First Attendant: Edith Martelli; Second Attendant: Limbania Leoni; Capitano: Alfredo Giacometti; Creonte: Nicolai Ghiaurov; Glauce: Ivana Tosini; Jason: Jon Vickers; Medea: Maria Callas; Néris: Giulietta Simionato. Orchestra e coro del Teatra alla Scala di Milano. Thomas Schippers, conducting. Live performance, 14 December 1961, Milan.

Fidelio — London Lyric Opera, Cadogan Hall

And what an improvement it was — the fundamental difference being that the most important roles were strongly cast. As Leonore, Elizabeth Connell wielded her steely-centred soprano with a confidence that was equal to the dramatic demands of the role without compromising on lyricism and good classical technique. Her physical characterisation was less convincing; her Fidelio was introverted, diffident and tentative until it came to the critical moment of the rescue. Leonore must surely have had to be convincing enough as a strapping youth to convince both Rocco and Marzelline of her credentials; here she never quite disguised the persona of the desperately worried wife.

The tenor Jeffrey Lloyd-Roberts sang Florestan; his voice is oversized in a small hall, but this only heightened the impact of his emotionally powerful performance. The commitment in his singing was second to none, even if it made his vocal delivery rather ragged around the edges. Without the benefit of a fully staged production, it was his performance which brought to life not only the character but the whole scenario.

The interplay between Rachel Nicholls’ Marzelline and Andrew Staples’ Jaquino drew affectionate laughter from the audience. Staples’ delivery is lucid and direct, while Nicholls soprano is perhaps overly rich and creamy for this role but a gorgeous, bright sound nonetheless.

Richard Wiegold, a young singer still, had the fatherly demeanour for Rocco and an attractively projected bass.

The weak point, I’m afraid, remained the baritone James Hancock (the company’s founder) as Pizarro. Although Beethoven gives him comparatively little to sing, thus limiting the impact of his performance on the concert, his blustering, characterless singing in imperfect German could not help but be shown up by the high-quality surrounding cast. Surely there is a major flaw in his strategy here?

[Photo by Moz Bulbeck]

The young conductor Madeleine Lovell was polished and assured in her direction of the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra; the overture was robust and lyrical, the arias sensitively accompanied and the big dramatic climaxes powerfully realised. The collective vocal strength of the Philharmonia Chorus, galvanised by Cambridge’s Queen’s College Chapel Choir, gave them a pleasingly ‘operatic’ timbre so often missing from concert choirs.

It was certainly in a different league to that very disappointing Dutchman, better on almost every level.

Ruth Elleson © 2009

image=http://www.operatoday.com/LLO-Fidelio-Flyer-Cover.png image_description=Fidelio (London Lyric Opera) product=yes product_title=Ludwig van Beethoven: Fidelio product_by=London Lyric Opera product_id=Above artwork designed by Wardour

Siegfried Wagner: Rainulf und Adelasia

Siegfried Wagner’s Rainulf und Adelasia might seem to be a work inspired - if that’s the word - by the composer’s father’s Tristan und Isolde.

However, once past the exposition, Tristan und Isolde is a fairly simple narrative, with its great length given over to an expansive portrayal of pained eroticism and obsession. Rainulf und Adelasia, on the other hand, winds its way through a labyrinthine libretto. The synopsis in this CPO set’s booklet runs to three double-column pages, and would prove an exacting test of short-term memory, as few of the events as described seem to bear much relation to whatever transpired previously or what ensues.

Based - very distantly, one imagines - on histories of the Normans in Sicily, the story comes down to the wicked efforts of Rainulf to thwart the ambitions of his half-brother Osmund, who is set to marry one Beata. So who is Adelasia? Strangely, the synopsis doesn’t make the character’s relation to the others clear. However, Rainulf loves her, while she bears an unrequited love for Osmund. Rainulf resorts to the assistance of a witch to win Adelasia, but Adelasia is just too pure and good. When his scheme to discredit Osmund falls through, Rainulf kills himself. Osmund and Beata go off happily, while Adelasia wonders what happiness is.

The booklet contains three essays, all apparently written by Peter P. Pachl and translated by Susan Marie Praeder (they are credited after the final essay). The first relates the story of the opera’s composition in ample - even excessive - detail, though without making it clear whether the composer ever saw the work staged (apparently not). The second essay takes the form of a musical analysis, relating the action to various themes described by their keys and mystifying adjectives. A typical example: “In Rainulf’s monologue…a theme with a triplet upswing familiar from the prelude is heard as stupidity while Rainulf makes fun of the same.” As well he should. The title of the third essay should give a good sense of its contents: “Onomatopoetics and Onomatopoetry.” Here we learn how the character’s names bear insights, such as this: “The second part of Adelasia’s name also alludes to the Greek name »Aspasia« (»Welcome Woman«). The most famous bearer of this name was a Greek courtesan. Accordingly, Adelasia’s name may be interpreted as meaning »noble whore«.” Rainulf might object.

