Opera Today

Suor Angelica and Pagliacci at Liège

Hasmik Papian - Suor Angelica et Fiorenza Cossotto - La Zia Principessa (Photo: Opéra Royal de Wallonie)

Opéra Royal de Wallonie (Liège)

Suor Angelica: Hasmik Papian (Angelica), Fiorenza Cossotto (Zia Principessa), Laura Balidemaj (Badessa), Christine Solhosse (Zelatrice), Cécile Galois (Maestra delle Novizie), Nicole Fournié (Genovieffa), Chantal Glaude (Osmina), Christine Remacle (Dolcina), Magali Mayenne (Infirmiera)

Pagliacci: Vladimir Galouzine (Canio), Alketa Cela (Nedda), Seng Hyoun Ko (Tonio), George Petean (Silvio), Florian Laconi (Beppe)

Orchestre, Choeurs de l’Opéra de Wallonie
Conductor: Giuliano Carella

Not the usual twins but a rather original though no less appealing combination. Both operas were cast from strength and far bigger houses would have been proud of it. Hasmik Papian with her splendid spinto voice was a moving if less than usually placid Angelica. She once more became a princess during the confrontation with her aunt. She poured out wonderful tone during her aria ending it however with the soft ravishing high A the score demands. I know Puccini cut it himself though after some protest but one of these days I’d love to hear Angelica’s second big aria after the intermezzo though it was not to be this time. A lot of interest centred upon Fiorenza Cossotto who at the day of the première celebrated her 70th birthday. Well, you cannot erase 50 years of stage experience and she brought to Zia Principessa all the necessary haughtiness and at one small moment even seemed to relent (nice touch) but then regained her composure. And the voice? In the low register there are still some sounds reminding me of the impetuous Amneris I first saw in 1969. But higher on there is nothing that resembles that bright silvery sound of yore. Decibels there are and a wobble as well. Still, she was not a travesty as was Rita Gorr a few years back in Antwerp who grunted the role. All other roles were sung convincingly.

Director Claire Servais had some good ideas. She put everything behind bars (a reality in this kind of cloister) and showed us the nuns’ cells stapled upon each other. The big confrontation scene with Angelica behind and Zia Principessa before bars worked extremely well, made even more poignant by the brief appearance outside the cloister of Angelica’s living son and the Principessa’s hesitation before making up the story of his death At the end of the opera Servais however mixed up Angelica and Cio Cio San. A nun with Angelica’s knowledge of poisonous plants wouldn’t think of committing suicide with a blunt knife. Servais succeeded in avoiding the sentimentality of the original ending by a simple device: Angelica may think she sees the Madonna and gets her pardon but for the spectator there is only the loneliness of a painful death to watch.

General Manager Jean-Louis Grinda himself directed Pagliacci. I cannot say I liked the idea of turning every villager into a clown until the end of the opera when everybody takes off his or her mask. We’ve seen those clowns in the Antwerp Hänsel und Gretel and last year’s Tannhäuser at De Munt used exactly the same device. On the other hand I liked his concept very much in that Canio enters and propagates the evening’s entertainment in his clown’s outfit while gradually returning to his normal clothes in which he sings “No, Pagliacco non son”. Vladimir Galouzine succeeded into raising the house to a white hot temperature. Some thirteen years ago he made his début here with a clear ringing Renato des Grieux (with the late Yoko Watanabe). The voice has changed into a burnished brown sound with an enormous amount of volume. Sometimes he loses focus and there is no ring any more on the highest notes. He even breathed between “Ridi” and “Pagliacco” in “Vesti la giubba”. But he doesn’t try sobbing or improving on the score with “infamia, infamia” like Gigli used to do. The torrent of sound, the honesty of acting is simply overwhelming so that one forgets the less pristine sounds. This is probably his best role for the moment, better suited to the voice than Kalaf or Otello.

Another big voiced singer is baritone Seng Hyoun Ko. With Galouzine one forgets his somewhat special histrionics while with Ko one is too much reminded of his chopping up the line, of making noise for noise’s effect. He can sing a piano but even then (and much in the tradition of Korean singers) one feels he is just imitating some other singer’s records. I would wager quite a lot on Ko studying his role with Gobbi’s CD’s near him. Still there is no denying the force of nature his voice is. I admit that up to now I didn’t know the name of Alketa Cela (though she has sung in Brussels) and so I was in for quite a surprise. The soprano has a big lirico, slightly but sexy husky in the middle voice, very agreeably coloured in the best Mediterranean way. Only at the top she now and then flattens the sound too much. The lady is a beauty too and knows how to impress on a scene. A real find and I hope she will soon be back in the country. Young Romanian baritone George Petean will go far too. He has some decibels less than Ko but the voice is smooth, well rounded and with a brilliant top and he outclasses the Korean in style and musicality. I’d like to hear him in one of his Verdi roles. Our luck still held as Florian Laconi was a Beppe of one’s dreams and it was immediately clear that he won’t sing long as a comprimario. Indeed he has already sung Faust.

Giuliano Carella is somewhat better known for his many recordings of belcanto operas but he proved himself to be a formidable veristo too, whipping up his orchestra into passion without drowning his singers (difficult of course with Galouzin and Papian). A great evening.

Jan Neckers

Giovanna d’Arco at Antwerp

Guylaine Girard

Vlaamse Opera Antwerpen: Giovanna d’Arco.
Concert performance on April the 16th 2005.
Guylaine Girard (Giovanna), Stefano Secco (Carlo), Bruno Caproni (Giacomo), Kurt Gysen (Talbot), Eric Raes (Delil)
Symfonisch orkest van de Vlaamse Opera en Koor van de Vlaamse Opera
Conducted by Silvio Varviso

The performance started with another prologue than the usual Verdi one. The Minister of Culture had just announced that the Vlaamse Opera would lose its orchestra so that it could be cut into two to complete the two Flemish Symphonic Orchestras which have some empty chairs. As a token of protest the Opera Orchestra decided to play in their daily outfit, not wanting to deprive their clients (and future supporters) of a performance and not repeating the odious Italian way of striking. Their action resulted in a wave of sympathy. At the end of the performance, frail 81-year old Silvio Varviso spoke briefly but forcefully and asked for the spectators’ support. He is completely right as the Opera Orchestra has grown enormously these last 15 years and can easily compete (and sometimes surpass) Pappano’s former phalanx: De Munt Orchestra. This was only the last stage in a series of happenings that illustrate the difficulties in performing a less known opera.

Originally, soprano Micaela Carosi had accepted the assignment but she gave it back after studying the score: too much coloratura for her taste. No problem for Michele Crider, a stalwart of Antwerp concert performances. The lady, however, got pregnant and would have her baby at the moment of the performances. Enter Nelly Miriciou who would surely please a lot of her fans. Then disaster struck in Amsterdam when Miriciou lost her voice completely and only came back with less than half a voice for the last performances. She (or her voice) was so shaken she cancelled too. Antwerp was lucky enough to find Marina Mescheriakova to sing all performances except the last one when she was to be Cio Cio San in London. Covent Garden absolutely refused to release her and for a month a frantic research went on to find a replacement, knowing the role and willing to sing one single performance. And at last Guylaine Girard, a soprano from Quebec, was found.

The lady has a clear, nice, though not large sound. Her main asset is her profound musicality and her brilliant technique. She knows how to shape a phrase, uses a lot of well supported pianissimi, knows how to sing messa di voce and people who heard Mescheriakova as well told me the Russian soprano with double the voice made less of an impression. Almost the same can be said of tenor Stefano Secco. He too is not over endowed with a striking big voice though the colour is distinctly Italian and he too succeeds with purely musical means. Irish baritone Bruno Caproni, who has the decibels, was not at his best. He sang rather blandly at first, improved in the second part of the opera and then once again lapsed into routine. Veteran conductor Silvio Varviso who is uncommonly popular at the Antwerp Opera, which he has almost made his artistic house, once more was at his best. Without big gestures, he gave rhythm and drive when necessary while restraining himself and the orchestra in solo moments of a soprano whom he probably had met only a few hours before. It speaks of craftsmanship when one still can give the impression of a thoroughly rehearsed performance. And indeed, it would be a crime to kill this opera orchestra or to merge the chorus with another one. Few if any small provincial opera houses can boast of such quality.

