Baritone Gareth John is rapidly accumulating a war-chest of honours. Winner of the 2013 Kathleen Ferrier Award, he recently won the Royal Academy of Music Patrons’ Award and was presented the Silver Medal by the Worshipful Company of Musicians.
This second revival of Jonathan Miller’s La bohème was the first time I had caught the production.
It’s Verdi’s bicentenary year and Rolando Villazón has two new CDs to plug — titled somewhat confusingly, ‘Villazón: Verdi’ and ‘Villazón’s Verdi’, the latter a ‘personal selection’ of favourite numbers performed by stars of the past and present.
Nicola Luisotti and the San Francisco Opera Orchestra climbed out of the War Memorial pit, braved the wind whipped bay and held spellbound an audience at Cal Performances’ Zellerbach Auditorium at UC Berkeley.
Paul Dukas’ Ariane et Barbe-Bleue, first heard in 1907, once seemed important. Arturo Toscanini conducted the Met premiere in 1911 with Farrar and later arranged some of its music for a 1947 recording with his NBC Symphony.
Utterly mad but absolutely right — Richard Strauss’s Ariadne auf Naxos started the Glyndebourne 2013 season with an explosion. Strauss could hardly have made his intentions more clear. Ariadne auf Naxos is not “about” Greek myth so much as a satire on art and the way art is made.
“Man is an abyss. It makes one dizzy to look into it.” So utters Georg Büchner’s Woyzeck, repeating what was also a recurring motif in the playwright’s own letters.
National Opera Company of the Rhine has marked this year’s Benjamin Britten celebration with a remarkably compelling, often gripping new production of the seldom-seen Owen Wingrave.
Once upon a time, Frankfurt Opera had the baddest ass reputation in Germany as “the” cutting edge producer of must-see opera.
Productions of Giuseppe Verdi’s Rigoletto can serve as a vehicle for individual singers to make a strong impression and become afterward associated with specific roles in the opera.
Just in case we were not aware that the evening’s programme was ‘themed’, the Britten Sinfonia designed a visual accompaniment to their musical exploration of night, sleep and dreams.
Poor Aida! She never seems to have anything go her way.
Is it possible to upstage Jonas Kaufmann? Kaufmann was brilliant in this Verdi Don Carlo at the Royal Opera House, London, but the rest of the cast was so good that he was but first among equals. Don Carlo is a vehicle for stars, but this time the stars were everyone on stage and in the pit. Even the solo arias, glorious as they are, grow organically out of perfect ensemble. This was a performance that brought out the true beauty of Verdi's music.
The big names were absent: Duparc, D’Indy, Debussy, Ravel … and while Fauré, Chausson, Roussel and several members of Les Six put in an appearance, in less than familiar guises, this survey of French song of the early 20th century and interwar years deliberately took us on a journey through infrequently travelled terrain.
Composed between 1718 and 1720, Handel’s Esther is sometimes described as the ‘first English Oratorio’, but is in fact a hybrid form, mixing elements of oratorio, masque, pastoral and opera.
Hector Berlioz's légende dramatique, La Damnation de Faust, exists somewhere between cantata and opera. Berlioz's flexible attitude to dramatic form made the piece unworkable on the stages of early 19th century Paris and his music is so vivid that you wonder whether the piece needs staging at all.
St. John’s Smith Square was the site of Elizabeth Connell’s final London concert, intended as a farewell to London on her moving to Australia. It was rendered ultimately final by her unexpected death.
With the building of the Suez Canal, Egypt became more interesting to Western Europeans. Khedive Ismail Pasha wanted a hymn by Verdi for the opening of a new opera house in Cairo, but the composer said he did not write occasional pieces.
Back for its fourth revival, David McVicar’s 2003 production of Mozart’s Die Zauberflöte has much charm, beauty and artistry.
The economics of the recording companies dictate much that is not ideal. Wagner’s operas were not composed as they were in order to permit the extraction of bleeding chunks, even on those occasions when strophic song forms do occur.
Naxos is perhaps the only significant major label regularly releasing complete opera sets. A few have won widespread praise, and certainly the prices, at super-budget level, make them attractive to both first-time buyers and those whose collections scarcely justify an additional set.
Naxos recorded this Cenerentola in November 2004 at the Rossini in Wildbad festival. While not as punchy or pristine as a studio recording, the sound presents a good balance between vocalists and orchestra, and stage noise, often a significant detriment of live recordings, does not significantly mar the audio.
Right from the overture, however, an inexplicable dampness sets in – the electric charge which many live recordings boast remains stubbornly absent. Conductor Alberto Zedda, whose excellent booklet essay speaks to his commitment and authority, captures some fine detail, but the SWR Radio Orchestra seems to simply lack the flair and innate enthusiasm that brings out the best in Rossini’s charming score. Rossini specialists, however, will appreciate the opportunity to hear some alternative music that Zedda has identified and chosen to include in this performance
The CD cover photo suggests the primary attraction of this recording: rising star Joyce DiDonato’s sweet, agile voice. She delivers her act two canzone, Una volta c’era un re, with the grace and skill of a mature artist, all of which also characterizes her contribution to the sextet. She alone, however, can’t bring up the energy level to one that would make the whole performance take flight.
Juan Diego Florez reigns as Don Ramiro on the world’s stages now. Jose Manuel Zapata takes the role here, and though his voice doesn’t suggest he approaches Florez’s stature, he has a pleasant voice not strained at all by the role’s demands. Bruno Pratico’s Don Magnifico has some rough edges that might have been more effective as part of the theater experience; other than that, he inhabits the role with humorously gruff authority.
Naxos provides a link to an online libretto, with a note on the booklet informing us that this economy measure helps Naxos remain the “leader in the budget-priced market.”
All fine and good, but a Cenerentola that doesn’t sparkle and bounce makes for a less than appealing audio-only experience. Perhaps the staging, if captured for DVD, might have revealed more charm than this recording offers.
If Decca gets around to re-releasing at less than full price the Bartoli studio recording of a few years’ back, budget price alone won’t make this Naxos set competitive. Only as a record of Joyce DiDonato, still early in her career, can it be recommended. The more exciting prospect would be a DVD of DiDonato and Florez in a fine production of the opera. Perhaps the fairy Godmother, or Don Magnifico, of the opera world can make it come true, and soon.
Chris Mullins
Los Angeles Unified School District, Secondary Literacy