The sixteen-minute overture finds the younger Wagner emulating the aching chromaticism of his father’s score for Tristan und Isolde, but the body of the opera more frequently recalls music from earlier operas such as Lohengrin and Tannhaüser, with martial horn passages and striding themes in a more conservative tonality. From time to time, a certain orchestral touch, such as a wry comment from a solo violin, will suggest that Siegfried Wagner had felt the influence of his contemporary, Richard Strauss. Although it lacks originality, Rainulf und Adelasia still manages to present itself as a creditable composition - outdated in many respects, unmemorable in its themes, but consistently supportive of the drama, such as it is.

A close reading of the back cover reveals that this live recording originated in October 2003 at the Herbstilche Musiktage Bad Urach. Werner Andreas Albert leads a willing and secure reading from the Staatsphilarmonie Rheinland-Pfalz, though from time to time the string sound thins out, and the winds and brass have moments of sour intonation. Considering the long stretches of orchestral carpet Wagner lays out, that’s forgivable.

A strong cast gives the effort all they can. Frank von Aken sings Rainulf, a tenor role, with the right heroic heft and some dark shadings for the character’s malevolent side. Elisabeth M. Wachutka’s Adelasia lacks personality, but they may be a problem with the role, which is close to that of Elsa in Lohengrin in its patience-testing virtuous victim-hood. Roman Trekel brings some star-quality to the role of Osmund. The third act has some attractive music, slightly gypsy-influenced, for the witch Sigilgaita, and Margarete Joswig growls attractively in her big scene.

There are fans who only love the early Wagner, and for them, a Siegfried Wagner opera such as this one should be a very enjoyable listen. But curses to CPO for replacing the “und” in the title with an ugly ampersand on the front cover. Crass & tacky.

Chris Mullins

image=http://www.operatoday.com/Rainulf.png image_description=Siegfried Wagner: Rainulf und Adelasia

product=yes producttitle=Siegfried Wagner: Rainulf und Adelasia productby=Minutillo, Trekel, van Aken, Wachutka, Kuckler, Hawlata, Klepper, Janiszewski, Joswig, Lang, Stuttgarter Choristen, Staatsphilharmonie Rheinland-Pfalz, Werner Andreas Albert productid=CPO SWR 777 017-2 [3CDs] price=$49.99 producturl=http://www.arkivmusic.com/classical/Drilldown?nameid1=12733&namerole1=1&bcorder=1&comp_id=241465

Korngold Thrills in Venice

But then, La Fenice’s extraordinary Die Tote Stadt was helmed on all three counts by the venerable triple threat Pier Luigi Pizzi in another of his masterful displays of how to perfectly showcase and (gasp) serve the work at hand. At this point in his long and illustrious career, Signor Pizzi is deservedly a veritable national treasure.

His atmospheric setting consisted largely of two angled black platforms mid-stage, headed by a door on each side, dipping from the wings, and coming to rest one on top of the other center stage, serving as the wherewithal for the entrances and exits in the “realistic” scenes.

This rather shallow space was dressed with two black-draped tables, sporting vases stuffed profusions of white flowers. Stacks of plump, over-sized black pillows were strewn on the floor, perfect for lounging. The stage right table also bore the all-important silver box-cum-reliquary containing the dead wife’s braid of hair. A full-length black and white oil painting of the deceased Marie was propped on the stage right wall, flanked by large candlesticks, and complemented with a corresponding full length mirror stage left.

This whole elegant “prison” of Paul’s own creation, is framed by a mirrored proscenium, and backed by black drapes, but no ordinary backdrop was this. For the cloth was able to trim into fourths (making three vertical openings) and/or fly into the loft, revealing all or part of a fantasy land of water and set pieces that were perfectly calculated to suggest the various locales in our hero’s troubled mind.

This upstage nether world was slightly skewed by a giant tilted overhead mirror which reflected the pool of water and all that was in it from a disorienting perspective. The tourist postcard town of Bruges never looked like this! After Marietta’s first appearance in which she teased and left, the drapes then revealed her upstage as the dead Marie, clad in white, and subsequently outlined by a spectral white frame that tilted up at us out of the water, creating a living double for the oil painting. Chilling.

After Marie glided off, she soon came back in a taunting mood, clad in a devastatingly dazzling red gown, replete with long train and diaphanous capes that she trailed in the water as she twirled and flung red roses willy nilly, roses from an identical bouquet that had figured so prominently in Marietta’s first scene.

L’entrée du Béguinage by Fernand Khnopff (1904).

Act Two’s carnival featured a canal boat, a silvery denuded cypress tree, two rotating buildings, Bruges’ bell tower, and, well…truly gorgeous designer costumes, another of Pizzi’s masterful accomplishments. To name one, there was a knockout nudie black lace number that evoked the same peak-a-boo naughtiness that adorned Anita Morris in Nine. Marietta was resplendent in yet another star-worthy, drop dead sequined red dress.