Jan Neckers

The Bartered Bride at Julliard

Bedrich Smetana

In Mitteleuropa, There’s a Bright Golden Haze on the Meadow

By ANNE MIDGETTE [NY Times, 28 Apr 05]

In the dark before the lights came up, the stage looked like a set for “Oklahoma!,” down to the dozing cowpoke. The rising lights revealed the object that had looked like a windmill to be a maypole and the setting to be Czech, yet the “Oklahoma!” resemblance didn’t altogether fade. Bedrich Smetana’s opera “The Bartered Bride” has a whiff of an American musical to its simple sweet story (boy loves girl, boy figures out how to get together with girl) and pretty tunes, and the Juilliard Opera Center’s production, which opened on Wednesday, brought out the similarities.

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Upshaw in Downtown Philadelphia and Carnegie Hall

Dawn Upshaw

Dawn Upshaw at Verizon

By Peter Dobrin [Philadelphia Inquirer, 28 Apr 05]

A few seconds into Dawn Upshaw’s singing, you decide that the most important thing is purity of tone - honest, solid, unadorned tone - and Upshaw has it in spades.

No, it’s the ability to put across a lyric - to marry meaning and sound, as she so trenchantly did in Schumann’s Liederkreis.

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Shared Evening of Music Makes a Comeback at Carnegie Hall

By BERNARD HOLLAND [NY Times, 28 Apr 05]

Before Liszt and the advent of solo recitals, concert stages were well-populated jamborees: sometimes without a theme, even aimless, but welcome suppressions of the individual star ego. Shared evenings of music made a comeback at Carnegie Hall on Thursday with Dawn Upshaw and Richard Goode.

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Bo Skovhus at Wigmore Hall

Bo Skovhus (Photo: Daniel Borris)

Bo Skovhus

Tim Ashley [The Guardian, 28 Apr 05]

We don’t hear Bo Skovhus in the UK as much as we should. One of today’s great singers, the handsome Danish baritone is both a star and something of a sex symbol on the European mainland, although his work has been inexplicably undervalued by British opera companies and concert managements.

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A Profile of Corrado Rovaris

Academy of Music

OCP’s young music director making waves

Corrado Rovaris has jumped in feet-first during his freshman year, and it shows.

By David Patrick Stearns [Philadelphia Inquirer, 28 Apr 05]

Peering out onto Broad Street from a poster in front of the Academy of Music, conductor Corrado Rovaris seems too young to be so intense. At almost 40, his face is boyish, his hairline unreceded. But the eyes behind the glasses are penetrating.

Now, finishing his first season as the Opera Company of Philadelphia’s first-ever music director with the forthcoming Die Fledermaus, Rovaris has already changed the local operatic landscape and isn’t stopping now.

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Tales of Hoffmann at Baltimore

Scene from Tales of Hoffmann (Photo: Baltimore Opera)

‘Tales of Hoffman’ is a fantastical version of reality
Baltimore Opera’s production premieres

By Tim Smith [Baltimore Sun, 28 Apr 05]

Looking for an escape — from reality? The Baltimore Opera Company has just the ticket.

Jacques Offenbach’s Les Contes d’Hoffmann (The Tales of Hoffmann) is not called an “opera fantastique” for nothing.

Fantastical events run all through the plot of a beer-soaked poet who keeps finding problematic objects of his affection — a temporarily life-like mechanical doll in Berlin; a sickly singer drawn into a fatal song in Munich; a courtesan who steals the poet’s reflection, not just his heart, in Venice.

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HANDEL: Rodelinda

Georg F. Handel: Rodelinda
Rodelinda: Dorothea Röschmann; Bertarido: Michael Chance; Grimoaldo: Paul Nilon; Eduige: Felicity Palmer; Unulfo: Christopher Robson; Garibaldo: Umberto Chiummo
Das Bayerische Staatsorchester, Ivor Bolton
FARAO Classics D 108 060 [DVD]

There was a time, not so long ago, when Handel was a rare bird on the video shelves of opera shops and record retailers, but it seems that with the advent of the slim ‘n sexy DVD disc, and (in Europe at least) a more flexible attitude to rights issues between record companies and opera houses, that those days are now, happily, past. The latest offering from Farao Classics is the 3 year old Munich Staatsoper production of his “Rodelinda” with staging by David Alden, music direction by Ivor Bolton, first given at their Festival in 2003. I’m not entirely sure why certain operas get chosen for DVD release and others don’t, and this one is a bit of a puzzle for several reasons.

Firstly, when seen live, this production had a spacious, if gloomy and weighty, feel to it - big spaces, long vistas, endless walls of imprisoning brick, that effectively reduced the human characters to tiny figures, fighting the powers of oppression and tyranny that threatened to overwhelm them at every moment. Think old black and white spy films: it’s night, it’s Vienna, the fascists are everywhere, huge stone statues of “the Boss” (or is it the ex-Boss?) dominate the square, the population is cowering unseen behind endless dark tenement windows, and it’s raining. A cigarette flares briefly in the dark shadows, a knife flashes, a woman cries softly and a huddled figure shuffles through the puddles, looking for who knows what, maybe a kingdom. Somewhere in the distant gloom a single red light flashes sadly over a bar-room entrance.

Rodelinda is the story of a brave queen from ancient Lombardy fighting the usurper Grimoaldo, who covets her missing husband Bertarido’s throne, and she uses every wile to evade his attempts at seduction. On the stage this worked well visually against the totalitarian landscape she was incarcerated within. But transferred to the small TV screen, there’s an obvious problem of scale - how do you effectively represent both the elements of a huge set and tiny, intense, human emotions? Experienced TV director Brian Large has responded by relying heavily on the use of close ups and mid shots. But these are always fighting the low light levels of the set, and it takes a committed viewer to keep a visual memory of the wider picture, only occasionally glimpsed, and reach the meat of the story, and eventually some much-needed broader canvases.

Secondly, although the setting of the drama has been updated to a mittel-european 1950s urban streetscape, replete with fascist tokens, all the dark Mafioso type suits, and calf-length dreary dresses do somewhat depress the eye; it’s with relief that we greet even a few sparkling jewels on Eudige’s costume or a blinking red and yellow café sign in the glare of a Mercedes’ headlights. Rodelinda may be one of Handel’s most intense and serious dramas, but you can have too much of a good thing.

Thirdly, the singers are an uneven, if dramatically strong, bunch. Dorothea Roschmann as Rodelinda isn’t perhaps in her most favoured fach and makes rather heavy weather of some of the most beautiful arias Handel wrote for soprano, although her bearing is suitably regal and restrained. She is at her best in the arias of contempt and anger, when she confronts the tyrant Grimoaldo or his traitorous henchman Garibaldo. As Bertarido, Michael Chance is something of a surprise - he has become, rather late in the day, a rather good stage actor and this certainly helped him overcome a slightly lacklustre vocal performance, which unfortunately pointed up the limitations of his voice compared to his more lustrous countertenor colleagues Daniels and Scholl who have both triumphed in this role recently. He still has a beautiful, elegantly-handled instrument, but he seemed to lack some power and stamina - this is certainly noticeable by the time he reached his final big aria “Vivi Tiranno”. A really pleasant surprise is the vocal quality of Paul Nilon, tenor, as Grimoaldo the hesitant baddy - here is a real Handelian singer with power, elegance and restraint. He can act too. But not as well as the second countertenor in this production, the evergreen Chris Robson, as Bertarido’s faithful servant Unulfo. I would suggest that any young opera singer looking for inspiration in how to work on a stage and get the best out of what must be called a now less-than-perfect voice, should view his performance here - it’s a triumph. The perennial put-upon “little man”, despised by most, but dogged and even brave in defending what he knows to be right, Robson’s Unulfo must be one of the most affecting Handel performances I’ve seen. I have to admit to a lump in the throat as he staggers bloodied to the floor after a beating and sings of his loyalty to his king and his conviction that these storms in life will pass, in the lovely aria “Fra tempeste”. It’s at this point too that we get another bonus: one of the best shot and lit scenes of the opera as poor Unulfo completes the aria’s de capo section walking into a curtain of sulphurously-lit falling rain, a visual metaphor for, we hope, a cleansing of the evil that surrounds him.

Of the other main roles, Umberto Chiummo as the dastardly real villain Garibaldo is a bit rough vocally, not really reaching his lowest notes, and is also a bit of the “rolling eyes” type baddy - acting by numbers you might call it. Elias Maurides plays the silent boy’s role of Rodelinda’s son Flavio. As Eudige, the elegant Felicity Palmer is, frankly, a little too mature for the part although she is of course hugely experienced and could manipulate her slightly depleted vocal range to good effect as her character changed emotional course through the opera.

So, this Rodelinda is not a world beater, but certainly worth a look for some memorable scenes - but do try to watch it on as big a screen as possible in order to get the best from it.

