Carmen Forever By Octavio Roca October 19, 2004 Bizet's legendary heroine still inspires artists and opera lovers. The woman is fascinating, no question about it. Little by little, we are still getting to know Carmen. The fascination is strong, and...
US countertenor who is a wow in Europe By Francis Carlin Published: October 28 2004 03:00 | Last updated: October 28 2004 03:00 It is always a good sign when you find a singer attending a performance of something else...
MEMORIES OF ROBERT MERRILL: AMERICAN OPERATIC ICON by James Engdahl, Engdahl Artists International Robert Merrill, born Moishe Miller in the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn, passed away last Saturday, October 22, 2004, as he watched the first game of the World...
Wexford's dilemma for future operas By Andrew Clark Published: October 27 2004 03:00 | Last updated: October 27 2004 03:00 When Wexford's opera festival was young and innocent, audiences used to talk of "one for the head, one for the...
Scientists dig up family skeletons Luke Harding in Berlin Wednesday October 27, 2004 The Guardian It has been a mystery for more than a century - is a skull in an Austrian basement really that of arguably the greatest composer...
Not so hippy now Since the 1960s, René Jacobs has been a pioneer of the early music movement. Stephen Everson hears how his vision has evolved Friday October 22, 2004 The Guardian Anyone who still thinks "authentic" performances of baroque...
*New Repertoire Discoveries for Singers: An Interview with Michael Kaye* by Maria Nockin Did you ever wonder why that last Tales of Hoffmann you sang had all those photocopied sheets added in? Or why the version of "Butterfly" you learned...
Top composer Tavener turns to Islam for inspiration The Orthodox faith inspired him for more than 25 years, but after a rift with his spiritual adviser, the composer has rejected its 'tyranny' in a major work based on the Koran....
El sexo en la ópera no es sólo vulgar: ya nos aburre Fuera de la escena, la mezzo sueca es áspera y poco acogedora. Sus escasas sonrisas son un premio y sus respuestas son rápidas y precisas. Una evidente robustez...
Mistakes? I've made a few... (Filed: 04/10/2004) Pierre Boulez, the greatest and most uncompromising composer-conductor of our time, is mellowing as he approaches 80. He talks to Ivan Hewett However hard one normally prepares for interviews, there's always the feeling...
*Deborah Voigt withdraws from Vancouver Opera's production of Der Rosenkavalier* Vancouver, BC ~ American soprano Deborah Voigt, who was to make her role début as the Marschallin in the company's première production of Richard Strauss's Der Rosenkavalier, has withdrawn from...
Many a tear was shed when soprano Licia Albanese sang. Now she is celebrating her signature work, 'Madama Butterfly.' Allan Ulrich, Special to The Chronicle Monday, October 4, 2004 Was she or wasn't she? Licia Albanese is adamant. "Diva? Hah!...
Deux reprises, des tournées, un DVD, le prix de la critique : La Belle Hélène par le tandem Minkowski/Pelly fut l’un des plus grands et des plus durables succès du Châtelet. De quoi donner envie de reconduire l’équipe gagnante dans un autre Offenbach : ce sera La Grande Duchesse de Gérolstein. Mais à une condition : que la vedette en soit à nouveau Dame Felicity Lott, la plus française des chanteuses britanniques, dont la classe et le naturel s’imposent de l’opérette viennoise à l’opéra-bouffe français, en passant par la nostalgie du Chevalier à la rose ou le désespoir de La Voix humaine. Nous avons rencontré cette femme délicieuse début septembre, juste avant que le spectacle n’inaugure la nouvelle salle de Grenoble, «rodage» précédant les représentations parisiennes.
L'opéra au cinéma, entre chic et surprise LE MONDE | 30.09.04 | 14em5 La mise en scène d'opéra est, pour des cinéastes comme Benoît Jacquot, Atom Egoyan, Robert Altman... l'occasion d'expériences exceptionnelles. "Il y a dans l'opéra un truc qui...
In the October 2004 issue of BBC Music magazine, Amanda Holloway writes: The phrase most often used of Anna Netrebko is a 'package': stunning looks, acting ability and a gorgeous, effortless lyric soprano voice. The following is a profile...
By Jan Neckers The line of Decca-tenors seems to run straight from Del Monaco to Bergonzi to Pavarotti. Granted there are some intrusions by Giuseppe Campora, Giuseppe Di Stefano and Franco Corelli but their names are not widely associated with...
This is not a biography of the Jewish tenor. Just some personal thoughts on a few interesting aspects. Those interested in a biographical article and an outstanding discography better purchase the June 2000 issue of The Record Collector where your servant and Hansfried Sieben devoted more than sixty small print pages to the tenor. Those able to read German can still buy Alfred Fasbind’s biography published at the Schweizer Verlagshaus in Zürich 1992. It is still available in some German bookshops and maybe with the author himself (Rosenbergstrasse 16, 8630 Rüti, Switzerland).
Goldberg No. 27 By Brian Robins During the eighteenth century Naples was one of the largest and most vibrant cities in Europe. Hot, dirty and overcrowded, it was a city of teeming life and colour that flowed from court and...