The most creative costume design effect was arguably the white clad funeral procession, which began respectfully enough slogging through the water, and ended with a profane parody of a religious ceremony, with the celebrants revealed to be naked under their chasubles. Their frenzied religious-sexual fervor as they kicked and hurled water about, costumes akimbo, in a demented tarantella was powerful imagery indeed. (Vincenzo Raponi contributed the excellent lighting design, and Marco Berriel the free-wheeling choreography.)

Nor did Pizzi falter in his directorial accomplishment with a gifted cast of singers pulled from the front ranks of the world’s roster. Stefan Vinke, in the punishing role of Paul, experienced a bit of spreading at times, but he is also in command of stentorian high notes that are as thrilling as you are likely to hear today. Man, he slams them home!

True, he sometimes did not recover quickly from the effort, the voice getting brittle in mezzo forte mid-range passages, and there were a few rough releases. However, he gets all the notes and more in this killer part, and even manages some wonderful messa di voce effects. I do worry that he muscled up for the big outpourings — I have never seen anyone open his mouth that wide — no, never — provoking concern for just how relaxed his jaw might be. But Herr Vinke delivered the musical goods, and he is also a committed actor with an appealing “bear” look. He is singing Siegfried later in the season here, and it should hold no terrors for him.

Solveig Kringleborn as Marie/Marietta confirmed my wonderful previous impressions of her artistry with an assured impersonation that was beautiful, blond, sexy, fearless, and vibrantly sung. Mariettas Lied, the opera’s best known tune, was voiced with silvery tone and lovely limpid phrasing. Her full-throated, arching phrases also gave much pleasure and if her vibrato got a bit (but just a bit) generous in pressed lower passages, it was more womanly than off-putting.

The roles of Frank-Fritz were well-served by the very musical baritone Stephan Genz, even though the voice occasionally got a little croony and hooty as is the wont of some German baritones. It must be said his Pierrot’s Song (the other famous melody) was pleasantly taken. All of the featured ensemble solos were uniformly secure. Special mention must go to mezzo Christa Mayer, whose Brigitta was a piece of luxury casting that showcased a rich, full-bodied instrument that would be a pleasure to encounter as, say, the Nurse in “Die Frau Ohne Schatten.”

The orchestra regaled us with professional playing of the highest order, easily the best effort from the pit I have yet experienced at La Fenice. Under Maestro Eliahu Inbal, they embraced every demand of Korngold’s sprawling score, capable at will of being tender, passionate, delicate, agitated, percussive, melodic, and most important, sensitively supportive of the singers.

Still, for all the radiant musical accomplishments, it was Pier Luigi’s day. His sure hand was evident in so many ways: beautiful use of the levels to define character relationships, excellent variety of blocking using the entire space in a psychologically meaningful way, and the ability and willingness to simply serve the creators’ intentions. When Marietta taunted Paul with Marie’s braid and he strangled her with it, it was not only highly effective drama, it was also just as called for in the script.

The final image found Paul walking slowly out of his “prison” and into the fantasy world upstage, literally walking into a sea of possibilities. He had shed his demons at last.

This was stunning lyric theatre. Mr. Pizzi, we should be cheering you still.

James Sohre

image=http://www.operatoday.com/UnevillemorteKhnopff.png imagedescription=Une ville morte (1890) by Fernand Khnopff

product=yes producttitle=Erich Wolfgang Korngold: Die tote Stadt productby=Paul: Stefan Vinke; Marietta / Marie: Solveig Kringelborn; Frank / Fritz: Stephan Genz; Brigitta: Christa Mayer; Juliette: Eleonore Marguerre; Lucienne: Julia Oesch; Gaston: Gino Potente; Victorin: Shi Yijie; Albert; Mathias Schulz. Orchestra e Coro del Teatro La Fenice. Eliahu Inbal, conductor. Pier Luigi Pizzi, director. product_id=

Sir Harrison Birtwistle on the joy of music

By Andrew Clark [Financial Times, 6 March 2009]

The act of creation is “pretty self-indulgent”, says Sir Harrison Birtwistle, citing Picasso and Damien Hirst. But the remark carries no air of censure, for the UK’s foremost living composer has a Picasso print propped up on his drawing room floor, an industrial brick posed decoratively on his windowsill, and several minimalist canvases adorning the walls.

Dr Atomic lands on London with a bang

On the surface, there’s little overt action. Oppenheimer and his colleagues stand about talking, but therein lies the drama. But remember Waiting for Godot. The angst is existential, directed inwards. There is no overt commentary in the libretto, either. Instead, texts are taken from documents and letters of the time, presenting evidence without explicit judgement, for there are no easy answers. The words hang in limbo, like the photograph of the wall in Hiroshima standing amid the rubble, a mute witness to horror.