Technical details:
2 DVD Set; Subtitles in English, German, Italian and Japanese; Reg Code 0 (all); RT: 3’23”

© Sue Loder 2005

LARSEN: love lies bleeding — Songs by Libby Larsen.

(Total disclosure: I know both performers and asked them for review copies of the CDs because of my interest in music by women composers.) The earlier release presented songs by three important French women from the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries — Pauline Viardot-Garcia, Marie vicomtesse de Grandval, and Lili Boulanger — and was remarkable in at least three respects: the Viardot songs handled their German texts persuasively, the Grandval songs (world premiere recordings) proved to be consistently interesting if a bit conventional, and the Lili Boulanger cycle is one of the major statements by that important composer who died all too young at age 24.

The present CD, by contrast, is devoted almost entirely to a single woman composer and a living one at that, Libby Larsen (1950- ). The works — including one that is new to disc — prove to be just as fascinating and nearly as diverse as the contents of the previous CD, as might well be predicted by those who know some of Larsen's previous pieces, such as her 1990 opera Frankenstein: The Modern Prometheus, her song cycle for mezzo-soprano Love after 1950 (Koch International Classics 3-7506-2 H1), or her 1988 orchestral work Collage: Boogie (on the Baltimore Symphony's widely circulated Dance Mix CD: Decca 444 454-2/Argo D 108669), which show her use of what New Grove calls "liberated tonality without harsh dissonance, and pervading lyricism."

The first of the three Cowboy Songs of 1994, "Bucking Bronco," has a seductive, tango-like lilt for a poem (by Belle Star) of a Western gal who was courted and then abandoned by her rider beau. "Lift Me into Heaven Slowly" is a powerful four lines of verse (by Robert Creeley) made truly gripping by Larsen's decisions about which words to repeat and when to have the vocal line pause for rhetorical effect; Larsen also gives the piano a sweet-sad "cowboy" tinge through a loping rhythm. "Billy the Kid," makes a fascinating contrast to other, better-known works about that varmint, namely Aaron Copland's ballet (1938) and Andre Previn's recent Sally Chisum Remembers Billy the Kid (London 455 511). Whereas, in those two works, Billy comes across as something of a doomed charmer, here the bustling, ferocious music bans all melancholy, as befits an anonymous folk text that spares no regret: "One day he met a man / A whole lot badder / And now he's dead. / And we ain't none the sadder."

The Sonnets from the Portuguese are based on poems from Elizabeth Barrett Browning's famous collection of that name (1846) that, written a few years after she married fellow poet Robert Browning, recall their courtship, which had been carried out often in secret because of violent opposition from Elizabeth's father.

Larsen's cycle, originally for soprano and chamber orchestra, was written at the request of, and with the close cooperation of, the wonderful soprano Arleen Augér. (See David Mason Greene's review of her "live" recording of the orchestral version, Koch International Classics, 3-7248-2H1, in American Record Guide, March/April 1994.) The present CD is the recorded premiere of the remarkably effective piano version.

Sonnets is a major work and a deeply earnest one, about the joys and fears inherent in a close but sometimes unequal loving relationship. The poems' meter is unvaried iambic pentameter; the rhyme pattern, though different from that in Shakespeare's sonnets, is tightly repetitive and interlocking (abba abba cdc ded). Larsen lets both (verse-)meter and rhyme work at a subliminal level, focusing instead on the text's shifts in gut emotion and gestural energy.

Particularly striking, and not at all dated, is the poet's worry that she is giving herself to someone who may not be willing or able to sacrifice as much in return, a worry that is made all the more poignant by recurrent expressions of her needfulness: "If I leave all for thee, wilt thou exchange / And be all to me? . . . / I have grieved so I am hard to love. / Yet love — wilt thou? Open thy heart wide, / And fold within [it] the wet wings of thy dove." Larsen reflects the poet's vulnerability at that final phrase with a soft high note. Eloquent also is the composer's decision to highlight musically through near-Tchaikovskyan rising sequences the words of the man whom the poet is beseeching. At these moments, the cycle almost becomes a mini-opera played out in the mind of one of the characters. Augér, from the beginning, had asked Larsen for a cycle that "spoke about the finding of mature love, as opposed to the young girl's feeling for the promise of love in [Schumann's] Frauenliebe und [-]Leben." The task is brilliantly, movingly fulfilled.

The CD concludes with the world premiere recording of Larsen's Try Me, Good King: Last Words of the Wives of Henry VIII (2001). Larsen decided not to set any words of the sixth wife, Katherine Parr, who outlived the monarch. Instead, she focused on letters and gallows speeches of the remaining (or, rather, non-remaining!) five. Stressful documents they are, ranging from Anne Boleyn's "Let me have a lawful trial, and let not my enemies sit as my accusers and judges" to Katherine Howard's frank words at her execution, as transcribed by an unknown Spaniard: "Long before the King took me, I loved Thomas Culpeper. I die a Queen, but I would rather die the wife of Culpeper."

The songs contrast sharply in tone and make occasional and effective use of melismatic singing and virtuosic leaps that never feel superficially "archaic" but rather responsive to the particular woman and her specific anguish, such as the sarcastic leap up an octave and then down again at the end of Anne of Cleves's declaration: "I neither can nor will repute myself for your grace's wife. Yet it will please your highness to take me for your sister." Larsen also subtly worked musical phrases from four sixteenth-century lute songs into the Try Me cycle, again more for expressive purposes than for some kind of self-consciously "neo-" effect. These four songs — Dowland's "In Darkness Let Me Dwell" and "If My Complaints Could Passions Move," Michael Praetorius's "Lo How a Rose E'er Blooming," and Thomas Campion's "I Care Not for Those Ladies That Must be Wooed" — are performed on the CD just before the Try Me cycle, giving the listener all s/he needs to catch yet another aspect of Larsen's artistry. Strempel sings them in the gorgeous mid and lower end of her range and is artfully accompanied by Russian-born lutenist Alexander Raykov.

In the Larsen works themselves, Strempel handles the vocal lines with confident professionalism and communicative thrust, including subtle use of portamento, speechlike inflections, and so on. (Larsen coached the duo, attended the recording sessions, and even adjusted the vocal line of one song for greater depth of characterization.) One suspects that Strempel would be able to cope handily with the additional challenge of the orchestral version of the Sonnets: she performs often in oratorios and has scored a hit as Violetta with the Bolshoi Opera. The voice comes across, through speakers or earphones, as rich and brilliant, with a few particularly vivid full-voiced high notes and a few exquisite "floated" ones; this is not the thin, artsy type of "recitalist's" voice whose notes nearly vanish after a consonantal puff of air.

Richness of voice, of course, can carry its own disadvantages, especially when vividly recorded: here the vibrato can become a touch obtrusive, and pitch is sometimes a shade flat on held notes. Nonetheless, the warmth of the voice is a plus overall, and somehow does not prevent Strempel from conveying the words and their sense to the listener's ear. Her readings feel not laboratory-perfect, like so many recordings these days, but alert and alive.

Throughout the piano-accompanied songs, the soprano is brilliantly partnered by Québec-born Sylvie Beaudette, who brings immense oomph and ease to her part, which the engineers have balanced very satisfyingly with the voice. Her playing in the Cowboy Songs is enchanting, drawing one right into Larsen's mind-world from the start. (Beaudette recorded this short cycle once before, with Nanette McGuinness, on Centaur CRC 2461. Yet another Cowboy performance, by soprano Louise Toppin and John B. O'Brien, is on Albany Records TROY 385. Both of these are anthology discs of music by various women composers.) Similarly, in the Sonnets, it is to Beaudette's great credit that one rarely finds oneself trying to guess what the colors might be in the orchestral version. And, in Try Me, one is carried along by her responsiveness to the ebb and flow of feeling and drama in this portrait gallery come to life.

Ralph P. Locke
Eastman School of Music (University of Rochester)

THIS REVIEW ORIGINALLY APPEARED IN THE MARCH/APRIL 2005 ISSUE (VOL.68, NO.2) OF AMERICAN RECORD GUIDE (ARG). IT IS REPRINTED HERE WITH THE KIND PERMISSION OF ARG AND THE AUTHOR. FOR ADDITIONAL INFORMATION ON ARG, GO TO ITS WEBSITE AT www.americanrecordguide.com.

image=http://www.operatoday.com/images/528.jpg
image_description: Libby Larsen: The Cowboy Songs

product=yes
product_title=Libby Larsen: The Cowboy Songs; Sonnets from the Portuguese; Try Me, Good King (with four lute songs by Dowland, Praetorius, and Campion)
product_by=Eileen Strempel, soprano; Sylvie Beaudette, piano; Alexander Raykov, lute.
product_id=Centaur CRC 2666 [CD]

Hansel and Gretel at Inverness

Engelbert Humperdinck (1854-1921)

Hansel and Gretel

Robert Thicknesse at Eden Theatre, Inverness [28 Apr 05]

WHAT was that about working with children? Halfway through Humperdinck’s fairytale opera a gang of local kids troops onstage dressed in sheets — angels, see — and hangs around for a bit before sloping off again: the naffest piece of staging I’ve collected in a while, and indicative of some confusion about the purpose of Scottish Opera’s mid-scale touring arm.