Soprano still sings, and talks about it By David Patrick Stearns Inquirer Music Critic The majestic voice of Metropolitan Opera radio announcer Milton Cross became painfully flummoxed at the name Kiri Te Kanawa. It was the soprano's 1974 debut at...
William Bolcom: The `Wedding' planner By John von Rhein Tribune music critic September 12, 2004 Elden is William Bolcom's middle name, but it might just as well be Eclectic. He's perhaps the most versatile "serious" composer now at work in...
For an opera company that boasts a $30-million endowment, and has scheduled funding efforts expected to bring that largesse to $50-million by 2007, its fiftieth anniversary of summer opera performances, plus $10-million more for capital improvements, the question comes up: Santa Fe Opera can afford top quality, but are they providing it? The answer seems to be, sometimes.
The just-concluding season offered one memorable success, Benjamin Britten's haunting 1945 tragedy Peter Grimes. Everything about it worked, from a spare but imaginative production to first rate singing and acting, with quality throughout the big cast. Anthony Dean Griffey, today's specialist in madman tenor roles, excelled in the name part and soprano Christine Brewer presented her role of schoolmarm Ellen Orford with luxurious tone and understated but effective acting. The huge choruses were magnificently done, much honor going to SFO music director Alan Gilbert for his leadership and choral director Gregory Buchalter. Considering the SFO chorus also had major duty in Turandot, and individual members (the opera apprentices) also took part in two evenings of scenes with piano, the young artists had a vigorous work-out over summer 2005. They came through brilliantly.
Mozart's youthful (he was 15) Lucio Silla enjoyed an elegant, stylized production and superb singing from sopranos Celena Shafer, Anna Christie and Susan Graham, as well as tenor Gregory Kunde, but the score holds little of interest, and none of Mozart's mature melodic genius. The adequate conductor was Bernard Labadie from Canada.
The much-booted Ainadamar, a 'new' (read revised) 'opera' (read play with music) by Osvaldo Golijov proved to be 75-minutes of tedium - excessively wordy; most action reported or recollected (difficult as a technique unless you are an ancient Greek master), and a score that dwelt in the land of Latin dance rhythms, but no such steps were ever taken. It was a weird evening considering the talent involved: composer Golijov, librettist David Henry Hwang (M. Butterfly) and director Peter Sellars. Maybe there was just too much talent to come up with one unified artistic vision. I found the effort diffuse and almost entirely ineffective, yet some critics gave it a rave. Perhaps one can charitably say, succes d'estime.
For the record, "Ainadamar" means something like "fountain of tears," in this case at Granada, Spain, where the gay revolutionary poet Garcia Lorca was shot by fascists in 1936 in the Spanish civil war. The central role of actress Margarita, an old, dissolute, lesbian friend to Garcia, was taken by the spruce, coiffed, scrubbed, prettily-singing Dawn Upshaw, in an example of serious mis-casting. With a different singer in the key role, matters might have improved. Since the entire effort was electronically amplified, often to excess, it is hard to say how much contribution was made by music director Miguel Harth-Bedoya, as compared to sound engineers Gustavo Santaolalla and Jeremy Flower. Better luck next time!
Turandot was treated as fairyland kitsch, with 80-year old Willa Kim's imaginative costumes and radical, young Douglas Fitch's goofy set of plastic steps and platforms, variously colored from lighting within their Plexiglas structures, and it was all fun - but it was also mainly nonsense. A routine cast and only so-so conducting from Gilbert contributed to a forgettable performance. I am not much of an advocate for Puccini's final opera - it's a lot of recycled tropes and ideas from the master's earlier, better days. There are more interesting ways for an opera company to spend its Puccini budget. Amidst all the hubbub was the sweet, little lyric Liu of Patricia Racette - the one element of Italianate opera over the evening. Jennifer Wilson, loud through not thrilling, took the title role but did not own it, while beefy Carl Tanner shouted a bit as the Calaf and seemed short on romance. Hard work!
And then there was Stefano Vizioli's take on Rossini's The Barber of Seville. It was frantic - over produced, over acted, over the top and with no memorable singing. Yes, Barber should be fun, but with prissy, unidiomatic conducting from Ken Montgomery and principal singers camping their way thru the show, little pleasure was found. Most surprising was Ana Maria Martinez as Rosina without low or top notes and entirely given over to mugging and dashing about the stage, no doubt as directed by Vizioli. Even last summer as Elvira in a splendid Don Giovanni at Santa Fe, Martinez was eliciting rave reviews from this and other critics, and she was a superb, vocally accomplished Fiordiligi in Cosi fan tutte the year before. Somewhere along the way Martinez seems to have gotten off the track; I hope she soon returns to the main line.
With its lovely new theatre, a first class orchestra, the ambience of Santa Fe abounding and fine mountain evenings to enjoy, not to mention its mounting assets and strong box office (by some accounts over 95% for this season), America's premiere summer opera festival needs to improve artistically. Glimmerglass is hard on the heels of Santa Fe, and often doing a better job. I wish them both great success, but the artistic vision in New Mexico needs to be sharpened.
Santa Fe repertory for 2006 is Carmen, Salome, The Magic Flute, the Massenet Cinderella and the American premiere of Thos. Ades's The Tempest, only the last two promising much of interest.
J. A. Van Sant
Santa Fe, New Mexico
© 2005