The atmosphere is claustrophobic, tinged with paranoia. If the action drags at first, it recreates the tedium and tension at Los Alamos, which is central to the drama. How do scientists, men of reason, get caught up in barbarity? Oppenheimer himself was an educated, civilized man who was later persecuted for his political beliefs. The scientists on the Manhattan project didn’t know the full consequences of what they were doing and were in denial. Audiences at Dr Atomic have images of Hiroshima and the Cold War seared into their memories and cannot escape.

The lyrical episodes Adams builds into the opera are essential to the whole meaning of the opera. Oppenheimer quotes Donne, Baudelaire and other poetry. It’s an escape to a more ideal world, but he’s deeply conflicted. The song “Batter my heart” is Ground Zero in this opera, utterly pivotal and beautifully written. Gerald Finley sings it with conviction, and doesn’t flinch from its irony. “Reason….me should defend, but is captived, and proves weak or untrue”. It’s so powerful that it would obliterate anything that followed. We leave the first act stunned, to ponder it in the interval.

Perhaps the secret to this opera is not to expect action from the words, but from the music. Orchestrally, this is surprising rich and beautiful, the choruses in particularly well supported. The ENO chorus and orchestra have performed Adams before, most recently Nixon in China but this isn’t traditional repertoire, so they deserve credit for achieving such good results. Lawrence Renes conducted the European premiere of the original staging at Der Nederlandse Opera in 2007. Experience shows.

This production, by Penny Woolcock, who directed the Death of Klinghoffer film, makes much of the Teva Pueblo. Just as the scientists do the bidding of politicians, the Pueblo serve the scientists. But they observe, they are the conscience of nature. The production starts with a wall of photographs showing the scientists formally posing, as if for mug shots. Later, they are replaced by Pueblo, standing in the cavities of the wall, as if in a massive canyon. They sing from the Bhagavad-gita, prophecying doom. “Your shape stupendous”, they repeat, to booming percussion, “All the worlds are fear struck”.

Special mention should be made of Meredith Arwady’s dark contralto, seething suppressed passion. Pasqualita is a small part, but essential. Kitty is too distressed to mother her baby, but Pasqualita nurtures.

Full Stage [Photo by Catherine Ashmore]

The final scene is overwhelming. The orchestra builds up to a harrowing climax, rolling thunder as it the skies were rent asunder. As the cast stare upward, transfixed, the bomb explodes. The whole auditorium is bathed in unearthly yellow light. This is what “awesome” really means - it is magnificent as theatre. But lest we be too impressed, the voice of a Japanese woman cries out for water. All that power, all that knowledge, was to be channelled for destruction.

Superb singing from Gerald Finley who has made Oppenheimer his speciality, and also for Brindley Sherratt who was impressive recently as Pimen in Boris Gudonov. Sasha Cooke characterises the brittle Kitty well. The whole cast is strong but chorus and orchestra ground the production with firm purpose. The whole cast is strong but chorus and orchestra ground the production with firm purpose. The ENO has long had a reputation for choosing innovative and challenging work : this Dr Atomic epitomises what the ENO stands for.

Anne Ozorio

image=http://www.operatoday.com/doctoratomic016.gif image_description=Gerald Finley as J Robert Oppenheimer, Thomas Glenn as Robert Wilson, Brindley Sherratt as Edward Teller [Photo by Catherine Ashmore courtesy of English National Opera]

product=yes producttitle=John Adams: Dr Atomic productby=Brindley Sherratt (Edward Teller), Gerald Finlay (J Robert Oppenheimer), Thomas Glenn (Robert Wilson), Sasha Cooke (Kitty), Jonathan Viera (General Leslie Groves), Roderick Earle (Frank Hubbard), Lee David Bowen (Captain Nolan), Meredith Arwady (Pasqualita), Chorus and Orchestra of the English National Orchestra, Lawrence Renes (conductor), Penny Woolcock (director). product_id=Above: Gerald Finley as J Robert Oppenheimer, Thomas Glenn as Robert Wilson, Brindley Sherratt as Edward Teller [Photo by Catherine Ashmore courtesy of English National Opera]

La bohème — English National Opera

As a staging, it has all the hallmarks of a future classic of the ENO repertoire. Isabella Bywater’s naturalistic set is as easy on the eye as Amanda Holden’s fluid new translation is on the ear, while Jean Kalman’s lighting handsomely sets off the wide attic windows and silhouetted rooftops. Fast-forward a couple of seasons to an above-average revival; the rough edges of the staging will have been smoothed over, the perfect cast will be engaged, and everything will ‘click’. The previous production - which was less distinctive than this - was memorable thanks to a succession of lively and well-matched ensembles of soloists.