Yes, it’s a good way of getting parents into the theatre — and of confirming their worst suspicions about opera. For the next year (and the foreseeable future, outside Glasgow and Edinburgh), Scottish Opera on Tour is what remains of publicly funded opera in Scotland; so I thought it would be interesting to see what it was like.

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Boris Godounov at the Bastille

Modest Mussorgsky

L’esprit Bolchoïaut; pour Boris

Jean-Louis Validire [Le Figaro, 26 Apr 05]

L’Opéra de Paris redonne à partir d’aujourd’hui, à Bastille, le Boris Godounov créé en octobre 2002 sous la baguette de James Conlon et dans la mise en scène de Francesca Zambello. C’est Jiri Kout qui devait assurer la direction musicale de ces nouvelles représentations. Empeché pour des raisons de santé, il sera remplacé par Alexander Vedernikov, directeur musical et chef principal du Théâtre Bolchoïaut; qui assurera les sept premiers concerts, laissant à Alexander Titov, chef invité du Théâtre Marinski depuis 1991, le soin de prendre le pupitre pour les deux derniers. Une façon de recréer à Paris la rivalité artistique qui oppose Moscou à Saint-Pétersbourg.

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Faust at the Met — Another View

René Pape (Photo: Jeanne Susplugas)

In this ‘Faust,’ the devil’s in the details

BY JUSTIN DAVIDSON [Newsday, 25 Apr 05]

In opera, embarrassment comes with the territory. Sooner or later, if you’re a fine and dignified singer, you will find yourself trapped onstage in a situation or a costume so stupid that the voice of God couldn’t save the scene. For René Pape, who has the body and bearing of a Hussar and who is probably the world’s best basso, the moment came in Act IV of the Metropolitan Opera’s new production of “Faust,” the scene in which the illegitimately pregnant Marguerite enters a church to repent and finds a taunting Mephistopheles.

That would be Pape, cloaked at first in a monk’s hood and cassock, which he sheds to reveal a hilariously muscled nude suit, armored in plastic pectorals and sporting gauzy wings, a prodigious codpiece and a 4-foot-long rat’s tail. He looked less like Satan than like a third-tier superhero’s nemesis. On the other hand, he was singing with Apollonian poise.

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Faust, Metropolitan Opera, New York

By Martin Bernheimer [Financial Times, 27 Apr 05]

The Metropolitan Opera has always been sentimental about Faust. Gounod’s essentially Gallic reduction of Goethe’s ultra-Germanic drama served as the company’s first vehicle, back in 1883 and the candy-coated opus has returned for its 714th performance in a new, heavily cut, bravely muddled production staged by Andrei Serban and designed by Santo Loquasto.

The management reportedly gave these two a mandate: Respect tradition. So they did, after a fashion. Tongues lodged loosely in cheek, they toyed, sometimes cleverly, sometimes clumsily, with the old romantic kitsch.

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Zemlinsky's The Dwarf in Budapest

Alexander Zemlinsky

German opera orgy

By Kevin Shopland [Budapest Sun, 28 Apr 05]

IMAGINE you’ve got a birthday coming up. What would you like this year? How about a dwarf? I didn’t think so. Well, how about a dwarf who doesn’t know how ugly and misshapen he is, and in fact thinks he’s attractive and loveable?

An unusual thought? Well, that’s the premise of the Oscar Wilde shortstory-turned-opera-libretto for Alexander Zemlinsky’s The Dwarf, which was performed at the Hungarian State Opera on April 14.

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Alexandrina Milcheva Opens the 9th Easter Festival at the Sofia National Opera

Alexandrina Milcheva

On April 23, the 70-year old Bulgarian mezzo, Alexandrina Milcheva, gave a full recital at the Sofia opera, including airs from: “Orpheus” (Gluck), “Dido and Eneas”(Purcell), “Faust” (Gounod), “Il Trovatore”, “Werther”(Massenet), “Adrienne Lecouvreur”(Cilea)and “Carmen.” These are some of her best known roles in Varna and Sofia, where she performed regularly between 1960 and 1989. As a winner of the 13th opera competition (1966) in Toulouse, France, her appearance in France, Germany and the Met was no surprise. But, it was on the stage of the Vienna Staatsoper, where for 12 years beginning in 1977 her brilliant voice qualities and talent met wide approval and recognition. Throughout the past years her voice seemed unaffected by time. The first airs posed no problems for her rich, warm and easy floating mezzo. The last three airs Milcheva sang with extraordinary control, brilliant tone and much youthful verve that overwhelmed the audience, especially after La Princess de Bouillon, such that it didn’t want to stop applauding. Currently, Alexandrina Milcheva is teaching young singers in Sofia and giving master classes, the next one being at the end of May.

Our correspondent in Bulgaria

GLUCK: Orphee et Euridice

Gluck did this, first with his Italian version premiered in Vienna in 1762, and then his second French version (Orphee et Euridice) premiered in Paris in 1774. The CD recording detailed here is of the 1774 Paris version, in which the character of Orphee was rewritten for a tenor voice. The DVD recording reviewed here is of the 1859 version reorchestrated by Hector Berlioz, an ardent admirer of Gluck, in which the character of Orphee was rewritten for a female alto (the original Italian opera had Orpheus sung by a castrato). The Berlioz reorchestration was most heard during the late-eighteenth/early-nineteenth centuries, but the 1774 Paris version was the most popular before the Berlioz version.

Gluck was the son of a forester, who spent his childhood in Bohemia. He studied at the University of Prague, and spent most of his employment with the Lobkowitz family in Vienna. He spent some time in London, composing operas for the King's Theatre, but returned to Vienna in 1750 where he married and composed typical Metastasian operas for Prague, Naples, and Rome. By 1755 Gluck was in charge of two theatres in Vienna, adapting French opera comique for the Viennese stage. In 1761 he met Ranieri de'Calzabigi, who as a librettist was abandoning the conventions of Metastasian opera seria with its overextended melismatic arias and formal performance, towards a new simplicity and dramatic realism. The result was Orfeo ed Euridice in 1762.

This simplicity in performance and music can best be seen and heard in the DVD performance by the Bayerische Staatsoper. One must remember that Gluck's opera was astounding to eighteenth-century audiences, who were enamored by Italian opera with its castrati lead roles, long drawn-out arias full of melismas and ornamentation, and characters that had very formal portrayals and movements. Orfeo went against all of that: with its simple monodic arias characteristic of Monteverdi's reactions against Renaissance polyphony, costumes and scenery that were less formal, and music that was more dramatic. For this interpretation, tuxes are worn by both the main character and the chorus in the beginning. Amour wears a Cirque de Soleil-type costume with baggy pants that flourish outwards at the knees. When Orpheus enters Hades, the demons are represented by cooks who put members of the chorus into ovens and pots for cooking, even displaying various appendages that have been pulled off for stewing. Some of the chorus are hanged on meat hooks. Further into the drama, the chorus dresses in togas, marking across the stage during certain parts of Orpheus' arias, while puppets of a cat, monkey, and bear briefly appear in the scenery, along with someone in a polar bear costume. At the end of the DVD, the entire Orpheus legend is done as a ballet, with the dancing being done within the framework of a huge television set. The DVD features subtitles in German and English.

In contrast to the female alto role of Orpheus in the DVD (sung by Vesselina Kasarova), the CD of the 1774 Paris version features a male tenor in the role of Orpheus. This performance was recorded in a studio, rather than as a live production. The sound difference between a female alto and a male tenor does, of course, produce a contrast that one has to experience when listening to operas of the eighteenth century. Since Opera Lafayette is a period-instrument ensemble dedicated to performing the music of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries as close as possible to the way it would have been performed, the CD has a much crisper and exact sound tone than the DVD performance, which was done by a modern-day orchestra and chorus. The use of smaller orchestral numbers makes the CD recording a more precise and authentic performance of the music. Both this DVD performance and the CD recording, however, provide interesting contrast and entertainment, showing how one musical composition can have numerous manifestations, performance situations, and representations in our modern-day society.

