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Librettists have long mined the literature shelves for narratives that are ripe for musico-dramatic embodiment. On the whole, it’s the short stories and poems - The Turn of the Screw, Eugene Onegin or Death in Venice, for example - that best lend themselves to operatic adaptation.
Soprano Louise Alder has had an eventful few months. Declared ‘Young Singer of the Year’ at the 2017 International Opera Awards in May, the following month she won the Dame Joan Sutherland Audience Prize at the BBC Cardiff Singer of the World.
This is the only disc ever devoted to the art of Sesto Bruscantini (1919–2003). Record collectors value his performance of major baritone roles, especially comic but also serious ones, on many complete opera recordings, such as Il barbiere di Siviglia (with Victoria de los Angeles). He continued to perform at major houses until at least 1985 and even recorded Mozart's Don Alfonso in 1991, when he was 72.
Since 1952, the ARD—the organization of German radio stations—has run an annual competition for young musicians. Winners have included Jessye Norman, Maurice André, Heinz Holliger, and Mitsuko Uchida. Starting in 2015, the CD firm GENUIN has offered, as a separate award, the chance for one of the prize winners to make a CD that can serve as a kind of calling card to the larger musical and music-loving world. In 2016, the second such CD award was given to the Aris Quartett (second-prize winner in the “string quartet” category).
Detlev Glanert's Requiem for Hieronymus Bosch should be a huge hit. Just as Carl Orff's Carmina Burana appeals to audiences who don't listen to early music (or even to much classical music), Glanert's Requiem for Hieronymus Bosch has all the elements for instant popular success.
Only one Shakespeare play has resulted in three operas that get performed today (whether internationally or primarily in one language-region). Perhaps surprisingly, the play in question is a comedy that is sometimes considered a lesser work by the Bard: The Merry Wives of Windsor.
There have to be special reasons to release a monophonic live recording of a much-recorded opera. Often it can give us the opportunity to hear a singer in a major role that he or she never recorded commercially—or did record on some later occasion, when the voice was no longer fresh. Often a live recording catches the dramatic flow better than certain studio recordings that may be more perfect technically.
Critic and scholar John Barker has several times complained, in the pages of American Record Guide, about Baroque vocal recitals that add instrumental works or movements as supposed relief or (as he nicely calls them) “spacers.”
Hans Knappertsbusch was one of the most renowned Wagner conductors who ever lived. His recordings of Parsifal, especially, are near-legendary among confirmed Wagnerians.
Kathleen Ferrier Remembered, from SOMM Recordings, makes available on CD archive broadcasts of British and German song. All come from BBC broadcasts made between 1947 and 1952. Of the 26 tracks in this collection, 19 are "new", not having been commercially released. The remaining seven have been remastered by sound restoration engineer Ted Kendall. Something here even for those who already own the complete recordings.
The Requiem text has brought out the best in many composers. Requiem settings by Mozart, Verdi, and Fauré are among the most beloved works among singers and listeners alike, and there are equally wondrous settings by Berlioz and Duruflé, as well as composers from before 1750, notably Jean Gilles.
Matthias Goerne Schumann Lieder, with Markus Hinterhäuser, a new recording from Harmonia Mundi. Singers, especially baritones, often come into their prime as they approach 50, and Goerne, who has been a star since his 20's is now formidably impressive. The colours in his voice have matured, with even greater richness and depth than before.
La Jacquerie—here recorded for the first time—proves to be a wonderful opera, bringing delight upon delight.
Good news for lovers of Mozart’s Marriage of Figaro: the famous Living Stereo recording, a co-production of RCA Victor and English Decca, is now available again, well remastered, on Urania.
In May 2016, Opera Rara gave Bellini aficionados a treat when they gave a concert performance of Vincenzo Bellini’s first opera, Adelson e Salvini, at the Barbican Hall. The preceding week had been spent in the BBC’s Maida Vale Studios, and this recording, released last month, is a very welcome addition to Opera Rara’s bel canto catalogue.
Jonas Kaufmann Mahler Das Lied von der Erde is utterly unique but also works surprisingly well as a musical experience. This won't appeal to superficial listeners, but will reward those who take Mahler seriously enough to value the challenge of new perspectives.
A new recording, made late last year, Morfydd Owen : Portrait of a Lost Icon, from Tŷ Cerdd, specialists in Welsh music, reveals Owen as one of the more distinctive voices in British music of her era : a grand claim but not without foundation. To this day, Owen's tally of prizes awarded by the Royal Academy of Music remains unrivalled.
The Feast at Solhaug : Henrik Ibsen's play Gildet paa Solhaug (1856) inspired Wilhelm Stenhammer's opera Gillet på Solhaug. The world premiere recording is now available via Sterling CD, in a 3 disc set which includes full libretto and background history.
Honours yet again to Oehms Classics who understand the importance of excellence. A composer as good, and as individual, as Walter Braunfels deserves nothing less.
‘Can great music be inspired by the throw of the dice?’ asks Peter Phillips, director of The Tallis Scholars, in his liner notes to the ensemble’s new recording of Josquin’s Missa Di dadi (The Dice Mass). The fifteenth-century artist certainly had an abundant supply of devotional imagery. As one scholar has put it, during this age there was neither ‘an object nor an action, however trivial, that [was] not constantly correlated with Christ or salvation’.