That, alas, was what this new production lacked. As Mimì, the sweet but pallid soprano of the American soprano Melody Moore lacked warmth and passion; Alfie Boe was a fine Rodolfo a few years ago at Glyndebourne, but that’s a much smaller house, and his is not a large voice - he was frequently swallowed up by the orchestral texture. But a much greater problem was their credibility as a couple, with almost no chemistry between them. Admittedly the costumes were unhelpful: Moore has youth on her side, but a dowdy wig and unflattering dresses made her matronly and plain, not to mention improbably strong and healthy for a fragile heroine whose very identity is defined by a diminutive pet-name. In comparison to the small-framed Boe’s amiable and boyish Rodolfo, Moore’s Mimì seemed like a sensible elder sister.

Hanan Alattar (Musetta) Alfie Boe (Rodolfo)

Musetta, Hanan Alattar, somehow failed to dominate Act 2, and her sharply focused soprano remained pert and hard-edged right up to the end, though her characterisation gained in warmth and was quite touching. Best among the soloists was the congenial, warm-voiced Roland Wood as Marcello, and Pauls Putninš’ distinctive bass brought considerable pathos to Colline.

The set - with buildings that revolve into various configurations to create the various locations - evokes a down-at-heel 1930s Paris. Appropriately, the garret scenes take place on an upper level, which caused a few acoustic issues from where I was sitting in the Stalls. The cast were sometimes overwhelmed by the orchestra, particularly in the fast-moving banter of Act 1. It wasn’t until Act 3, when the soloists are at ground level and not lost in the ensemble, that the vocal projection was really satisfactory. The split level creates a dramatic issue too, with the staircase up to the Bohemians’ doorway forming the focal point of the set: none of the entrances are a surprise, from Benoit’s in Act 1 to Musetta’s in Act 4. The sole purpose of its central placement seems to be to throw focus on Schaunard (David Stout) towards the end as he leaves Rodolfo and Mimì alone.

Alfie Boe (Rodolfo), Melody Moore (Mimì), David Stout (Schaunard), Pauls Putnins (Colline), Roland Wood (Marcello)

In his house debut, conductor Miguel Harth-Bedoya gave a musically competent, lucid reading, but it was short on warmth and there was little sense of connection between pit and stage.

I mustn’t ignore the positives: Simon Butteriss’s sleazy Benoit was a highly entertaining cameo, and Act 3 was really well-staged, with well-directed cameos from members of the chorus and (finally) some believable emotional interplay between the two couples. But at the end of the evening, though I found myself sorry for Mimì’s death, I was quite indifferent to Rodolfo’s loss. If only I could have believed they were ever in love.

Ruth Elleson © 2009

image=http://www.operatoday.com/LaBoheme007.gif image_description=Melody Moore (Mimì) and Alfie Boe (Rodolfo) [Photo: Tristram Kenton]

product=yes producttitle=G. Puccini: La bohème productby= product_id=Above: Melody Moore (Mimì) and Alfie Boe (Rodolfo)

All photos by Tristram Kenton courtesy of English National Opera

A Bellini Gem in a New Zimmerman Setting

By HEIDI WALESON [WSJ, 4 March 2009]

Presenting Bellini’s “La Sonnambula” (1831) as a backstage drama, as Mary Zimmerman did in the new production at the Metropolitan Opera, turned out to be a pretty clever way to reconcile the flimsy plot and deep emotional content of this bel canto gem.

Mahler: Das Lied von der Erde (The Song of the Earth)

As John Newton comments in the notes about the audio technology used in this new release, the quality of the original record was excellent from the start, and that allows for enhancements, rather than restoration in bringing the almost legendary American recording to the twenty-first century. The razor-blades that sound engineers used in 1959 to edit tapes were the best tools available then, but such physical means have given way to digital ones, and the results are evident in this fine issue.

When RCA originally released this recording of Das Lied von der Erde, relatively few recordings were available on LP, but those included the monumental performance of Kathleen Ferrier and Julius Patzak, with the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra, conducted by Bruno Walter. Comparisons of these two great recordings are futile, but they represent two of the finest performances of Das Lied von der Erde on disc. Ferrier’s performance is unquestionably moving, and Forester represents another impressive interpretation of the part. It is fortunate to have the fine recording with Ferrier and Patzak conducted by Walter, the musician responsible for the premiere of Das Lied von der Erde after Mahler’s death. With Reiner’s recording, though, both singers would continue with their careers for years to come. Forester and Lewis would appear again in Das Lied von der Erde in a concert on 16 April1960 at Carnegie Hall, in a performance of the Philharmonic Symphony Orchestra led by Bruno Walter. That performance is available on CD, but does not have the sonic presence of the one with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. Almost a decade later, in 1967, Forester and Lewis would also recording Das Lied von der Erde with the Cleveland Orchestra conducted by Georg Szell, but those later performances are not esteemed as highly as the one with Reiner and now reissued in SACD format.