Dr. Brad Eden
University of Nevada, Las Vegas

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image_description=Orphee et Euridice

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product_title=Christoph Willibald Gluck: Orphee et Euridice
Version by Hector Berlioz (1859). Ballet music from the original score (1762/1774).
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Summer Courses and institutes for singers at New England Conservatory

Jordan Hall (New England Conservatory)

SCE Opera Studio

Daniel Wyneken, chair & music director
Marc Astafan, guest stage director
June 6-23 (twelve meetings)
M-Th: 6:30-9:30 p.m.

The SCE Opera Studio offers an exciting opportunity for serious singers to receive operatic training. Sessions include movement and acting classes, audition techniques, aria stagings, musical coachings and scene preparation. The course concludes with two public performances at NEC.

Auditions: Thursday, May 19, 7:00-9:00 p.m. and Sunday, May 22, 2:00-5:00p.m. or by appointment; two arias are required. Call 617-288-8177 for more information and an audition time.
2 SCE credits: $850
Full participants (Non-credit): $715
(NEC College students: $610)
Auditors (Non-credit): $275
(Note: auditors are invited to observe all class activities, rehearsals, and performances. They are not given scene assignments, however, and do not perform.)

Mark Lee
June 6-August 1 (eight meetings; no class July 4)
M: 6:30-8:30 p.m.

Singers who understand staff notation and can easily sing basic rhythms and find pitches on the keyboard are systematically taught to develop their sight-singing skills. Students are given regular drills in recognizing and singing all intervals; they also become fluent with all key signatures, learning to sight-sing accurately in all major and minor keys. Students are expected to attend class regularly and spend two to three hours a week in outside-class preparation.

Prerequisite: permission of the instructor; please call 781-397-6825.
1 SCE credit: $425
Non-credit: $305

Mark Lee
June 7-July 26 (eight meetings)
Tu: 6:30-8:30 p.m.

This course introduces the principles of good singing: posture, breath support, tone production, singer’s diction and resonance. Students apply their knowledge by preparing songs of their choice and performing them in class, where they are coached by the instructor. Ideal for singers who wish to understand and strengthen their singing voice in a class setting that focuses upon increasing their confidence and enjoyment. Call the instructor at 781-397-6825 for a placement interview.
1 SCE credit: $425
Non-credit: $305

Mark Lee
June 8-29 (four meetings)
W: 6:30-8:30 p.m.

This course is designed for the amateur or intermediate tenor, and will help singers develop increased range, stability, and stamina. Students will learn specific techniques for removing constriction, strengthening and stabilizing notes in the upper range, and achieving variety in tone quality.

Prerequisite: Teacher interview; please call instructor at 781-397-6825.
Non-credit: $160

Clara Sandler
July 5-July 14 (eight meetings)
T-F, M-Th: 6:30-8:30pm
Final recital: July 14, 7:00 p.m.

We will learn and perform pieces from the vibrant Spanish and Argentine song repertoire of the 20th century; students are coached on assigned songs in class and will perform them at the final recital. We will also discuss the differences in the Spanish diction of both countries and listen to historic recordings of famous singers. Suitable for adult singers and advanced teenagers; some knowledge of Spanish is preferable, but not necessary. (Note: For an informational interview and to schedule an audition, please call Clara Sandler at 617-739-0365. Auditions will take place on Thursday, June 16, 7-9 p.m.; songs will be assigned by Saturday, June 18. Please work on your songs before the first class.)
1 SCE credit: $425
Non-credit: $305

Kathryn Fields
June 13-17 (five meetings)
M-F: 6:00-7:30 p.m.
Final performance: Fri June 17, 8:00 p.m.

A one-week intensive workshop on the successful musical theater or opera audition. Participants will hone audition skills, concentrating on physical and emotional focus, elements of character, interpretive through-line, and the specifics of the audition experience. A practical approach to auditioning.
Non-credit: $225

Murray Kidd, instructor
Mana Tokono, piano
June 28-July 21 (eight meetings)
T,Th: 6:00-8:00 p.m.
Final recital: July 21, 8:00 p.m.

Adult singers and pianists interested in preparing their own song recital are welcome in this class (originally designed for high school singers and pianists planning to major in music in college), which offers guidelines for the preparation necessary for a successful song recital. Students are coached and perform weekly with a professional pianist; the entire class will produce their own recital. The final recital will be professionally recorded and each student will receive a CD.

Auditions to decide repertoire: Sunday, June 5, 2:00-3:30 p.m. Call 617-585-1130 to reserve a time.
1 SCE credit or non- credit: $440

Eve Budnick
June 27-July 21 (eight meetings)
M,Th: 7:30-9:30 p.m.

For singers and coaches. The International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) and its application to the performance of English and Italian song. Classes include written, spoken and sung exercises; the course concludes with a short in-class performance for students and invited guests. No prior diction study is required.

Text: Joan Wall, International Phonetic Alphabet for Singers; also recommended: Joan Wall, Diction for Singers.
1 SCE credit: $425
Non-credit: $305

Eve Budnick
(eight meetings; schedule to be decided)
First meeting: June 28, 7:30âO”9:30 p.m.

A study of German and French diction using the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) and its application to the performance of lieder and chanson. Classes include written, spoken and sung exercises, one-on-one coaching, and (size permitting) a final in-class performance for invited guests.Those unable to attend the first meeting should contact the instructor at eve@vocalrep.org or 781-821-9321.

Prerequisite: Lyric Diction I or permission of the instructor.
Required text: John Moriarty, Diction; also recommended: Joan Wall, International Phonetic Alphabet for Singers.
1 SCE credit: $425
Non-credit: $305

Kilar's Missa pro Pace at Alice Tully Hall

Wojciech Kilar

A Mass From a Polish Orchestra, Seeming Perfectly Timed

By JAMES R. OESTREICH [NY Times, 26 Apr 05]

Amid the annual parade of world-class orchestras passing through New York, a visit by the Wroclaw Philharmonic of Poland could easily have been overlooked - and to some extent it was, in a sparsely attended concert at Alice Tully Hall on Sunday afternoon. But on Saturday evening, partly through an accident of timing, the orchestra played to a nearly full house in St. Patrick’s Cathedral.

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Daily Telegraph Interviews Richard Farnes of Opera North

The accidental maestro

[Daily Telegraph, 26 Apr 05]

Opera North is on sparkling form right now - but how will it cope with its forthcoming period of homelessness? Rupert Christiansen meets its inspirational music director Richard Farnes

If Richard Farnes was the jockeying, politicking sort, he would have been a front-runner to succeed Paul Daniel as music director of English National Opera.

The job has now gone to Oleg Caetani, who is pretty much an unknown quantity in this country and will be doubling up as supremo of Melbourne Symphony Orchestra.

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Boulevard Solitude at Graz

Michal Zabavík, Margareta Klobucar (Manon Lescaut), Andries Cloete (Armand) (Photo: Peter Manninger)

Boulevard Solitude, Graz Opera

By Larry L Lash [Financial Times, 26 Apr 05]

In the middle of 2006, when you’d rather scream than hear another note of Mozart, take heed of a less-heralded musical birthday: Hans Werner Henze will turn 80.

Since I don’t see opera companies lining up to revive König Hirsch, Der Junge Lord or The English Cat, the Graz Opera’s new look at Henze’s 1952 Boulevard Solitude reminds us what a gifted and accessible composer he is.

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In the News: Henze and Boulez Wow Paris; Faust at the Met; Chanticleer at the Temple of Dendur

Paris in raptures over two modern masters

[Sydney Morning Herald, 26 Apr 05]

Time is looking more fondly on the work of these radical composers, writes Roger Covell.

How do composers famous in their younger days for radicalism look to the future of their art and reputation as they reach their 80th birthday? Paris in the past few days has been witness to hints of how a baton change might occur for two eminent seniors of music, Frenchman Pierre Boulez and German Hans Werner Henze.

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Scene from Faust (Photo: The Metropolitan Opera)

We Have a Faust!

BY JAY NORDLINGER [NY Sun, 25 Apr 05]

“Habemus Papam!” rang the cry from Rome last week. (“We have a pope!”) Well, I cry, “Habemus ‘Faustus’! “We have a new “Faust” at the Metropolitan Opera, the sixth production in the company’s history. (And remember, the Met began life, in 1883, with “Faust.”) Directed by Andrei Serban, a Romanian-born professor at Columbia, it is rip-roaring, a killer. Boo-birds sang at Thursday night’s debut, but when don’t they? The Met has a production that will last, and please. Besides which, Gounod’s opera was treated to a first-rate performance, on this opening night.