As familiar Richard Wagner’s Tannhäuser is, the opera benefits from solid performances that bring together fine singing, exquisite orchestral playing, and effective staging, and the Metropolitan Opera’s 1982 production conducted by James Levine gave audiences an exemplary performance that remains a touchstone for this work.
At the time this production was staged, reviews called attention to the quality of this particular effort on the part of the Metropolitan Opera and the leadership of James Levine. Based on performances given on 22 November and 20 December 1982 for a broadcast of “Live from the Met,” this 2006 DVD release demonstrates the lasting power of this production of the Paris version of Wagner’s opera.
A tradition staging, akin to the Met’s famous broadcast and, later, DVD release of Wagner’s Ring der Nibelungen, this production is faithful to the conventional treatment of the text as a fully medieval tale, albeit, the medievalism that Wagner brought to the public. Eschewing avant-garde theatrics and abstract imagery, the qualities of this production reside in the faithfulness to the traditional settings associated with the opera, including the colors and shading that bring the work to life on stage and in the imagination of the audience. The famous opening scene in Venusberg benefits from the choreography that points to the sensuality the composer intended, without necessarily indulging in excessive display. With the orchestral playing underscoring the scene, it serves as a fitting introduction to the opening exchange between Tannhäuser, as portrayed by the American tenor Richard Cassilly, and Venus, sung here by the late Tatiana Troyanos. The reviews of the time praised Cassily for his fine sense of drama, and this video preserves his nuanced performance, as well as Troyanos’s elegant and compelling depiction of Venus. The two performers clearly worked well together, both vocally and dramatically, with body language that reinforces the meaning of the text of the emotion of the music in this Otto Schenk production.
After immersing the audience and performers in the seductive world of Venusberg in the opening of the first act, the transformation to a stark countryside demonstrates the gulf between those world. The chorale-lilke hymn of pilgrims awakens Tannhäuser in the real work, with the choral textures flawlessly underscoring the scene. As traditional as this staging is, the flawless execution demonstrates how effective such a setting can be.
The staging gives way in the second act to the German court, the staging recreates in tableau the kinds of images found in illustrations from the period, and it is this sense of an authentic setting that conveys the artistic space for the performers to make the work come alive. Playing off the greeting of Venus at the beginning of the opera, Wagner’s overt parallelism is having the Christian Elizabeth welcome everyone to the German court, and Eva Marton conveys an elegant presence that stands alongside her other opera roles (notably a stunning Turandot from the Met, also available on DVD). Marton’s vocal coloring helps to delineate her character. The overt welcoming of “Dich, teure Halle” shifts to a more personal tone as Elizabeth interacts with Tannhäuser and defends him. Yet her interpretation of the extended prayer scene in the third act is even more impassioned in its parallel of the intensity that Troyanos brings to her sensual interpretation of Venus.
As Wolfram von Eschenbach, Bernd Weikl is quite effective, with a ringing baritone sound that plays off Cassily’s tenor. Yet the extended “Blick’ ich umher” shows Weikl’s commanding vocality that anticipates his fine work in the third act. John Macurdy is a solid Landgraf, with proper stage presence, and the other men fit well the court that Wagner created in what becomes essentially a morality play in the final act. While the third act maintains the traditional staging of the opera in its medieval trappings, the interpretation diverges a bit. Levine focuses on the more recitative-like exchanges in the third act, which contrast pointedly the more isolated lyricism “Song to the Evening Star” of Wolfram and Elizabeth’s “Allmächt’ge Jungfrau.” The dramaturgy verges, at times, to expressionist images, as the closeups on Cassilly point to a Tannhäuser on the edge of reality. This sets up the dénouement, which resolves the conflict implicit in the story, as pure and sacred love redeem the more self-directed hedonism that attracted Tannhäuser almost to the end. Wolfram is an agent of salvation, and Weikl acts well with Cassilly in bring out the inner struggle that essentially involves both of them.
It is a triumphant presentation that is captured well on for television and preserved here on DVD. The limitations that exist with filming opera on stage are mitigated by varying camera angles and a careful selection of long shots and close ups. At times the production captures the intimacy of the stage in ways that would be difficult to see from the audience’s perspective. A quarter century after its presentation on stage and subsequent broadcast, this Met performance remains compelling for musical, dramatic, and scenic qualities that coalesce here. The final bows seem all to swift for such an impressive production, and it calls to mind the late evenings that typified many productions of “Live from the Met.”
The two-DVD set is accompanied by a useful booklet that includes a detailed listing of the tracks, along with a synopsis of the scenes. It does not include a full libretto, but the text is readily available. In terms of presentation, the DVD is appropriate to an international audience with subtitles available in German, French, English, Castillian Spanish, and Chinese. The sound allows for DTS and Dolby Digital. Not listed in the booklet are the bonuses found on the DVD, which include a photo gallery that documents the continuing presence of Tannhäuser in the repertoire of the Met. (The other bonus is an extensive set of excerpts from Deutsche Grammophon’s DVD of the Patrice Chereau’s Ring for Bayreuth, and it is unfortunate that space was not devoted to the Met’s Ring, also available on the same label.) As a whole, this DVD presents a solid production of Tannhäuser that bears repeated viewings.
James Zychowicz