While Reiner’s name is not often included with others of his generation when it comes to performing Mahler’s music, his interpretation of Das Lied von der Erde stands out among his efforts as an impressively persuasive. He brought to the score the virtuosity of the Chicago Symphony and with it came the fine sonic ambience of Orchestra Hall and the recording techniques of RCA, which were the most advanced of the day. The result is a vibrant orchestra sound, with the individual colors of the ensemble emerging readily under Reiner’s leadership. Without a question the Chicago Symphony has a fine blend, but it is possible to hear more distinctly some of the specific sounds in Mahler’s score. From the outset the sound is vibrant, with the horns in the opening passage ringing out the repeated notes that signal the gesture with which the piece begins. Likewise, the characteristic hollow sound of the woodwinds that follows demonstrates the reason that Mahler used those colors in the passage. The eighth-note figures that underscore the vocal line are articulated cleanly, with appropriate separation between them, and the sudden entrances that punctuate some of the phrases in the first piece have a nice resonance. With Lewis, his performance of the ”Trinklied vom Jammer der Erde” is impressive, with his diction matching his fine expression, with the descending slide that occurs near the end of the movement beautifully executed. It is unfortunate that some passages of “Der Trunkene im Frühling” (mistranslated in the liner notes as “Wine in Spring” as is “Der Einsame im Herbst” as “Autumn Loneliness” rather than “The Lonely One in Autumn”) show some strain. With the middle of the three tenor pieces, “Von der Jugend” (“About Youth”) the understated tone is entirely appropriate to this number and Lewis conveys the sense of youthfulness implicit in the text.

Maureen Forester brings a full, rich, dark sound to the contralto pieces, and her vibrant voice never blurs. The open tones at the beginning of “Der einsame im Herbst” are engaging, as she blends well with the orchestra as if she were part of a smaller ensemble. This recording captures the sound well so that it is difficult to mistake her distinctive voice in this setting from Hans Bethge’s Chinesische Flöte. Yet with “Von der Schönheit” (“About Beauty”) Forester captures the sense of drama by differentiating so well between the introverted opening section and the more assertive central portion of the song. The full rein of the Chicago Symphony is evident in the middle of the movement, which stands out for its bold statement of exoticism. Yet both Reiner and Forester restrain the ending appropriately and masterfully. In many ways, though, “Der Abschied” poses musical and interpretive challenges for even the finest performers, which Reiner and Forester meet with remarkable style and conviction. After the percussive opening of the movement, Forester is almost subdued in presenting the text. She builds on that opening gradually, and as the first part of “Der Abschied” ends, she is fervent, with a warm, rich approach that stands in contrast to the earlier portion of the movement. In the second half of the movement Forester moves away from this and makes audible the sense of confident resignation found in the text. Her intonation of the final portion of “Der Abschied” is convincing, with Reiner’s command of the Chicago Symphony evident in the finely played conclusion.

With over 50 recordings of Das Lied von der Erde available on CD, a number of fine performances are available. The release of this particular one, though, makes a classic interpretation available for new audiences to enjoy. The already fine sound of the original LP is reinforced in this newly issued CD, which does not merely present what was on the famous LP, but is a reshaping of the original recorded sound. As familiar as the LP may be to some, the CD merits attention, not only as a classic recording, but as a perpetually effective one.

James L. Zychowicz

image=http://www.operatoday.com/DasLiedCSO.gif image_description=Gustav Mahler: Das Lied von der Erde (The Song of the Earth)

product=yes producttitle=Gustav Mahler: Das Lied von der Erde (The Song of the Earth) productby=Maureen Forester, contralto; Richard Lewis, tenor, Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Fritz Reiner, conductor. productid=RCA Red Seal 88697-08281-2 [SACD] price=$11.99 producturl=http://www.arkivmusic.com/classical/Drilldown?nameid1=7537&namerole1=1&compid=14812&bcorder=15&nameid=56114&name_role=3

Janáček's Šárka at Dicapo Opera

Wagner made folklore respectable on the lyric stage, and after the premiere of the Ring in 1876, every nationality in Europe (many of them not legal nations yet) aspired to a national music, including a national opera based on all-but-forgotten national legend or quasi-historical incident. To this efflorescence belong Rimsky-Korsakov’s operas of Slavic myth, such as The Invisible City of Kitezh and Snegouroutchka, Sibelius’s tone poems from the Kalevala (he never risked an opera), Rutland Boughton’s operas of Irish myth, and a whole school of Czech operas, beginning with Smetana’s Libuše, an operatic treatment of the prophetess who founded Prague and (with her husband, Přesmysl), the first Czech dynasty, the Přemyslids. The Přemyslids were looking mighty good to the Czechs after three hundred years of the Germanic Habsburgs.