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Chanticleer

Saintly & Otherwise

BY FRED KIRSHNIT [NY Sun 25 Apr 05]

The Temple of Dendur was transformed into the Temple of Athena on Friday evening as the all male a cappella choir Chanticleer presented a program of works entitled “Women Saintly and Otherwise.” The power and scope of religion as well as the history and future of Catholic Europe are much in the news these days, and so this program of portraits both sacred and profane, which encompassed music from the 15th through the 21st centuries, seemed especially relevant. As a musical whole, the evening offered, shall I say, an unusual experience.

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Feminine mystique, in masculine harmony

BY MARION LIGNANA ROSENBERG [Newsday, 25 Apr 05]

In Chaucer’s “The Canterbury Tales,” the henpecked cock Chauntecleer talks out of both sides of his beak, declaring that woman is man’s ruin and also his “joy” and “bliss.”

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Michelle DeYoung Steps In

Michelle DeYoung

DeYoung delivers at Mandel Hall

Michael Cameron [Chicago Tribune, 25 Apr 05]

In the wake of soprano Helene Hunt Lieberson cancellation of a Friday appearance at the University of Chicago’s Mandel Hall, management was fortunate to land Michelle DeYoung, one of the finest in a strong contingent of young American mezzos.

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BRITTEN: The Turn of the Screw

Benjamin Britten: The Turn of the Screw
Mark Padmore, Lisa Milne, Catrin Wyn-Davies, Diana Montague, Nicholas Kirby Johnson, Caroline Wise, City of London Sinfonia, Richard Hickox
Opus Arte OA 0907 D [DVD]

Turn of the Screw is one of my favorite operas (I do! I do! I do! I do believe in spooks!), and despite the Women’s Studies approach taken by the filmmakers, this DVD is well worth the consideration of opera lovers. Seeing the piece again got me pondering about its being one of the few musical-dramatic works to show that children can be creepy. I’d better make that Other People’s children; old age and assisted care arrive all too soon. If we accept Stephen Sondheim’s admonition that children may listen and learn, then we’re probably seeing only something of ourselves in their creepiness. And our own ghosts.

David Anderson

In the News: DVD and Opera; Verdi in Florida; Trouble in Scotland

Universal Classics’ 2005 DVD Releases

Can There Be Too Much of a Good ‘Ring’?

By ANTHONY TOMMASINI [NY Times, 24 Apr 05]

WITH the cost of recording operas in a studio now almost prohibitive, we are witnessing a boom time for opera on DVD. Opera buffs can hardly keep pace with the number of releases in the last year. And in June alone, Universal Classics plans to put out 18 complete operas on DVD, most of them reissues of productions originally taped and released on video.

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A gentle conductor stirs up a romantic tragedy

Guest conductor Alberto Veronesi says the uniqueness of a Verdi opera, like Un Ballo in Maschera, lies in the composer’s ability to depict a subject precisely.

BY ENRIQUE FERNANDEZ [Miami Herald, 24 Apr 05]

Ah, Verdi. He is synonymous with opera to everyone except perhaps Wagnerians. Even during a rehearsal in which singers are holding back just to learn the staging, the musical voice sweeps the listener.

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Opera’s voices lift Verdi’s ‘Aida’ in a tight space

By Scott Warfield [Orlando Sentinel, 24 Apr 05]

Few operas are as well known as Aida, a work that is virtually a cliché for the genre, and that familiarity breeds certain expectations. Thus there is a tendency in many productions to attempt to ensure that Giuseppe Verdi’s masterwork really is the “grandest of the grand operas”—as Orlando Opera billed its new Aida — by packing the stage as fully as possible with visual elements.

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Opera chief’s departure ‘a political catastrophe’

WILLIAM LYONS [Scotsman, 24 Apr 05]

SIR Peter Jonas, the former English National Opera chief who advised the Scottish Executive four years ago to pump more funds into Scottish Opera, has described the departure of its chief executive as a political disaster.

Christopher Barron announced last week that he would step down to become chief executive of the Birmingham Royal Ballet in October. He is the second senior management figure to leave the company in a year.

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L'Express Interviews Peter Sellars and Bill Viola

Bill Viola (Photo: Darin Moran)

Wagner au XXIe siècle

par Bertrand Dermoncourt [L’Express, 24 Apr 05]

Le metteur en scène et le vidéaste américains présentent Tristan et Isolde, à l’Opéra Bastille. Ils révèlent les étapes de cette collaboration inédite

Par les attentes qu’elle aura suscitées et l’exceptionnelle pléiade de talents qu’elle réunit, la nouvelle production de Tristan et Isolde, de Wagner, à l’Opéra de Paris, est certainement le point d’orgue de la saison lyrique. Pour monter cet ouvrage monumental, il faut d’abord deux chanteurs d’envergure. Ils sont là: Ben Heppner, Tristan digne et noble, et l’incandescente Waltraud Meier, la plus grande wagnérienne d’aujourd’hui. A coté de ce duo de reve, une star de la baguette, Esa-Pekka Salonen, qui dirige pour la première fois Tristan. Sa direction claire, objective, propose une relecture profonde de la partition.

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BIZET: Les Pêcheurs de Perles

Georges Bizet: Les Pecheurs de Perles
Annick Massis, Yasu Nakajima, Luca Grassi, Luigi De Donato
Orchestra and Chorus of Teatro La Fenice, Marcello Viotti, conductor
Dynamic 33459 [DVD]

Les Pecheurs de Perles is not a terribly major opera. Ned Rorem once memorably described it as “harmless” concerning the occasion on which it shared a double bill with the world premiere of Poulenc’s Les Mammeles De Tiresias. But for a competent early work by a promising composer who went on to greater things (well, one greater thing, given his tragically early death), Pecheurs has been given an enormous amount of attention both on stage and in the recording studio. An attractive work of conventional Second Empire French oriental exotica, it’s blessed to contain two beloved numbers that have won the hearts of opera lovers whose loyalty keeps it before the public with some frequency.

One of those numbers does not appear on this Dynamic video in its familiar form. The Teatro La Fenice production presents the composer’s original 1863 score, without the cuts and touch-ups provided by Benjamin Godard who restructured the beloved duet “Au fond du temple saint” into the form known popularly today. He threw out the C section, repeating the A section to create a da capo structure concluding the duet with the most famous music in the opera—generally to thunderous applause. Heard here in Bizet’s original form the C section takes Nadir and Zurga into a gentle martial rhythm that prefigures the Carlos-Roderigo duet in Verdi’s Don Carlos four years in the future. There are various other differences, particularly in act 3.where the standard Choudens edition truncates the final scene. Nadir has a solo in the opening chorus, followed by a duet with Leila in the original. Zurga is not struck down for treason by Nourabad in this edition either, but lives on to watch the lovers depart, mourning his lost love and friendship with each of them.

The production was designed and directed by Pier Luigi Pizzi in warm earth tones highlighted by saffron and gold. Pizzi frequently has dancers enacting scenes from the past upstage in pools of light as they’re being remembered downstage, most aggressively in a semi-aerial ballet by a dancer as Leila during the famed duet. The action takes place on a gently curved platform, whose ends rise at either side, in front of a temple in the form of a gilded stupa at the top of black lacquered steps up center. For some scenes a gilded Hindu stature provides the only backing. Pizzi places his chorus in traditional groupings that allow video director Tiziano Mancini to linger over the beautiful and characterful faces of the Fenice’s sopranos and mezzos in particular. Choreographer/chief male dancer Gheorghe Iancu’s dances are in the graceful calisthenics style that’s relatively common now, creating an occasional grouping with arms and legs in the “now we’re going to become a statue of Kali” mode. It’s all decorative, unchallenging and, well, “harmless.”

The major problem with this performance, one that may bother me more than it will some, is the scarcity of French singing style among the principles. Beyond the estimable Annick Massis, who is in very good form here, there are few head tones to be heard or floating high passages where the score really demands them. . The men all display a certain amount of vocal health combined with the thickened upper middle and top registers of singers who have pushed for power in more dramatic material. Tenor Yasu Nakajima, ideally youthful and handsome for Nadir, tries hard but cannot muster the elegant, finely shaded delivery to make a memorable impression in “Je crois entendre encore.” It becomes just another aria competently sung in the prevailing international vocal style. Much the same can be said for Luca Grassi as Zurga. The clarity of vocal production with words far forward and floating on the tone that marks the best French singing is not his to give, although his solid, virile baritone and keen dramatic involvement offer rewards of their own. Young Luigi de Donato’s bass is a work in development, although Nourabad is a small enough role that no particular harm is done.