Those who know Libuše (or who have pondered the murals depicting it on the walls of Prague’s National Theater) may be curious about its sequels, for the legend goes on, as legends will. Janáček’s first opera, Šárka (1887-8), some fifteen years before Jenufa, concerns the attempt of an army of Czech Amazons to seize power after Queen Libuše’s death, and their ultimate defeat by the patriarchal Přemysl. Šárka, a warrior maiden, seduces the doughty Ctirad when he is sent to capture magic weapons and destroy her; she lures him to his destruction, then kills herself in remorse - surefire operatic material, with bits of Dalila, Odabella, Brunnhilde and Armida. It’s a bit stagy, though. Janáček was not at his best dealing with legendary archetypes - his gift was for transforming ordinary people (or ordinary foxes, like his Vixen Sharpears) into such archetypes. But in 1887, he didn’t know that yet, and neither did anyone else - mythic opera was the fashionable thing. (It is curious how few of those dozens of expertly written, proto-Wagnerian legendary operas do endure in today’s repertory. Hansel und Gretel may be the only genuinely popular successor the Ring ever had.)

The reason one wants to hear Šárka, of course, is to study the roots of the later, greater operas of this highly original master, little known in his own time but an international favorite now. Certainly the orchestration is skillful if rumbustious (cut down for the Dicapo forces and not as tight on opening night as it will no doubt become by the last), and the singing is mostly declamation following the rhythms of the Czech libretto - a translation might have dissipated the effect (though I have heard superb English-language performances of other Janáček operas). The result is indubitably nationalistic and gives distinctive shape to Janáček’s melodies, as idiosyncratic within the western idiom as all those damned Czech diacriticals are to spelling names like Šárka and Janáček in the Roman alphabet. Indeed, to the composer’s great discouragement, it took a generation for the (usually German-speaking) masters of music in the Czech lands to agree to present his operas at all and another for the works to begin to catch on internationally.

The reason not to hear Šárka too often, though, is that Janáček’s skill lay in the humanity he found, and made musically real to us, even in such startling figures as the desperate Kostelnička in Jenufa and the haunted Elena Makropoulos. Such feeling is not to be found in Šárka’s mythic characters, despite their proclamation of mighty emotion. They do not live in our world and share our emotions - therefore their sensations and deeds do not shatter us, as Kostelnička’s and Elena’s do. Janáček’s genius (to which his musical skills were the brilliant partner) lay in making ordinary emotions mythic - not in making mythic figures human, Wagner’s specialty. It is no accident that the greatest emotional catharsis in Janáček is the arrival of the police to arrest Kostelnička: so ordinary, so real, with resonance beyond any daily event, illustrated in music that peaks just as the drama does.

One may sense some of Jenufa’s self-knowledge and resignation in Šárka’s final aria of renunciation, but Jenufa’s wisdom, her vision of hope beyond despair, is too human for Šárka - both the woman and the opera. Kristin Sampson sang and acted the role powerfully; the music lacked the punch in the guts of a good Jenufa, but it was hardly for want of melodrama. (Like Dicapo, I’ve always pictured Amazon warriors in scarlet tea gowns with spike-heeled boots, haven’t you?) All four solo singers were extraordinary - at least in the confines of the intimate but handsome theater in the basement of St. Jean Baptiste Church on 76th Street and Lexington Avenue - but, not knowing the work, it was impossible to tell if the unsubtle force of all four was required by the composer or their Wagnerian response to the legends on offer. There is a visceral pleasure in hearing so many healthy sets of young lungs tearing into this music, and they sing, they do not bellow - but in later Janáček operas, soft singing for softer emotions tends to be part of the emotional palette.

The production cleverly makes use of projections, lighting effects and screens, for example, to show Ctirad invading a spooky tomb to carry off magical weapons, or to permit the Amazons to burn their suicidal queen before our eyes, but I found the prevailing Japanese motifs a little difficult to parse - my guess is the designer found it easier to get samurai swords than barbarian maces in New York costume shops. There was quite a variety of edged utensil on view, but barbarian warriors no doubt make do with whatever is loose about the kitchen.

Performances continue through March 4. Check the Dicapo Opera Theatre Web site for details.

John Yohalem

image=http://www.operatoday.com/KristinSampsonSarka.gif image_description=Kristin Sampson as Sarka [Photo by James Martindale]

product=yes producttitle=Leoš Janácek: Šárka productby=Šárka: Kristin Sampson; Ctirad: Erik Nelson Werner; Přemysl: Zarab Ninua; Lumir: Sanjay Merchant. Conducted by Oliver Gooch. Dicapo Opera Theatre, performance of February 19. product_id=Above: Kristin Sampson as Šárka [Photo by James Martindale]

Staatsoper: „Eugen Onegin“, verzwergt

Wilhelm Sinkovica [Die Presse, 3 March 2009]

Tschaikowskys „lyrische Szenen“, von einem fantasielosen Regieteam zur Petitesse reduziert, blieben unter Seiji Ozawas Leitung auch musikalisch unterbelichtet.

BELLINI: La sonnambula — La Scala 1957

Music composed by Vincenzo Bellini (1801–1835). Libretto by Felice Romani, based on La Sonnambule ou L’arrivée d’un nouveau Seigneur (1827) by Eugène Scribe.

First Performance: 6 March 1831 at Teatro Carcano, Milan.

Principal Characters:

Il Conte Rodolfo, Signore del Villaggio	Bass
Teresa, Molinara	Mezzo-Soprano
Amina, Orfanella raccolta da Teresa, fidanzata ad Elvino	Soprano
Elvino, ricco possidente del Villaggio	Tenor
Lisa, Ostessa amante di Elvino	Soprano
Alessio, Contadino, amante di Lisa	Bass
Un Notaro	Tenor

The Scene: A village in Switzerland.

Synopsis:

Act I

A village with a mill on one side and an inn on the other.

It is a festive occasion in the village square. That afternoon Elvino and Amina, an orphan raised by Teresa, are to sign a marriage contract. All but Lisa, the innkeeper’s daughter, celebrate. Lisa is in love with Elvino. She is consoled by Alessio, a villager who wants to marry Lisa. The notary arrives, followed by Elvino. Elvino has visted his mother’s tomb to pray for her blessing of the marriage. He gives Amina his mother’s ring, together with a bouquet of violets.

A stranger arrives. He is traveling to the castle. As he looks about, he recognizes the mill, the fountain, the wood and the farm. As night begins to fall, the villagers become fearful. Teresa explains to the stranger that a strange ghost wanders through the village wrapped in a white sheet, spreading terror everywhere. Incredulous, the stranger nevertheless accepts Lisa’s invitation to stay at the inn. The stranger greets Amina and tells her that he hopes her husband will love her “as I would love you,” much to the annoyance of Elvino.

A room in the inn.

Lisa comes to the stranger’s room. She addresses him as Count, for he is Count Rodolfo, the son of the deceased lord of the castle. Lisa makes it clear to the Count that she is available, of which the Count is quite willing to take advantage. There is a sudden noise. Lisa runs out of the room, dropping her handkerchief in the process. Amina comes in through the window. Wrapped in a white sheet, she is walking in her sleep. She is dreaming of tomorrow’s wedding ceremony and speaks to the Count as if he were Elvino.

As the entire village gathers to give the Count a hearty welcome, the Count escapes through the window to avoid being caught with a woman in his room. Everyone is surprised to find Amina sleeping on the sofa. Elvino, having been informed by Lisa, becomes extremely jealous. Amina awakes. She cannot explain her presence in the Count’s room and, despite her pleas, Elvino calls off the wedding. Dismayed, Teresa picks up the handkerchief dropped by Lisa.

Act II

A shadowy valley between the village and the Castle.

A group of villagers is enroute to the Castle to ask the Count to exonerate Amina. Amina and Teresa, who are among them, and stop at Elvino’s estate, where they find Elvino venting his grief. Amina again expresses her innocence, which Elvino refuses to accept. When the villagers return, they proclaim that the Count has exonerated Amina completely. Elvino will have none of it. Furious, he tears the ring from Amina’s finger.

The village square.

As Alessio tries to convice Lisa that Elvino will never marry her, others announce that Lisa is his chosen bride. The Count confirms Amina’s innocence, explaining that she is a sleepwalker. No one believes him. Realizing that Elvino is about to marry Lisa, she produces the handkerchief that she found in the Count’s room. Lisa blushes, much to the despair of Elvino. Just then, Amina, who is sleepwalking again, comes out the window of the mill and walks along the edge of the roof above the revolving wheel. Seeing that she is in grave danger, the Count orders everyone to be silent. Amina awakens unscathed and in the arms of Elvino. He realizes that she is innocent. The entire village celebrates.

Click here for the complete libretto.

image=http://www.operatoday.com/CallasAmina.png imagedescription=Maria Callas as Amina

audio=yes firstaudioname=Vincenzo Bellini: La sonnambula firstaudiolink=http://www.operatoday.com/Sonnambula2.m3u

product=yes producttitle=Vincenzo Bellini: La sonnambula productby=Alessio: Dino Mantovani; Amina: Maria Callas; Elvino: Nicola Monti; Lisa: Mariella Angioletti; Notaro: Franco Ricciardi; Rodolfo: Nicola Zaccaria; Teresa: Fiorenza Cossotto. Orchestra e Coro del Teatro alla Scala di Milano. Antonino Votto, conducting. Live performance, 4 July 1957, Grosses Haus, Köln. [Vincenzo BelliniDB Sonderband: A. Ommer: Verzeichnis aller Operngesamtaufnahmen, S. 652]

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