Mme. Massis carries the vocal honors here in a stylish performance that wins the biggest audience response. Not a conventionally beautiful woman, her strikingly angular features and physical grace support a beautifully sung, highly expressive performance. Marcello Viotti takes the score seriously, bringing out its lyricism and supporting his singers. The chorus does well with Bizet’s frequent choral episodes, particularly the big anthem that ends act two (here performed without any break into the short final act).

Subtitles are available in six languages including Chinese and Japanese. The sound is clear if just a shade distant at times. On the other hand, microphones aren’t stuck down the singers’ throats. This is an attractive release of a sweet little opera that will give some real pleasure unless you insist on absolutely authentic French vocal style. Whether the original version is an advantage or not will be up to each purchaser individually.

William Fregosi

Miliza Korjus sings Mozart, Donzetti, Delibes, Meyerbeer, Offenbach, Gounod, ...

Miliza Korjus sings Mozart, Donzetti, Delibes, Meyerbeer, Offenbach, Gounod, …
Living Voices series
Hänssler Classic 94509 [CD]

Miliza Korjus (1912-1980), the “Queen of Pyrotechnics”, sings with a crystalline precision, reminiscent of Joan Sutherland, and a purity of voice akin to Natalie Dessay. During the height of her operatic career, 1933-1936, Korjus had the flexibility, dynamic vocal range, and brightness to become the quintessential lyric coloratura. Hänssler Classic brings her voice back to life by remastering the very Electrola recordings that made her singing “immortal.”

Korjus’ selections include the bread-and-butter of the coloratura repertoire such as Lakmé, Olympia, Lucia, and Konstanze, but also enhance the selection with virtuosic show pieces of von Weber, Rossini, and J. Strauss. The technical precision and vocal purity most definitely surpass the involvement of text and emotion, yet it seems to be a small price to pay for such perfection. Her most impressive arias include “Les oiseaux dans la charmille” and “Ombre légère”, featuring a beautiful clarity and flexibility even in the most extreme registers.

Hänssler Classic’s remastered recording is also impressive. Recording the upper extremities of the human voice had not been mastered during the time of the original recordings, 1934-1936, but they have certainly captured Korjus’ upper register with pure brilliance. Yet there are moments when a fuller, more acoustic sound is wished, especially in the top voice. All in all, this is an impressive recording with impeccable virtuosity, which bodes well alongside the coloratura queens of today.

Sarah Hoffman

“Fly, Thought, on Golden Wings” — Verdi’s Life told by Thomas Hampson

“Fly, Thought, on Golden Wings” — Verdi’s Life told by Thomas Hampson
A film by Felix Breisach
Euroarts DVD 2051047

With a running time of 60 minutes, this DVD biographic feature on Verdi’s life might possibly be a satisfactory introductory piece for the newcomer to the great man and his art. Even then, the knowledge gained would barely form an outline to be filled in by much more study. However, if one would like a pretty travelogue of the sights and landscapes of Verdi’s Italian roots (with a side trip to Paris), plus a little time joining Thomas Hampson in admiring his own handsome self, Euroarts has a treat in store.

The film has a simple format - Hampson in voice-over tells the story of Verdi’s life, in chronological fashion, while the camera pans the countryside near his hometown or the streets of whatever city his career took him to. The film is attractive and high quality, although everything tends to look just a bit too neat and pretty. From time to time Hampson appears on screen, seated in a church pew or leaning against a column, to intone some passably profound commentary.

Most of that commentary, besides running through the basic facts of Verdi’s life, focuses on economic/social class issues, and not without interest. As delineated by the narration, Verdi’s life epitomizes the dictum, “Living well is the best revenge.” Feeling the humbleness of his roots, from his youth Verdi searches out ways to use his innate musical gifts to push his way up the social ladder. The crowning glory for him, therefore, is to build his beautiful home in his hometown and have it become larger and more magnificent than any of those inhabited by the local aristocracy who had apparently patronized him.

The quotes selected from Verdi himself tend to emphasize his brittle, cranky side, especially as regards his sojourns in Paris, trying to find that first big success outside his native Italy. Although not exactly focusing on “feet of clay,” the film does tend to downplay the love and respect the man engendered, or at least it does until the description of his death.

The DVD cover trumpets the inclusion of four arias sung by Hampson. These are slipped in with no meaningful introduction. The four selections, in fact, come from Hampson’s 2001 EMI release Verdi Arias, and Hampson, understandably, rather stiffly lip-synchs to the tracks. The Hampson voice glows with its fine amber tone through key arias from I due Foscari, Macbeth, Trovatore, (actually, sung in French), and Traviata. One can certainly question, however, what it means to have Verdi’s art, best understood when heard with singers, confined to four baritone arias. The rest of the music offered is instrumental - the film opens, rather oddly, with the Traviata prelude over a beautiful scene of birches emerging from shallow water. Only the director, however, can explain why Rossini’s overture to Barbiere appears early on, with no identification whatsoever.

The review copy came with no documentation of any kind other than the sparse info offered on front and back covers. The DVD has no subtitles, and so can only be recommended to English speakers. Finally, as a bonus, there is a brief trailer for an Aida staged at the Pyramids, with horses and elephants in numbers to make Zeffirelli die of jealousy. The tacky splendor of the scene can barely be described. Unfortunately, no singing is heard from a cast whose names were unfamiliar to your reviewer.

Only if the price for this DVD reflects its brief running time and lack of features should it be considered, and only then, as stated in the introduction, for those who need a brief, simple understanding of who this “Verdi” is. Other than that, this Euroarts DVD offers too little for even a modest investment of money or time.

Chris Mullins
Harbor Teacher Preparation Academy

Mozart's La Finta Giardiniera at Boston University

Illustration from the title page of a German vocal score to La finta giardiniera, printed around 1829.

Last night I saw the second of four performances of Mozart’s La Finta Giardiniera given at the Huntington Theater by the Boston University Opera Institute. Hallmarks of their program are fresh, clear voices brought along in a sane way in appropriate repertory, with stage time given in productions directed, conducted and designed with care. There was a bit of extra drama to this production as Craig Smith, a grand figure in the Boston musical landscape, suffered a heart attack during the final days of rehearsal and David Hoose came to the rescue. The good news is that Smith is doing well. Hoose brought the opera to the stage in fine condition.

I had seen Finta Giardiniera at Glimmerglass almost ten years ago with a cast that reads interestingly now: Giuliana Rambaldi, Sondra Radvanovsky, Marguerite Krull, Karina Gauvin and William Burden. And I didn’t get it. The production may well have been at fault, but things that struck me forcefully last night didn’t come across at that time. This is very late teenaged Mozart, or he may actually have been twenty at the time of the 1775 premiere. Gluck’s librettist for Orfeo provided a text that has at its center the same situation that would explode ninety years later into Tristan und Isolde. A pair of lovers in a tempestuous relationship: he stabs her in a fit of jealousy and flees, believing her dead. She survives and goes out in disguise to find him. She does so as he is on the verge of marrying. Their reunion causes emotional turmoil and other plot complications. The dramatic device here isn’t a potion but a night of temporary insanity that ends at dawn with recognition that their love is still there. In a great duet they reconcile. A conventional happy ending with three couples united ends the opera. At this point in Mozart’s career, many of the arias are delightful and well composed but conventional in form and the orchestral introductions to some create problems for singers and director by going on at great length with no obvious dramatic function. But some of the numbers — just enough to make the situation achingly real—find the composer trapping into the inner life of the characters in a way that presages the great works to come. The crucial duet of reconciliation, in particular, is deeply human and compassionate — and beautiful music into the bargain

The opera is chock full of previews of things to come, particularly in Cosi Fan Tutte and Don Giovanni. Of principal interest is the entire matter of tone, as LFG mixes seria and buffo characters in a manner that will lead to Leporello interacting with Donnas Elvira and Anna, and Despina calling the shots chez Fiordiligi and Dorabella, albeit a bit more smoothly in both cases. In an uncommonly interesting program note, director Sharon Daniels (who drops a line that will resonate well with many opera lovers: “believing as I do that the composer is the first stage director”) discusses second and third thoughts about how to direct and design this opera based on what seemed like conflicting signals from that very composer. At first she found grinding rather than shifting gears, and grand tragic arias that simultaneously poked fun at the over-the-top suffering of the character involved — a device to be found in later Mozart as well. Her eventual solution was to place the action in the Edwardian period, in the artifice of highly colored art nouveau decor and graceful very masculine and very feminine costumes.

Under Hoose’s lively presentation of what Smith had prepared, ensemble was strong and the young cast sang strongly, particularly Jessica Tarnish as heroine Sandrina and Darren Anderson as the limpid, bright-voiced tenor hero Count Belfiore. But the cast as a whole deserves mention: petite, accomplished coloratura Stephanie Chigas en travestie as Ramiro, Michael Callas, who understood perfectly that Nardo was to be father to both Leporello and Figaro, Joyce Ting’s witty minx of a serpetta, Courtenay Symonds, scoring in both comedy and voice as Arminda, and Oshin Gregorian as the flustered, frustrated Podesta.

Ms. Daniels arrived at a particular series of decisions on the proper mix of low comedy, pathos and high sentiment. That her decisions might or might not have been mine in any particular instance is irrelevant. The production emerged a unified whole. An indication that she had achieved her goal was that intermission conversation centered around plot points and the sincerity of a particular character’s emotions at a particular moment in the story.

William Fregosi

GOUNOD: Polyeucte

Because of the war, Gounod and his family moved to London, where he finished work on it. Gounod fell in love with a British soprano, Georgina Weldon, and promised to try to get her the lead role when the opera was eventually given in Paris. But the relationship turned sour, and Gounod abruptly moved back to France, leaving the score with the Weldons in London. They refused to return it, and Gounod wound up doing the job over again from memory. It was finally premiered in Paris at the Opéra on Oct. 7, 1878, where it was given a total of 29 times, before disappearing from the boards. The only other French city where it is known to have been performed is Nantes[1] (April 1881). But, it was never given in some of the other major French centers such as Lyons, Marseilles and Rouen. Outside France, it was produced in both Antwerp (April 1879) and Geneva (April 1882), but apparently not in Brussels nor Monte Carlo.

Polyeucte was the third significant opera loosely based on Corneille's Polyeucte. The first was Donizetti's Poliuto, originally intended for Naples in 1839, but banned by the censors. Donizetti revised it for Paris next year, renaming it Les martyrs, the première taking place on April 10, 1840. It was not overly successful in Paris, with a total of 52 performances over several seasons. However, Les martyrs was widely given in the French provinces, as well as French theatres in neighboring countries and New Orleans. It stayed in the repertory in the latter city until 1871. In the meantime, Poliuto was finally given in Naples in 1848, and soon entered the standard repertory, where it remained for over 50 years. Strangely, it was much more successful in Paris than the French version, and given at the Théâtre Italien in that city almost every season from 1859 to 1877. Some of the most important interpreters of the title role included Enrico Tamberlick and Francesco Tamagno. Gounod must have been aware of these facts, and probably had every reason to believe that an opera by him on the same subject would have an equivalent triumph. But that was not to be.

Steven Huebner, author of the definitive book on Gounod[2] attempts to explain the failure of Polyeucte, primarily using the most reliable sources at his disposal: contemporary reviews. They blame the lack of success largely on "the failure of the title character to excite the sympathies of opera audiences", and of his being "obsessed with his own destiny, at the expense of exhibiting more vibrant human attitudes[3]". He also cites these critics as questioning the love of Polyeucte for Pauline, and/or finding Pauline much too cold. Elsewhere Huebner comments on the negative reaction of the public to Gounod's religious beliefs: "The responsiveness of the chord that Polyeucte's mission struck within the devout Gounod is equal in volume to the unresponsiveness the theme found with the composer's contemporaries[4]".

Yet, these rationalizations do not appear to tell the whole story. The hero of Meyerbeer's L'Africaine also was concerned with his legacy, and seems to have been simultaneously in love with two women. Carmen is, perhaps, as unsympathetic a "heroine" as one can find in opera-in fact with the exception of Micaela, none of the characters are really likeable. And there are many other once successful operas without love interest or sympathetic characters. Yet, Carmen and L'Africaine were among the most popular operas composed in France between the premiere of Faust (1859) and that of Manon (1884). By the same token, the emphasis on religion of Donizetti's two operas on the subject did not detract from their popularity. In fact, Poliuto stayed in the repertory much longer than most of Donizetti's works, with perhaps three exceptions[5] .

I would postulate that the problems with Polyeucte were more complicated, and also included the fact that Pauline only has one relatively short, albeit beautiful, prayer with little opportunity for vocal display, although she does have four major duets, two each with her husband, Polyeucte, and her former lover, Sévère. By the same token, Polyeucte's only major aria occurs in Act V by which time both Sévère and a secondary character, Sextus, have had their solos. Another likely issue is that Polyeucte came at a time when the once great popularity of grand opera was on the wane. It was one of five major grand operas premiered at the Opera between 1875 and 1885, the others being Le Roi de Lahore (Massenet-1877), Le tribut de Zamora (Gounod, 1881) Henri VIII (Saint-Saens-1883) and Le Cid (Massenet-1885). The last, with 152 performances at the Opera and a major international career, was the most successful of these, but it also had the most sympathetic hero and heroine. But even the success of Le Cid was miniscule to those of earlier works by Meyerbeer, Halévy and Thomas[6]. All of these operas consisted largely of set numbers, something that Wagner and his followers thoroughly disliked. Polyeucte even has a cabaletta (a form that had virtually disappeared by 1878). But whether an opera composed 130 years ago was ahead of its time or not does not matter to this reviewer, and should not matter to modern audiences. There really is one valid criterion: Is the music beautiful? The answer to that question is a resounding "Yes!!!!".

Only one number in Polyeucte has become well known: the tenor's famous aria in the prison: "Source delicieuse" in Act IV, thanks largely to single recordings by the likes of Leon Escalais, Jose Luccioni, Jose Carreras, Roberto Alagna and others. But there is much else of great beauty in the work, starting perhaps with the first big duet for Polyeucte and Pauline in Act I. Later in the act, the march announcing Sévère's entrance is striking, as is the ensuing ensemble. The second act starts out with a fine aria for Sévère, and an effective duet between him and Pauline. There also is a fine barcarolle for Sextus. The third act has a pagan ballet followed by the most Meyerbeerian scene in the work where Polyeucte, with the help of Néarque, smashes the statues. The latter is stupendous. The last act has Polyeucte's fine prison aria, another duet for him and his wife, and the final "credo".

It has been my experience over the years that when long forgotten works are revived for the first time, the singers are often disappointing. This is because established stars may be reluctant to learn a new work that they may only sing that one time. This has not been the case recently at such adventurous centers as Martina Franca, Jesi, Compiègne, and Wexford, and is definitely not the case here. The tenor, Giorgio Casciarri, who sings the role of Polyeucte is a revelation. He has a large voice of great vocal beauty, with lots of "squillo", and a fine top. I hope that this recording will help launch a brilliant career, and that the stardom he so richly deserves will not deter him from continuing to take an interest in unusual 19th century repertory. He is a tough act to follow, but soprano Nadia Vezzu, baritones Luca Grassi and Vincenzo Taormina and the three basses all provide him with excellent support. It is interesting to note that, although he is a relative newcomer, Luca Grassi already is well on the way to establishing himself as a singer with an unusual repertory. In addition to Polyeucte, he has sung Mayr's Ginevra di Scozia in Trieste and Gounod's Reine de Saba in Martina Franca.

The presentation is reasonably good, although I am a little surprised that only an English translation is provided for an opera recorded in Italy by an Italian firm. It is also unnecessary and somewhat irritating to try to translate the names of the characters, calling Pauline Paulina, Polyeucte Polyeuctus, etc. Finally, the liner notes could have been more informative.

As a total package, this recording can be recommended in the highest terms

Tom Kaufman (c) 2005

fn1. The documentation of many French opera houses such as Bordeaux is inadequate to determine with certainty whether or not other French cities heard it.

fn2. Huebner, Steven: The Operas of Gounod

fn3. Ibid. pages 215 to 216

fn4. Huebner, Steven: After 1850 at the Paris Opera: institution and repertory in The Cambridge Companion to Grand Opera, page 306.

fn5. Lucia di Lammermoor, Favorita, Lucrezia Borgia, possibly also Maria di Rohan.

fn6. These ranged from 384 for Hamlet to 1120 for Les Huguenots.

image=http://www.operatoday.com/images/512.jpg
image_description=Gounod: Polyeucte

product=yes
product_title=Charles Gounod: Polyeucte
product_by=Giorgio Casciarri, Nadia Vezzu, Luca Grassi,Tiziana Portoghese, Nicola Amodio, Vincenzo Taormina, Pietro Naviglio, Emile Zhelev, Fernando Blanco, Manlio Benz (cond.). Recorded live at the Festival della Valle d'Itria in Martina Franca-August 2004
product_id=Dynamic CDS 474 [2CDs]

WILLIAMS: Wagner and the Romantic Hero

Simon Williams. Wagner and the Romantic Hero
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004. x, 193 pp.
ISBN 0-521-82008-1